The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-03-04
BY EDWARD B. CLARK.

E@pSJ ration which is actively engaged in
the production of wealth, and he has
with him as other members of the
hrm about one hundred million nephews and
nieces.
This governmental factory produces paper
money, bonds, revenue, postage and custom
stamps, checks, drafts and all the important docu-
ments printed from engraved plates. The direc.
tor OF the bureau of en- craving and printing ia
Joseph E. Ralph. He might be called the foreman
OF the greatest moneymaking shop in the United
states OF America and perhaps in the world,
From Director Ralph's own words we learn some
thing specific about the activities of this big shop
of the capital city:
THE daily output of United States notes gold
and silver certificates and national bank notes, is
two and one-quarter million notes, having a face
value or nine million dollars and weighing over
three and a half tons. If laid out fiat they would
cover nine acres, and if placed end to end the
daily output would make a chain two hundred and
fifty miles long.
Each day forty million postage stamps are
manufactured, which would cover approximately
seven acres, OF make a chain of STAMPS six hun.
dred and twenty miles long. The value of each
days stamp output is nearly seven hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. Six hundred EMPLOYEES are
engaged in stamp manufacture. Fifty-one different
kinds of postage stamps, in denominations from
one cent to five dollars, are made for the United
States and its insular possessions. They are print
ed in fifteen distinctive colors.
Another important part of the bureaus work
is internal revenue stamps, through which an an
nual income of over five hundred million dollars is
collected for Uncle Sam. These stamps are of
larger size than postage stamps, and while the
daily output is only twenty million stamps, they
would cover twenty acres if spread out in single
sheets, and they weigh six and a half tons. More
than three hundred different varieties are issued"
In Uncle Sans workshop is made all the paper
money for the United States government. This
means that every man who has a dollar bill in his
hand, or who is lucky enough to have a bill of
larger denomination, may know of a certainty
that its origin was in a factory situated at the
corner of Fourteenth and c streets, S. w, in the
city OF Washington, d. c.
And speaking of counterfeits, there is a thing
of marked interest which might be said. The
bureau of engraving and printing was organized
under an act of July II, 1862. From that day to
this the government has done its own work. It
has employed the most skillful engravers that it
can find and it is a matter of pride today to this
government that never in the history of the bu-
reau has one of it's employees been engaged in the
work of counterfeiting 1t is true that counter
feiting goes on occasionally in different places
throughout the United States, but in the hundreds
of arrests which have been made of men and
women engaged in the work, not one ever had
been in the employment of the government, and
not one was found to be in collision with any of
Uncle Sans workmen.
Concerning the matter of engraving, Director
Ralph of the bureau has had this to say:
The engraving division is the corner stone of
the bureau and the bulwark Of our securities. In
this division every form of security has its origin,
and the most artistic and skilled engravers that
the world produces are employed here.
steel engraving is the perfection of art as APP
piled to securities; 1t differs from painting and
sculpturing, inasmuch as the engraver who carves
his work on steel plates must deliberately study
the effect of each inftnitesimal line. Free hand,
with a diamond pointed tool. known as a graver.
aided by a powerful magnifying glass, he carves
away, conscious that one false cut or slip of his
tool, or miscalculation of depth or width of line
will destroy the artistic merit of his creation,
and weeks or months OF labor will have been in
vain.