Evening Star Newspaper, February 1, 1925, Page 75

— THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, Preparedness in the Treasury Building Is Seen’ When Alarm Bells Ring And Machinery of Defense Is Set 1n Motion‘ BY IRVING S. SAYFORD. NI “« th ran afternoon a few o a clerk burst th offic pistol The ough buckling while he | vaults! here, belt stlver shoulde: had uped up at my By the time I gone the dozen s Into the hall.” continued United tes Treasurer Frank White, e of the multitude of street ¢ Treasury Building had been loc n armed guard These doors ronze han unlocked until 1ard fetches on - this 1housands ha seng protably p prisoners liter every | doors | a them of can the by the the captalr from his office. | afternoon the | nd employes g, to the particular officials Mellc build from the 1 ! us could have got out| windows, for they are | ed. The upper windows 00 high to leap from, un- want to break vour neck. couldn’'t have stepped | of the innumerable cor-| ithout encountering an armed } veral, in uniform or or-| citizens business were mes- vou | + more hope- | write at had the Treasure started his your bell, one e many concealed throughout the | ding. Some p found. | ere at work in an underground sec of the Treasury, near an vault, an nwittingly 8 v didn’t under- he t set off a gong in of the captain of the guard other at police headquarters, captain had reflashed the | # But I suspect Chief| The ringing of sers, T William H « Service as the usl used to discuss fo of th ited States pro con and ref ny phase how it ot ths T hoards of against had of a talke no one ass find out wuipped to attack. | isfied to know & kept safe, and a subject,” M with grace: s better Moran bow not the that r the writer stood in a| room, perhaps 10 feet| y 8 high, and gazed upon the| Rockefel in 1, 2, 5, 10, 1.000, 5,000 and 10,000 dol- | greenbacks and vellow backs, | crisp and new. Of course, that is not “ARMED GUARDS WERE ‘ON THE MONEY' FROM THE VAULTS TO THE SIDEWALK.” true. It wasn't Rockefeller's at but the total in neatly packaged wdles just tallled with the amount D. was privately and authori- ely stated to he worth two years in a lower Broadway office in York—3$650,000,000. ke ago, | New "1‘”!3’ loset of Croesus was in the cashier's section of the Treasury | RBullding. A very short and very| narrow hall divides it from a dupli- e closet adjoining the long tier of cashler cages, but in this second room tha shelves content themselves with iodging & mere $15,000,000 or so in| llow fellows, and some glit-| piles of high-hat gold and| bags of silver. | king $10,000, you are holding| hand there $1,000,000," said ihe absurdly calm custodian. The alight of 99 grayish-black | $10,000 notes could have been slipped into the breast pocket without of- fending the outlines of a well-pressed coat. But writer did not do that. What was a paltry $990.000 in such| spacious company! Still But right then the writer happened to drop his gaze, and in the field of he floor loomed the toe of the polish- | ed shoe that held the gentleman's right foot. All about us were con- | cealed mechanisms which a polished suld deftly press or a swift hand nietly touch, and some- vast, dim building a would clatter, and erywhere bells would r-r-r-ing and numerable bronze handles would wist and deor locks click sharply d armed me steriously appear. The writer politely handed the $990, 2k and said, “How Interesting sheaf or elbow ¢ in that fble gong way between the cubby rooms. $15,000,000 of paper in the one the $650,000,000 in_the not money, but was. What this? It was money, but It wasn't. The two supplies were identi- | they admitted that. Any note— we would call ft—taken from package in the 650-million room would buy groceries or a raflroad ket, pay a hotel bill or be accept- i and changed at a bank without sestion, the same as the notes in the erty-stricken 15-million room. Yet ~ former wasn't money They meant that it wasn't money et.” It had not been “issued.” No, | nothing had to be done to it to make ¢ issued. But something had to be done about it. It, or any required portion, had to be lifted from the shelves in the 630 room, carried across into the 15 room, and the fact of the transfer had to be entered in certain book in writing. Lo, then hat which had been money but was ot money became mon it was oMolally “issued.” Before it had heen ust “reserve stock.” Quite as good afore as after to a burglar, however, f he oould get it. Which he couldn't, or_he long ago would have. Treagurer officials told an inter. esting story about the empty eil- | was {in | now have been fully paid nua to “A CLERK BURST THROUGH THE OFFICE HERE BUCKLING ON A PISTOL BELT AS HE RAN.” bers toyed | It is black ver vault where the plu e concealed alarm underground cage iron lattice, 89 feot long by and 11 feet deep, divided into 16 com- partments, § above and 8 below, in the manner some jail tiers are buil with concrete floo On the 30th of the tide of the heaped to the dollars, 112,896.000 of months later, March 7, 1919, not a dollar remained. They had gone or were on the way to India, China and other parts of the Orient to circulate as reminted British redemption coin and uphold the financlal honor, t} foreign integrity, since the world judges a nation as a man by what's the purse, of our ally, England We sold thus to the London gov ernment, and on credit, 270,000,0 standard silver dollars, for which we | in ins of $35.000.000 or more an- We enabled British banks. a throughout the East Indles, | redcem paper rupees with silver n at a time when Inability to do ire af sloom: of 1918, in vault silver them. Six August war, root with ments notably { 50 would have been of utmost gravit in maintaining the colonial grip on | loyalty | A Treasury official thus pictured | situation n the latter m’ of the calendar | © 1817, the coMmerclal supply of | ver bars was practically ex- hausted and the German empire at once selzed the opportunity to broad- cast propaganda which proclaimed that England, through her banking institutions situated in the East| Indies, would not be able to main- tain the redemption in silver of the rupee: in other words, would default her monetary obligation to nervous natives befors a watching world This would have been the same as if the Treasury at Washington, and con- sequently the banks throughout this| country, had no sliver to redeem, say, $1 greenbacks when presented and silver demanded. “The use of siiver was an absoluts nec it in the trade with eastern countries, and for a short perfod the financlers of Engiland studied the monetary systems of the countries of the world for a solution. They found that the United States had, a an element of its monetary system, more than 560,000,000 standard silver | dollars, of which about 453,000,000 were held in the Treasury against outstanding silver certificates of $1 denomination and above. Little time was lost in making an appeal to us for such ald as we could lawfully extend. (QJNDER the law at that fime, it would have been possible to se- cure in the open market sliver cer- tificates in exchange for gold, and upon presentation of these silver certificates to the Treasury redemp- tion would have been made in silver dollars. But thAt process was too slow to grip the emergency, so an experienced committes of our law makers and financlers drafted a plan | the caption of which was as follows “‘To conserve the gold supply of the United States; to permit the set- tlement in silver of trade balances adverse to the United States; to pro-| % N ok | tire the corresponding value i vide (half silve a comm Bovernments at war of the United States: and for the above purposes to stabilize the price and_encourage the production of sil- ver. “This plan became law as the Pitt- man act, approved by President Wil- son, April 18 5 “The clauses ‘to assist forcign gov- ments’ and ‘t the and e the production ver’ commanding inportance; the latter proceeded to the rescue of the American silver mining industry and.was an astute complement of the former clause The authorized Of the Treasury tc and_ sell bul 350,000,000 standard the Treasury for subsidlary quarters dimes) to assist foreign with the enemies coinage and e o stabilize price the Secretary break up or melt not more than silyer dollars in and simultaneously re- Iver the bullion not than $1 per ou the mint-refined silver com- POSINg it; the Secretary of the Treas- ury thereupon to purchase at $1 an ounce a corresponding weight of sil- ver mined and smelted in the United Stares “The availed as on certi to enbacks) ; English government at once itself of this opportunity to buy silver dollars and made with Washington a contract for $70,000,- 000 worth at $1 an ounce silver. As a result of these transactions the sil- ver market rose rapidiy and steadlly to the high point of $1.3 reached November 25, 1919 English were not only enabled to meat their redemption crisis, but also made a handsome profit on the mar- ket. “It was well known at the time this sale of silver dollars was made that the silver product from our mines would not be available for purchase by the Government to coin the re- quired replacement dollars, at least until the close of the war, and for a longer period, if the price of sllver remained above $1 an ounce; for the mines would sell to the highest mar- ket of course, and the act permitted Washirgton to pay not more than $1 “Operation of the act reduced the stock of money in the United States temporarily, but it also prevented contraction of the currency by per- mitting the Federal Reserve banks to issue Federal Reserve Bank notes in any denominations (including $1 and $2) as they should be authorized by the Federal Reserve Board, not to exceed in total amount the amount of silver dollars sold in bullion; and to secure these bank notes the Fed- eral Reserve banks were permitted to deposit in the Treasury, United States certificates of indebtedness or United States one-vear gold notes. The Fed- eral Reserve Bank notes thus issued into circulation were to be retired when standard silver dollars should be cofned out of bulllon purchased from our mines under the act. “In May, 1920, the director of tha mint began to buy such bullion and replace the 270.000,000 silver dollars sold to England.” P THE emptying of the dim old sub- terranean silver vault for the honor of our friend England stands Thus the “SOME PLUMBERS WERE AT WORK IN AN UNDERGROUND SECTION AND HAD UNWITTINGLY TOUCHED A WIRE" 25 per ounce, | | the heftiest job of its kind in the an- |nals of the Treasury. One thousand “hard” dollars to a bag, the pieces were heaped 11 feet deep on a space |89 feet fong and 52 feet wide. The |task of getting thls vast weight of money to the sidewalk and thence to rallway cars for shipment to the mints at New York, Philadelphia and | San Francisco for melting Custodian Masten of the cashier's | section. He is still, six years after- ward, a bit tickled with the fact that only one lone, single silver dallar “got away from him.” It was quick- 1y found between partitions in an express car and turned in to the San Franeisco mint This efliciency fine because more than $1,000 coln bags burst in being re- moved from the vault, The treasure had lain there so long & time, securi- ty agalnst silver notes in circulation, that the canvas had rotted colliding at a curve of the chute leading from vault ment to truck-floor would and scatter streams of rolling, tum- | bling. leaping round dollars. These, every time it happened, had to be recovered, counted, rebagged in new canvas, sealed, and packed two in wooden box for the rallway station. The task would have been less ardu- ous with gold, for gold, being a {nobler metal, fs always weighed, but Iver is counted picce by p Armed guards, of course, were “on the money” from vault to sidewalk to depot to mint, but nobody an where got rough and Making off with such boxes of silver dollars would be the silllest of out- law jobs at best. An average of 15 men dafly formed the devaulting force, and they work- ed eight hours a day from August 30, 1918, to October 29, and from No- vember 23 to December 11, and from December 26 to March 7. That is, 15 men worked 146 eight-hour days, or 1,168 hours. Could one man have done the work as well. he would have labored ,620 hours For the most part, the |from watchmen and laborers. Rai | way mail cars were early substituted | for expresy cars, two cars a day be- |ing loaded with 600,000 dollars each | between 7:30 and 10:30 a.m SISTANT Secretary of the Treas- ury Charles S. Dewey has 40,000, 000 brand beautiful gleaming siiver Peace dollars he wants to get rid of. If vou will stand by ht this you will save your country {000,000 & vear, for w fdge will thank known economy of his heart, or out of the economy of his well known heart, according to your politics. Mr. Dewey put it this way “In 1919 there were about 5,000,000 silver dollars and about 330.000.000 paper dollars; in 1924 there are out 53,000,000 silver dollars and 378,000,000 paper dollars. tell to record is especially 50,000 of the gravity compart- split open new $1.