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14 Turning Out Money in Uncle Sam 's Factory PEOPLE who work in a certain factory in Wash ington, D. G, might rhyme the old line thil way: ney, money everywhere but not a cent to spend." During the fiscal year ending June 30 last that fac tory turned out products of a face value of nearly twenty-eight billions of dollar: during the previous ical yi if the face value of its output was almost fifty billions of dollars. No other factory in the world does such a business. The factory in question is known as the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing which makes all OUT paper money, postage stamps, revenue stamps and national government securities. So great has been the demand for its products that during the last few years the factory has been operating every day and every night, six days a week, with three shifts of workers. When its present building was erected only a few years ago. the facilities were shaped with the view of being sufficient for twenty-five or thirty years. In addition to treble shifts, working space outside of the main plant has been taken. Though we haven't worked our money-making printing presses with the recklessne of many other countries, we have during the last year turned out more money than during any other like period in our history and more than any one ever thought would be turned out in such a period of time. This was due, in the main, to the war whose demands added greatly to the novelty of the most novel and fascinating printing establishment in America. About 125, sightseers now visit the United States Bureau of Kncrravir.g and Printing in Washington every year. And the chief surprise to each of them is that there are very few secrets about how paper money is made. In fact, excepting the process for making the white paper on which money and government bonds are printed, there are no secrets about the work. An ther surprise is in the apparent freedom permitted ryonc employed in making money. Though money passes through their hands in great bundles and with as little seeming formality as the rushing of collars from worker to worker in a laundry, the thousands of worktr B and come and mingle together with as little restriction, apparently, as employes of any other factory. It would seem possible for one to stick bills representing millions of dollars into an inside coat pocket or effectively con- .1 them elsewhere in the clothing and get away with it; for there is searching of persons or garments. It is entirely possible for what is stated to be done by any one of several thousand employ excepting the part of getting away with it. Many attempts have been made, but veritably all, say the officials, resulted in discovery and usually were followed by terms in prison. For with all the apparent absence of retriction on persons who help turn out bales and bales of manufactured paper money and other securities every day, there governs work in the Bureau of Kngraving and Printing certain soft and subtle precautions that make success ful stealing all but impossible The precautionary system has been developed through the years and is the product of great experience and knowl edge of human nature. It is hard to grasp and describe the system which in some respects is more psychological than mechanical. It is predicted perhaps on the notion, whose truth the records of the bureau bear out, that the great bulk of people are by nature honst. Another fundamental is that people often need to be protected from themselves. Hence one of the strongest factors in that sys tem is collective responsibility. An other is the rule that no person be per mitted to do important work alone or separated from others. Most of the work, such as counting and assorting and bundling, is done by groups. Kach group receipts to the last one that handled the ''goods" it works on and takes a receipt when the work is passed on to another group. It when so passing, something disappears and individual liability cannot be fixed, ev ery one in the group of workers is held to be responsible and has to pay. If a sheet of ten dollar-bills only half printed disappears in transit through the bureau, the group in which the loss occurred is easily discovered. Then the person who caused the loss is sought. If it is a proved case of theft, jail doors open immediately and penitentiary doors open ultimately. If it is due to care lessnesi the person is fmed, suspended or discharged. If the sheet is not re covered the person, if found, who lost it must nav for its full face value: if individual blame cannot be fixed then the group m the section where the loss took place must share the indemnity. The collective liability rule makes every worker watch associates, for a careless 0T dishonest one might cause an honest one to be called on to help make good a big loss. The rule that no person shall handle money alone is aimed at protecting everyone from himself or her self during those possible weak moments when tempta tion presses. No one can go alone into a vault where there are valuables, and the rule applies to the high officials as well as to the lowest workers of the bureau. If a stack of bills must be carried from one part of By ROBHRT KENTON the establishment to another, two or more persons must go along with it. Checking up is a very im lHrtant part of the work. This requires the employ ment of hundreds of counters; for from the time bundles of paper are turned over to the bureau exact accounting must be made of every sheet until it is turned back in printed form to the Treasury or other governmental department. The paper is made at a factory in Massachusetts. No visitors can go through the paper mill, which is run by an outside agency on contract with the govern ment. There is no secret about the composition of the paper. That tor money and bonds is made chiefly of (men, though scarcity of material forced them to use cotton almost entirely during the war and for a while afterward. The secret is in the little silk thread imbedded in the paper and the wa the are put in. It I knew how it is done it would not DC lawful for me to describe the process here. No outsider can legally manufacture paper of that kind by any proc ess or for any purpose, even though it have nothing to do with counterfeiting. A sheet of money paper is handled about fifteen times, after it is turned over to the engraving bureau, before it is returned to the Treasury as a sheet of bills. The backs are printed on power presses but the "faces" are done on old-time handlike presses. The printing process