The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1904-07-02
FATE OF OLD BANK NOTES.

Through an order promulgated
by the treasurer of the United Staes
the macerating machine in the sub
basement of the treasury at Wash
ington has been put out of commits
sion, and hereafter all paper money,
whether issued by the government
or by national banks, will be re-
duced to pulp in the large macerator
at the bureau of engraving and
printing.
This order was brought about by
a protest made by national bankers
claiming that the old machine failed
to do its work perfectly and that the
bank notes dumped into it not in
frequently turned UP in sections for
redemption by the banks of issue,
that the pulp sold to various makers
and manufacturers of images, to be
resold as souvenirs, was filled with
large pieces of bills and that these
and offered for redemption. Not
withstanding the fact that the treas
ury macerator has been in service
for many years and has reduced to
pulp many trillions of dollars in
bank notes which had ceased to be
current, this complaint was the first
one ever made against its nonper-
formance of duty, but the treasurer
got such positive evidence that the
bankers were correct in their asser-
tions that he issued the order.
Washington souvenir dealers have
long realized that the pulp images
found heavier demand than any
other, and those made from the pulp
of notes last destroyed-or partly so
by the treasury macerator have al
ways brought higher price than the
ones manufactured from the pulp of
the macerator at the bureau of en-
craving and printing, this being due
entirely to the fact that images from
the latter contain not a speck OF
greenbacks, the notes being reduced
to almost whitish pulp. Natural
ly visitors prefer an image made
from real money" in which some of
the money would be in evidence.
The treasury macerator production,
output, was therefore worth a great
deal more to the manufacturers and
always brought a much larger price.
In fact, the bureaus pulp was almost
drug on the market.
But now the images-busts of
presidents, the Washington monu-
ment, Uncle Sans hat, the national
emblem (the eagle), the capitol, the
treasury, cats, dogs, frogs, ETC., each
representing from $1,000 to $4,000
must be made from the bureau
pulp or first class counterfeit, for
every note destroyed must be in this
specially constructed macerator,
which works every day and night in
the year except Sunday, there being
from ST., 100000 to $2,ooo,ooo mace
rated every twenty-tour hours. This
| work of maceration and the prepa-
ration for it are under the personal
direction of representatives OF the
treasurer, the secretary, the comp
troller and the register, and these
representatives go with the heavily
guarded wagon containing the mon
ey to the bureau, where it is taken
from the steel boxes, checked off,
placed in the macerator, the iron
doors closed, locked and sealed, and
then the machine begins its work of
destruction. The large boiler or vat
| in which the money is placed is filed
with some kind of chemical, and a
network of machinery keeps up
continuous churning and grinding
until IL o'clock the following day,
when it is stopped, the pulp taken
out and another million or two plac-
ed in, to be treated in the same way
| for the next twenty-four hours.
By this process of maceration II
is utterly impossible for anyone to
find any money in the pulp, even the
small silk threads which run through
all genuine notes being entirely de-
stroyed save to form part OF the
whitish pulp.
When man falls from grace he