All women do not excel as counterfeit-detectors; nor can all become experts as restorers and counters of currency. But wherever a woman possesses native quickness, combined with power of concentration, with training and experience, she in time commands an absolute skill in her work, which, it has been proved, it is impossible for men to attain. Her very fineness of touch, swiftness of movement, and subtlety of sight give her this advantage. Thus when notes are defaced or charred beyond ordinary recognition, they are placed in the hands of women for identification.
After the great Chicago fire in 1871, cases of money to the value of one hundred and sixty-four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven dollars and ninety-eight cents, were sent to the United States Treasury for identification. They consisted of legal tenders, National State bank and fractional notes, bonds, certificates and coupons, internal revenue and postage stamps, all so shrivelled and burned, that they crumbled to the touch and defied unaided eyesight. All these charred treasures were placed in the hands of a committee of six ladies, for identification. What patience, practice, skill, were indispensable to the fulfilment of this task, it is not difficult to conjecture.
“After unpacking the money from the raw cotton in which it travelled, as jealously swathed as the most precious jewellery, the ladies separated each small piece with thin knives made for the purpose, then laying the blackened fragments on sheets of blotting-paper, they decided by close scrutiny the value, genuineness and nature of the note. Magnifying glasses were provided, but seldom used, except for the deciphering of coupon-numbers or other minute details. The pieces were then pasted on thin paper, the bank-notes returned to their respective banks, and the United States money put in sealed envelopes and delivered to a committee of four, who superintended the final burning. The amount of one million, two hundred and twenty-six thousand, three hundred and forty-one dollars and thirty-three cents was identified—over seventy-six per cent. of the whole.”
A year later, Boston, from the ruins of its great fire, gathered the ashes of its money and sent it to the United States Treasury, begging identification and aid in restoration. Eighty-three cases came from that city, and these were so carefully packed that the labor of identification was greatly lightened. Of the eighty-eight thousand, eight hundred and twelve dollars and ninety-nine cents, which they contained, over ninety per cent. of the whole was identified by the same six ladies, who saved so much to individuals and to the Government from the Chicago fire.
Besides money, a large amount of checks, drafts, promissory notes, insurance policies, and other valuable papers were identified by these same clear eyes and patient hands, and restored to their owners. The entire responsibility of the whole amount rested on them. The money was delivered to them, when it came, and on their reports all remittances on it were made. It took over six months of constant labor to identify the money from these fires.
The names of this committee of six are Mrs. M. J. Patterson, Miss Pearl, Mrs. Davis, Miss Schriner, Miss Wright, and Miss Powers. “Mrs. Patterson has been engaged for seven or eight years on what are called ‘affidavit cases’—cases where the money is too badly mutilated to be redeemed in the regular way, and the sender testifying under oath that the missing fragments are totally destroyed, receives whatever proportion of the original value allowed by the rules.”
The most noted case that she ever worked on was that of a paymaster’s trunk that was sunk in the Mississippi, in the Robert Carter. After lying three years in the bottom of the river, the steamer was raised, and the money, soaked, rotten and obliterated, given to Mrs. Patterson for identification. She saved one hundred and eighty-five thousand out of two hundred thousand dollars, and the express company, which was responsible for the original amount, presented her with five hundred dollars, as a recognition of her services.
All the money which she identifies passes from the hands of this lady to a committee of three—two gentlemen, one from the Treasurer’s and one from the Register’s office, and a lady from the Secretary’s office. The duties of these three persons are identical. They re-count the money, seal it with the official seal of the three offices, and for so doing receive, per year, the gentlemen each eighteen hundred dollars, the lady twelve hundred dollars—one more illustration of the sort of justice between the work of men and women, which prevails in the Treasury service!
The identification and restoration of defaced and mutilated notes is a very difficult and important operation. From the toes of stockings, in which they have been washed and dissolved; from the stomachs of animals, and even of men; from the bodies of drowned and murdered human beings; from the holes of vice and of deadly disease, these fragments of money, whose lines are often utterly obliterated, whose tissues emit the foulest smells, come to the Treasury, and are committed wholly to the supervision and skill of women.
Let any just mind decide whether such labor does not deserve to be recognized and rewarded absolutely on its own merits. Such is its acknowledged[acknowledged] value, that these Government experts have been allowed to go to distant parts of the country, to restore burnt money belonging to Adams’ Express Company, because it was known that there was no one else in the land, who could perform this service.