The Yellowstone journal. [volume] (Miles City, Mont.) 1893-1901, 1893-03-17
INITIATED MONEY.
HOW DAMAGED CURRENCY is RE-
DEEMED BY The GOVERNMENT.

Case, in Which Ellis W ere Apparently
Hopelessi. Destroyed.
The redemption division of the treas
ury department is one of the most inter
esting of its branches. 1t Is here that
mutilated money comes for identitica-
tells to the chief of the division nary a
romance and many a tale of woe. There
is much that is humorous and mnch
that is pathetic in Mrs. Browns public
experience. That experience range over
nearly eighteen years now. and in that
time millions OF dollars have passed
through her hands, most of 1t in such
condition as to he beyond identification
by ordinary mean~.
There is hardly any way you can think
of in which MONEY is not mutilated or
partly DESTROYED. Men light their ci-
gars with it WHEN they are drunk: rats
gnaw it into t~atters. and fire crisr,s it
into brown ash as. Whenever there is a
sudden cold snap at the beginning Of
winter the redemption division has d
perfect harry, Il of rnutilated money. One
of yfe favorife hiding places which woln-
en- have for their savings is the oven.
When u cold day comes the woman
probably fprgets all about the money,
builds a fire in the stove and cooks the
bills to what is known III the cookbook
as "a ..rich brown"
An interesting case is that If a woman
living near Hamilton. o., who was
burned to death. She had "a rocketbook
with ner containing seventy dollars.
Her children sent the pocketbook with
its charred contents to the treasury de.
p%aft,nent, and Mrs. Brown picked ont
t..e seventy dollars and identified it. 4
great deal of the none. that comes in is
partly burned. Wherever a part of the
burned money Fan he ilen,itied and u
satisfactory affidavit is furnished as to
the facts the government restores the
amount to the owner. But if a note is
entirely destroyed the government is just
SO much ahead.
Much of the money which ONE in for
redemption has been damaged in rail
road wrecks. When Il car is burned in &
railroad WRECK no attempt is made by
the express company To remove the
money from the safe. The safe is sent
direct to the treasury department and
opened there. The money is usually in
a pretty badly charred condition. 1t is
taken ont. and the treasury experts go
over it and identify as much of it as can
be recognized. Two years age a pack
age containing xa2, 900 was taken from IA
wreck near St. Louis, and all of the
money was identified and restored to its
owners
A~favorite hiding place for money with
men who have no faith in banks is in
their cellars. A Philadelphia man sent
$3.50 which he had buried in a tin box
under his cellar floor. When he took up
the box he found the money widowed
and rotten. The package as it came
into Mrs. Browns hands looked like a
bunch of tobacco leaves. 1t was almost
impossible TO distinguish the character
of the notes with the naked eye. Mrs.
Brown was picking apart the pieces bit
by bit and arranging them Oh slips Of
brown paper cut to the size Of a dollar
bill. She said that she expected to iden
tify the whole of it.
One man sent in some time g forty
two dollars which had been taken frou.
the stomach Of a goat. The goat was not
worth forty-two dollars, SO he was sacri-
feed. The Identification of this money
was not . very nice task, but it was COM |
p~aratively an easy one. When Mrs. |
Brown dropped the sticky mass into a
basin of water the bills came apart and
were very easily identified. This is not
the only goat case which has come to the
division. and it has happened
that even cows and pigs have been sacri-
iced to recover money which they had
swallowed. There is one case on record
where . baby swallowed some bank
notes, and an emetic saved the money
md possibly the baby. Babies do not
often swallow an entire bill. but many
afRdavits are received accompanying por-
lions Of bills which say that the missing
were swallowed by babies and
wholly destroyed"
Usually when mutilated money is sent
in for redemption the owner has q close
u not perfect idea of the amount which
represented, but one old German in
the west sent in some years ago what he ,
to be the remains of 5000, and
after . long. long investigation Mrs.
Brown fully identified e7,100 In the
package. A secret service agent was
ISN'T out to investigate the case, but he
could discover nothing that would throw
light upon the mystery, and so the mis-
take was charged up to the old mans
stupidity, and the department sent 3. 100
to him.
The redemption division receives very
pieces torn from bills, ac-
by afidsvits saying that the
of the notes has been destroy
ID BY mice. But the experts Of the
Treasury department can tell in a minute
WHISTLER . piece hes been torn of or eaten
a. and these petty frauds are sue
can1ful !
Treasurer Nebeker has . Eve dollar
hill in his Office made Of sixteen pieces
ont from 6ve dollar notes nAtclfd y