Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-07-16
ERRORS IN PRINTING.
Has Cost Governments Large
 Amount of Money.

Amount of Money.
 Enormous sums of money are fre- quently expended by various govern ments to rectify errors, often appar- entity trivial, in government printing. The United States some years ago destroyed 100000 telegraph forms owing to the misspelling of a single word. In 1883 several hundred thousand greenbacks were cancelled before issue owing to the same cause. An employe was convicted of attempt ing to steal some of these worthless notes with the intention of selling them to collectors.
 The Austrian government is so in- tolerant of mistakes that it cancels documents not only on the ground of serious mistakes OF misspelled but even as the result of misshapen let ter. The use of small instead of a capital "B" in the word "Briefe" led a short time ago to the destruction of 25.O00 forms issued to the various Epost0fices. Ina1S50 an Austrian de- |signar of bank notss signed his namc in tiny letters at the foot of draw ing. The engraver copied the name and before the mistake was discover ed 10000 notes were printed, all of which had to be burned. A symbol ical figure on another Austrian note was maliciously given beard which could be seen if the note were held at certain angle in the light.
 Before the union of Italy more than one attempt was secretly made fn furp pfF3cfal poparc apd nntac tn propagandist uses. A custom house regulation form was so spaced by the compositor that the initial words in every line, If read consecutively, were a declaration against the papal claim to govern Rome. In another case the spacing of words in certain bank notes was so arranged that by draw ing a pencil line in particular way rude outline of the arms of Savory resulted. These notes. of course. never saw the light, the device being too obvious to escape detection.
 Tn 1901 Spanish engraver was heard boasting that he had signed his name" on every one of 10000 bank notes just about to be issued. When called up and asked for an ex- planation he declared that he had been joking. But an examination of the notes showed that certain letters in one line were raised microscrop- ical distance above those next to them. These raised letters spelled the employees name. Seven hundred and fifty dollars was the price paid by the authorities for their engrav- CTS joke.
 France has been a bad sufferer. In 1898 more than 10000 100-franc credit notes were printed with a word badly misspelled. the error not being noticed until some of the notes had been issued to banks.
 The kaiser's persistent interference in all matters of art has cost the fa- therland heavy losses in cancelled printed matter. One of his first acts as sovereign was to show his subord- mates how the imperial arms should be printed. After many thousand forms and documents had been im- pressed with these arms an anti quarian of high authority proved to his majesty that the new design was not only wrong but also humiliating to himself. Seven thousand five hun dred dollars worth of papers were promptly reduced to ashes. In an- other case the kaiser .'subedited" the German money order form in such way that the public could not make head or tall of It. Finally the new form had to be called in and thousands of unissued copies de- stroyed.
 Fifteen thousand pounds worth of the eleven-shilling postal orders had to be destroyed by the British general postofice some time ago owing to the poundage stamped on the face having been Id instead of 1 1-2 d. as it should have been. The estimated loss to the country was $500. Eng land seldom has 10 put up with such losses. but foreign governments are less lucky. Both on the continent and in America carelessly or vanson- ness is miSprinted money orders. telegraph forms and bank notes has led to serious loss and curious com pIicatious.-ChicaEo Chronicle.