THE MINT, THE BANK, AND THE POST-OFFICE
Has it ever occurred to you that money must be made somewhere? We do not
find it ready made in the earth or growing on trees; and if you think a
little, that could not be, for every country has its own money with its
own King's or President's head on the coins. Here in England we have the
King's head on one side and various designs on the other, which are
different according to the coins they adorn. It would be rather nice if
money did grow on bushes. Supposing we could have a row of them in the
garden. The penny ones might be like gooseberry bushes, rather low down
and stumpy, and mother would say, 'Now, who will go and see if there are
any ripe pennies for me to-day?' and we should see the great round brown
pennies hanging ready to drop, and the little wee ones just beginning to
grow, or perhaps having grown to the size of halfpennies; and we might
ask, 'Shall we gather all we find, or leave the halfpennies for another
day to grow into pennies?'
Then there would be silver trees, where shillings and half-crowns grew,
and we should be told, 'You must not go near those, they are too
valuable. You might drop some of the money and lose it in the mud;' and
the gold, I think, would have to be reared in hothouses only, and kept
locked up very carefully.
Well, of course, this is just imagination. Take out a shilling and look
at it. It probably has the King's head on it, or it may have King
Edward's, or Queen Victoria's head if it is a very old one. Anything
further back than that would be valuable as a curiosity. All these
shillings are the same value, and it makes no difference which one you
use, and they have all been made at the Mint in London. It is not
difficult for anyone to get leave to go to see over the Mint, and it is
a very interesting thing to do. The building is near the Tower, and does
not look at all grand; in fact, it is difficult to believe that such
riches can come out of any building so poor looking. Here all the money
for England is coined--gold, silver, and copper. If we are lucky, the
day we go we shall find the workmen making gold sovereigns, and pouring
them out so fast that it is like the old fairy story of Rumpelstiltskin.
In the first room there are great furnaces, with dirty-looking caldrons
hanging over them, and in these caldrons there is not soup or anything
to eat, but gold, pure gold. This gold has been found in far-away
countries and brought to England, and the men who bring it get paid so
much for it according to its weight, and then the Mint people turn it
into coins. The gold is all liquid, seething and boiling. The man who
stands by the caldron has a pair of thick leather gloves to protect his
hands in case sparks fly out. Suddenly he seizes the caldron with a pair
of pincers, and, dragging it from the fire, he tilts it up so that the
molten gold runs out in a stream into a number of tubes like long
straight jars joined together. The gold flows in, bubbles up, and that
one is full to the top; and then the next is filled, and the next, and
so on to the end. Then the gold is left to cool. The big caldron goes
back on to the furnace to boil more gold. As the gold boils a tiny
quantity of it gets into the sides of the caldron and sticks to them,
and this is too valuable to lose, and so after the caldron has been used
a certain number of times it is broken up and melted so as to recover
this gold again, and not a grain is lost.
When the gold which has been poured into the jars has cooled it is solid
again, and has taken the shape of the jars--that is to say, it is in
bars of gold. You will be given one to handle and feel; it is a flat bar
of gleaming gold weighing a great deal. The bars are then taken and put
under a machine something like a mangle, and the machine squeezes and
presses them with such terrific force that they are squeezed out thinner
and thinner, and, of course, get longer and longer in the process. Just
think what tremendous force must be used to press out a bar of gold!
When at last they are ready these long thin slabs of gold are the
thickness of a sovereign.
Now, each of these bars is passed through a machine, which cuts out of
it a double row of holes just the size of sovereigns all the way down,
and the little gold pieces thus neatly cut out drop down below into a
box. Take one up and look at it; it is smooth and clean and round, the
size of a sovereign, but it has as yet no King's head on it, and the
edges are smooth, not rough as in a real sovereign. So each of these
little round gold pieces is taken away to another room to be finished,
and the remainder of the long thin strip out of which they were cut goes
back to the caldron to be boiled up again and made into more sovereigns.
You will notice that every time we go through a door at the Mint it is
unlocked for us to go through, and locked again behind us; this is
because the gold is so valuable. No one is allowed to pass in and out
without being watched, lest they should carry some away with them. Every
night each one of these rooms is carefully swept out, and the sweepings
boiled up to get any little particles of gold that are lying about, and
a large amount of money is saved in this way. The men who work in each
room are responsible for the gold in it; the gold is weighed on coming
in and on going out, and any weight lacking has to be made up by the men
out of their wages.
