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Show treasury's Latest Innovation Is a Money Laundry Sffffg- 11 'SHMSrfS in our sub-trcnsuries -iKinDafXmntion office at Wasb-BStfaPh8?tho Wasb-BStfaPh8?tho present cost f umW7 United States greenbacks. LtBiti "Si predicts that tho (JBKkfi Sfll reach this extent, l!4&So hive studied tho mat-vBpettSSJ'it mat-vBpettSSJ'it will be tremendous MtKUment perhaps a nnl- 1 -MuSdnr scheme from start invention and creation fiBlX! the progressive director 5FWiBi of engraving and print-already print-already devised several AJices for "lessening the cost 5tcly. when ho proposed to iWft if reissue tho greater part or rnancr money now chopped W'WSiv U sufficiently j im- S' i Ifflnt a committee of troas-&Fo troas-&Fo investigate the matter, iust submitted a favorable I'll tlJ o poarco, chairman of tho tK&ta Sis me that its experiments JKrffi certainly 60, per cent and ner cont of our redeemed ' jMiiv destroyed by the Idered and reissued 1, stiff and smooth n quite as pood as sonic of the fresh-ncc fresh-ncc flimsy, creased it now nattily dis-und-ncw ones fresh 's big paper money 2, who is chief of i, further estimates bo laundered by i cost of one-tenth As it now costs ;ach new note, the .11 save Vi cents tl. ironed and rcis-Irics rcis-Irics can turn out estimates the cost f 1 cent per note, a saving of i 1-3 of laundered paper ipor money now treasuries is to be 2d is now decided rs. Notes- that look sue, but that which ir foiled they stack liich are placed un-n un-n halve?, eacli pack-hipped pack-hipped to tho treason treas-on soparale days, ;liou against train reasury tho halved a big macerator, to pulp while a clicks clic-ks on. Mr. Balph 's scheme fifths to four-fifths w macerated. And i saving perhaps a ir to the taxpayers utics now compellod money tho benefits reenbacks free from is already in opera-of opera-of engraving and mcsy of Mr. Kalph ed to inspect every Machine, , goes first into the lie tank whose end accompanying pho-'npotl. pho-'npotl. That is to 1 bottom and rides the top. Along one row of water .ids am of hot soapsuds j of the tank whose curved bottom causes the liquid to circulate cir-culate around and around. Tho washer stands on a zinc-topped table beneath which is a motor belted to a pump which takes tho hot suds from tho overflow and forces it back into tho descondintr jets. A stack of soiled greenbacks is 'laid oefprc tho operator of tho washer who rapid!' feeds them to the revolving current cur-rent of tho tank. Ho distributes them as equally as possible and they swim up and over and down in rapid procession whilo tho strong washing solution is doing ItB work. This lather isso strong that, it bleaches tho yellow sides of our gold certificates or ''yellow backs," as well as the signatures and other lettering letter-ing added to national bank notes by tho ordinary pen, tho typewriter of fac simile stamps. But ail of our " greenbacks,' green-backs,' 3 which constitute tho great bulk of tbo paper currency, withstand tho process because theyarc printed, numbered num-bered and sealed entirely in inks made with a metallic base. For these reasons, therefore, the greenbacks alone aro to bo laundered until old certificates and bank notes can be issued wholly in metallic me-tallic ink. The washing machine takes a thousand thou-sand notes at each bath, and they re- main in the tank until the motor-driven pump has circulated the solution for fivo minutes, all of which timo the bath is maintained at a temperature of 330 degrees. de-grees. Then they are similarly circulated circu-lated for live minutes moro in plain cold water, which thoroughly washes out the suds. After this they aro spread to dry upon wire trays. Rcstiffencd With Gluo and Alum. But they are yet to be starched, sterilized steril-ized and ironed, so to speak. Tho mon-03' mon-03' laundry, however, does not employ starch, .but 'another stiffoner which works bettor- This is added by the 'sizing 'siz-ing machine." that shown in the picture where the girl with tho white shirt waist sits with her back partly turned and with a tall stack of money at her left hand. Before her is a sort of gridiron grid-iron of narrow felt bands1 revolving over rollers. This gridiron is partly open and into it she slides the freshly washed notes, one by one. Th(' top