A Machine That Chews Money
��FI\'E million dollars a day in worn- out papeF money was destroyed by machinery in the Treasury Department, at \\ ashington, during the last fiscal year. Two tons of this redeemed paper, amounting to over three hundred and fifty million bank notes, with a face value of more than a billion and a half dollars, passed through the macerating machinery, new money be- ing issued to take the place of that which was de- stroyed.
This money, after being sent to the Treasury for redemption, is carefully counted, made into piles, first punched and then cut in half, after which a com- mittee of treasury em-
��money was first issued, is indicated by comparison with figures for the fiscal year 1865, when seventy million pieces of redeemed currency were destroyed, of a face value of one hundred and forty- four million, two hundred and nineteen thousand, nine hundred and twenty dol- lars, which included a large amount of fractional currency.
����The first step in the destruction of worn-out paper
money is to bind the bills solidly and compress
them into packages
��ployees sees that it is chewed up in a machine made for the purpose. It is said that the average life of a one-dollar bill is one year.
The great growth of this work since the days of the Civil War, when paper
��The chief duty of these treasury
employes is to see that all old paper
money is thoroughly destroyed
��The government first issued paper money in connection with the Civil War finances, and Sec- retary Chase's regulations for the destruction of notes unfit for circulation were issued as a re- sult of an act of Congress. In Secretary Chase's time paper money and securities were de- stroyed by l)urning. Experience shewed that this was not the safest plan in connection with the destruction of distinctive ])aper, because it is difficult to burn bundles of money, and un- destroyed pieces may escape through the chimney. For this reason the act of June 23, 1874, authorized the destruction by maceration. The destruc- tion of these once valuable bits of paper has always been wMtnessed by a joint committee, appointed for the purpose.
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