1927 letter Shifted the faces future U.S. small-size notes

Included in her study, she discovered a letter dated Oct. 28, 1927, at the National Archives which was clarified as a memo to both Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon from his team, indicating subjects for the shortly to be released small-size United States paper money.

Another denominations have handwritten fluctuations in pen. Initially, the $20 note was to possess Grover Cleveland's portrait on the surface. Jackson's name is crossed out on the $1,000 notice and substituted with that of Cleveland.

There was just 1 shift to the backs of these notes.

Dr. Franklin Noll, former historian for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, has witnessed public documents which provide greater insight into this specific memorandum and to the background of the growth of small-size notes generally.

The memo came from BEP Director Alvin W. Hall, who served in this place from 1924 to 1954. The handwritten notations, as mentioned, are Mellon's.

Considering that the very first small-size notes are Series 1928 problems, while the overdue 1927 memo has been nearly last moment, the movement to smaller dimensions notes, Noll states, wasn't. The idea started in the days before World War I, with notions which were kicked out of a Treasury secretary to another but not listened upon before the Mellon years.

In 1916, the short-lived Agency of Efficiency was set. It had been the executive branch's first employees bureau and, states Mordecai Lee at Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916--1933, it had been tasked with bringing the principles of scientific management into the national authorities.

One of its workers was Hall. The young accountant became a researcher to the agency in 1920 and in 1922 was delegated to a committee created by Mellon to assess the operations of the BEP. He had been appointed as leader of the BEP's preparation unit and became manager in 1924 at age 36.

In terms of the new currency, you will find many meetings and lots of thoughts that Noll characterizes as suspended in a logical strategy. Initially that included (1) that the most well-known persons ought to be about the lower denominations in order that they'd be recognized immediately; (2) they ought to be presidents, if possible; and (3) when the denominations were lined up side-by-side, the portraits must seem significantly different. For example, portraits facing left, right, and forwards; beards and no beards; and apparel from other eras.

The initial proposal by the Bureau of Efficiency called for George Washington to look about the $1 notes, Woodrow Wilson about the $2 denomination, and Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln on additional lower denominations. Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury, was on one of those higher denominations. It did not work out this way.

Mellon had other components to think about, possibly also in the name of efficiency. Among the essential ones was that the BEP was subsequently printing large-size Series 1914 Federal Reserve notes and had all of the dishes. The atmosphere was that rather than reinventing the wheel, so why don't you use most of these portraits when potential? Jackson was transferred from the $10 notes into the $20 notes; Cleveland in the $20 into the $1,000 notes; and Hamilton in the $1,000 denomination into the $10 denomination. The newest Benjamin Franklin portrait, based on a painting by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis, fit in better with the manner of another notes compared to the one about the large-size $100 notes. There was also a feeling in the time that three-quarters-facing portraits were more difficult to replicate than profiles.

An average of President Wilson substituted Chief Justice John Marshall about the 500 notes.

In terms of the vignette of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing construction proposed for the $100 denomination, it was not an ego trip by Hall.

There's not any list of why Mellon created the modifications on the memo.