- feh Calvin Coc ¥ou out of the in circulation “THE WRITER STOOD IN A CUBBY - LIKE ROOM AND GAZED AT THE WEALTH OF A ROCKEFELLER.” “Bar silver rose to its high point of $1.38 an ounce In November of 1918, This made it profitable for pri- vaie agencles to buy and melt silver Qollars for sale to the market, par- ticularly should the price continue upward, and a great many speculators did so and sold the bullion or held it for rise. They got their dollars for melting from the banks. “Then the price of silver fell to around 70 cents, and such of the spec- ulators as had not yet dropped thelr dollars into the pot blessed them- selves and rushed back to the banks and redeposited and lost nothing. But great stores were melted, and the quantities returned by banks to Federal Reserve banks wers the chief reason why the number of silver dol- lars in circulation fell as low as 39,000,000 in 1921. “Now the Government wants to get back to a normal silver-dollar cfrcu- lation again, and we ara trying at the moment to put out 10,000,000 of the new peace fssus in place of paper dol- lars as the latter come into the Treas- ury for retirement as wornout or dir- ty money. That is, instead of issulng new, clean $1 notes for the old ones which we destroy, we are asking the banks to accept part of the replace- ment value in silver dollars. The public demand for paper dol- lars is increasing year by vear In 1922 the Federal Reserve banks put 628,000,000 $1 bills into circulation, in 1923 760,000,000 and this year 898,- 000,000. Causes of increase of dsmand are general business growth and im- provement, higher wages to spend and the enormously spreading popu- larity of automobile vacation tours and short pleasure trips. The gaso- line station business alons is a big consumer of small-denomination pa- per mone “Due to the war, the Government's reserve stock of printed money is eaten up. We have not been able to keep it replenished, because we have had to print more than 215,000,000 pleces of money, bonds and war sav- ings securities during the reqgnt perlod. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has been running 24 hours a day. “Our reserve supply of paper money used to be maintained as for three months; now it is down to three weeks. This has done away with the important process of Seasoning the paper both before and after printing, and thus the life of the bill is short- ened. The average life used to be nine months or more; this omission of seasoning and other causes have reduced it to four or five months. money * kK % 6N making good paper three months are consumed. First the sheets of blank paper (the size of eight notes) are wet, then the back is printed, then the sheets are dried in stacks three weeks, then the process is repeated for the face, then the notes are numbered and given thelr seal, then counted and tied in packages and sent to the treasurer's vault, where they lis a final month in seasoning and are fit to be circu- lated. “Instead of this, we are mow pay: 2o Two bags | = tried to steal. | force was recruited | D. T, , FEBRUARY 1, lRambler Recalls Social Life of District in Days Preceding the Civil War As He Reviews History of Heibergers, Tailors HE oldest business house in | Washington which has come to the Rambler's notice is that of F. J. Helberger, tailor, third of that name in the Capital. The business has been car- ried on for 74 years. Let me tell | the story. Franz John Heiberger came to Washington in 1851 and opened a tai- lor shop, called in some of the old advertisements “a_fashionable tai- loring establishment for gentlemen, under Brown's Hotel |, Many Washingtonians know that | Brow Hotel began as the Indlan | | Queen Tavern and at the door was a | wooden statue representing an Indian | queen. It may have been a statue of an Indian princess or a Pamunkey or Piscataway squaw in festal dre but in those long-gone days it was said—I know not by whom, but it was sald-—to vepresent an Ind n queen. and it is plausible that ine Washingtonians of a century ago who saw this Image knew as much about it as we do today It was a wood ving_after the toshion of the cigar store Indlan, but in this case the sculptor left out the uplified tomahawk and the bunch of cigars with which the wooden Indlan