is what is known as "intaglio," and about the only improvement made in it for many years is the equipment of the small presses with motors. Until a few years ago muscle power turned them. The making of plates is the most intricate as well as the most interesting of the bureau's work. The leading steel engraver living is among the engraving force of the bureau. He receives a salary of $7,500 a year which is $1,500 more than the director of the establishment gets. Some of his portraits for bills are world-famous as works of art. The engraver cuts out the main designs for bills or securities on soft steel. Formal work is done by a machine, a big diamond-pointed lathe, which can be a set of those plates, almost anyone might turn coi terfeiter and be able to produce perfect Counterfeh The plates are kept in a gnat vault, in the basem of the bureau building. The keeper of the vault never allowed to leave it when the door $ unlock H and it is so surrounded with lights and reflectors th he can stand at the door and see above and all arot it without moving. Postage and revenue stamps are turned out chief! printing processes that are not unusual. I',;,, nr. . ' hv i a - la' w mTL li. Hill w lw iyyyyMfiF iVrKfliBLL h mmm b W mm IKst' F kLM ' - (mw mW jflR mmfi' mm IK ImL jjpjBFjjjy rk r K yJf 3 AM mm 1 uTRr 411 VL V HflHRfyawftf Biff H rMuW H- mm Interior of one nl thr numerous borate vaults in the Bureau of Fnaravnn ..,.1 Pr.. -value of the content, of the p.ck.e. seen ,S ,u tenl o. 'SnVA doHar.'' set so that it will work out automatical such as the formal decorative work around the edge, of bills TMns machine work is very important, for it Cannot t duplicated by hand, and many of the lines arr 0 deli .ate that thry can't he picked up and transferred by till- filf .t, ,rr-.f , hp II .1 ' VT UJ Zi t 4 j i I nw wnnout a machin i ui.u hind, wmcn costs a great deal of til. 1IK. counterfeiter can make a plate that will exactly duoli cate paper money or bonds. 1 From the original plate I "die" is cut, win, 1, ran be used to cut working plates for the pr- i All pSatei are preserved with a car i .edmi. tint given to any other thing around the bureau For with e n presses are now used for that work. The DresMf a- recior anu an ivrvc 01 niee names Developed a h" rotary press that reels off stamps very much like newspaper press pours out newspapers. It i vn a the gumming. Tons and tons of gum are consumed bv the bureau every year. The gum used on stamps u virtually the same substance as that used in mav S tapioca. It comes from a tuberous plant called ca and grown chiefly in the East Indies. Many revenue stamps are now printed by what is known as the otT-set process which is something he lithography, of which a little is done by the bureau bureau prints many other things like check book? blank commissions, and other government forms that require plates. It even prints the President's cards But it is not open to work for Congressmen and other government people around Washington as in the cac of the Government Printing Office, The amount of money printed every year is stag gering. Currency, bonds, notes and certificates of in" debtedness turned out during the last fiscal Mar had a face value of nearly $Jo.0Oi.(X .0(X). Bills each with face value of $10.(HK) are the highest denomination! of currency turned out. Certificates of indebtedness often have individual face value of $100,000. It takes more than $7,000,000 a year to pay the op erating expenses of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Some of that comes directly front outside spendes that have to pay for work done, such as the Federal Reserve and national banks. The rest is an "overhead" charge, chiefly on money and bond manu facture. But it isn't a tax in the strict lei Si , for all the government's expense in producing paper money and bonds i more than made up tor by the securities that go out and never come back for redemp tion. It is estimated that one pet of all national bank currency is never redeemed. But it doesn't accrue to the banks, even when they go out of busi ness; but goes into the United States Treasury, where the fund held for the redemption of bank curreiu'v alone amounts to about $40,000 Most of it will never be drawn, for the money represented, no doubt, in the main ha been destroyed or lost beyond recovery. Yet every now and then somebody comes along with an old hill or other government obligation that should hau been redeemed a long time ago. A feu days before this was written an V&W woman showed up with a $1,000 certri cate issued in 1X53 to indemnify Ten! !'r Mexican war claims. The engrav ing bureau pronounced it - line and it was paid. Of the more than 7,000 employes, over 4.5M are women, and most of the women are rated as unskilled help and are not highly paid, especially as com pared with skilled help. "But in 25 years' experience here," laid an old attache of the bureau, "I have known only one woman to be caught in trying to get away with products of the bureau. SI a sheet of nearly completed bills. Wc knew of it within a few hours and re covered the sheet next day. All other peculations were by men. Before the war they were not numerous; I can recall only three. But during the war when there was a great labor turu-ver and some contusion, there ware several attempt! made to get away with money or other things of value." The only perfect counterfeiting that has ever been done in this country was by an engraver who worked in the bureau. He duplicated at hom IOBN of the plates he made in the bureau, and the bad money put out brought on a court tight that went to the Tinted States Supreme Court, which held that. no matter by whom or how made, u legal m..ney is worthless and cannot 1m redeemed by the government That is the last case, say they, of a hnreau engraver aoinsr wromr. and it happen not long after the Civil War. There is an interesting story about the portraits of Presidents and others that are put on billl and bonds. The subject! are chosen by the retary of the Treasury, who is limited onlv to the lkc' nesses of people who are dead. This lone restriction waa put into the law because, not long after the burcat yai established, a bureau director put his own tad. 'ikeness QU a series of greenbacks. While the Bg oj Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury are : dinarily used, fenerals, Senators and others have nt so honored in the past. Excepting the fanciful fiKnre , "l iberty" no woman's likeness has ever been USCdi though there is no law preventing the honoring ot 3 woman, provided she no longer lives. The lace