Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 October 1887 — Redeeming Mutilated Money. [ARTICLE]

Redeeming Mutilated Money.

Bank President in St. Louis Globe-Democrat. I am often asked whether this or that piece of mutilated money is redeemable. It is safe to say, unless the money’s identity is entirely gone, that it is redeemable. In fact, one may say that money in the shape of ashes can be restored. It is a, fact that after the Chicago fire ashes were redeemed. It came about in this way: It is customary in banks 1o do money up in packages, say of SIO,OOO each, and in the big lire of course hundreds and hundreds of these packages were reduced to ashes. But the shape of £he package remained, and wherever the package could be sent'bn to Washington without crumbling the ashes the money was sure to be replaced. it was done by nimble-fingered women in the Treasury Department whose trained touch and sight are wonderfully acute. It is well known that the ashes of a newspaper if dampened will show traces of the printing. So was it with the bills. These women would moisten the package of apparently useless ashes, and to their experienced eye the number and character of the bill would at once appear as if they had touched it with a magic wand. „