CHAPTER XXXII.THE LAST DAYS OF A DOLLAR.
The Division of Issues—Ready for the World—Starting Right—Forty Busy Maids and Matrons—Counting Out the Money—Human Machines—A Lady Counting for a Dozen Years—Fifty Thousand Notes in a Day—Counting Four Thousand Notes in Twenty Minutes—Travelling on Behalf of Uncle Sam—In Need of a Looking-Over—“Detailed” for the Work—What has Passed ThroughSomeFingers—Big Figures—Packing Away the Dollars—The Cash Division—The Marble Cash-Room—The Great Iron Vault—Where Uncle Sam Keeps His Money—Some Nice Little Packages—Taking it Coolly—One Hundred Millions of Dollars in Hand—Some Little White Bags—The Gold Taken from the Banks of Richmond—Anxious to Get Their Money Back—A Little Difficulty—Not yet “Charged”—A Distinction without a Difference—Charming Variety—A Nice Little Hoard—Five Hundred Millions Stored Away—The Secret of the Locks—The Hydraulic Elevator—Sending the Money off—How the Money is Transported—Begrimed, Demoralized, and Despoiled—Where is our Pretty Dollar?—The Redemption Division—Counting Mutilated Currency—Women at Work—Sorting Old Greenbacks—Three Hundred Counterfeit Dollars Daily—Detecting Bad Notes—“Short,” “Over,” and “Counterfeit”—Difficulty of Counterfeiting Fresh Notes—Vast Amounts Sent for Redemption—Thirty-one Million Dollars in One Year—The Assistant Treasurer at New York—The Cancelling Room—The Counter’s Report—The Bundle in a Box—Awkward Responsibility—“Punching” Old Dollars—They are Chopped in Two—Paying for Mistakes—The Funeral of the Dollar—The Burning, Fiery Furnace—“The Burning Committee”—What They Burn Every Other Day—The End of the Dollar.
Following our dollar, we come this soft summer morning to the Division of Issues. It is in the Treasurer’s Bureau, and here, crisp, new and ready for its adventures, our dollar has arrived. The fate that mayawait it out in the world, the wildest fancy cannot foretell; but before it starts on its long pilgrimage, it must be again manipulated by fair fingers, to see that it starts “all right.”
We enter a long, light, airy room; and here at a table sit forty or more maids and matrons, counting the new notes. Pretty maidens! Pretty dollars! Our dollar among the rest. Crinkling, fluttering, flying, the dollars! Serene, silent, swift, the maidens! That anything can be counted so rapidly and yet so accurately, defies belief. It is the marvel of this counting, that it is as infallible as it is flying. The fingers of forty women play the part of perfected machinery, the numbered notes passing through them with the celerity and regularity of automatic action.
This perfection of mathematical movement is acquired only by long practice and by one order of intellect. There are persons who can never acquire this unerring accuracy of mind and motion combined. There is a lady sitting here who has been in this division since it was organized, in 1862, who can, upon demand, count fifty thousand notes in one day. As the department hours of work are from nine to three o’clock, and half an hour is taken at noon for lunch, these fifty thousand notes must all be counted in the space of five and a half hours. This is at a rate of nine thousand and ninety notes each hour, one hundred and fifty each minute and two and a half each second. The same lady will count four thousand legal tender notes in twenty minutes. These lady counters, with a number of their sister peers from the Redemption Division, perform numerous journeys for Uncle Samuel whenever the Treasury Offices in othercities need a “looking over.” At such times they are “detailed” to go and count the Government funds there.
Through the fingers of these ladies has passed every note—legal tender or fractional—which has been issued by the United States since the beginning of the war of the rebellion. Every note, ever touched or seen, with all the gold-notes and the millions of imperfect bonds and notes never put in circulation—every one has passed through these same deft fingers. The total value of this vast amount, up to July, 1872, was about two thousand nine hundred million dollars, more than two hundred and twenty-three millions of which was in postal and fractional currency.
As soon as the new money is counted, it is again put away—the legal tenders in strong paper wrappers, the fractional currency in paper boxes. All are sealed, put on a hand-cart, and rolled off to the vaults of the cash division, whither we still, you and I, pursue our little dollar.
Passing through the cashier’s office and the superb Marble Cash-room (to which we will soon return), at the opposite end we reach one almost exclusively occupied by the iron vault of the United States Treasury. The double iron doors swing slowly back, and we stand in the money vault of the nation. It looks light and airy as a china-closet. The sealed packages, lining the shelves to the ceiling, are full of money. I hold a small package in my hand of crisp, stamped paper, tied with common twine, and “take it coolly” when the keeper of these coffers tells me that the string ties in one hundred millions of dollars. It doesn’t seem much!
