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LOSSES OF PAPER MONEY. To the Editor of the San Francisco Call-SIR: Before attempting to show the certain losses of paper money during the last thirty-three years in the form of United States notes or greenbacks, National bank notes, silver certificates, gold certificates, currency certificates and fractional currency, perhaps it will be well to remind the reader that money disappears in many ways and is seen no more in the bands of the people or in bank or treasury vaults, as for example some of it is lost and destroyed in the fires great and small which are constantly occurring all over the country, and some of it is lost at sea and on the lakes and rivers, in the pockets of persons drowned, in the valises and trunks of passengers and in the strong boxes of lost ships and boats, and in other ways I need not enumerate. The loss of 50 cents out of every $100 in the course of a year may seem a low estimate to many readers, but I shall be content with a much smaller percentage for present purposes. although in the case of fractional currency the loss of nearly $8,500,000 in sixteen years out of nearly $46,000,000 was recognized and declared by act of Congress June 1, 1879, a loss of 18 per cent in sixteen years, or more than $1 out of every $100 in circulation. and there can be but little doubt that fully 2 per cent a year disappeared during those sixteen years. But I do not compare the loss of greenbacks and other forms of paper currency with that of the more constantly handled fractional currency. Through seventeen volumes of figures prepared by the several Comptrollers of the Currency I have laboriously searchea in vain for any effort on the part of these able financiers to show the true percentage of loss which occurs every year in the paper currency of the country. Hon. John Jay Knox, one of the ablest and shrewdest treasury officials this country has ever produced, in his report for the year 1875, was the first that I can find who ever mentioned the subject, essential as it is to know how much money is annually lost in order to come anywhere near being able co report how much money is in this country, and, therefore, how much can possibly be in circulation. On page 49 (xlix), report of 1875, Mr. Knox cites statistics of 286 New York State banks which went out of business in 1862, when greenbacks were first issued, showing that there was a loss of $1,336,337 out of the $50,754, 515 in the notes issued by these banks, being a loss of 2.63 per cent. Healsogives statistics of other State banks showing a similar state and then list of fifteen National of facts, banks which he had gives failed a prior to 1870 and states that 1.39 per cent of their notes were notyet redeemed in 1875; but, as in the case of the State banks, he gives no dates to show how long the notes of the several banks mentioned had been in circulation, and I can get nothing definite out of such information as to the percentage of loss year by year. For example, take the bank of Attica. N. Y., which went into the hands of a receiver April 14, 1865, and in 1875, ten years after, the loss of notes is given as 1.10 per cent, but he does not state how long the bank was in existence. In 1883 Comptroller Knox again takes up the subject of losses of the National bank notes, and we now find more definite information as 10 the fifteen bank failures prior to 1870. We are now given the date of organization of each bank and the date when each one passed into the hands of a receiver, For ex-