threatened and invited passers-by The sculptor made his statue an Image of an Indian woman endowed | with beads and plumes. The carver, who was also painter. did not blanch the face of the figure, paint a fever in the cheeks and incarnadine the lips. He gave the woman nature-like skin of brown Taverns had their signs, Long ago the sign of a tavern was a green bush, and an original chap wrote that 7004 wine needs no bush.” The original chap was not Shakespeare He makes Rosalind say in the epi- logue of “As You Like It”; “If it be true that ‘good wine needs no bush’ ‘tis true that a good play heeds no epilogue.” The bard put it in quo- | tation marks and W. Gurney Ben- ham, in his “Quotations,” ascribes it to the Latin phrase by Erasmus, Saleable wine needs no ivy hung out.” | | Whether that FErasmus was the bishop who suffered martyrdom unde Dlocletian, or was Krasmus th Dutch scholar of the fifteenth centurs the Rambler does not know, and is | not going back to the Library to find out. He will make this a good story {without 1t. At any rate, in old Rome |the wine merchant or vinarius hung |out tvy as his trade sign. Later our ancestors put up a hoar's head, a blue | dragon or a silver swan at the door and the place of public hospitality | {became the Boar's Head or the Stlver| Swan | Thus tha tavern on the north side of the between Sixth and Seventh the Indlan Queen Tavern. On a tall pole set in thae footwalk were bell and rop | When meals were ready in the “ordi- |nary” a slave rang the bell and it could be heard along the Avenue from | Four-and-a-half to Ninth street- and perhaps further, depending weather, traffic, and one’s ears Indian ‘Queen Tavern became the Indian Queen Hotel. FEnlarged and remodeled it became Brown's Hotel, | and that, remodeled, became the Metropolitan Hotel. | Under Brown's many hotels then and now, was a row of shops. of thesa was | rented by Franz Hefberger and the | Rambler has been told that the sign | was “Farant & Heiberger, Tailors.” | From such references as the Rambler | has it seems to have been opened as | the Washington store of Hubert a Avenue became | on | The | Hotel, as under | One ing out money which less than four weeks ago was blank paper. “It costs one and seven-tenths cents to manufacture and keep a plece of paper money in clirculation one year. If its life is only six months, the cost becomes more than 3 cents a year—— the equivalent of savings bank inter- est on deposits, or about as much as the interest yielded by some Govern- ment bonds. “It costs only one cent to coin a siiver dollar, and it lasts in circula- tion indefinitely. Its manufacture and subsequent career are subject to no vagari of material. For example, our paper stock for money used to be made of linen rags pure, now we have to be content with 25 per cent cotton- rag paper, which won’t stand up to wear.” (A Red Cross nuree of the A, E. F. arrives here with some necessary in- formation. Don’t blame it on the poor rag man, she says; blame it on the war. “We had to have a thousand million pieces of linen over there, and the whole blessed country tore up its old tablecloths and sheets and petti- coats and things,” and sent them across. When the women bought new, they mostly bought cotton or silk ma- terial, because the price of linen had gone spire-high. No, certainly don't blame the poor g man!") “We have got,” pursued the Assist- ant Secretary, “to build up our re- serve of §1 bills, and as thelr demand is increasing and their life decreasing that is a difficult thing to do. 1t we can push an additional 40,000,000 sil- ver dollars into circulation, they will take the place of one month's supply of paper dollars, and permit that quantity of newly printed bills imme- ditely to go into the reserve stock for one month to season. That will help us out all down the line of processing. “If by doing this we can lengthen the life of the paper dollar by about five months, we shall be saving one cent on every paper dollar i{ssued, and that will amount to about §1,000,000 saved a vear in the cost of running the Government. “The addition of these 40,000,000 silver dollars to the currency will be in both continental and insular United States, and the {ssue used will be the new 1924 Peace dollar, one of our handsomest coins. Notwithstanding any popular mo- tion to the contrary, the 