Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/105



IVE million dollars a day in worn-out paper money was destroyed by machinery in the Treasury Department, at Washington, 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 being issued to take the place of that which was destroyed.

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 committee of treasury employees 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 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 dollars, which included a large amount of fractional currency.

The government first issued paper money in connection with the Civil War finances, and Secretary Chase's regulations for the destruction of notes unfit for circulation were issued as a result of an act of Congress. In Secretary Chase's time paper money and securities were destroyed by burning. Experience shewed that this was not the safest plan in connection with the destruction of distinctive paper, because it is difficult to burn bundles of money, and undestroyed pieces may escape through the chimney. For this reason the act of June 23, 1874, authorized the destruction by maceration. The destruction of these once valuable bits of paper has always been witnessed by a joint committee, appointed for the purpose.