CHAPTER XXX.

INSIDE THE TREASURY—THE HISTORY OF A DOLLAR.

A Washington Tradition—“Old Hickory” Erects his Cane—“Put the Building Right Here”—Treasury Corner-Stone Laid—Robert Mills’ Discolored Colonnade—Where “Privileged Mortals” Work—A Very Costly Building—Rapid Extension of Business—Splendid Situation of the Building—The Workers Within—The Government Takes a Holiday—The Business of Three Thousand People—The Mysteries of the Treasury—Inside the Rooms—Mary Harris’s Revenge—The “Drones” in the Hive—Making Love in Office Hours—Flirtations in Public—A Vast Refuge for the Unfortunate—Two Classes of _Employés_—A List of Miserable Sinners—A Pitiful Ancient Dame—A _Protégé_ of President Lincoln—Women’s Work in the Treasury—The Bureau of Printing and Engraving—A very Hot Precinct—Rendering a Strict Account—Not a Cent Missing—The “Chief’s” Report—Dealing in Big Figures—The Story of a Paper Dollar—In the Upper Floor—The Busy Workers—Night Work—Where the Paper is Made—The “Localized Blue Fibre”—_The_ Obstacle to the Counterfeiter—The Automatic Register—Keeping Watch—The Counters and Examiners—Supplying the Bank Note Companies—“The American” and “The National”—An Armed Escort—No Incomplete Notes Possible—Varieties of Printing—The Contract with Adams’ Express—Printing the Notes and Currency—Internal Revenue Stamps—Thirty Young Ladies Count the Money—Manufacturing the Plates—The Engraving Division—“The Finest Engravers in the Country”—The Likeness of Somebody—Transferring a Portrait—“Men of Many Minds”—The Division of Labor—Delicate Operations—A Pressure of Five or Six Tons—The Plate Complete—“Re-entering” a Plate—An “Impression”—How Old Plates are Used up—A Close Inspection—Defying Imitation—The Geometric Lathe—Tracing “Lines of Beauty” for More than Forty Years.

It is one of the traditions of Washington that Andrew Jackson decided the exact site of the present Treasury Building.

After the third destruction by fire, in 1833, of the early Treasury Buildings, a great strife came up concerning the location of the new Treasury. Worn out with the claims of “rival factions,” it is said that President Jackson walked out a few rods from the White House one morning, and thrusting his cane into the ground, exclaimed: “Put the building right here!” This ended all disputes, and the end of the “old hero’s” cane marked the north-east corner of the present site of the Treasury of the United States.

Though nearly approached by the Patent Office, the Treasury Building, in architectural splendor, ranks next to the Capitol. Its corner-stone was laid in 1834 by Levi Woodbury, then Secretary of the Treasury. The original building was designed by Robert C. Mills, whose long and discolored colonnade on Fifteenth street is still visible. It was built of the freestone brought from near Acquia Creek, Virginia, which has touched with premature dinginess too many of the Federal buildings of the Capital. But in the Treasury its long line of smut is lost in the marble splendor of the extensions. The extension of the building was authorized in 1835, and built from the designs of Thomas W. Walter. It embodies the most perfect Grecian architecture, adapted to modern uses. It surrounds a hollow square, on which its inner offices look out on green grass and cooling fountain through the summer heats. Instead of cooped-up cells, the lower stories of the Treasury are filled with airy apartments, in which privileged mortals serve their country and earn their bread and butter. The new Treasury is built of gleaming granite brought from Dix Island, on the coast of Maine.

The walls of the extension are composed of pilasters, resting on a base which rises some twelve feet above the ground on the southern or lower side. Between the pilasters are _antæ_ or belt-courses, nobly moulded; the facings of the doors and windows bear mouldings in harmony. The southern, western and northern fronts present magnificent porticoes. Its lofty pillars are of the Ionic order, and the entire building is at last surmounted by a massive balustrade. The south wing was completed and occupied in 1860. The west wing was completed in 1863—the north in 1867—the whole at a cost of $6,750,000. The exterior is four hundred and sixty-four feet by two hundred and sixty-four feet.

The Treasury was begun and consummated on a truly magnificent scale, and with the expectation that it would meet every demand of its own branch of the public service for at least a century. Like every one of the public buildings, it is already too small to accommodate the over-crowded bureaus of its own departments, several of which, for want of room in the Treasury Building, already occupy other houses in different parts of the city; and yet there is not space left for those who remain. Before the year 1900, another Treasury Building as magnificent as the one now our pride, will be indispensable to the ever-increasing demand of the departments of the financial service.

