Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1910 — THE UBIQUITOUS CENT. [ARTICLE]

THE UBIQUITOUS CENT.

No Other Denomination Has Undergone So Many Changes. The universal money of the people In this country is the cent. The child does his earliest business thinking' in terms of cents. The hobo holds up the passerby with the request for a few cents to relieve the pangs of hunger. It is the unit of coinage. On the other side of the continent, the contempt for it is rapidly being overcome, and the mints have to take a constantly Increasing demand for it into their reckonings. The appearance of the new Lincoln cent is one of the most interesting additions to. this coinage that has been produced. For practically the first time it substitutes the real for the ideal, or rather the fanciful, but it is evidently Tegarded as something of an experiment, since the proposed 150,000 will not go far towards supplying current needs. —— Perhaps no other monetary denomination has undergone so many changes of design. Since the republic was bom there have been almost annual changes In the character of the cent. Most of these have been trivial, though some have been radical. The cent of 1792 bore a bust of Liberty, with flowing hair, and the legend, " Liberty, Parent of‘Science and Industry.” The next year what was known as the “chain cent” was produced, showing on the reverse a chain with fifteen links. There were many imperfect, dies in those days, but the imperfections have not infrequently . made them more precious to coin collectors. A genuine 1799 cent has 'been among the pieces most prized by the numismatist since they early became very scarce. This was said to toe due to the enterprise of a Salem firm that secured several hundred thousand of them and sent them to the coast of Africa, where punched with holes they were hung as ornaments on the necks of the native®.—Boston Transcript.