The Osceola times., 1883-09-22
MONEY MAKING.
Cords Of Silver Bullion Bars From
Which Dollars Are Made.
Assaying, Weighing, stamping, Concaving
and Milling - Where the silver Comes
From.
n. Quad in Detroit Free Press.

If you go into the mint at New Orleans
as you certainly will if you visit the
city, you will find guard in the rotundo
TO receive visitors. The James brothers
might have penetrated that far easy
enough, but they could not have gone
further. The barred gates rising up
between the visitor and Uncle Sans
store of silver dollars have a state prison
look, and one is put on his good be-
havior at once.
When your credentials are pronounced
all right and The gates unlocked to you,
you are ushered into the receiving and
weighing room. Silver bullion is cord
ed upon all sides, and is being handled
with as much contempt as a brick-car-
rer loads his hod. A bar of bullion
looks exactly like bar Of plumbers
solder, and when you are about to pick
up and walk off with one of the bars you
suddenly cdange your mind.
THE BIG SCALES.
In this room are the mo perfect pair
of large scales in America. They weigh
up to 10000 ounces, Troy weight, and are
30 delicate that a crumb weighing the
fve-hundredth part of an ounce will
drop the bar. All the silver received is
weighed upon these scales, and they are
looked upon by the general visitor as
one of the sights of the institution.
MAKING INGoTs.
All the bullion first goes to the melt
ing department and is melted, alloyed
and run into ingots of standard hneness,
which means 900 parts of silver and 100
parts of copper The coppcr-isput In
70 harden Il, and without this alloy
there would be great loss by natural
"wear and tear" There is a new assay
alter melting, and the assay must prove
that the composition is exact and cor
rect. The loss of even the three-hun-
dreth part of an ounce between the
weighing and the melting rooms must
be accounted for.
CUTTING THE BLANKS.
After the assay the ingots are turned
over TO the conner, whs rolls them into
strips by means of powerful machinery.
These strips are about three feet long,
and little wider than a dollar. The
thickness is designed to be the same as
dollar, but is sometimes too thick or
too thin The strips are then passed to
th..v tx,ha l, IL, 4 L..
punch as fast as you can count, and the
smooth, greasy blank dollars fall into
the box below. To discover if the blanks
are of the standard weight they are
wheeled into the adjusting room. The
demand is for 4l29 grains, but the gov
ernment permits a slight shortage. If
the blank is one grain short it is cast out
to be remelted. Ifit is one grain over
weight file is used to secure exact
weight.
In The adjusting room are about two
dozen women, each with delicate pair
of scales before her, and the blanks are
handled with surprising dexterity.
Those found to be standard weight are
sent on their way through the mint, and
the light ones will form part of new in
gots
CoNCAvINd AND CLEANING.
You think of a silver dollar as a per-
fectly fiat surface. Hold one to your eve
and you will see that it is concave. If
the letters and ornaments were even
with the rim Of the dollar they would
soon wear off. The concave is tn protect
them. From the adjusting room blanks
60 to the machine to be concaved and
then to the bath. The silver is greasy
and blackened, and the bath il to re-
move this and restore luster. After
being treated to an acid bath, the trays
filled with blanks are placed in red
hot oven and subsequently placed in a
revolving cylinder with saw-dust.
When they emerge ION this they shine
like stars.
MAKING THE DOLLAR.
Here are the smooth, round pieces and
to make dollar of them they are sent to
the stamp presses. These powerful ma
chimes feed themselves at the rate of 25S
per minute, and if you pick up one of
the coins you will find one side COM
plete and the other side still blank.
They are picked up and fed to second
machine, and now your dollar is com
plete except the edges. A smooth-eged
coin would wear away faster than mill
ed edge, and hence larger denominations
are milled. II is no use to try to guess
how it is done, for forty.nine out of fifty
persons would miss it. They are dropp-
ed into cavity in powerful machine
arranged to fiji them, and the coins ly-
ing fat upon one side, are squeezed the
same as if tube shut up on all sides of
your finger at once. This mills the
edges. The pressure on each dollar in
stamping and punching is about eighty
tons.
WHERE THE SILVER CONES FROM.
Uncle Sam contracts for his silver
bullion the same as a private individual