40,000,000 ad- dition will not ‘weight the people’s pockets down.' The average person will not see or carry, in a year, many more ounces of silver than now. For example, in the average change re- celved from a $10 bill there won't be nine silver dollars—calculations indi- cate there probably will not be more than one. And—why, say!"” The gentleman thrust hand Into trousers pocket and dumped on his desk a loaded key-ring, several scrawny coins, a penknife and some odds. “There!” he sald. “See? That's the stuff we parry around, and it will { wear out any respectable lining more quickly than seven amooth silver dol- lars. “Now, will the public help us? The Treasury has nowhere else to turn.” P TO BURGLARS: If you genu- - '* jnely want to be a suicide in your profession, why not pass out in the near-company of real money? Why trifle with the Treasury at Washington? Why not pick on the Federal Reserve Bank vaults in New York, 30-32 Wall street, where there is more cash kept than in any other known spot in the world? But take a whisper: Look out for the flve- story underground trick mirrors with- in the double walls of reinforced con- crete! By glancing into any one of the four of them any one of the rub- | ber-soled armed guards, day or night, | can see all over the four faces of the | five-story hburied vaults, where lie stacked billions of dollars in paper, | gold and silver, behind the marvelous deuhle-comblnatlnn time locks. Its s un 1925—PART 5. Nor nageme Farant, an Important committed its Heiberger. ANZ JOHN HEIBERGER = born in Germany, March 14, 1819 d the tailor's "trade Amsterdam, Hol There was in London in the the 40's a tailor of renown work whose name was North his London he opened tailortn houses in cities on conti One of the branches was at Amster: dam, and there Franz Heiberger came a journeyman tallor and to the place of manager of branch. He went to London and he & responsible offic the main house of North The New World nitles called him There had been a connection with th Farant housa in | Norfoik and the North house in L don and North gave Heiberger a ter to Farant Franz Heiberger sailed—and “sailed” is the right word —from gland America with his new wed wife, Emma Jane Baker of London, &nd they landed at Norfolk in. August, 1847 You can make the calculation your- gelf, but you probably will not, so | the Rambler tells you that Franz was then 28 years old. He knew the h ma Mr. F® and lea % From branch be- | ways of one of the celebrated tailor houses of London, he dressed as well as any man might and he had the air and manner of a man who knew the world and its people. The Rambler Is working hard to avoid saying “He was a gentleman of the old school.” That fs an over- done phrase and does not mean much The Rambler comes upon mortuary eulogies written in 1840 and 1740 in vhich it is sald of the deceased that he was a gentleman of the old school” To be a gentleman is enough. The Rambler believes that there is likeness between the gentle- men of 1725 and 1925. He believes that one had and the other has in- telligence, consideration for persons less fortunately placed, courtesy (except, of course, when angered) and that the one did and the other does use soap and water at proper intervals. There is no agreement as to what 1s & gentleman. Some folk hold the opinion thet a gentleman is some- thing that has passed through a fa- mous university without getting any thing but an un-Christian accent, and spends the rest of his life seelng that hiz pants are created and in swapping gossip in an exclusive club. Others'hold that a gentleman should have some other qualifications than & dozen pairs of creased pants. ‘When Franz Helberger, 22 years old, came to Washington in 1851, he was a smartly dressed and affable man, and began to make clothes for men who were as proud and important in their time as we in ours. His workmen turned out suits of clothes that stood in the Senate and House of Represent- atives, making speeches eloquent and impassioned. They. made suits of clothes that sat on the bench of the Suprems Court and attendad cabinet| meetings at the White House. From the old shop were turned out sufts of clothes that 60-odd yvears ago stood before little Lucinda or Priscilla, who, wearing pretty- curls and seven skirts above her hoops, curtsied and believed that suit of