The Treasury borrowed its face from the Parthenon; and, as it turns it toward the Potomac this May morning, it is one of the fairest sites in Washington. From the southern portico we look across sloping tree-shaded meadows. Beyond, we see the shimmering river, with its girdle of green, and above, “the flush and frontage of the hills.” When flowers, and trees and soft lights shall have taken the place of all this glare—how beautiful it will be to the eyes of generations to come. But even now the bright grass, flower-parterres and lapsing fountains are pleasant to behold, while the southern front of the Treasury is an object upon which the eyes must always rest with a sense of satisfaction.

The Capitol lords it over the east, but the Treasury reigns over the west end. To be sure, it stands upon the poorest make-believe of an Acropolis, but coming along Pennsylvania avenue we look up to its noble façade and fair Ionic columns gleaming before us, as a compensation for the poverty of beauty in the streets which we travel. The western windows overlook the grounds of the presidential mansion, now gay with flowers and dazzling with sunshine, their trees decked in the vivid foliage of a southern June-time.

How many pairs of weary human eyes look up from their tasks within these walls, and, without knowing it, thank God for this fair outlook. The breeze-blown grass, the fragrant winds, the lavish light of these open windows—to dusty lips and tired eyes which take them in—are God’s own benedictions. Hundreds of such look up from their desks. Past the great fountain, tossing its diamonds below, past the sunny knolls and mimic mounds of newly-cut grass, above the bloom-burdened trees and all the tender verdure of early spring and summer, they see the windows of the presidential reception-room, whose doors, through all the winter months, are besieged by an army of office and favor seekers, but which are shut and silent and deserted now, while “the Government” drives among the hills or loiters by the sea.

But I began to talk about the Treasury, and no matter how I wander for ever so many pages, I must come back to it again.

It is easier to comprehend the outside than the inside of it. One might as well try to snatch up a city and portray it in a sitting, as even to outline the Treasury of the United States in a single chapter.

It holds a metropolis within its walls. It affords daily employment to over three thousand persons, and thousands more daily throng its halls. Just a glimpse into this vast human hive makes us long for a Dickens to embody the romance and reveal the mysteries of the Treasury. The story of the Circumlocution Office and the Court of Chancery pale before the revelations and undreamed of human experiences which it holds. Before you, behind you, and on either side stretch out the great marble paved halls. Out of these open numberless rooms, whose shut doors stare blankly, or whose half-open blinds wink and blink at each other through the gleaming cross lights.

Over these doors you read significant inscriptions, such as First Comptroller’s Office, First Auditor’s Office, etc. You ascend the great stairs and find other halls, such as those below, and like them lined on each side by doors. Over these you read, “Loan Branch,” “Redemption Branch,” “Office of the Register,” “Office of Secretary of the Treasury,” etc. Many of the open doors reveal to you large airy apartments filled with busy men and women. Many more show you narrow, one-windowed apartments, each containing a desk, or desks, with its scribe, or scribes.

Here we see men who have grown gray, weak-limbed and wizened in those rooms beside those desks. They have grown to be as automatic as their pens, and as narrow as their rooms. Here also are thousands of men in their prime and in their youth representing every phase of character. In this hall, just by this door, Mary Harris watched for the man who had robbed and ruined her—and just here she shot him. Poor thing! With her blighted face she is a maniac, now in the Asylum across the river. These halls are as thronged as Broadway, and their denizens are as cosmopolitan. People of all nations and costumes come and go along their vast vistas.

There are drones in this hive. These are office hours, yet here and there may be seen a young man and maiden whose in-door costume marks them as _employés_ of the Treasury, loitering in the shadow of pillar or alcove, lingering by stair or doorway, saying very pleasant things to each other, doubtless, after the manner of young maidens and men. Flirting or making love in the flare of the public must always be a desecration of the heart’s best sanctities. Beside, Sassafras and Sacharissa, you ought to be at work. It is precisely such as you who have brought discredit even upon the faithful and unfortunate, and sometimes rebuke upon the whole Treasury Department. For, as a rule, the Treasury, like all the other departments of Washington, is a vast refuge for the unfortunate and the unsuccessful. The only exceptions are found in two classes, viz.: those who use departmental life as the ladder by which to climb to a higher round of life and service, and those who seek it without half fulfilling its duties, because too inefficient to fill any other place in the world well. Unpractical authors, sore-throated, pulpitless clergymen, briefless lawyers, broken down merchants, poor widows, orphaned daughters, and occasionally an adventurer, masculine and feminine, of doubtful or bad degree,—all are found within the Treasury.

I remember an aged woman, with bent back and long, wasted fingers, sitting behind the door in the Redemption Bureau. Her dim eyes peered through her spectacles and her poor fingers trembled, as she tried to count the dirty, ragged currency. “Alas! sad eyes,” I thought, “by this time rest from toil should have come to you.” “It is pitiful,” I said, to the kind gentleman who reigned over the division, “that one so old should have to come through rain and snow to fulfil a daily task. Is she not too old to do her duty well!”