On the shelf of a cosy closet are piled some littlewhite bags which have done a deal of travelling. They hold the gold captured from Jefferson Davis’s fleeing trains, taken from the banks of Richmond. You know the banks of Richmond have been very anxious to get their money back, and have sent numerous messengers after it. A small obstacle, in the shape of a fact, separates them from the object of their desire. This gold was rifled from the mint in New Orleans, and before it came to the banks of Richmond belonged to the Treasury of the United States.
In this vault is packed away all the money not needed for circulation. A large portion of the money which lines these shelves has never been charged to the Treasurer on the books of the department, therefore, technically, is not yet money, although all ready for use. Every kind of note which the ingenuity of Uncle Sam and his servants ever devised, is here packed and guarded. The compartments of the safe not affording sufficient space, the floor is piled—and as carelessly, apparently, as if with potato or apple bags; but not in fact. The value of every bag and package is known, and not one cent could be taken without being swiftly discovered and pursued. Piles on piles of little bags and packages! this is all, and yet they hold five hundred millions of dollars. Little bags and packages these are, all, and yet for them men toil, struggle, sin—sell their bodies and their souls!
On each of the doors of this iron vault are two burglar-proof locks, of the most complicated construction, each on a combination different from the rest. But two or three persons know these combinations, and no person knows the combination to the locks on both doors.Thus it is impossible that they should be fraudulently opened, save by collusion between two persons who know the combination. This is but one of the safeguards which the Government sets about its treasures.
A few paces from the door of this vault is the elevator communicating with the room of the agent of Adams’ Express Company, on the basement floor below. The motive power of this elevator is Potomac-water, from the water-mains. Two iron pistons, about eight inches in diameter, attached to the elevator platform, one on each side, move smoothly up and down in perpendicular iron cylinders. A turn of the handle admits the water into the cylinder beneath the pistons, which are forced up by the pressure, and with them the elevator. A reverse movement of the handle allows the water to escape from the cylinders, and the elevator descends. Its movements are noiseless, and it is managed with remarkable ease. Up and down, this servant, swift and silent, bears the moneys of the people. It is just descending, piled high with packages, some directed to banks, railroad and manufacturing companies. Others are addressed to assistant treasurers and depositors of the United States. Much is going to replace the old money already sent back to the Treasury for destruction. All will be carried away, as it was brought in its neophite state, by Adams’ Express Company, which is bound by contract to transact all the vast money transportation business of the Government. This contract confers mutual advantage, both on the Company and the Government. To the latter, because it obtains transportation at a much lower rate than it could otherwise do, paying but twenty-five cents for each thousand dollars transported; while, at even this per cent., the Companycan grow rich on the monopoly of the vast money transportation business of the Government of the United States.
Alas! for our dollar that went forth from the paternal door—as many another child has done—unsullied, only to return at a later day from its contact with the world, begrimed, demoralized, despoiled. Where is our pretty dollar, fresh and pure? Every delicate line defaced, tattered, filthy, worn out—this wretched little rag, surely, cannot be it! And yet it is. This is what the world’s hard hand has made our dollar.
We have reached the Redemption Division of the Treasurer’s Bureau, and stand in one of the rooms devoted to the counting of mutilated currency and the detection of counterfeits. This difficult and responsible labor of the public service is performed solely by women.
In the long rooms on either side of the marble hall, on the north ground floor of the Treasury Building, may be seen one hundred and fifty women, whose deft and delicate fingers are ceaselessly busy detecting counterfeits, identifying, restoring, counting and registering worn-out currency which has come home to be “redeemed.” Each lady sits at a table by herself, that the money committed to her may not become mixed with that to be counted by any other person.
The fractional currency sent to the Treasury for redemption is usually assorted by denominations only. The work of assorting by issues remains to be done by the counters of the Treasury. As there are four distinct issues of most of the denominations, each of which must be assorted by itself, this labor alone is a vast one to thecounters. Looking on their tables we see them heaped with little piles of currency, each made of a denomination or issue different from the rest. Thus every new issue increases the labor of currency-redemption. With clear eyes and patient hand, the lady bending over this table takes up slowly every bill and scrutinizes it, first, to see if it be genuine. Over three hundred dollars in counterfeit notes are found in the fractional currency, daily. This fact alone is sufficient to make the counting of the Redemption Division far less rapid than that of the Division of Issues.