Now we have got the little round sovereigns, which are cleaned and
polished and put into another machine; this machine has what is called a
die in it--that is, a stamping instrument with the King's head on it
ready to print on the coin. The little sovereign is put on to a tiny
round place, with a little collar of metal all round, and this collar is
rough, like the edge of a shilling or a sovereign. Down comes the die
with enormous force, and stamps on the coin King George's head; the
force is so great that the coin is a little flattened out and pressed
against the rough collar, so the edges become rough, too. Thus are both
sides done, and the sovereign is now a real sovereign, and could be used
to buy things at a shop.
There are rows of these machines all hard at work, and we feel we are in
a fairy tale when we see the little round clean bits of gold drop, drop,
drop without stopping on to the tiny round table with the collar; and
the machine goes up and down, up and down, never stopping, and every
time it does its work, and a new sovereign drops away into a box below.
Drip, drip, drip, sovereigns are raining down, dozens every minute, all
newly made; it seems as if we could easily get rich if we were allowed
to make money like this. But the sovereigns are not finished yet; they
must go to be weighed, and all those that are not exactly the right
weight, but either too heavy or too light, go back to the melting-pot to
be made all over again; and only those that are exactly right are passed
out new-minted to the Bank, from whence they go to all the people in
Great Britain and Ireland. It is reckoned that so many as one in every
three has to go back to the melting-pot, and be boiled and hammered and
squeezed all over again; so it is a good thing gold cannot feel.
On other days silver and copper are made in the same way, but gold is
much the most impressive to see.
After leaving the Mint we might pay a visit to the Bank, which stands at
the meeting of many streets in the very midst of the City. It is a
strong place built round a courtyard, with all the windows inward so
that burglars cannot get in. In the vaults below the Bank are many bars
of gleaming gold, like those we have seen at the Mint; these are sent
here for safety, and in time will go to the Mint to be coined. The Bank
of England is very strong and safe, and anyone who keeps his money there
has no fear that he will lose it. The Bank is allowed by law to make
notes of its own, which are as good as money, and are received instead
of money, but it cannot make more than a certain number of these notes
in any one year. You have heard of bank-notes, perhaps? Have you ever
seen one--a crisp, crackly bit of paper, with some printing on it, that
could be burnt up any minute? These seem very unsafe to keep, but they
are convenient. If a man wants to go away for some time he could not
carry with him a great many gold sovereigns, for they would be so
heavy; but if he takes a number of bank-notes they are quite light and
easy to carry, and are just as good as money. The most common is a
five-pound note. Of course, accidents do happen sometimes when people
are careless. I heard of a man who lit his pipe with a five-pound note,
thinking it was just an ordinary bit of paper, but this was very
careless; it was an expensive pipe-light to cost five pounds.
In the Bank you are shown many interesting things, and one of the chief
of these is a book where are kept all the imitation bank-notes, called
forgeries, that men have made and tried to persuade people were real
ones. In some cases these are so cleverly done that even the bankers
themselves hardly knew the difference, and many, many people had been
cheated by them.
The great machines for printing bank-notes are inside the bank, and each
note has a different number. Let us follow one throughout its life. It
is printed on special paper made for the bank, and not sold to anyone
else, and it is printed in the Bank's own machine. It goes in at one end
of the machine, just a blank bit of paper, and comes out at the other
worth five pounds. This seems almost more wonderful than making gold
coins. Downstairs, in the office of the Bank, a man comes in who has an
account with the Bank--that is to say, he has given the Bank people a
large sum of money to keep for him--and he takes out some of it when he
likes. He comes this morning to ask for twenty pounds, and it is given
to him in four five-pound notes, which he folds up and puts in his
pocket-book and then he goes away. He has just got outside the Bank,
when a friend comes up, and says: 'I say, old man, what about that five
pounds you owe me?'
So the first man gives him one five-pound note. The second man has to
pay his landlady's rent, and he owes her three pounds; so he gives her
the five-pound note, and she gives him two pounds in gold back again.
