Visiting the Mint.
The Mint, on Chestnut street near Broad, is open to the public daily, excepting Sundays and holidays, from 9 to 12 A. M. Visitors are met by the courteous ushers, who attend them through the various departments. It is estimated that over forty thousand persons have visited the institution in the course of a single year. Owing to the immense amount of the precious metals which is always in course of transition, and the watchful care necessary to a correct transaction of business, the public are necessarily excluded from some of the departments. These, however, are of but little interest to the many and are described under their proper heads. The system adopted in the Mint is so precise and the weighing so accurate, that the abstraction of the smallest particle of metal would lead to almost immediate detection.
On entering the rotunda, the offices of the Treasurer and Cashier are to the right and left. Farther in, in the hall, to the rear, on the right, is the room of the Treasurer’s clerks; a part of this was formerly used by the Adams Express Company, who transport to and from the Mint millions of dollars worth of metal, coin, etc.