The first thing that a lady at a redemption table does with her money packages is, to compare their number with the inventory which accompanies them. If there is none, she makes one. If there is a discrepancy between the packages and the number claimed, she refers to a clerk, that there may be no mistake. She then proceeds to the examination of a single package. After she has placed all the rest in a box, so that no strap or stray scrip from another bundle may mix with the first; when she has scrutinized and counted every note in the package, she puts the strap on again, marking it with her initials, the date, the amount, the “shorts,” “overs,” and “counterfeits.” Thus she continues till every package has been counted. She then proceeds to assort the notes into packages, each containing one hundred notes, each of the same denomination and issue, which she binds with a “brand new” printed strap again, marked with her initials and date. All the notes over even hundreds she places by themselves. These in turn are given to distinct counters, whose sole business it is to make even hundreds out of these odd numbers.
The first counter then enters in a book, having a blank form for the purpose, printed in duplicate on one side of each leaf, a statement of the result of her count, containing the net amount found due to the owner, the aggregate of the “shorts,” the “overs,” the “counterfeits” discovered and the amount claimed. One of these duplicates is retained in the book as her voucher; the other is attached to the letter which accompanied the money; all together are handed to the clerk, who draws the check which is to be sent in return; or, if new currency is to be sent from the cash division, the clerk writes the order on which it is to be forwarded.
This is the story of but one package of mutilated money of the tens of thousands that are received at the Treasury every day. The Government has provided the most munificent facilities for the redemption of its currency and the maintenance of its credit in circulation. To what an extent the nation avails itself of these facilities no one can realize who has never visited the Treasury. Regular transportation, at the expense of the Government, is provided by express for the redemption of all currency. Everything demanded of its holders is, that they should send it in proper amounts; then its transportation is paid, and new currency sent back in its stead. This liberality in the Government is partly accounted for in the fact that fresh notes are a prevention of counterfeits. A fresh, new note cannot be counterfeited. Its exquisite tints and lines cannot be reproduced by any false hand. Only after its beauty has been obscured is the attempt made. Thus it is said that counterfeiters “soil and rumple their spurious notes, to give them the appearance of having been in circulation a long time.” Thus many banksnever sort over or pay out any fractional currency which they receive, but put it into packages and send it to the Treasury at the close of each day’s business, so that nothing but clean notes are ever paid over their counters. By doing this they are saved the immense labor of reassorting old notes, and afford their applicants the happiness of always receiving new ones.
Only the room in which the express messengers deliver their remittances can give any idea of the vast amounts sent daily to the Treasury for redemption. Here we find counters, tables, and the floor piled high with damaged money from every State in the Union. Two and three hundred packages are often received by express in a single day. The greater part of these contain postage and fractional currency. The Assistant Treasurer of New York forwards a remittance of fractional currency every ten or twelve days, never less than one hundred thousand dollars, and the amounts sent from other treasury officers are proportionately large. Over thirty-one million dollars in fractional currency were received and counted during the last fiscal year—about one hundred thousand dollars for each working day. Every note in this large sum has to be counted, studied, assorted with all others of the same denomination and issue; strapped, labelled, reported, delivered—all done by women.
The last room to which the counter carries our dollar is the cancelling room. She has just reported to the chief of the Redemption Division the result of her count, in the following duplicate report on the broad paper strap which binds her bundle of soiled notes:
Amount, $5,000.00From Fiftieth National Bank, New York City.Received July 9, 1873, byMary Jones.
Amount, $5,000.00From Fiftieth National Bank, New York City.Received July 9, 1873, byMary Jones.
Amount, $5,000.00From Fiftieth National Bank, New York City.Received July 9, 1873, byMary Jones.
Amount, $5,000.00
From Fiftieth National Bank, New York City.
Received July 9, 1873, byMary Jones.
The $4,960 is immediately sent to the bank in any denomination of new notes requested, or if no such request has been made, it is sent in exactly the denominations received. And now our lady-counter proceeds to attend the cancelling of the notes which she has counted, and which the Treasury has already redeemed. A messenger carries her precious bundle in a box, but she must keep messenger, box, and bundle in sight; for, from the moment that she receives it, till she places it in the last cash-account clerk’s hands, she is personally responsible for its contents. If, by any possibility, it could be spirited away, she would be obliged to pay for every ragged dollar out of her little stipend.
This is a bustling sight. Messengers, each with a counter, are rushing in and out with their boxes full of strapped and labelled currency. Round a large table crowd many fair women, while every instant “thud! thud!” strike the precious packages. Each in turn is taken up by the canceller and set between the teeth of Uncle Sam’s cancelling machine. This is fashioned out of two heavy horizontal steel bars, five feet in length, workingon pivots. To the shorter end of each is attached a punch, while the other is connected by a lever with a crank, in the sub-basement below, which is propelled by a turbine water-wheel furnished with Potomac-water from one of the pipes of the building. Under its grinding “punch” our poor little dollar goes, and with it a hundred dollars beside. With a savage accuracy it stabs two holes through every one. This is done for the purpose of absolute cancellation. Then each bundle is returned to its box, the messenger picks it up, the counter follows, and both hasten to the cash-account clerk of the division, whose business it is to see if all the money received and delivered to the counters, has been returned and accounted for. Not until she sees her box of cancelled notes safe in the hands of this clerk, does the counter’s personal responsibility end.