“No,” was the answer, “she does it very well. But if not, she would never be removed. She is a _protégé_ of President Lincoln.”

But any one who fancies that even woman’s work in the Treasury Department is a sinecure, should climb to the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. You may climb, but you cannot enter unless you hold a written “sesame” from the Secretary of the Treasury; so sacred and guarded is this very hot precinct in which Uncle Samuel creates his “Almighty Dollar.” The business of this Bureau is to engrave, print, and perfect for delivery to the United States Treasurer, all United States notes, Treasury checks, gold notes, drafts, fractional currency notes, all bonds and revenue stamps issued by the Government of the United States.

At the close of each day, every fraction which has passed through the division for the last twelve hours must be accounted for. If a cent is missing, all the workers of the Bureau are detained until the missing fraction is certainly found and safely deposited in the vault of the Treasury. The vast monetary responsibility resting on the Chief of this Bureau may be judged from a statement made, in his own report, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1872.

“There has been finished and delivered to the proper officers of the Government by this Bureau, during the fiscal years ending June 30, 1870, 1871, 1872, in notes, bonds and securities, $2,050,141, and 331,273,955 stamps, and not a note, nor a sheet, nor a portion of a sheet or note has been lost to the Government.”

But I hold the “open sesame;” so come with me and begin the story of a paper dollar. Walking through the long, cool corridors and the airy saloons of the lower Treasury, who would dream that afar up, close under its clinging roof, ceaseless fires burn, engines play, eager shuttles fly, and patient hands ply through all the nights and days to make the people’s dollar! Here in these low, close rooms, these crowded halls, whose roofs press down so low that even a child, in many places, could not stand erect beneath it, patient men and women,—weary, gray, and old,—and youth, with its first tints yet unbleached by the burning atmosphere in which it toils,—all are at work making the paper dollar.

Sometimes in the dark night, down the granite colonnades, athwart the great trees dimly waving in mid-air, across the lapsing fountains, stream long gleams of light shooting from the tiny loop-hole windows high up under the Treasury roof. They dart from the Printing Bureau of the Nation. While the Nation sleeps, its servants, through the long, still hours, go on making the people’s money!

First, the paper! It is all manufactured at “Glen Mills,” near Philadelphia, by the Messrs. Wilcox, who own the mills, and are the patentees of the “localized blue fibre,” made of jute, which runs through the right-hand end of the fractional currency and United States notes, and on the back of the bonds, etc. This fiber is _the_ obstacle to the counterfeiter, and can only be overcome by oiling or soiling the spurious paper, so that its absence cannot be discovered. The paper is chemically prepared, and the application of an acid will change the tint to one color, and an alkali, to another. Thus any attempt to alter the filling-in or denomination of the stamped check, is defeated.

A Government superintendent resides at Glen’s Falls, who, with a corps of assistants, receives the paper from the contractors, counts, examines, holds it carefully guarded night and day, until delivered to the Treasury of the United States. To each paper-making machine is attached an automatic register, by which the mill-owners account to the Government for every square inch and sheet recorded by this register, the register being locked, and the key held securely in the pocket of a Government officer, who watches the work. During its manufacture and storage at the mills, this paper is guarded, by day and night, by a regularly organized “watch.” The Government Superintendent has a corps of counters and examiners under his direction, who examine and count the paper, as received from the makers, before it is packed away for shipment. The account is sent to the Department, and paid each day by the Secretary.

The paper is supplied the Bank Note Companies only upon requisition from the Bureau at Washington. Mr. Bemis, the Superintendent, makes a report to the Printing Bureau, also to the Secretary of the Treasury, of all the paper delivered to him. The first journey made by this governmental infant, is to the Bank Note Companies—two of them, one in New York, the other in Philadelphia—the American and the National—that there may not be any dangerous monopoly of priceless charms. It is borne to the depot by an armed escort, and conveyed on the cars by Adams’ Express. The New York Company, printing tints, must turn over to the Company printing backs, notes equivalent to the paper, and the second Company must similarly account to the Government for every incomplete note received—thus neither can possess itself wholly of this beloved child. One Company prints the tints of one denomination, and the back of the other, no Company executing on the same note both printings.

The national bank notes, hitherto engraved and printed entirely in New York, coming only to the Government Printing Bureau for numbering and sealing, hereafter will be exclusively engraved and printed in the Treasury. The jute-fibred paper will also be used in their making, as it is in the United States notes. The face of the Treasury notes is printed in black and green, the back in green. The National Bank Note face dares to be printed in black, and its back in black and green.

This tinted and outlined paper is conveyed to the Treasury by Adams’ Express, who have the contract for carrying all the Government moneys and securities.

