Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-07-07

VIE last package of charred embers
identified as burnt money from the
l. San Francisco disaster has been e.
amined and passed upon by the experts OF
the redemption division of the treasury and
the most stupendous task in all the history
of that department completed. Mrs. A. E.
Brown, burnt-money expert has passed on
each badly damaged bill submitted, and 1t
has been given her approval and redeemed
or has been declared undecipherable and re-
manned much ash, valueless.
Crisp new bills TO an amount estimated as
high as a half million dollars have been is
sued from the treasury to replace the pack
ages of ashes sent to Washington by the
bereft in the stricken city, and hearts have
been made glad by the replacing in its orig
inal value of that which has been regarded
as irretr.evably lost.
-
Surely It must seem a miracle to those
who have sadly gathered together the
charred, black fakes of an assortment of
ex-twenty dollar bills and mailed them to
the Treasury Department as a forlorn hope
to receive in return the equivalent of the
apparently destroyed and unrecognizable
currency. One can readily understand that
a bill burnt but still instact, with its entire
printed surface family discernible to the
unaided eye. should find ready redemption,
but that Mrs. Brown should be able to
Identify such a bill when it had been
crumpled and broken into hundred flakes
hardly larger than ten-cent piece seems
little short of the marvellous
Twenty years constant experience in the
redemption of burnt and otherwise dis
figured paper currency has made Mrs.
Brown the expert of the redemption d.
vision experts. Her wonderful record for
accuracy and facility has set her in class
by herself. To her comes all the most
difficult redemption work The daily mails
bring in pill boxes filed with tiny fakes of
burnt bills, envelopes containing bills torn,
tattered and stained apparently beyond
r. recognition, and packages of what were
once rolls of paper money. If the mutt
lated currency is merely injured so badly
that a layman would not know whether he
were looking at money or frazzed cabbage
leaves, 1T is turned over to some of
the ordinary experts of the division 1t
has to be in worse shape than that before
Mrs. Brown is troubled to look into the
matter
This sWeet-faced little woman sits at her
desk by a north basement window and
SPENDS ner hours on DUTY poklng scraps OF
mCth-catel currency about with a palette
knife and decipherng their secret through
a large end powerful reading glass. She
knows to the minutest detail the design of
every bill ever issued by the government,
and if she can but find the faint outlines
of a bit of the scroll work on the border of
a note half the battle is won, for she can
then be sure of the issue OF the bill Then
follows a close scrutiny of each particle
until something shows up by which she
can name the denomination of the de-
stroyed note. AS far as possible the note
is pieced together, and If the necessary
three-fifths is found the bill is redeemed at
its full value. II but two-fifths of the note
is in evidence the owner receives half
the original value; IL less than two-fifths
the bill is deemed valueless.
difficult form of mutiated currency that
Mrs. Brown is called upon to identify.
Often she has to work over rolls of bills
that have lain in water until the roll has
become one solid mass of pulp. Here the
greatest degree Of delicacy is necessary in
separating the particles and dectphering
each of the bills. Then again there will