A few paces from the door of this vault is the elevator communicating with the room of the agent of Adams’ Express Company, on the basement floor below. The motive power of this elevator is Potomac-water, from the water-mains. Two iron pistons, about eight inches in diameter, attached to the elevator platform, one on each side, move smoothly up and down in perpendicular iron cylinders. A turn of the handle admits the water into the cylinder beneath the pistons, which are forced up by the pressure, and with them the elevator. A reverse movement of the handle allows the water to escape from the cylinders, and the elevator descends. Its movements are noiseless, and it is managed with remarkable ease. Up and down, this servant, swift and silent, bears the moneys of the people. It is just descending, piled high with packages, some directed to banks, railroad and manufacturing companies. Others are addressed to assistant treasurers and depositors of the United States. Much is going to replace the old money already sent back to the Treasury for destruction. All will be carried away, as it was brought in its neophite state, by Adams’ Express Company, which is bound by contract to transact all the vast money transportation business of the Government. This contract confers mutual advantage, both on the Company and the Government. To the latter, because it obtains transportation at a much lower rate than it could otherwise do, paying but twenty-five cents for each thousand dollars transported; while, at even this per cent., the Company can grow rich on the monopoly of the vast money transportation business of the Government of the United States. * * * * * Alas! for our dollar that went forth from the paternal door—as many another child has done—unsullied, only to return at a later day from its contact with the world, begrimed, demoralized, despoiled. Where is our pretty dollar, fresh and pure? Every delicate line defaced, tattered, filthy, worn out—this wretched little rag, surely, cannot be it! And yet it is. This is what the world’s hard hand has made our dollar. We have reached the Redemption Division of the Treasurer’s Bureau, and stand in one of the rooms devoted to the counting of mutilated currency and the detection of counterfeits. This difficult and responsible labor of the public service is performed solely by women. In the long rooms on either side of the marble hall, on the north ground floor of the Treasury Building, may be seen one hundred and fifty women, whose deft and delicate fingers are ceaselessly busy detecting counterfeits, identifying, restoring, counting and registering worn-out currency which has come home to be “redeemed.” Each lady sits at a table by herself, that the money committed to her may not become mixed with that to be counted by any other person.