The paper is supplied the Bank Note Companies only upon requisition from the Bureau at Washington. Mr. Bemis, the Superintendent, makes a report to the Printing Bureau, also to the Secretary of the Treasury, of all the paper delivered to him. The first journey made by this governmental infant, is to the Bank Note Companies—two of them, one in New York, the other in Philadelphia—the American and the National—that there may not be any dangerous monopoly of priceless charms. It is borne to the depot by an armed escort, and conveyed on the cars by Adams’ Express. The New York Company, printing tints, must turn over to the Company printing backs, notes equivalent to the paper, and the second Company must similarly account to the Government for every incomplete note received—thus neither can possess itself wholly of this beloved child. One Company prints the tints of one denomination, and the back of the other, no Company executing on the same note both printings.
The national bank notes, hitherto engraved and printed entirely in New York, coming only to the Government Printing Bureau for numbering and sealing, hereafter will be exclusively engraved and printed in the Treasury. The jute-fibred paper will also be used in their making, as it is in the United States notes. The face of the Treasury notes is printed in black and green, the back in green. The National Bank Note face dares to be printed in black, and its back in black and green.
This tinted and outlined paper is conveyed to the Treasury by Adams’ Express, who have the contract for carrying all the Government moneys and securities.
When it reaches the Treasury, the work yet to be done by the Printing and Engraving Bureau, before the paper is complete as Government money, is to print the face upon the United States notes, and hereafter, on the National Bank notes, to plate-seal, to number, trim, and cut them into single notes; to trim, surface-seal, and cut into single notes the ten, fifteen, and twenty-five, fractional currency notes; to print the face of, trim, surface-seal, and separate the fifty cent notes; trim, surface-seal, and number the “funded loan bonds;” to trim, number, and surface-seal, the national bank notes; and to print the faces upon all the tints for internal revenue-stamps, already printed in New York. Besides all this work, the following are entirely engraved and printed in the Bureau of the Treasury: All strip-tobacco and snuff-stamps, stub and sheet snuff-stamps, domestic and customs cigar-stamps, compound liquor-stamps, crew lists ships’ registers, brewers’ permits, all the new special tax-paid stamps, (sixteen in number,) all miscellaneous bonds, gold notes, checks, drafts, etc.
When this precious paper, with its black and green lines and tints, fresh from the Bank Note Companies, arrives at the Treasury, it is placed into the hands of thirty young ladies for counting, one lady counting it twice, then passing it to another, for verification.
The next act in the process of making a dollar, is the manufacture of the plates used in printing. They are made in the engraving division of the Bureau, under the supervision of Mr. Casilear, a gentleman distinguished in his profession, who presides over a corps of the finest engravers in the country. Their work upon the plate of the United States note, is the engraving of its different parts. First, the face which it is to bear. This is always noticeably a perfect likeness of the person whom it represents. A daguerreotype or photograph is used. On the metallic plate of the daguerreotype the features are drawn lightly, the artist following accurately the lines of the portrait. If a photograph is used, gelatine is laid over it, and the picture is traced. From this outline on the plate, an impression is printed. This impression, by a chemical process, is transferred to a steel plate covered with wax. The outlines are then traced on steel, the wax removed, and the face, in outline, is then on the steel. The shading is then completed.
So many phases of consummate skill are necessary to the completion of a single dollar note, that “many men of many minds” are required to perfect a single plate. One has a genius for landscape, another for portraits, another for animal figures. The portrait is given to one, the lettering to another, the ornamental work to a third, and on and on. These fragments of the perfect picture to be, are executed upon separate bits of soft steel. When the lines on them are completed, these different bits of soft steel are put into an iron box, case-hardened and annealed in a crucible of intense heat, then suddenly cooled by dipping them in oil, which utterly hardens the soft steel. Rolls of soft steel are then prepared. By the application of a powerful press, the various pictures and lines, that the artists have engraved, are taken up by the soft steel rollers from the hard steel plate. The intaglio work appears on the roll, just as it afterwards appears on the note.
Now, the note-face is in fragments on the surface of the separate rolls. Next, the rolls are hardened, and placed in a transfer press over a flat plate of soft steel. Upon this plate, the operator of the press, by applying the lever, can, if necessary, impose a pressure equal to five or six tons. This pressure transfers the fragmentary picture to the plate. Then its counterpart picture is set in exact juxtaposition. The operator uses his steady hand, and skilled eyes, to set like a mosaic, each fragment of the complete design. Then moving the roller softly, to and fro, to equalize the pressure on every part of the picture, he continues to do so till the plate is hardened. He then passes a soft roll over it, and the entire note-face is taken up. In turn, this roll is hardened, and the note-face transferred from it to a soft steel plate. This final plate, hardened and polished, is the plate from which the note is at last printed.
After this plate has been used for thirty thousand impressions, its fading lines are restored by “re-entering” the plate with a roll. It is then used for thirty thousand impressions more. When finally “used up,” these plates are destroyed in the presence of a mixed committee of Treasury officers and members of Congress.
Look closely at the United States notes, the fractional currency bonds, and the most valuable revenue stamps, and you will see many lines involved and intricate, running to and fro in the most marvellous manner. These lines defy imitation. They are the best tantalizer and detective of the most accurate counterfeiter. The most absolute imitation, made by hand, can be instantly perceived under a glass. These involuting lines are the work of the geometric lathe, an instrument whose complicated wheels can be set to work out any combination of curved lines which the human mind can possibly conceive. The counterfeiter, with the same lathe, would be powerless to produce the same complications—“he would grow gray in endless and useless experiments, and even with a record of the combination, he could not so exactly re-produce it, that an expert could not detect the imposition.”