New Britain Herald Newspaper, January 9, 1926, Page 13

4 -t e Shoet e Brot Mo O o long G Toben, | Ihe Slory of DOLLAR BILL vk Here's Autobio r&P]W of ‘ T oney .- Popular Armerican diamonds moves majestically ~ " g Jrans across a hotel lobby, some spectator wliil lean over to his companion and remark: jet that guy has oodles of wam- . [} ent “Wampum''—meaning money. 2 & It's a slang phrase today—like ma. . guma, berries or dough—but {n point T 0 of fact wampum DOES mean e g 1 3 / / M4 i}%’z;fl L"{l ) i money, the first money America ever { in big steel | | - | ) | i i ; ) It was used by the Indians and was called by other names, too— wanpumpeag and plain peag. Wam- um consisted of beads and belts. ck bead was worth two white The white beads were made out of the ends of periwinkle shells, and the bl; beads were made out of the black part of @ clam shell. They were rubbed down and polished as articles of ornament and arranged in strings or belts as jewelry, PR FHE first English colonists in America began to use wampum for exchanges with the Indlans eand then among themselves, It was made a legal tender fn Massachu- setts and by custom soon became the prevailing currency. The white man also proved hix superfority by making counterfeit & 3 \ v | ] X A ¥ ¥ X wampun Ui i N ¥ 4 e # A fathom or belt of wampum was 5 : 2 R made up of 860 beads, For the In- Case hardening engraved plate in dlans 1t was perfect money; for the cyanide furnace Taspection g + A i ¥ 4 ;5 i § 3 % white man it became & fluctuating. came next . \ N . — 3 ' unsatisfactory currency. B Z i Soon efter the settlement of Mas- sachusetts Bay the colonists began to use what is ealled a barter cur- rency. Musket bullets, for instance, were worth a farthing aplece. “ e ISTORY shows that the English government made no objection to the emigration of the Puri. tans to New England except for the fact that they carried money out of the realm. Illustrative of the value of English ecurrency among the early settlers are the following in- cidents: BY DOLLAR BILL I'S & ehort life but a gay one! 1 started in as part of a load of paper—and now I'm the left car of a souveniy rabit! Here's how: 1 was mado at the Crane Mills, in Daliton, Mass., where afl the government's currency paper is made, 1 was just in the raw then, No polish or refine- ment. Just the same, I had the makings of an in- fluential eitizen. I wasn't any common plece of paper—not by a long shot! I was made of special silk fibro—trick stuff, made by a closely guarded wecret process, Voult Containing; £535000,000 Passed fro rand Eohand iamsgiy wll | - nd acmaie 7.5 e [ IR Souvenirs made ofold billg The sheet of paper T was in was big enough to o four bills, and this shest was put up in & package with 999 other sheets Every other package of currency tains 1000 shects. This 1000 count s paper mill and fs continued through the B of Printing and Eagraving and into the treasury, 1t anybody counts wrong, everybody in ment whera the error {s made count Is corrected. | 1 didn’t think I was o important until T reached tho Printing and Engraving Bureau. They drove me through the streot of Washington in a truck o fuss at all. As soon as I reached the bureau A married preacher was allowed 80 pounds a year, A man who stole four baskets of corn from the Indlans was fined five pounds for his crime. Carpenters, sawyers, foinc-s and bricklayers, whose services were in great demand, wers forbldden to take more than two #hillings a day for their labor, A cow was worth 25 or 30 pounds. The years rolled by. Paper money sprang into being. Colonists’ cur- rency passcd through hundreds of early crises, And then came the Revolutionary War—the greatest crisis of them all. , | depart- is held until the they put me in a steel safe behind a 20-ton steel door, I was guarded as carefully as finished cur- reney! Whila T was fn my safe, some men made a plate to print me with. They never use the o plate for this. They use it to make replica plates, and print with them. I found this is the bureau's plan to keep tselt from being a counterfeiter. If anything ehould happen to the orlginal another one. No matter how much this second plate was like the or late, they'd o to make 1, it wouldn't be the origi- nal—and bills printed by it would be counterfe But if anything should happen to the replica they could casily make a new one. PLATES GUARDED And maybe you think they aren't carcful of thesa plates! They guard them 24 h and lock them in a vault at night. a day 1t a counterfeiter got one, he could be a aire in a week! From the safe where they put me at first they sent me te the pr ting room, where 625 employes money faster than Rockefeller ever dreamed of. They make $15,000,000 a day! That's eno even Henry Ford can't laugh off. The smal s are $£1, and the largest are $10,000, In the printing room they printed me first on my back. Then they sent me over to the Inspection room to be examined. Finding I was all O, K., they sent me back to the printing room and slapped another plate on my front Lots of