Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1920 — HOLD MOTE AS RARE RELIC [ARTICLE]

HOLD MOTE AS RARE RELIC

Piece es Money Imued in China More Than Five Centuries Age Owned in America. Marco Polo found banknotes In China ages ago. printed on paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree. One of these notes, upon which the great Venetian traveler himself may have gazed, is on exhibition at this day in the office of an American company. It is one of a series Issued by the Ming dynasty about 1390 A. D., “current anywhere under the heavens” —and seems to have been printed from wooden blocks on a sheet of paper nine by thirteen indies —a bigger surface than any man could cover with both hands outstretched. It is good for “one string of cash.” The provision against forgery is simple to the point of severity — “Counterfeiters hereof will be executed. Persons giving information of counterfeiters .will be rewarded with taels 250, and, in addition, will receive the property belonging to the criminal.” The head of the emperor who gave the order and the lopped heads of the counterfeiters have long since moldered into impalpable dust, the property of the criminal vanished and left not so much as a shade, but the faded old banknote, pressed between the sheets of glass and framed in carven teak, still croaks Its harsh warning to him who can understand it.