The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1884-03-28
UNCLE SANS STRONG BOX,
INSIDE THE NATIONAL TREASURY
BUILDING AT wASHINGao
ALOOk at tie various zBNreaus-1uov
the Money il Stored Away and
COunted-Intor resting Stories.

A Washington correspondent of the
Cleveland Leader has written an interest
ing account of the United States Treas
ury building. We quote: The govern
ment, you know, requires each national
bank to deposit 500, 900 in United States
bonds as security for every 800, 900 of
circulation issued to them. These bonds
of the national banks are kept in the
bond vault on the second floor of the
treasury facing the building where the
attorney general has his office. The
vault is entered by massive doors, and
the bonds to the amount of four hundred
million dollars are kept in thousands of
big envelopes, each bank being separate.
These envelopes are arranged on shelves
like those of book case around the
walls of the vault from the floor to the
ceiling. Each envelope has a separate
division or pigeon hole for itself, and
many of them contain hundreds of thou
sands of dollars. The vault is bound
with iron and is the size of an ordinary
parlor-twenty feet long and fourteen
solitary gas Jet in the center. and black
whiskercd clerk stands guard over it
while you are admitted only with a
cDCIldl Cdlu llOIn lllC llCuSulCI VI lllC
United States.
One morning-it was several years ago
one of the national bonds was missing.
Great CONSERVATION was the result. The
whole treasury was in trouble, and a score
of employees were brought up and exam
ined. Still there was no clue to the loss;
and so it continued up until evening when
an old fellow who had been in the depart
E.. Il |,
in the attic with the missing bond in his
hand. Though it was known he had
handled the bonds in the morning he was
of such an honest reputation that no one
had suspected him of stealing it. He
was very methodcal old fellow and was
accustomed to take off his boots rs soon
as he came into the office in the morning,
set them beside his desk and put on his
slippers. This morning he had looked
over the package of bonds in which the
missing one was and had left it on the
corner of his desk, not noticing that one
of them had fallen off into his boot. An
other office having to deal with the
bonds, they were gathered up hurriedly
and the mistake was not discovered until
they had passed through several hands
The old man was in CONSERVATION, but he
protested he knew nothing of the loss
and the result was the treasury was wild
for day When he went to put on his
boots he discovered the bond and re-
turned it,
On the floor below. the bond vault is
the redemption bureau of the treasury.
1t is shut off from the main hall by iron
grated doors which are always locked.
The people within, fair girls and with
cred men, move about noisclessly and
mysteriously with big punches of green
backs in their hands, and now and then
the great vault in the center is opened
for the storage of more silver Only
written permit from the treasurer will
admit stranger to this place, where mil
lions are daily handled and where for
tunes are cut to pieces with one stroke
of great knife.
The great iron vault of silver is an iron
room, twelve feet wide and eighteen
feet long. Its walls are a foot thick, and
it now holds ninety tons of silver dol
lars. They are tied up in bags, and are
piled one on top of the other like so
much wheat Beside this is another
great vault for greenbacks which lately
held $685. 900, 600, 300, 000 coo OF which
were in large denominations, and could
have been put in a two-foot box while
the other eighty -five millions of smaller
kinds would have made load for a
four-ox team.
In this bureau, and in this large room
divided into two parts by these great
vaults at the center, all the greenbacks
of the country are redeemed. Behind
office desks several score of women,
many of them good-loolling sit counting
package after package, day by day, year
in and year out. Their wages average
seventy five dollars month, yet each in
that time handles hundreds upon hun
dreds of thousands At one side of
each one, on the table, lie great piles of
greenbacks, done up into packages as
they come from the banks A strip of
paper is around each one hundred bills,
stating where they come from and who
counted them in the country. The Young
lady takes this off and counts the bills,
moistening her dainty fingers with wet
sponge in glass on the table. If it is
not right she reports so to the chief, and
the bank stands the loss. IT, however
she makes mistake or passes a counter
felt she must make the mistake good
These girls become the most expert of
detectives, and they can tell a bad note
by feeling it, They seldom make mis-
takes, and the national banks average a
hundred errors to their one.
Some years ago one young lady when
counting had been throwing the straps
III which the packages were tied on the
floor beside her after verifying the count.
While she was counting package she
would lay the strap marked with the
name of the bank which sent it, beside
her on the table. The packages were all
OF one hundred dollar notes. At last she
came to one that contained only ninety
nine notes, and looking for the strap,
was terrified to find that 1t had fallen
among the others. She thought she
knew the name of the bank, but could
not prove it. The bank on being mott
fed, refused to acknowledge the mistake
and she was compelled to pay the one