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Show WALLS OF STEEL AND IliO. The Rough Kind ot Experience a. Burglar Would be Likely to Have in Entering Uncle Sam's Vaults. To outside appearances the Treasury is no more of a strong box than is the General Gen-eral Postoffice, the Interior Department or the Capitol building, and the attention of the visitors going through the building is not attracted by any extraordinary precautions. They are allowed to roam about the halls. Nobody watches them or asks any questions. In one room they inay see a man signing bonds that are stacked up in front of him, representing probably thousands of dollars. In another an-other they may sec some one putting his name to little slips of paper, hundreds of j which lay unon his desk. These may be warrants or drafts for large sums of money, but the visitor doesn't know un1 ! less he examines them, and even then ten chances to one he wouldn't understand under-stand them. As a matter of fact, none of these would be of value to anybody getting get-ting possession of them by chance or dishonesty. dis-honesty. At most they could only furnish a basis for forgery, as they are in an incomplete in-complete form or are drawn upon some particular place, to be paid to a specified person. ' T1HS MYSTEBY OF THE THING. One of the greatest safeguards of the Department, though, of course, not the one most relied upon, is the fact that a thief wouldn't know what to steal, where to find t or what to do with it if he should happen to get it. To a stranger all the workings of the department are mysterious, and they lose sight of the strong box in contemplating the business establishment the clerks at work on correspondence, and a thousand and one other routine matters. , At the north end of the building is the only place where there are any indications of the presence of great sums of money. Thsre are located lo-cated the . Treasurer's office, the cash room, the counting rooms and the great vaults. There is collected nearly two hundred million dollars in silver, gold, or paper currency, such as would be good for use at once in the commercial world, besides indefinite thousands of old notes that have been cancelled and are on their way to destruction, and in the neighborhood' neighbor-hood' of four hundred million dollars in registered bonds, "which are left as security se-curity for the national bank circulation, and are of no value except to the banks in whose names they are registered, or to the United States. But a visitor passing to that part of the building is not stopped b' any grini-yisaged grini-yisaged guard, but is allowed the same privilege to walk through the corridors as he had where there was nothing more valuable than appointments or decisions. de-cisions. He is even allowed to walk out on a balcony above the cash room and look at the men handling the money that is taken out of the vaults for use during the day. While walking aroung this balcony admiring the marble paneled walls they are at one time very near a vault that is loaded down with wealth. They may even lean with their backs against it, but they don't know it. More i than this, it is not difficult for the visitor to get a pass that will admit him into the very vaults themselves, and he can stand in the immense iron and steel rooms, surrounded sur-rounded by piles of money, which, if it fall on him, would crush him to death. Or the visitor may be allowed to ' go into a beautiful little vault and be permitted to hold a package of two or three millions mil-lions in his hands for a moment. Besides all this there is a huge vault in the south end of the building, known as the Registers Reg-isters vault, which at times has many millions in unsigned bonds in it. THE STRENGTH OF THE VAULTS. It must not be presumed from the fact that bolts and bars and guards are not visible that no precautious are taken against robbery. It is the consciousness of perfect safety that makes them so easy. The vaults are about the strongest and best that the ingenuity of man could contrive,' con-trive,' and they are very carefully guarded, They are made of chilled iron and steel, and are as near being impenetrable as safes can be made. Their double steel doors are locked with time locks in the night. In the day time these are opened and the entrance closed with a steel grating, grat-ing, near which the custodian stands with his key. It might seem very easy to knock this man down, take his key from him and bag the wealth, but it wouldn't be at all easy. Youw&uld have to pass through a .great many iron gratings, where a large number of responsible employes em-ployes are assembled, to get at him. You would go in company with some official, offi-cial, and there would not be more than two or three of you go in at a time.where there would Be half a dozen good men to deal with, you if you didn't act right. If 3 oj succeeded in getting away with all those, you wouldn't have time to get out before the whole Treasury watch would be on hand to receive you. If you had "nok" in fhe enrriciors readv to ioin vou in a fight with these, and you killed them all off, the District police force would have time to get there before you could doit, and if j-ou were very hard to whip, a file of soldiers and a gatling gun might be brought to bear on you, by way of recruits. re-cruits. In this way the money and bonds are safe during the day. In the night the vaults are locked up with time locks that can't be opened again till morning, and all the clerks and officials are away, the building being left to a force of watchmen, who patrol the corridors as policemen do the streets of the city. There is constantly con-stantly some one at each door, and the rest walk about the corridors, one being left, however, in constant guard over the vaults. Their strength is supposed to be enough to resist any assauhUhat might be made upon them long enouguto aiiow plenty of time for the whole force of watchmen, and if need be, such aid as they might call into reach the scene of the attack and drive away the assailants. Of course the vaults would not be impenetrable im-penetrable if a burglar were given enough time, but a whole night long of undisturbed undis-turbed work would scarcely suffice for the most expert to get in. OBSTACLES IN THE WAY OF TUNNELING. A gang of burglars might get a house across the wav, and tunnel under the street and up under the vaults, but they would have a very big undertaking. They would have to dig under the foundation of thebuildins, which is four or live feet thick, and nobody knows just how deep under the ground,and when they went to come up they would strike their heads against about a foot and a half or two feet of solid cement, as hard as a rock II they got through this and struck the bottom bot-tom of the vault, they, would come contact with about nine inches of chilled S and iron plates, which could not be drifted? They would then either have to Sip this, which it would take days to do or blow it up with dynamite. Could all Sis successfully done, they would find themselves in the immense .fiver vut, which contains pothing butsilver dollars, of which they could not carry away enough to pay the actual expenses of their work. The stock of silver there would net benefit a burglar. This vault is a large iron room, whose cold walls and silver lining would chill a burglar's blood. It is fifty-four feet eight inches long, thirty feet eight inches wide and nine feet five inches high. Besides this, there are about Bix vaults in that vicinity, but not to be reached by mining. In one of these is about $150,000,000 in currency, such as burglars might pack away in their carpet bags and carry off. This is about the only vault that is worth their trouble ; but they don't know just where it is, and if they did they would find it the most difficult to get into, as they would have to cut through two powerful safes before they reached its walls, which are as hard as the hardest. Washington Star. |