There are drones in this hive. These are office hours, yet here and there may be seen a young man and maiden whose in-door costume marks them as employés of the Treasury, loitering in the shadow of pillar or alcove, lingering by stair or doorway, saying very pleasant things to each other, doubtless, after the manner of young maidens and men. Flirting or making love in the flare of the public must always be a desecration of the heart’s best sanctities. Beside, Sassafras and Sacharissa, you ought to be at work. It is precisely such as you who have brought discredit even upon the faithful and unfortunate, and sometimes rebuke upon the whole Treasury Department. For, as a rule, the Treasury, like all the other departments of Washington, is a vast refuge for the unfortunate and the unsuccessful. The only exceptions are found in two classes, viz.: those who use departmental life as the ladder by which to climb to a higher round of life and service, and those who seek it without half fulfilling its duties, because too inefficient to fill any other place in the world well. Unpractical authors, sore-throated, pulpitless clergymen, briefless lawyers, broken down merchants, poor widows, orphaned daughters, and occasionally an adventurer, masculine and feminine, of doubtful or bad degree,—all are found within the Treasury.
I remember an aged woman, with bent back and long, wasted fingers, sitting behind the door in the Redemption Bureau. Her dim eyes peered through her spectacles and her poor fingers trembled, as she tried to count the dirty, ragged currency. “Alas! sad eyes,” I thought, “by this time rest from toil should have come to you.” “It is pitiful,” I said, to the kind gentleman who reigned over the division, “that one so old should have to come through rain and snow to fulfil a daily task. Is she not too old to do her duty well!”
“No,” was the answer, “she does it very well. But if not, she would never be removed. She is a protégé of President Lincoln.”
But any one who fancies that even woman’s work in the Treasury Department is a sinecure, should climb to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. You may climb, but you cannot enter unless you hold a written “sesame” from the Secretary of the Treasury; so sacred and guarded is this very hot precinct in which Uncle Samuel creates his “Almighty Dollar.” The business of this Bureau is to engrave, print, and perfect for delivery to the United States Treasurer, all United States notes, Treasury checks, gold notes, drafts, fractional currency notes, all bonds and revenue stamps issued by the Government of the United States.
At the close of each day, every fraction which has passed through the division for the last twelve hours must be accounted for. If a cent is missing, all the workers of the Bureau are detained until the missing fraction is certainly found and safely deposited in the vault of the Treasury. The vast monetary responsibility resting on the Chief of this Bureau may be judged from a statement made, in his own report, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1872.
“There has been finished and delivered to the proper officers of the Government by this Bureau, during the fiscal years ending June 30, 1870, 1871, 1872, in notes, bonds and securities, $2,050,141, and 331,273,955 stamps, and not a note, nor a sheet, nor a portion of a sheet or note has been lost to the Government.”
But I hold the “open sesame;” so come with me and begin the story of a paper dollar. Walking through the long, cool corridors and the airy saloons of the lower Treasury, who would dream that afar up, close under its clinging roof, ceaseless fires burn, engines play, eager shuttles fly, and patient hands ply through all the nights and days to make the people’s dollar! Here in these low, close rooms, these crowded halls, whose roofs press down so low that even a child, in many places, could not stand erect beneath it, patient men and women,—weary, gray, and old,—and youth, with its first tints yet unbleached by the burning atmosphere in which it toils,—all are at work making the paper dollar.
Sometimes in the dark night, down the granite colonnades, athwart the great trees dimly waving in mid-air, across the lapsing fountains, stream long gleams of light shooting from the tiny loop-hole windows high up under the Treasury roof. They dart from the Printing Bureau of the Nation. While the Nation sleeps, its servants, through the long, still hours, go on making the people’s money!
First, the paper! It is all manufactured at “Glen Mills,” near Philadelphia, by the Messrs. Wilcox, who own the mills, and are the patentees of the “localized blue fibre,” made of jute, which runs through the right-hand end of the fractional currency and United States notes, and on the back of the bonds, etc. This fiber is the obstacle to the counterfeiter, and can only be overcome by oiling or soiling the spurious paper, so that its absence cannot be discovered. The paper is chemically prepared, and the application of an acid will change the tint to one color, and an alkali, to another. Thus any attempt to alter the filling-in or denomination of the stamped check, is defeated.
A Government superintendent resides at Glen’s Falls, who, with a corps of assistants, receives the paper from the contractors, counts, examines, holds it carefully guarded night and day, until delivered to the Treasury of the United States. To each paper-making machine is attached an automatic register, by which the mill-owners account to the Government for every square inch and sheet recorded by this register, the register being locked, and the key held securely in the pocket of a Government officer, who watches the work. During its manufacture and storage at the mills, this paper is guarded, by day and night, by a regularly organized “watch.” The Government Superintendent has a corps of counters and examiners under his direction, who examine and count the paper, as received from the makers, before it is packed away for shipment. The account is sent to the Department, and paid each day by the Secretary.