clothes the most gallant and irresistible-that ever was. From the old shop under Brown's Hotel went suits’ of clothes that carried bouquets and tickets to a ball at Carusi’s As- sembly Rooms, into many a parlor whose site Is covered by the lobby of a 10-story - office. bullding. * ok k% NFORMATION which the Rambler gets from early Washington direc- tories is that the Washington firm of il THE WIFE OF FRANZ JOHN HEI- - BERGER, 1a. f1e | berger (H. I ade, and the Rambler ring them teil of mak r Gens. Grant, Sherl uster and Miles, and for Dewey, Sampson and call off score Rambler having time, the names he remembers aterial of w 1 the Rar advertisements w put in the them, he believ that would He does not threaten t will think it over the Sunday editor. you may get of The Star i advertlsing anc strange nov F. J. Hel and clotl ames, but nade no notes at the all g for 1 those bler ca old in The hav e of e a story of them please vou do it but take it up with that official is ramble the ear news matter which Looking for berger, the Rambler matter pertaining iers in 50's. tisement found i this, in issues in S “Cash Merck scriber has Just ed from New York with & full and complete stock of Fall and Winter goods which are now ready to be m to order on the sh princple determined t drop the causs he i satisfled that many persons prefer get ting their goods at reasonable rates fo cash, | & much greate b he and I kept a » tailors The The Star ber. ailor He has credit system, t ces to obt red RIGGLES “Seventh - te Patriot i Bank E. Gode: th strest of Pann ms his patrons from the North Cassimeres and e @irectory ad addition to H s Mercers and n's Hotel” were thosa of rs, draper and tailor, Sevent! ows' Hall, and F. to Tucker & Bor two doors east of the T h returned Tailors P. J. Ste street, near Odd Fe A. Tucker, successor r, were found b directory of 1854 advertisements to Young & e, one doo E. Owen & and merchant avenue, batw J. C. Weigh ads n the succ n essor a ave: Hotel aval fourteenth and “F. T Hiberger Exchange He (Loudon & The Exchange was a rtheast Avenue and Third street ton House being on corner. Both buildings Advertisements of Loudo rerous and in the dire advertisement in of the “H. F t. Brown's Hote is also this Toudo; rner of the rorthwest standing. & Co. are y of 1858 names ows W. Fara Depot directory AT ‘Franci & Co. t street The Fr ax Is wife aker, all of whom we United States, were: I ried Capt. John E the Northern married Allie ington: Franz Emma born 2a, who mar an officer i Isabel J. who of Wash- a Low Rid Johx who marr 1. da r of Jo Washington; George single; Minnte E on; Jda J. (Dr Washington; in Florida; deceased, (died last gton); Adam Eugene, May, married Wil- lam M Steuart, director of census. living in Washington, Mary Blanche, dled in infancy The children of Franz John berger, ary Wilson were: Elizabeth Flora, married G. Wagner of Philadelphia, both lvin in Washington; Franz John He berger, 3d, single; Fanny L., married George (. Ross and living in Ma Ga., and Dorothy M, married Hyssen, both living in Milwaukee, W Franz deceased, Wash living Corda Josephine, vear in Washi Geceased; Flo living John {eiberger the first died March 2, 1901, and his funeral was held on March i he Rambler searched The Star of those and vening dates but found no obituary account such as is 1 on the death of an old and prominent citizen. The reason was that it was the time of inauguration of President McKinley and Vice President Roosevelt and the pages of our newspaper were crowded with news of preparation for the in- auguration, news of the ¢ the parade and the ball Penslon Building, accounts tary and other orga ‘Washington, work of th mittees and all that went with an old-fashioned inauguration of Pres dent _and” Vice President. All that the Rambler found for use in this story was the Bimple death notice “Heiberger—On Saturday, March of heart failure, at his residence, F. J. Heiberger, in the eighty-second year of his age.” Mr. Heiberger bought the interest of other partners in the firm under Brown's Hotel and the sign and ad- vertisement from a year or two be- fore the beginning of the Civil War gave the name of the house as “F J. Helberger.” , Mr. Heiberger was a charter member of the German- American Fire Insurance Co., was vice president of the company from 1879 to 1893, and president from 