DAMAGED FORTUNE

Greymouth Evening Star, 21 December 1934, Page 12

DAMAGED FORTUNE

RESTORATION BY EXPERT When you feel that you have “money to burn” —if you ever do —it may be possible to burn it and still have it to spend. That is, if you save the ashes and send them to Miss Bertha 0. Sherfy, for 16 years director of the department of the United States Treasury which identifies and restores mutilated money (writes Helen Rathje in the “Christian Science Monitor”) It may sound almost too amazing to be true, but Miss Sherfy is an amazing woman who does amazing things. Like the person who —provided with a button, is asked to sew a coat on to it, Miss Sherfy—provided with a thimble full of ashes or a few scraps of a banknote — C an determine the value of the money so mutilated. If a heifer accidentally dines on a roll of bills, or the savings of a lifetime, hidden in a bedpost caster, are converted into a charred mass when the house burns--two actual occurrences —Miss Sherfy waves her wand and the lost values are regained. Every day her force of specially trained workers receive from 75 to 150 cases of mutilated money, which must be opened and examined. Then the charred or mutilated bits of paper currency must be pieced together much as is a jig-saw puzzle, and mounted on a piece of paper the size of the original banknote. The. denomination of the damaged.note is then determined, if it is physically possible so to do, and a statement is made by the examiner as to the amount of good money to be returned the owner. If, however, a second examination of money proves that either Miss Sherfy or her force have made a mistake in determining the denomination of the bills they have handled she and her examiners must stand ready to make good their mistake out of their personal pocketbooks. But this is a requirement seldom exacted, for they are all expert workers who only receive theii present appointments after years of training in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE Perhaps no one else in the world knows money so well as this group of women, who must be familiar wi-ui every design of every issue of paper currency printed since the Federal Government first started making paper money in 1861. The earlier State issues are not redeemable. Beside this, they must detect counterfeit money. No disaster befalls the nation but its effect is felt by this department of the Treasury. Hardly an airplane crashes but that charred or otherwise mutilated money does not find its way from the scene of the wreck to Miss Sherfy s office. The recent Chicago stockyard fire swamped the force with extra loads of,burned money. The bank failures of several years ago, which sent investors scurrying to withdraw their hoardings and conceal them in some “safe” place about theii homes or persons, has added a terrilic burden to the department. “We are sometimes entirely upset by the letters we receive from persons whose savings of a lifetime are suddenly swept away,” Miss Sherfy explains, and then has to laugh at her own pun, for she can’t resist telling tne story of the man who hid his wealth in a carpet sweeper without telling his wife anything about it. “The letters we receive,” she continues, “and the people who sometimes cross the continent to bring us a little handful of charred ashes, are so pitiful that we just can’t help doing everything we can to return them their lost money.” She illustrated her point by a story of a school teacher who had saved all her working years to put aside 1500 dollars. This money in fifteen 100-dollar notes, she had rolled as tightly as she could into fifteen tiny rolls, like cigarettes, and put “for safe keeping” in what she believed to be the air flue of the furnace. But when she went to get her treasure she found it only a mass of charcoal. Scraping it all together, she came on as fast as she could to Washington, and told her tale of woe to Miss Sherfy. “She was in such a state,"’ Miss Sherfy explained, “we couldn’t have her in the department. We told her she’s have to go home. Then we fell to work. Naturally, we couldn’t work all day patching those tiny bits of scraps together. But every afternoon, when the sun struck our office windows, we all of us worked for as long as we could stand it. And *we were able to identify enough scraps to see that she got all of her £l5OO returned to her in good, new, crisp notes.”

“AWFUL RETRIBUTION.”

And then there is the story of the farmer who got more money back from the Government than he asked for. A very pious person, this farmer for years had carefully stored his dollars in a fruit jar. When relations came to him for financial help, believing that he had more money than he let on to have, he swallowed a guilty conscience and explained that he hadn’t a. cent to lend to anybody. Then came the awful retribution. His fruit jar, stuffed to bursting with 1400 dollars, fell into the fire. He retrieved it by dashing snow on to it, but too late to save his fortune. It was a charred mass.

Convinced that the disaster was the result of the lies he had told his relatives, he came on to Washington and confided in Miss Sherfy. He was being punished for his avarice, and, although he wanted his money back, lie felt he deserved to suffer for his sins. The department not only found all of his 1400 dollars, but an extra 10-dollar bill he didn’t know he had. He went out of the Treasury, shaking his head in amazement and quite oblivious to the efforts the faithful little force in the Treasury had put forth in his behalf. But Miss Sherfy wants to make it clear that the Government is not always so obliging. She and her workers are “on” on a great many tricks which are constantly being played on them, and they take every means to protect themselves against such dishonesty. One of the commonest deceptions is io send in a case of ashes, declaring it to be mutilated paper money when in reality it is nothing but paper.

Semetimes thieves break into a safe, in its place. Then, before leaving the remove the money, and return paper in its place. Then before leaving the premises, they set tire to the safe. Later, when the owner finds a lot of charred scraps in what used.to be his strong-box-, he sends it in all good faith to the Treasury and asks for the return of his money. | “The most cherished hiding place of i all housewives,” says Miss Sherfy, “is I the oven of the . cook stove. The women forget where they have put their money, light the fire, and cook the dinner.” The result is that the Treasury Department receives thousands of burned pocket-books and burn-

ed money boxes. One housewife sent in a pepper pot with the charred remains of 600 dollars inside. Others stow away their savings in the joints of pipes. Often, when a house burns, the owners scrape up the ashes and send them in bushel bags to the Treasury office, where the workers sift through all the ashes with their fingers, in order to detect the scraps that may be burned money. With gray ashes, however, they can do nothing. “It is amazing,” Miss Sherfy says, “how much money gets washed in the laundry.” Some of it comes, out almost while. Other bills, submitted to a strong ' -ashing soda solution, will shrink ono-a darter of their size. While one bill that was put accidentally through a s'.cel rolling mill spread to one-half again its size. A tremendous amount of money is lost by being buried. People bury their money and don’t realise that jars rust or tops fall off. But buried money is the hardest of any to identify, as the effect of damp and decay destroys the engraving whereby all identification is made.”