The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1893-10-14
COMING PRECIOUS METAL
A Glimpse Of the Interesting Proc
ess of Minting.
Il II Somewhat Similar to the Work ox
the Baker Specification OF Some o.
the Terms Used In Mint
Parlanco.


of how money is made. Even ency-
clopedias, which are supposed to be
equal to any and all emergencies, OBJ
ject to that. In measure they are
right. To get the best idea OF the
multiple and minute processes OF mint
ing one must be an eyewitness. 1t
adds charm to the proceedings to stand
by the dusty furnaces, arranged in
;sentinel-like rows, to see them open
their jaws and to look right down into
the fiery cavern where Unsuitable
tongues of fame are licking up the
molten masses of silver and gold.
A day or two ago, says the Philadel-
phia Times, Officer Brown, standing
beside visitor who had watched with
all the destinations of novice the
great iron mouths opening and closing,
betrayed himself into, a neat little ex-
PLANTATION Of the process of minting
money. Officer Brown has been many
years at the mint, so the visitor
listened with interest, as to one who
spoke with authority. Here is the proc
ess in a nutshell:
making money" said he, with one
Of those eloquent waves of the hands
he keeps by him to use on explanatory
occasions like this, sis like making
cake. You mix the dough, we mix the
metal. You roll out the dough into
shape, we roll out the metal into bars.
You cut the dough into cakes, we cut
the metal into coins. Then we stamp
them. The metal left over is melted
up and used again, just as the cook
gathers up the left-overs, rolls them
again and cuts more cakes"
In other words, an amount of metal.
say the equivalent of ninety thousand
dollars in gold, which chemically is
made up of ninety per cent. gold and
ten per cent. copper, is put into a
black lead crucible about the size of a
peck measure. 1t is kept in the fur
mace one hour and fifteen minutes.
The workman watches his gold as
sacredly as the cook her cakes, and
when the molten liquid is brought to
the proper consistency he takes three
cornered black lead cup, about the
size that would fit monkeys head,
and dips up two thousand dollars
worth of the metal at a time, pouring
it out again with that marvellous dex-
terity which only comes from practice
into molds holding one thousand dol
lars each. Nothing can be more beau
tiful than the fiery stream Of young
and pure gold as it glides into the
locked arms of the iron mold. When
the liquid solidifics it forms bar, or,
to be technically correct, an ingot
about twelve inches long and about
half an inch thick.
These ingots are subjected to proc
ess of rolling out which lengthens them
without increasing their width. The
bars are then ready to be cut. One
machine cuts the coin, another stamps
them after the process OF milling has
been performed. Milling, in mint par
lance, has somewhat of different sig
nification than in ordinary vernacular.
It signifies the rolling over of the edge
of the coin preparatory to stamping it
with the minute denticulations. which
are commonly known as the milling.
The latter is part Of the process OF
stamping. and is done at the time that
the signet is put on the coin.
Speaking of stamping introduces the
large corps of wome n who form a con-
siderable part Of the working force of
the mint. About one hundred Of them
are employed, and they attend entirely
to the adjusting and stamping. tmay
be said in explanation of the process
of the term adjusting" that every
coin before it is shaped is carefully
weighed. ii too heavy the edge is del
icately filed until the coin is OF lawful
weight; if too light the piece is sent to
be remelted. This process of weighing
and adjusting is an employment to
which women, with their -delicacy of
ouch, are well suited. They are also
n charge of the stamping. Incident
lly it may be said that most presses
tamp from eighty to one hundred and
en- coins every minute. In one short
,our forty-five thousand dollars in ten
lollar gold pieces can be stamped
around the edge and on both sides.
There is another part of the work
which comes under the charge of the
women employed at the mint. They
do the sewing. At first thought it
seems trifle ineongruous to associate
sewing with money minting, but all
the bags used by the mint are sewed in
the building. The bags are made OF
white duck and run up by machine,
being sewed twice for security. The
bag making is no small thing when
YOU come to consider the number it
takes to pack up the newly coined
wealth of the country each year. The
fve-cent pieces are packed in fifty-dol-
lar bags and the pennies in ten-dollar
bags, small silver in one-thousand-dol-
lar and the gold in five-thousand-dollar
pouches. Roughly speaking, last year
fully two thousand bags were made up
for gold alone, sixteen thousand for
silver, five thousand for half dollars.
besides many thousand for the smaller
coins
'sIt is curious/ said father, "how
deficient young people seem to be in
some of their senses and how acute in
others. For instance, the other day
my boy and went grabbing. When it
got along toward noon we both got
very hungry and my son sent me ashore
to buy lunch, while he went out upon
the river again and went on grabbing.
l went mp into a nearby village and
bought some pies and cakes and sarsa-
parilla. I carried these down to the
wharf and stood there and shouted till
I was hoarse, but my son never heard
me. Then an idea struck me: l was
to the windward of him and took
pie out of the bundle and held it up in
one hand and held up bottle OF
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