The Grangeville globe. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho) 1907-1922, 1910-04-07
SOME COSTLY ERRORS.

Enormous sums of money are fire.
quently expended by various govern
ments to rectify errors, often appar-
emily 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 is
sue owing to the same cause. An EN-
ploye was convicted for attempting 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 or misspelling, but
ter. The use of small instead of
capital "B' in the word "Briefe" led
a short time ago to the destruction
of $4,000 forms issued to the various
post offices.
In 1850 an Austrian designer of
bank notes signed his name in tiny
letters at the foot of a drawing. The
engraver copied the name, and before
the mistake was discovered 10000
notes were printed, all of which had
to be burned.
Before the union of Italy, more
than one attempt was secretly made
to turn official papers and notes to
propaganda uses. A custom house
regulation form so spaced by the
compositor that the initial words in
every line, If read consecutively, wer
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 drawing a pencil
line in particular way a rude out
line of the arms of Savoy resulted.
These notes, of course, never saw
the light, the device being too OBJ
vious to escape detection.
In 1901 Spanish engraver was
heard boasting that he had signed
his name" on every one of the 10000
When called on and asked for an ex-
PLANTATION, he declared that he had
been joking, But an examination of
the notes showed that certain let
fnr In Inc
scopical 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 engravers
joke.
The kaiser's persistent interior
ence in all matters of art has cost
the fatherland heavy losses in can
celed printed matter. One of his
first acts as sovereign was to show
his subordinates how the imperial
arms should be printed. After many
thousand forms and documents had
been impressed with these arms an
antiquary 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 another case the kaiser sub
edited" the German money order
form in such way that the public
could not make head or tail of it.
Finally the new form had to be call
ed in and thousands of unissued COP
les destroyed.
Fifteen thousand pounds worth of
postal orders had to be destroyed by
the British general post office some
time ago owing to the poundage
stamped on the face having been Id
stead of one and one-hah d, as it
should have been. The estimated
loss to the country was $500.
France has been a bad sufferer.
In 1898 more than twenty thousand
hundred-franc credit notes were
printed with word badly misspelled
the error not being noticed until
some of the notes had been issued
to banks.