Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1893 — GLIMPSES IN A MINT. [ARTICLE]

GLIMPSES IN A MINT.

The Process of Coining the Precious Metals. It is rather difficult to attempt a description of how money is made. Even encyclopedias, which are supposed to be equal to any and all emergencies, object to that. In a measure they are right. To get the best idea of a multiple and minute processes of minting, one must be an eye witness. It adds charm to the proceedings to stand by the dusty furnnoes, arranged in sentinel-like rows, to see them open their jaws and to look right down into the fiery cavern, where insatiable tongues of flame are licking up the molten masses of silver and gold. A day or two ago Officer Brown, atanding beside a visitor who had watched with all the fascination of a novice the great iron mouths opening and closing, betrayed himself into a ueat little explanation of tbe process of minting money. Officer Brown has been many years at the mint, so the visitor listened with interest, as to one who spoke with authority. Here is the process in a nutshell : "Making money," said he, with one of those eloquent waves of the hands he keeps by him to use on explanatory occasions such as these, "is just like making cake. You mix tho dough, we mix the metal. You roll out the dough into shape, we roll out the metal into bars. You out the dough into cakes, we cut tho metal into coins. Then we stamp them. The metal left over is melted up and used again, just ns the cook gathers up the left-overs, rolls them again and cuts more cakes."

In other words, an amount of metal, say the equivalent of SOO,OOO in gold, which chemically is made up of 00 per cent, gold and 10 per cent, copper, ia put into a black-lead crucible about the size of a peck measure. It ia kept in the furnace one hour and fifteen minutea. The workman watches his gold as sacredly as tho cook her cakes, and when the molten liquid is brought to the proper consistency he takes a three-cor-nered black-lead cup, nbout the size that would fit a monkey’s head, and dips up $2,000 worth of the metal at a time, pouriug it out again with that marvelous dexterity whiob only oomas from practice into moulds holding SI,OOO each. Nothing can be more beautiful than the fiery stroamof young and pure gold as it glidea into the locked arms of the iron mould. When the liquid solidifies it forms a bar, or, to bo technioally correct, an ingot about twelve inches long and about naif an inch thick. These ingots are subjected to a process of rolling out which lengthens them without increasing the width. The bars are then ready to bo cut. One muchine outs the coin, another stamps them after the procesa of milling baa been performed. Milling, in mint parlance, has somewhat ot a different signification than in ordinary vernacular. It signifies tho rolling over of tho edge of the coin preparatory to atamping it with the minute denticulutions. which are commonly known as tho milling. The latter is port o( the process of stamping, and is done at the time that the signet is put on the coin. , Speaking of stamping introduces the largo corps of women who form a considerable part of the woiking force of the mint. About one hundred of them are employed, and they attend entirely to the adjusting and stamping. It may be said in explanation of the prooess of the torm "adjusting" that every coin before it is shaped is oarefully weighed. If too. heavy the edge is delicately filed until the coin is of lawful weight; if too light the piece is sent to be remelted. This process of weighing and adjusting is au employment to which women, with their dclicaoy of touch, are well suited. They are also in charge of the stamping. Incidentally it may be said that most presses stamp from 80 to 110 coins everv minute. In ono short hour $15,000 in ten-dollar gold pieces can be stamped around the edge and on both sidea. There is another part of the work which comes under the chnrge of the women employed at the mint. They do the sewing. At first thought it seems a trifle incongruous to associate sewing with money minting, but all the bags used bv tho mint are sewed in the building. The bags are made of white duck and run up by machine, being sewed twice for security. The bag making is no small thing when you come to consider the number it takes to pack up tbe newly-coined weabbof the country each year. The five-oent pieces are packed in SSO bags and the pennies in $lO bags, small silver in SI,OOO and the gold in $5,000 pouohss. Roughly speaking, last year fully 2,000 bags were made up for gold alone, 16,000 for silver, 5,000 for half dollars, besides maov thousands for the smaller coins.—[Philadelphia Times.