Near the punches in the cancelling room is a ferocious-looking knife, set in an axle, which is consecrated to the purpose of cutting the cancelled bundles in two, through the middle of each note. These are made into packages of one hundred thousand dollars of fractional currency, and larger sums of legal tender notes; and are sent back to this office to be cut asunder by this knife. The duplicate paper and strap which our fair counter bound about this bundle, is so printed as to show, upon each half, the denomination, issue and amount of the notes enclosed. The counter’s initials and the date of counting are also recorded at each end, as well as a number or letter to identify the bundle. These sundered notes are now sent, one-half to counters in the Secretary’s office, the other half to counters in the Registrar’s office, where every little wretched rag is re-counted. This is done as a checkon the Treasurer’s counters, and to secure absolute accuracy. If these second counters discover a “short” or a “counterfeit” passed over by the first fair fingers, the full amount is taken out of the wages of the counter whose initials the tell-tale package bears.
BURNT TO ASHES.—THE END OF UNCLE SAM’S GREENBACKS.The above is a graphic sketch of the destruction of the worn and defaced currency constantly being redeemed by the Government, which is here burned every day at 12 o’clock. On one occasion considerably more than one hundred million dollars’ worth of bonds and greenbacks were destroyed in this furnace, and the burning of from fifty to seventy-five millions at a time is a matter of ordinary occurrence.
BURNT TO ASHES.—THE END OF UNCLE SAM’S GREENBACKS.The above is a graphic sketch of the destruction of the worn and defaced currency constantly being redeemed by the Government, which is here burned every day at 12 o’clock. On one occasion considerably more than one hundred million dollars’ worth of bonds and greenbacks were destroyed in this furnace, and the burning of from fifty to seventy-five millions at a time is a matter of ordinary occurrence.
BURNT TO ASHES.—THE END OF UNCLE SAM’S GREENBACKS.The above is a graphic sketch of the destruction of the worn and defaced currency constantly being redeemed by the Government, which is here burned every day at 12 o’clock. On one occasion considerably more than one hundred million dollars’ worth of bonds and greenbacks were destroyed in this furnace, and the burning of from fifty to seventy-five millions at a time is a matter of ordinary occurrence.
The Treasury mills grind slowly; but in the slow fullness of time the separate “counts” of three offices—the Treasurer’s, the Register’s, the Secretary’s—are finally reconciled. The integrity of the Government, throughout the whole existence of its minutest fraction, has been maintained and demonstrated. In the process there is not much left of our poor little dollar, and nothing left for us but to go to its funeral. Like most of us, it has had rather a hard time in this world of ours. Where has it not lived—from a palace to “a pig’s stomach;” and what has it not endured—from the scarlet rash to the small-pox—and to think that nothing remains for it now but to be burned! Only through purgatorial flame can it be fully and finally “redeemed.”
About a quarter of a mile from the Treasury Department, in what is called “White Lot,” stands the furnace which is to consume our dollar. The furnace, and the building in which it stands, was built expressly for this purpose for the sum of ten thousand dollars. The furnace is ten feet high, seven in diameter, circular and open at the top. With it is connected an air-blower, which is attached to an engine, the steam for which comes from a boiler some twenty rods distant. On the ground about lie piles of cinders—the metallic ashes of extinct dollars, compounded of pins, sulphur, printer’s ink and dirt.
To this furnace, filled with shavings in advance, every other day comes “The Burning Committee,” bearing theboxes of doomed dollars, sealed finally in the Register’s and Secretary’s Bureaus. This Committee is formed of a person from each of these Bureaus, with a fourth not connected with the Departments. In their presence the final seals are broken—the complicated locks of the furnace opened. Then the packages are thrown into the flames, each “lot” being called and checked by the Committee, the amount averaging about one million five hundred thousand dollars every other day. At the same hour about one hundred thousand dollars in national bank notes are burned at another and smaller furnace. Beside cancelled money, internal revenue and postage stamps, checks and defective new money are all consumed in this furnace.
Here the three official delegates, with a few spectators, stand to witness the sight. Worn out, used up, gone by—all pass into the furnace, our dollar with the rest. The furnace is locked, by official hands, with nine distinct locks. A match is set to the shavings; the smoke of the sacrifice begins to ascend—the Committee depart. The fire and the money are left alone together for the next twenty-four hours. To-morrow a smutty aerolite, smothered in ashes, will be the significant “finis” of the story of our dollar. It has had its day!