The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-11-05

spread over the land like the locusts of Egypt within the last two or three years. A single automatic machine company in New York city takes in half million pennies a day. As there isn't a crossroad village in the coun- try that hasn't a chewing-gum, kineto- scope, music or weighing machine ope- rated in this way the number of coins required to keep them all going Is enormous. The other invention respon- sible for the rise of the cent is the bargain counter" The craze for for ty-0ine cent and ninety-nine cent bar gains makes work for @ lot of pennies.
 Superintendent Milman of the New York Sub-Treasury said the other day that it was no unusual thing for one of the great department stores which make a speciality of "bargains" to take
 ten thousand dollars worth of cents
 one million pieces-at a time. hepenny
 newspapers and in some places three
 cent street-car fares have also in-
 creased the field of operations of the
 one-cent piece.
 "The cent is really the most interest,"
 ing and least known of our coins," said
 MT. Milman "and there are some very
 curious facts about it. The Sub-Treas-
 ury Is the clearinghouse for the pen
 nies in circulation in the metropolitan
 district. and the penny is for us a ba- rometer a calendar and an accurate index of business conditions.
 "Why, in the middle of July there was a week or more of cold, rainy weather, and the supply of pennies coming in for exchange into larger de- nominations fell off third. A heavy storm or the sudden coming of cold weather, anything that keeps the pen- ny-spending part of our population at
 home, is accurately reflected in the falling off in the supply of cents coming to us for exchange. All through the
 summer the pennies accumulate on our
 hands, but when cold weather comes
 and the children get back to school, and
 retail trade revives, there Is @ great de-
 mand for them. At present the minor coin division has tens of thousands of dollars worth of pennies on hand, but | they are beginning to go out, and by November one we shall probably be compelled to call on the mint for @ | fresh supply. The holidays demand a
 lot of pennies, and with the approach of | Christmas our cent pile melts away
 amazingly. ... There is no better indication of live l ly trade conditions than the cent. Dur | ing periods of dullness they always &C., cumulate on our hands, and when trade
 revives they begin to circulate rapidly l again.
 They come to us from the slot ma | chine companies, the newspaper offices | and the street railways, and they go | out to the department stores, the toy
 and confectionery shops and the small | trader generally. Of course, some of | them come and go through the banks. Come this way,'' said MT. Milman, If you want to see the way we handle
 pennies" and he led the way to the mi
 nor coin division where half a dozen
 clerks were busily at work. In one cor
 ner of the room was a stack of canvas
 bags reaching nearly to the ceiling and
 making a goodsized pyramid. "Those
 are all pennies" said the director. q
 suppose there are some one hundred
 million pieces there, and we have more
 below" In another corner of the room
 was a stack of loose coins piled high above the heads of the clerks, who were busily counting them off into the can- I vas bags. The pennies are kept in bags | of one thousand each, and when they come in they are all counted over. An express wagon drew up at the door, and | behind its grated door could be seen the canvas bags piled high. There's a sample lot of half a million or so from | the slot machine company" said the l superintendent, and here's a boy with l a one hundred dollar bill who will get | ten bags of pennies for it. That's the | way they come and go. Talk about the volume of currency affecting business. I wonder what some kinds of business would do if we locked up what pennies we have on hand and didn't allow them