and bottom rows ot belts come to gethcr upon tho moving row of bills and earrv them down into a tank filled with this'stiffener, which the money laundry emplovs in lieu of starch a solution of glue, alum and water, heated to 130 degrees. de-grees. Sterilization is the third process.. From the sizing bath another combination of felt ribbons carries the notes into a tank filled with a volatile antiseptic, of the nature of formaldehyde, devised by Burgess Bur-gess Smith, a chomist of the bureau of engraving and printing, who has direct charge of the practical end of the laundering laun-dering process. Microscopic tests being made at the hygienic laboratory of the public health and marine hospital service serv-ice show that this antiseptic readily kills all of the germs upon tho soiled notes, and theso bacteriological tests have been made with notes with one-half one-half nearly black with dirt and tho other oth-er half laundered. Wringing and Ironing Machines. A wringing mnchiuo is tho next piece of apparatus to catch tho moving procession pro-cession of bills. Still another gridiron of straps carries them out of the an tiseptic bath and reeds them to a pair of big rubber rollers- held tightly together togeth-er by woight pressure. And. after passing pass-ing through these, they are dropped into a conveyor, which carries them through a chamber about ten feet long, heated bv coils. By tho time they have reached tho end of this they aro thoroughly thor-oughly dry. And finally comes the ironing process. Forty notcs aro piled one upon tho other oth-er and placed between lop and bottom lavers of "press board." the leather-like leather-like glazed cardboard which is used in making the flexible covers of blank books. Thus' put in packs, tho newly washed, sized and sterilized notes are passed between heavy steel rollers, which subject them to a pressure ot thirtj tons and squeeze each stack as it passes through to the thinness of pasteboard. paste-board. This process irons out all wrinkles, wrin-kles, closes up all creases and imparts i finish hardly distinguishable from that of brand newness. There has long been a loud popular clamor for clcanor money, to obtain which some individuals havo resorted to washing their greenbacks in their homes before handling them. Thus- I heard from a government official today the story of an old lady in Massachusetts who long made it a practice to wot all soiled greenbacks which sho rocoivoa. and then spread them upon a plate ot glass that hold them Hat while she scrubbed first one side and then tho other side with a brush wet with fionp and ammonia water. Dirtv money hns long boon a nuisance, especially in "communities far from the treasury and sub-treasuries,, to wnicli institutions banks or individuals caii take soiled notes and exchange them for now bills without expense. But uwav out. in tho northeast and southeast ami through tho west, until the gold belt, is reached, filthy notes accumulate because the banks have to pay from 00 to cents ncr thousand dollars' worth to havo their soiled greenbacks transported to tho treasury or sub-treasuries. .To reliove this condition a hill hns been beforo congress "to establish and maintain main-tain the physical cleaulinesB and serviceable serv-iceable character of all the United States paper currency in circulation." It provides that all national banks and other banks that arc national depositories deposi-tories shall send every bit of their dirty currency to the treasury for tho purpose of having it reissued in clean bills, the cost of transportation both ways being bornd by tho government. It also permits per-mits individuals, corporations and money mon-ey establishments of all sorts to enjoy tins privilege. Filthy Lucre, Indoed. How foul our papor money becomos before being retired from use is best seen at tho redemption office in tho treasury, whose money handlers sometimes some-times havo to go so far as to fumigate notes sont in ,by persons desiring new money in exchange. This had to bo done in the recent case of a man drowned in tho Potomac river and whoso body was not recovered until four months later, when some bills found in his clothing woro sent into tho treasury for rcdemp- tion. In another instance a box of money mon-ey was brought to the treasury from Cuba by a government undertaker