It is customary to assort the currency of from one to four groups by banks each day. Let us follow rapidly one of these groups through the remainder of the processes. The money of a group accumulated from day to day in the vault is in the morning transported to the assorting room, where it is delivered to the second assortment teller. By him the bundles are opened, the inventory verified, and the packages separated by denominations, reference being had in this process to the upper note of each package. The packages of each denomination are then strapped together by means of cardboards and rubber bands, and the group number, the denomination, and the amount marked upon each bundle. Next morning the money is delivered in this shape to the second assorters.
It will be understood that each of these persons thus receives notes of a single denomination issued by from forty to sixty banks. The second assorter first counts his money to be sure of the amount, and then assorts the notes into his till in the manner already described, putting, however, only the notes of one bank into a box. For his guidance each assorter is provided with a printed list of the banks composing his group, the number of the box assigned to each being set opposite to the title. For convenience of handling about the tills, these lists are mounted upon thick cardboards. The existence of stolen notes or counterfeits on a bank is noted upon these lists, and special directions for assortment are conveyed in the same manner. When a bank is in liquidation or is withdrawing part of its circulation, an "I," denoting "inactive," is set opposite the title. The notes of such banks are thrown together into box 52, and from this circumstance are known in the nomenclature of the office as "52's." These are counted together and put up in packages by means of orange-colored straps, properly marked for delivery, through a regular channel, to another division of the Treasurer's office, where the money is assorted and destroyed and the amount retired from circulation. At present more than half the banks of some groups are on the inactive list, and notwithstanding the clamor from the West for more paper currency, that part of the country is in the lead in the contraction which is rapidly going on. Of the Chicago banks, the notes of all but three have been ordered to be destroyed and withdrawn as they are redeemed, and in St. Louis and St. Paul only a few banks remain on the active list. Of the eastern cities, New York alone is pursuing the same line of policy to any considerable extent, more than half the banks there being either liquidating or reducing their circulation. The motives which induce this step in the case of solvent and unembarrassed institutions are diverse; but the effect is always the same. The amount of currency retired in this manner ranges ordinarily from twenty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars a day.