When it reaches the Treasury, the work yet to be done by the Printing and Engraving Bureau, before the paper is complete as Government money, is to print the face upon the United States notes, and hereafter, on the National Bank notes, to plate-seal, to number, trim, and cut them into single notes; to trim, surface-seal, and cut into single notes the ten, fifteen, and twenty-five, fractional currency notes; to print the face of, trim, surface-seal, and separate the fifty cent notes; trim, surface-seal, and number the “funded loan bonds;” to trim, number, and surface-seal, the national bank notes; and to print the faces upon all the tints for internal revenue-stamps, already printed in New York. Besides all this work, the following are entirely engraved and printed in the Bureau of the Treasury: All strip-tobacco and snuff-stamps, stub and sheet snuff-stamps, domestic and customs cigar-stamps, compound liquor-stamps, crew lists ships’ registers, brewers’ permits, all the new special tax-paid stamps, (sixteen in number,) all miscellaneous bonds, gold notes, checks, drafts, etc.

When this precious paper, with its black and green lines and tints, fresh from the Bank Note Companies, arrives at the Treasury, it is placed into the hands of thirty young ladies for counting, one lady counting it twice, then passing it to another, for verification.

The next act in the process of making a dollar, is the manufacture of the plates used in printing. They are made in the engraving division of the Bureau, under the supervision of Mr. Casilear, a gentleman distinguished in his profession, who presides over a corps of the finest engravers in the country. Their work upon the plate of the United States note, is the engraving of its different parts. First, the face which it is to bear. This is always noticeably a perfect likeness of the person whom it represents. A daguerreotype or photograph is used. On the metallic plate of the daguerreotype the features are drawn lightly, the artist following accurately the lines of the portrait. If a photograph is used, gelatine is laid over it, and the picture is traced. From this outline on the plate, an impression is printed. This impression, by a chemical process, is transferred to a steel plate covered with wax. The outlines are then traced on steel, the wax removed, and the face, in outline, is then on the steel. The shading is then completed.

So many phases of consummate skill are necessary to the completion of a single dollar note, that “many men of many minds” are required to perfect a single plate. One has a genius for landscape, another for portraits, another for animal figures. The portrait is given to one, the lettering to another, the ornamental work to a third, and on and on. These fragments of the perfect picture to be, are executed upon separate bits of soft steel. When the lines on them are completed, these different bits of soft steel are put into an iron box, case-hardened and annealed in a crucible of intense heat, then suddenly cooled by dipping them in oil, which utterly hardens the soft steel. Rolls of soft steel are then prepared. By the application of a powerful press, the various pictures and lines, that the artists have engraved, are taken up by the soft steel rollers from the hard steel plate. The intaglio work appears on the roll, just as it afterwards appears on the note.

Now, the note-face is in fragments on the surface of the separate rolls. Next, the rolls are hardened, and placed in a transfer press over a flat plate of soft steel. Upon this plate, the operator of the press, by applying the lever, can, if necessary, impose a pressure equal to five or six tons. This pressure transfers the fragmentary picture to the plate. Then its counterpart picture is set in exact juxtaposition. The operator uses his steady hand, and skilled eyes, to set like a mosaic, each fragment of the complete design. Then moving the roller softly, to and fro, to equalize the pressure on every part of the picture, he continues to do so till the plate is hardened. He then passes a soft roll over it, and the entire note-face is taken up. In turn, this roll is hardened, and the note-face transferred from it to a soft steel plate. This final plate, hardened and polished, is the plate from which the note is at last printed.

After this plate has been used for thirty thousand impressions, its fading lines are restored by “re-entering” the plate with a roll. It is then used for thirty thousand impressions more. When finally “used up,” these plates are destroyed in the presence of a mixed committee of Treasury officers and members of Congress.

Look closely at the United States notes, the fractional currency bonds, and the most valuable revenue stamps, and you will see many lines involved and intricate, running to and fro in the most marvellous manner. These lines defy imitation. They are the best tantalizer and detective of the most accurate counterfeiter. The most absolute imitation, made by hand, can be instantly perceived under a glass. These involuting lines are the work of the geometric lathe, an instrument whose complicated wheels can be set to work out any combination of curved lines which the human mind can possibly conceive. The counterfeiter, with the same lathe, would be powerless to produce the same complications—“he would grow gray in endless and useless experiments, and even with a record of the combination, he could not so exactly re-produce it, that an expert could not detect the imposition.”

The geometric lathe of the Treasury of the United States, is worked by Mr. Tichenor, who has been a skilled artist in such machinery for more than thirty years. There are no more interesting objects in the Treasury, than the line of clear-eyed men who sit bent over their tasks, their subtle lines tracing the exquisite vignettes which have made the engravings of the United States Treasury so famous. Here is one who has been tracing these lines of beauty for more than forty years: his hair is white, but his keen, strong sight—drawing harmony, poetry, nature, and life, out of barest outline—remains undimmed.