who had recoverod it from the bodies of dead soldiers. On still another occasion a steamboat explosion on Lake Michigan Michi-gan caused tho death of a pursor who had $60 in bills on his person. Ho floated about for somo weeks, at the end of which the cash was recovered and sent through a .bank for redemption at tho treasury. Then there was the case of a German tramp who died in a barn up in New York state. He lay buried in the potter's field until a letter from his brother in the old country led to his exhumation and $6000 in paper money was found in a secret mony belt hidden hid-den beneath his- underclothing. These notes, liko those recovered in tho pre ceding cases, had to be handled at tho redemption office. A note worn in a tramp's shoe during a sovonty-fivc-milo hike through Minnesota Minne-sota was another spocimen received recently at the treasury. This man started from Mankato to Minneapolis with a twenty-dollar bill secreted in each shoo as a protection against hold ups, but at the end of tho two-day trip he was horrified to discover that one of his notes had been worn to shreds, but some one told him to send the remains to the redemption office, which nfter subjecting them to tho miscroscopo issued is-sued a crisp twenty-dollar silver certificate certi-ficate in their stead. The other bill that served tlie tramp as an insole ho cashed at a Minneapolis bank, and per-haps per-haps you or I carried it after it went back into circulation. . A bill worn as a plnster came in for redemption within only the past week. A man had spread a porous plaster out on a table, preparatory to applying, it, and thon bad left tho room, turning down the light. Enter then his wife, who picked up a ton-dollar note and then droppod it on tho plaster.. Exit wife and enter husband, who applies the plaster and tumbles into ,bed. Two weeks Inter tho husband is amazed, on removing I lie plaster, to find tho long-lamented long-lamented greenback sticking to it. Money That Has Been Swallowed. Notes that have been swallowed by animals constitute quite the most remarkable re-markable category of dirty money which the treasury has to handle. Some time ago C. J. Allen, a farmer, came out ot. a hotel at Ogden. In., to discover that his horso had run away and upset his wagon. Ho located the dismantled team up tho road, but after getting his vehicle bnck on all fours ho missed a roll of greenbacks from tho pocket of his waistcoat, which had rolled out from under un-der the scat and fallen upon tho ground. Then he waxed exceeding wroth and promptly accused an innocent onlooker of tho theft. Tho onlooker pointed to a goat, which stood dreamily oy tho wag-onside, wag-onside, licking its chops, and promised to pay for tho animal if the missing wad was not found in its' stomach. So poor Billy was led to slaughter iind in exchange ex-change for a green lump found somo-whero somo-whero within nis digestive apparatus tho treasury handed out $30 in clean money. "Dog notes" form a class by them-solvos them-solvos in the annals of the redemption office. A man in Spring Valley, O., dropped a $20 note, which his dopr, in a playful spirit, chowed up and swallowed. swal-lowed. Tliit man. did not liosltato long. Ho killed tho canine, cut him open and recovered tho fragments of his money, which tho animal's gastric juico had nearly bleached out. Patching it up, he sont it to tho sub-Arcasury in Cincinnati, Cin-cinnati, where it was forwarded to Washington for redemption. Moro re-contly re-contly a dog's stomach inclosed in a jar was rcceivod, together with a. letter explaining that poor Fritz had playfully swallowed $20, but, not being wortn that amount, had been painlessly killed. The chowed-up gr.ccnbnQk was discovered discov-ered by the experts after a most unpleasant un-pleasant search, and a now silver cer tificate was returned to Fritz's master. a w Such cases glYo you an idea as to u fli what may happen to our paper money pH 1 boforo it becomes useless. In only ox- ' u9! trcmo cnscs-.liko those, whero its inucrip- f jMMj 'tions are disfigured, does it necessarily mum halt at the treasury. In thousands of mam' other instances it re-enters circulation If! full ufter having a history a bad or even Warn' worse than that of any of tho afore- iwS''ffi mentioned specimens of filthy lucre. i-SH! |