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TON OF $20 BANK NOTES SOLD FOR JUNK TO DEALER Worthless Now, but Got Into Circulation Throughout U. S. and Canada. all Selling nearly a ton of $20 notes to a junk dealer after the State Bank of New Brunswick failed forty years ago has resulted in thousands of these notes, which to all appearances are genuine, being circulated in this city, throughout the country and Canada. At the time they were issued the notes were genuine, but are now worthless. The sale of the notes was made by the receiver of the bank. How the junk dealer disposed of them is not known. That such notes were in circulation was brought to the attention of the police by a Mrs. Shaw, who keeps boarding-house at 123 Academy street. A young man called at her house sev eral days ago and engaged a room. He offered one of these bills, from which a deposit of $1 was to be taken. The money was changed by another boarder. He was unable to cash the bill and sent it to a friend who is employed in a bank in Passaic. From there the bill was sent to President Henry G. Parker, of the National Bank of New Jersey, in New Brunswick. He sent a letter to an employee of the Passaic bank reading in part as follows: "We are returning the bill herewith with the explanation that it has no value, and that the bank which issued it failed nearly forty years ago, and had no successor. No provision was made to meet its circulation outstanding, and in addition to this fact the inclosed bill was not regularly issued by the bank, but subsequently got into circulation through the carelessness of the receiver of the bank, who never destroyed the circulation which he found on hand, but sold it to a junk dealer, and in that way many thousands of these notes got into circulation throughout the United States and Canada, and have caused no end of trouble." Yesterday a man was arrested in New York for attempting to pass one of these notes. The notes were genuine in their time.
