We have reached the Redemption Division of the Treasurer’s Bureau, and stand in one of the rooms devoted to the counting of mutilated currency and the detection of counterfeits. This difficult and responsible labor of the public service is performed solely by women.
In the long rooms on either side of the marble hall, on the north ground floor of the Treasury Building, may be seen one hundred and fifty women, whose deft and delicate fingers are ceaselessly busy detecting counterfeits, identifying, restoring, counting and registering worn-out currency which has come home to be “redeemed.” Each lady sits at a table by herself, that the money committed to her may not become mixed with that to be counted by any other person.
The fractional currency sent to the Treasury for redemption is usually assorted by denominations only. The work of assorting by issues remains to be done by the counters of the Treasury. As there are four distinct issues of most of the denominations, each of which must be assorted by itself, this labor alone is a vast one to the counters. Looking on their tables we see them heaped with little piles of currency, each made of a denomination or issue different from the rest. Thus every new issue increases the labor of currency-redemption. With clear eyes and patient hand, the lady bending over this table takes up slowly every bill and scrutinizes it, first, to see if it be genuine. Over three hundred dollars in counterfeit notes are found in the fractional currency, daily. This fact alone is sufficient to make the counting of the Redemption Division far less rapid than that of the Division of Issues.
The first thing that a lady at a redemption table does with her money packages is, to compare their number with the inventory which accompanies them. If there is none, she makes one. If there is a discrepancy between the packages and the number claimed, she refers to a clerk, that there may be no mistake. She then proceeds to the examination of a single package. After she has placed all the rest in a box, so that no strap or stray scrip from another bundle may mix with the first; when she has scrutinized and counted every note in the package, she puts the strap on again, marking it with her initials, the date, the amount, the “shorts,” “overs,” and “counterfeits.” Thus she continues till every package has been counted. She then proceeds to assort the notes into packages, each containing one hundred notes, each of the same denomination and issue, which she binds with a “brand new” printed strap again, marked with her initials and date. All the notes over even hundreds she places by themselves. These in turn are given to distinct counters, whose sole business it is to make even hundreds out of these odd numbers.
The first counter then enters in a book, having a blank form for the purpose, printed in duplicate on one side of each leaf, a statement of the result of her count, containing the net amount found due to the owner, the aggregate of the “shorts,” the “overs,” the “counterfeits” discovered and the amount claimed. One of these duplicates is retained in the book as her voucher; the other is attached to the letter which accompanied the money; all together are handed to the clerk, who draws the check which is to be sent in return; or, if new currency is to be sent from the cash division, the clerk writes the order on which it is to be forwarded.
This is the story of but one package of mutilated money of the tens of thousands that are received at the Treasury every day. The Government has provided the most munificent facilities for the redemption of its currency and the maintenance of its credit in circulation. To what an extent the nation avails itself of these facilities no one can realize who has never visited the Treasury. Regular transportation, at the expense of the Government, is provided by express for the redemption of all currency. Everything demanded of its holders is, that they should send it in proper amounts; then its transportation is paid, and new currency sent back in its stead. This liberality in the Government is partly accounted for in the fact that fresh notes are a prevention of counterfeits. A fresh, new note cannot be counterfeited. Its exquisite tints and lines cannot be reproduced by any false hand. Only after its beauty has been obscured is the attempt made. Thus it is said that counterfeiters “soil and rumple their spurious notes, to give them the appearance of having been in circulation a long time.” Thus many banks never sort over or pay out any fractional currency which they receive, but put it into packages and send it to the Treasury at the close of each day’s business, so that nothing but clean notes are ever paid over their counters. By doing this they are saved the immense labor of reassorting old notes, and afford their applicants the happiness of always receiving new ones.
Only the room in which the express messengers deliver their remittances can give any idea of the vast amounts sent daily to the Treasury for redemption. Here we find counters, tables, and the floor piled high with damaged money from every State in the Union. Two and three hundred packages are often received by express in a single day. The greater part of these contain postage and fractional currency. The Assistant Treasurer of New York forwards a remittance of fractional currency every ten or twelve days, never less than one hundred thousand dollars, and the amounts sent from other treasury officers are proportionately large. Over thirty-one million dollars in fractional currency were received and counted during the last fiscal year—about one hundred thousand dollars for each working day. Every note in this large sum has to be counted, studied, assorted with all others of the same denomination and issue; strapped, labelled, reported, delivered—all done by women.
The last room to which the counter carries our dollar is the cancelling room. She has just reported to the chief of the Redemption Division the result of her count, in the following duplicate report on the broad paper strap which binds her bundle of soiled notes:
Amount, $5,000.00
From Fiftieth National Bank, New York City.