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.