Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/549

BANK-NOTES. ink, another with vermilion, while others are making blue, red, and other tinted inks. Nothing but the finest color and the best boiled linseed oil is here used. The next important department is the paper-room, where the paper is received, and cut in sheets of the required size. The notes are made of a peculiar material containing colored fibres. The paper for postage stamps is made of the best linen. It is of short fibre, very fine, and extremely strong. The sheets on which currency is to be printed are counted as soon as received, and the results reported for verification. They are placed in heaps, marked off in sets of 100 and 1000. When issued for printing, the workman receiving them has to present an order signed by the superintendent. They are then charged against him in his pass-book, when he carries them away to be damped by simply wrapping them in wet cloths. The presses used are simply cylinders moved by long-handled levers, and are each attended by three men and a girl. The plate rests upon a small iron box warmed underneath by gas-flames. A workman using a plate-printer's roller rapidly covers the plate with ink and passes it to another operative at his side, who wipes it with a soft cotton cloth, and then polishes with the palm of his hand covered with whiting, thus removing the ink from its surface, but not from the engraved lines, which remain filled. This done, the plate is placed, face up, in the press. The girl stands ready with a sheet of damp paper, which she carefully lays upon the plate. The pressman turns the levers, the cylinder revolves, the plate passes under it, and the paper is removed, bearing a perfect impression. As soon as a printer has completed the work assigned to him he hands it, made up in 'books' of 100 impressions, each sheet inclosed between two others of brown paper, to a clerk. He is then credited with his delivery, spoiled sheets being counted the same as perfect ones, so that if his return is correct his debit account on his pass-book, which is kept in a different apartment and by other employés, is thus balanced. The finished impressions are now carefully counted and inspected. The spoiled ones are removed and sent to the proper agents to be burned, while the others are hung in the drying-room. This apartment is heated by steam-pipes, and the paper is suspended by wires for a day or two, until perfectly dry. Then the brown paper is removed, and the sheets, packed between leaves of press-board, are subjected to the action of a powerful hydraulic press. They are then once more inspected and counted. BANK OF NORTH AMER'ICA. See. BANK OF THE UNIT'ED STATES. See. BANK'RUPTCY (Bank + Lat. ruptus, broken, from rumpere, to break. It. banca rotta, usually taken to refer to the former Italian custom of destroying the money-counter when a bank failed). In popular usage, the inability of a person to pay his debts, or the financial condition of one who has failed in business: as a technical law term, the status of one who has been adjudged a bankrupt.

The legal position of a debtor in primitive communities is one of great hardship. He is at the mercy of his creditor, who, after exhausting the property of the debtor, may generally seize his body and force him to work out the debt or become a slave. With the development of society, various devices are resorted to for the amelioration of the debtor's condition, terminating, as a rule, in a more or less satisfactory system of bankruptcy, the cardinal principal of which is that one who is unable to pay his debts in full may be discharged therefrom upon giving up all his property for ratable distribution among his creditors. The history of bankruptcy and insolvency legislation in England furnishes a good illustration of this statement. While it is true that there was no process of the common law by which a man could pledge his body or surrender his liberty for the payment of his debts, the courts permitted a legal fiction to grow up that a debtor who did not pay a judgment against him was guilty of a breach of the peace, subjecting his body to imprisonment by the writ of capias ad respondendum. The feelings of judges toward debtors, during that period, are disclosed by a recorded opinion of Mr. Justice Hyde, in 1663: "If a man is taken in execution, and lies in prison for debt, neither the plaintiff, at whose suit he is arrested, nor the sheriff, who took him, is bound to find him meat, drink, or clothes. He must live on his own, or on the charity of others; and if no man will relieve him, let him die, in the name of God, says the law, and so say I." A little more than a century prior to this utterance the first bankruptcy statute was passed in England. It shows that Parliament agreed with the judiciary in its opinion of insolvent debtors—that they were dishonest, and deserved punishment. This act (34 and 35 Hen. VIII., c. 4) was entitled, "Against such as do make Bankrupt," and recites that "divers and sundry persons, craftily obtaining into their hands great substance of "other men's goods, do suddenly flee to parts unknown, or keep their houses, not minding to pay or restore to any, their creditors, their debts and duties, but of their own wills and pleasures consume the substance obtained by credit of other men for their own pleasure and delicate living, against all reason, equity and good conscience." It then proceeded to confer upon various judicial officers power to take the offending debtors and their property; to sell the latter, and to divide the proceeds ratably among creditors. Under Elizabeth and James I., additional bankruptcy statutes were passed, all keyed to the same note of suspicion and harsh judgment of the failing debtor. The act of 21 James I. (c. 19) was especially severe, providing that the debtor who could not render some just reason why he became bankrupt, should stand upon the public pillory, have one of his ears nailed thereto, and then cut off. If his failure to pay his debts was due to fraudulent practices, he might be put to death.

With the growth of English trade, the hazards of commercial enterprises were so multiplied, and the complexity of business relations so increased that this Draconian legislation against failing debtors was found to be not only unjust but impolitic. Accordingly, bankruptcy laws underwent a radical change, until, in Blackstone's time, they were considered "as laws calculated for the benefit of trade, and founded on principles of humanity as well as justice; and to that end," adds the great commentator, "they confer some privileges, not only on the creditors, Rh