peopla think a bill is made of two pleces of paper stuck together, but they're wrong. When I was printed—it took about a month—I was sent to the examining division, where I got another careful once over. All this time I was still {n a sheet with three other bills. If any one of th fau the whole away. o bills had been heet would have been thrown But we wero all right, g0 they put us between two pl c ces of carboard, froned us with a mechant roller, trimmed the rough edges and sent us to the numbering room to be stamped with our treasury numbers. After more ch to the D and checked and counted again. Then they wrapped us In a brown paper package and put us In a van to be hauled to the Treasury Building On the way to the treasury I felt proud. The care they took of us was flattering. Jesse James ing ton of Issue, in the same building— nd counting we were sent ' v r end all his boy chums nmldn't have broken Into and they in thelr at van. Its sldes werd an inch thick ¢ t stages. had enough guards around to Jick the a e the old has-heens come when they are unless proof is presented that Being too to I was sorry for those old dollars. Some had been bo sent o t bill shred expert, 1 T don't blame them for being careful in circulation for years and some a few weeks. in a sealed package with s carries 4000 to £4,000,000 each trip, ) all dirty, fraved, and worn out. the rec lerk. He hand WORTHLESS They ame from bank and subtreasuries count gave him a re country. at the treasury, T thousit stay sorry for t hen 1 found I wasn't worth I d to be sizned by both the treas register and the treasurer of tha Uni ates I was signed with three other bills. They signed , using four pens hooked together en us in a bu: a bar Finally we were packed again and put into a g vault where we marked time for two months i shape, so t laundry to bo renovated ing to get into ci There was $535,000,000 i ult, that carry hills on endless 1 wouldn't advise a with of it, The watc n who patrol tk et awey, ersed In soaps 1 in r water, drie guarded by 68 on day and night, ed, ond sent into circulation with a special detail always on hand for emer- and crisp. gency duty. Other bills that c eith Electric signals are turned in every half hour shreds and patches sent ove to the office of the captain of the watch, The cap- the Redemption Division, where taln's office is in communication with the eity to identify and trace them police chief, with Fort Me nal, so police and with the Arse- avalry and artillers could be called Pl This expert has found frag ithout delay. okl delay that had been chewed by swine In the money storage vault, every time em put @ new package of bills in, they took a packax out. At last my turn came. I was taken to the in with me wer y have machines Then the bills once more, clean and checked us a0 vers long The counter was was prseed from and I'll say she knew T ink that dossn't t0 me was a co 1 didr 2t— feit,” and it was s 1 o Department for inve When I fou o the mor between cop; as-heated d a1 cash room of the treasury, and went f RN B 7'1'_ i into the wide, wide world T e AN ot ThT s Srit a6t EXCHANGED FOR OLD BILL eomed at its face value; if between t I t ¢ is 1 They sent me cut In exchange for a 4 twofifths Is left, it is v half-va 1 its owr that came Into the Treas jemption Divie but any part less ft e, redecn t d by the trea (Copyright, 1924, by NEA Service, Inc. No. 13) to ba renovated ar Each day at 1 p. m When the c¢olonies went into the war, all of them made iesues of pa- per money to meet the expenses of military preparations. The Contt: nental Congress, having no power to tax, began to issue bills on the faith of the “Continent."” The first issue was for 300,000 Spanish dollars, redcemable in gold or silver in three years. Paper for $9,000,000 was issued before the great depreciation began, PRCEEY BLATIAH WEBSTER insisted on taxation, but & member of Congress Indignantly asked why the people should be taxed when they could go to the printing office and get & cartload of money. In 1780 the bilis had so deteriorat. ed In value that they were worth two cents on the dollar. ‘The Bank of North America was chartered with a capital of $400,000 December 31, 1781. The bank origl- nated in a unfon of Philadelphia men formed in the preceding year to supply the army with rations. They were allowed to form the bank and to {ssue notes to buy the re quired articles. Another early ecrisis was Shay's Rebellion in New England in 1788 and 1786, It was an Insurrection of debtors who were suffering from the collapse of the currency and the re- turn to specie values, They clam: ored for paper money. ¢ . ’\BIERXC.\N currency started on a temporary upward trend with the organization of the first United States bank, chartered by Congress in 1701. The bank's caplh tal was $10,000,000, to be paid ene fourth in cash and the rest in United States bonds. The charter was te run for 20 years and the bank issued no bills smaller than $10. The first sliver was actually colned in 1794 and the first gold in the next year.