From the landlady the note passes to a shopkeeper, and from him to
another man; and so it goes on, wandering and wandering through the
hands of hundreds of people. It started a very nice clean new note; but
it gets crumpled and dirty, and at last one day it comes to a man who
has had some money given to him which he wants to put into the Bank, and
he pays this five-pound note in with the rest. So after its life it has
rest. It never goes out again into the world; but when once it comes
back to the Bank it is torn up and destroyed. A great many men are kept
at work only tearing up bank-notes; so every day, while many new ones
are being made, many old ones are being torn up, and the number keeps
about the same.
An old woman bought a mattress at a sale, and she thought she would undo
it and shake up the stuff inside and make it softer, and when she cut it
up she found among the stuffing some bits of paper that looked like
bank-notes; but they were little tiny bits not bigger than a sixpence.
She took them to the Bank, which examined them, and saw that, though a
great deal was missing, there was enough left to show that there had
been twelve five-pound notes sewn up inside the mattress. They gave the
old woman sixty pounds for them, saying that a bank-note meant a promise
on the part of the Bank to pay, and they would keep their promise,
however long ago it had been made. So the old woman did a good day's
work when she bought that mattress.
From the Bank we might pass on to the General Post-Office, and see how
London's letters are dealt with. You may say that there cannot be
anything interesting in that--that it is quite simple to sort out
letters and send them to the right persons. Yes, if you or I had perhaps
six letters we could do it easily; but if we had six thousand it would
be rather more difficult. The business of the General Post Office grows
and increases every year, and the buildings are frequently enlarged.
Even now they form the whole of a street to themselves. On one side is
the telegraphic department, where all the telegrams are received. We can
understand very little about this, because it requires a long training;
but we can see something of the enormous number of people whose whole
work in life it is to take and send telegrams. If we get there about
five o'clock in the afternoon, we shall see some girls and little
telegraph-boys hurrying about with trays, on which are piles of cut
bread-and-butter, and with great tin cans, like the cans in which hot
water is carried up for your bath. These cans are full of strong, hot
tea. Then we enter one room, so big that it almost startles you, and
see, seated at rows and rows of tables, many men, and nearly all of them
are working away at the telegraph instrument before them--tick, tick,
tick, tack; they cannot hear what you say, even though you talk quite
close to them, for all their attention is taken up by their work. For
eight hours every day they sit here and take and send telegrams. Here
comes the tea; it is poured out into the large cup waiting for it, and
the man takes a drink or a bite as he works. Some of the workers buy jam
to spread on their bread. In one place we see a tray with a large pile
of cakes and biscuits; but these are being sold, though the tea and
bread-and-butter are supplied by the Post-Office to its workers free. It
must be a big business to make tea for about fifteen hundred persons
every day. No wonder cans are used to carry it about, for teapots would
be of very little use. In one room there are men doing all the telegrams
for the daily papers--accounts of great speeches, or races, or anything
important that people expect to hear about--and by means of one
instrument one man can send the same news to five different places at
the same time. This sounds like a miracle to us, who do not understand
how it is done. In another room there are many girls who do just the
same work, and keep the same hours as the men, but are not paid so much
simply because they are women; they are having tea too. They seem to be
very fond of shrimp-paste, which they spread on their bread-and-butter
instead of jam. In every room there is always a loud noise like the wash
of waves; that is made up of hundreds of busy little instruments ticking
away hard all at once. It seems wonderfully quiet when we leave it
behind, and step out into the street again where the lamps are being
lit.
It is nearly six o'clock now, and opposite is the large building of the
Post-Office where the letters are dealt with. Up the steps in front we
see the huge letter-box, with a great gaping slit of a mouth into which
boys and men are pouring letters as fast as they can; for at six o'clock
the country letters are sent off, and any posted after that will not be
delivered first thing next morning in the country, but will arrive
later.
Come inside; we have a special order so that we can be admitted without
any difficulty. Now we see from the inside what we saw from the outside
a minute ago. It is like looking at the inside of a piece of machinery.