1893 tii1 his death. When the Corcoran building was constructed on Fifteenth street from in the of mili- tions ir | Pennsylvania avenue to F street, the Helberger store was moved from the Metropolitan Hotel to & store on the Fifteenth street side of thg new building. The Rambler ought to be able to give you the date, because in his series of stories on W. W. Cor- coran he told of the construction of that building, but he is too lazy and shiftless now to look it up, and he has an engagement tonight to show some friends that they do not know how to play euchre. If you will write a letter to the office making complaint about .this matter, the Rambler will be only too glad to look up the date of the construction of the Corcoran Building. * ok THE Helberger store remalned the Corcoran Buflding until much of the groupd floor of the structure was taken over for the Cafe Repub- He, about 18 years ago, when the store was moved to 1419 F street. The place was ruined by fire, March 11, 1923, and the store was opened at 1405 F, where it is now. F. J. Helberger the first, retired from the business in June, 1893, being suc- ceeded by his.son, F. J. Heiberger, who retired in May, 1932, being suo- ceeded by his son, F. J. Heiberger, 3d. Some of the old emploves of the house of Heiberger whom the Rambler recalls are: Alexander D. Tucker, bookkeeper; living at No. 35 P street northwest. Joseph F. Hodgson, deceased, bookkeeper, long a major in the District National Guard, Harry Metz, manager, deceased; Fred Duehring and W. F. Meher, cutters, deceased. Some of these men liked to talk of Army and Navy men whose in hant and dealer i ng, Pennsylv opposite Brown's Hotel “fashionable merchant taf I street, batwaa William T. Jer apers and tallors Y., and Penn- Sixth street g Store, Willl able Clothing E € Sixth and Per under the Natio nings 231 and Marshall avenue, T 1 Clotk “Fashio avenue. 1858, tailor 0. 488 T Willlam H. wa Stanford, me advertising his of Pennes ors four da west at Peterson or, was advertising his sho Pennsylvania avenue, be 1 Four-and-a-halt and r feels William possession of the houss street, in which Abrahu that th was Paterson who was on Tenth | Lincoln @ hous the fi rooms | sarola | Ford's | opened his 1w | voica sav. “The | shot” This and into the i w wers his tailor shop 1d re He front heard t floor front tec One of the roo s saw excitement o Theater, and President roomer ran and bringing street local com- | F. J. HEIBERGER, 2d. wounded President from the theatar. There wae no way of getting an am bulance or wagon without sending a messenger and the Peterson room called to the men bearing Lincoln “Bring him {n here.” Thers was & | Bas lamp in front of the Petersen | housa ana a light in the upstairs front room, where Saffold had been | reading. The President was carried in and laid on the Ded In a back room on the first floor, a room rented by one of Petersen’s tenants, Willlan T. Clark The Rambler in other years went into this matter with all the names | and details, and, seeing this 1858 ad | vertisement of “W. Petersen, tailor | 4803; Pennsylvania avenue,” brought | 1t to mind. The Petersen house became the Schade home (he who was long editor of the Sunday Chronicle). The Petersen-Schade home was bought by [lhc United States the early 90« under persuasion from the Memorial Association of the District of Co- lumbia, organized in 1892 to preserve noteworthy houses in Washington. After the Government bought the house it asked O. H. Oldroyd to bring his Lincoin collaction from the Lin- coln house in Springfleld, 111, and in- stall it In the Washington house in which Lincoln died Ttaly’s Mercury. INOTWITHSTANRIYG its many mountains, Italy has little min~ eral wealth. Sulphur and mercury are the only minerals mined on a large scale. Italy's possession of the mercury mines of Idria since the end of the World War has made her the world's leading producer of that min- eral. Necklaces of Eggs. ECKLACES of wild birds' egas are now being made. The eggs are paired for size, and after blow ing are treated by a chemical proc- ess and the insides filled with a light composition to give them solidity. As the shells have different mark- | ings, novel effects are produced —e Some wise guy made the crack that this idea of learning by starting at the bottom is all right unless you're learning to swim. »