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Show Use Of Nickel Declines Before Higher Prices ' WASHINGTON, D. C.-The nickel is losing iu popularity. Suffering 'from the effects of postwar inflation, infla-tion, the 5 cent piece no longer .pays for a subway ride in New York, a bus ride in Washington or a cup of coffee in many restaurants. restaur-ants. The nickel, however, is not the only coin that isn't being used as much as formerly. Government figures show that all coins are declining de-clining In use and "folding money" ,is gaining. Even the advent of retail sales taxes and parking meters in the last 10 years has failed to halt the postwar decline in coin usage. The United States mint delivered only 149,064.000 nickels to banks In fiscal 1949. The peak was 223.870,-000 223.870,-000 In 1945 and the number has been dropping since. Production of other coins is off even more. Banks required only a third as many pennies in fiscal 1949 as they did four years earlier. Sixty million half dollars were shipped out by the mint in 1943; in 1949 only 11,455,000 were ' dispatched dis-patched to banks. Meanwhile, the bureau of engraving en-graving and printing has been hard pressed to keep up with the demand de-mand for currency. In 1947 presses rolled out 113,030.000 sheets of currency, cur-rency, with 12 bills on each sheet. In 1948 the figure jumped to 124,-000.000, 124,-000.000, and last year the number rose to 140,000,000. Despite the reduced usage of coins, congress has been asked this year to approve at least five new coins: Three cent, 6Vi, 7, TA and 12 cent pieces. However, treasury department officials take a dim view of the ideas, particularly in regard to the fraetionnl currency. Cash registers, change makers, vending machines and millions of dollars worth of calculating machines ma-chines would have to be materially altered or scrapped. Businessmen and the public would be so annoyed by the coins "they probably wouldn't fool with them," according to Leland Howard, How-ard, assistant director of the mint. He agrees that the coins would come in handy for su :h things as transit systems, where tokens, representing rep-resenting fractional amounts of money are used, but he does not think the public wants them. |