We see now only the big slit and the eager hands thrusting letters into
it, more letters and more, which fly down inside like a snowstorm of
enormous flakes. They drop into great clothes baskets, which are filled
up every minute, and when full are dragged away by the postmen inside,
who thrust others into their places, others which, incredibly quickly,
are filled up, too, and dragged away. Rattle, rattle; down come the
letters. One boy outside has a bag, which he empties by tipping it up so
that a stream of letters runs down; he must be from an office. Here is
another, and another; but at last six o'clock strikes, the great baskets
have been dragged away, and no more letters for the country go until
much later. The basketfuls have been emptied into sacks; these sacks are
tied up with string and sealed with a piece of sealing-wax a good deal
thicker than your wrist, and then they are flung down into the bright
scarlet carts, which belong to the Post-Office, and which stand waiting
outside. Each driver starts off punctually with his load, and drives to
another great office in London where the country letters are sorted out
and sent off. All this business used to be done here where we are, but
in the last year or two it has been found better to keep the London and
the country letters separate.
Now we turn to look at the London ones. There is a separate box for them
to be posted in. Perhaps you who live in the country have never seen
that. At every large London office there are two boxes side by side, and
into one the people put their letters meant for the country, and into
the other those for London. The London letters are gathered from the box
and thrown out upon large tables, and down each side a row of boys and
men stand and sort them out like a pack of cards, putting them all
together, face up, and with the stamp in the same position. When they
are arranged the boys carry a great bundle to another man who has to
stamp them, so as to mark the stamp in case it should be used again.
There is a very clever contrivance for this. A little round wheel spins
at a tremendous pace, and on it are dark lines covered with wet ink. A
man holds the letters and pushes them one by one up to the wheel, which,
when it touches them, drags them through a narrow space in front, and as
they pass the wheel the ink-lines run across the stamp and mark it so
that it cannot be used again. So quickly does the little wheel whirr and
the letters spin past that five hundred are done in a minute. Think of
that; it means nearly nine a second. Nine letters stamped while you say
'One--two,' which is a second. Some letters are too thick and others too
big to go through the little space by the wheel, so the man who is
looking after them picks out those and throws them up on to a tray, from
which they are gathered up and carried to another man, who stamps each
by hand, a much slower process.
When the letters are stamped they are carried off to other men, who sort
them out, throwing them into different divisions, according to the part
of London for which they are intended, and any that he cannot read, any
that have not got a sufficient address, or any that have not a stamp on,
are put aside. Those with bad or insufficient addresses are called
'blind,' which is a funny word to use in this sense; they are carried
off to some men, who sit with ponderous books in front of them, and who
work solemnly, hunting out names and addresses. Perhaps one address is
so badly written that it looks to you and me just as if a beetle had
fallen into an ink-bottle and walked over the paper. But the man at the
desk is accustomed to bad writing, he soon makes it out, and writes it
neatly so that it can be read and the letter sent on. Another person has
put the street, perhaps on his envelope, but not the district of London,
and this is hunted up and supplied, and so on; and always as the men
work, gradually reducing the pile of letters before them, more are
added, so that it seems as if their work would never end. Near the first
men who were sorting letters are others sorting out packets and throwing
them into baskets. Fast as they work, they cannot keep up with the fresh
piles always poured in. They pitch the parcels into the baskets with
speed and accuracy generally, but sometimes in their haste a packet
flies over the rail and hits the head of a person walking past.
Here is a little table where a man is standing looking at some odd
things--a clothes brush, a box of flowers, a locket, and a pair of
gloves. What is he doing? These are things which have been badly tied
up, and have consequently come undone in the post, and some of them have
no addresses, but perhaps there is a letter inside the parcel. This
letter begins 'My darling,' but there is no time to read it; all that is
wanted is the address of the sender, to which the things can be
returned. This is quickly found, and the parcel is tied up again and
sent back. But if you do not want to have any of your letters seen by a
man in the Post-Office, you had better tie them up very carefully when
you send them by post. The things for which no addresses can be found go
to the Dead Letter Office, and every now and then there is a sale of
them.
But the Post-Office does its best always to find the people to whom the
things should be sent, and tries to please everyone, which is a
difficult task, and it very often comes in for a great deal of blame.
But we wonder as we leave the great building, not at the things that are
occasionally lost, but at the great mass, the millions of letters, that
are sent safely through to their journey's end without being either lost
or delayed.