The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1914-08-27
MONEY MAKING OF
THE UNITED STATES
1t Is Counted By Machine
and By Hand
Paper Is Made In One Special Mill In
Massachusetts,. Secret Is Care
fully Guarded--No Such Thing
As Waste Paper.
The Monitor

! lie paper uSoU LOT u ulteO SlaLoS
money is made in one special mill in
Dalton, Mass, and the secret of it's
making is carefully guarded. Down
through each sheet of bill paper run
lines of parti-colored silk threads
look at any bill and you will see
them. No other mill knows how
these silk fibers are put in the paper.
And if they did know. it is contrary
to law to make such paper except in
this one MILL Every sheet the mill
makes must be accounted for-and
every sheet delivered to the bureau
of engraving and printing must be
accounted for. There is no such
thing as waste paper" in the bureau
there is no such thing as losing
sheet Of blank paper, much less
any finished money.
Every pile of blank paper, every
pile of damp sheets. every pile of
partly or wholly finished sheets,
must be counted every time 1t goes
from room to room. A missing
sheet is traced to the responsible
party as soon as missed. The result
is, there isn't any money or paper
missed. Once, indeed, many years
ago, sheet of blank paper got lost,
probably in one of the washing or
sizing tanks. Anyway lost it was.
The employees of that room paid for
that sheet of paper. not in the value
of the paper. but in the value of the
bills it would have been made into!
1t is count, count, count, count,
count. all the time. The paper is
counted wet and counted dry. 1t is
counted before and after every print
ing. 1t is counted as it goes from
vault to work. and from work back
to vault again! 1t is counted by
hand ard counted by machinery
counted so much and so often that
mistakes are hardly possible, says
the Boys Magazine.
As fast as the bureau makes the
money, it is carted away to the
United States Treasury by big,
well-guarded automobiles. Here it
goes into the vaults; and from there
into circulation. There are two
machines in the treasury which ought
to be mentioned when telling OF the
making Of money. One is the laun-
dry machine into which notes so
worn that they are no longer crisp
and fresh are put, there to be washed
and sized and ironed and dried. to
come out looking like new bills. and
the other is the counting machine
recently put in operation. For
money counting is tedious opera
tion-much more difficult than the
counting of the sheets of bills which
is done so constantly at the bureau.
For years men have sought to make
money counting machine which
would count paper bills. But al
ways they depended on some revo-
luton of bar or roll to count the
bills fed inf bill were not fed
in, the machine counted just the
same. Attempts to make the ma
chine act from the slight weight of
a paper bill failed because the resul-
ting mechanism was too delicate.
Now, however, the problem has
been solved. The bills are fed be-
tween swiftly revolving rolls of steel
and brass. Through the rolls runs
a slight electric current. When the
paper bill goes through, the current
is broken, and the machine counts
one." If no bill goes through, no
count is made! One of the great
beauties of the machine is that by
having several sets of rolls in front
of the operator, ones, twos, ives, tens
and twenties can all be counted at
once, each being slipped into its
proper place. Formerly such mixed
piles of bills had first to be separated
and then counted.
1t is in the treasury, too, that the
money is destroyed-old money, sent
in for redemption or replacing with
new money, which is macerated into
pulp under the orders and before
the eyes of a committee. So that
the government not only makes, but
destroys paper money! But be-
tween the making which costs for
each bill something more than one
cent-and its destruction by the
macerating machine-which costs
but q tiny fraction of cent-lles q
whole history what an interest