“Tain’t real money,” they declare.
The paper francs and half-francs they call “soap coupons.”
“Why, you might just as well be spendin’ the label off a stick o’ chewin’ gum!” they jeer.
Next to the paper money that comes to pieces in their fingers, the boys detest the big one and two cent coppers. Known to the navy as “bunker-plates,” in the army they pass as “clackers.” “You get a pocket-full o’ them things and you think you’ve got some money, and all the time it ain’t more than ten cents altogether,” they grumble.
“I can’t be bothered carryin’ that stuff around,” they declare when I beg them to pay me in coppers. “I always throw ’em away or give ’em to the kids.” A prejudice which greatly complicated the matter of making change until I had an inspiration. Now I give them their small change in boxes of matches or sticks of chewing gum.
Then there is the annoyance of the local money. Since the war, the cities of France have taken to issuing their own paper francs and half-francs. We accept all this local money in the canteens and send it to Paris to be redeemed. But the French tradespeople in general refuse to honor these bills except in the city that issues them or its immediate vicinity. Many a puzzled doughboy has been driven to indignant protest or even to “chucking the stuff away” in his exasperated disgust when told by the shopkeepers that his paper money was pas bon. But the grievance is not quite all on one side: no small amount of worthless Mexican money, brought over by Border veterans, I am told, was palmed off on shopkeepers at the port when the Americans first landed!
In contrast to their disdain for this foreign currency the boys cherish to a degree that is half funny, half pathetic, any specimens of “real money” that they are lucky enough to possess.
“Say, I had an American dollar bill in my hand the other day,—I felt just as if the old flag was waving over me!” And another lad; “Saw a U. S. Dollar bill today. Oh boy! but it looked a mile long to me!”
If anyone displays an American greenback at the counter a little riot is sure to ensue. All the boys nearby crowd about, feast their eyes on it, touch it, pat it, kiss it even.
“Lemme see!” “Ain’t she a beauty?” “That’s the real stuff!” “Say, how much will you sell her for?”