"The Ithaca Sign Works, owned by the Stanford-Crowell Company manufactures signs of all sizes, from the small million so commonly secreted in a ladies handbag to a flying machine that does not fly. The Ithaca Sign Works makes more of a specialty of small novelties, such as match strikers, fans direct from Japan, drinking cups, fly killers, calendars, etc. A carload of drinking cups, about 100,000 a month, are shipped out of Ithaca. They sell pictures which are handled ten times in the coloring and varnishing, and yardsticks--they sell them by the hundreds of thousands. If you have ever attended a county or state fair, of course you know where some of them go. The output this year will aggregate over a million and a half. They are all cut, printed with advertising and varnished right here in Ithaca. The calendar trade for this Christmas was shipped out last May, but some calendars for local merchants are still being made.
The most novel signs of the factory are the huge wooden ones which are made in all sizes and shapes. The airship previously mentioned is a large board sign cut to the shape of a dirigible balloon, with advertising on the imitation gas bag. Others represent automobiles, phonographs, street cars, etc. Some days, Mr. Crowell says, the shipments made will go to twenty-five or thirty states."