make it soft and pliable. This drawing and annealing brings each
band of metal to just the right thickness and condition, and we may go
on and see the cutting-presses that stamp out the round pieces of metal
called "planchets." A workman takes a ribbon of gold and inserts the
end in the immense jaws of the press, and they bite, bite and bite, and
the round bits of gold drop in a shower into a box below.

[Illustration: POURING THE MELTED GOLD INTO THE MOLDS.]

"This press," says the usher, "is cutting double-eagles; and in the
single moment, by the watch, that we have been looking at it, it has
cut forty-five hundred dollars' worth. The same number of cuts would
make only two dollars and twenty cents if made in copper."

The machine goes on hastily biting out the round planchets to the end
of the ribbon, and then the guide holds up the long strip full of
holes, much as you have seen the dough after the cook has cut out her
ginger-snaps. These perforated bars go back to the furnace to be melted
over.

"The planchets," says the guide, "after being annealed in those
furnaces which you see at the rear of the room, are taken upstairs and
most carefully weighed."

None but women are employed in the weighing-room, and so delicate are
the scales that they will move with the weight of a hair. If a planchet
is found too light, it is thrown aside to be remelted; if only slightly
over the proper weight, a tiny particle is filed off from the edge; but
if the weight is much in excess, it is to go back to the furnace.
Nothing but perfection passes here, you see.

Now, one final washing in acid, then in water, and these much-enduring
bits of metal are admitted to the coining-room, there to receive the
stamp which testifies to their worth.

In the coining-room the planchets are first given to the
milling-machine. They are laid down flat between two steel rings, and
as the rings move one draws nearer to the other, and the planchets are
squeezed and crowded on every side, and finding no escape they turn up
about the edges and come out at the end of the sorry little journey
with a rim raised around the edges. Beyond the milling-machines stand
the ten coining-presses. These presses are attended by women. Watch
this one near us. At her right hand is a box containing silver
planchets, which are to be coined into fifty-cent pieces. On that round
"die," which you see in the center of the machine, are engraved the
letters and figures whi