Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1886 — Paper for Bank Notes. [ARTICLE]

Paper for Bank Notes.

• f t An old secret-service officer said: “The new distinctive paper for the mannfacture of bank and national notes will prove a failure, in my estimation. None of it has yet been issued from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, for the good reason that Secretary Manning has ordered that all the old fiber paper shall be used up before the new is put out. Somehow the Secretary has become possessed of the idea that the nearer we get to the paper used by the Bank of England the more secure wfl will be against counterfeiting. Now, that is preposterous right on its face. The condition of our paper currency cannot be compared with that of England, and for the reason that every note that goes into the Bank of England, no matter what its condition may be, is destroyed at once and a new one' issued in its place. There are hundreds of cases where the notes of the Bank of England, have been counterfeited, and some of them pretty successfully, too. “Only an expert can detect the difference between them and the genuine, and yet it is proposed to adopt the water-mark as a protection against counterfeiting. The fiber paper has been successfully imitated by one man only, notwithstanding the long number of years it has been in circulation. A little over nine years ago Tom Ballard, who is probably the most expert counterfeiter of this generation, made a paper which it was impossible to distinguish from the genuine. This was never successfully accomplished before, and has never been done since. Fortunately we caught Ballard and convicted him. He was sent to the Albany Prison for a term of thirty years. No one but Ballard knows how he made that imitation, and although we have made every legitimate endeavor that human ingenuity could suggest to get the secret from him, we have 'signally failed. Ballard fias invented a new paper for bank and national use since he has been in prison. “The fiber paper has been imitated but ohce, and that by a counter;eiter who will be an aged and decrepit old man should he live long enough to serve out his term. The water-mark paper is being constantly imitated, even in a country where the currency is kept in much better condition than ours. Another point is, that after the notes become soiled the water-mark will become completely effaced, and then we shall have the vast majority of our notes floating through the channels of trade without any distinctive device whatever, so far as paper is concerned. ” — Towle, in Boston Traveller.