The Kusko Times

U. S. MONEY PRESSES ROAR;
IT'S A BILLION DOLLAR TUNE

WASHINGTON—Lights are blazing from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing these nights, as three shifts of workers hasten the printing of Federal Reserve notes.

The order for speed came from the Federal Reserve Board, officials say. Printing began immediately on the higher denominations from $500 to $10,000 bills. Now the machines are turning out denominations from $5 to $50.

The Bureau had been working its regular one-shift schedule previous to the March 4 order.

Now stacks of greenbacks pile up on the workers' desks as the constant flow of visitors, more than ever curious about the plant, file across the spectators' ramps.

Women counters run through piles, counting, checking for misprints, tying sections of uncut bills together ready for the counting machines.

On the other side of the room sheets of paper, large enough to hold the faces of six bills, are placed in stacks by the printers. The sheets are soft, bend easily as they are handled, because they are taken to the presses after days of dampening to the point where they will take up ink from the plates easily.

Then, sheet by sheet, they slip rapidly under a heavy roller to the plate that will mark them as the public finally sees them. Again they go through a process of drying and dampening, and then the other side is printed.

Back in the recesses of the building where the ordinary visitor does not go is a huge vault surrounded by thick steel, and secured behind three sets of locks. There the bills finally get a breathing space. Shelves rise to the ceiling, holding every denomination from the plebeian $1 to the aristocratic $10,000 variety.