OCR Text |
Show Bring Pennies Out of Hiding Bankers Urge The nationwide shortage of coins first observed after the outbreak of hostilities in Korea last year, is becoming increasingly acute in this area the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco announced today. While it has not been necessary to resort to formal rationing, the Bank is finding it difficult to meet the present extremely heavy demand, de-mand, particularly for pennies and half-dollars, even though commercial commer-cial members banks have cooperated cooper-ated by ordering only their minimum mini-mum requirements. The principal shortage problem throughout the country is that of the lowly penny. Even through the mints have operated on as high as a 60-hour work week, they have been unable to relieve the situation. A reduction in the supply of copper allotted by the National Production Authority, and delays in deliveries of the metal due to recent re-cent strikes, have been contributing contribut-ing factors. Other reasons for the penny shor tage, outside of the general effect of greatly expanded business activity, act-ivity, are the prevalence of odd-cent odd-cent pricing, sales taxes, parking peters and vending machines. Not to be ignored, above all, are the cookies jars, piggy banks, and other oth-er household containers , which hold more than 17 billion one-cent pieces which are outstanding. Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross, director of the mint, recently issued an appeal ap-peal for each American family to return to circulation just ten of these one-cent pieces. If this were done, she pointed out, nearly 388 million pennies would come out of hiding, a number that would take the mint five months of 60-hour works to produce, using up 1260 tons of scarce copper. The Fedaral Reserve Bank of San Francisco, joining in this appeal, ap-peal, urges the public to cooperate cooper-ate fully in releasing coins of all denominations which have accumulated accum-ulated in home containers. The coins will be accepted either for deposit or for exchange into paper currency by any bank, or they may be used for making ordinary purchases. pur-chases. Prompt and widespread action ac-tion in this regard will help greatly great-ly in meeting the peak demands of the approaching holiday season. |