Just so we're clear, we're talking about empty hulls, right?
They can be dried out quite nicely by standing them on a cookie sheet in the oven at about 200F for an hour or so. The W-W hulls will take on a slightly sweaty appearance as they approach "done." Never could tell if it was moisture or wax, but I'm going to guess it was wax since the Reminton/Peters hulls of the same era didn't do this. All paper hulls have an afinity for moisture, so you don't want to do this way ahead of the time you intend to reload them.
The W-W paper hulls have a circular cardboard gas seal in the bottom. You can feel the lip on it if you stick your pinky down inside. After two or three loads that seal can come loose, and you can feel that with your pinky, also. Folks back then would run a stout wire with a hook on the end into the shell and fish out the loose ring. The ringless hulls loaded well and shot fine.
Hull life was about three or four loads, time-out being called on account of thin mouths or burn-through above the brass. W-W hulls were the best smelling, just nosing out the Remingtons.
As an aside, Remington was using plastic over-powder wads in their target shells even back in the early fifties. That had to have bunched some shorts at W-W.
