Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1882 — The Making of Greenbacks. [ARTICLE]

The Making of Greenbacks.

United States notes are printed on paper made in Dalton, a small town in Massachusetts, and each blank sheet of the peculiar paper used is guarded almost as carefully as if it were already printed and signed. The mill in which it is mede is one of the oldest in the country, having been established in colonial times. The grayish pulp, which is the embryo form of the paper, jiasses between heavy rollers, and, as it moves along, bits of blue and red silk thread are scattered over its surface. From the pulp-room to the vaults, in which it is stored until it is sent to Washington, it is jealously watched. It is carried to Washington in small iron safes, and some of it is kept in the Treasury vaults for years, until it is needed. The mere possession of any of this paper by an unauthorized person is a felony. More than a thousand persons are employed in the Bureau of Printing and Engraving at wetting, plate-printing, examining, pressing, numbering, binding, and engraving. The bank-note plates and stamp-dies are kept in vaults that can only be opened by the joint labor of three men, and each opening occupies fifteen minutes. All the Presidents except the present one have been portrayed on the bank-notes, and three Vice-Presidents twenty-four Secretaries of the Treasury, ten Secretaries of State, six Secretaries of War and three Postmaster-Generals and Chief Justices, besides twenty-six Senators and Representatives, and several persons distinguished in science and literature. The highest value in national bank-notes is SI,OOO. The printing of a bank-note requires from twenty-two to twenty-four days, and during the process it passes through the hands of fifty-two persons. The highest denomination for the legaltender notes is SIO,OOO. There are also $5,000, tliflOO and SSOO notes.

* A Half-Dollar Trial. Mr. Ernest King, editor of the Fall River, Mass., Sun, thus discourses upon the merits of St. Jacobs Oil: “Suffering with rheumatic pains I was Didymus as to remedies. I read of St. Jacobs Oil, and said here goes for a half-dollar trial. I bought a bottle and before it was half used the screw-wrench pains had gone and troubled me no longer.”