$2.50 Gold Pieces. Christmas week, and again not enough $2.50 gold pieces to pass around for presents! Bank tellers apologized to their depositors. What could they do? The National Association of Mutual Savings Banks had sent a letter to Secretary Mellon personally, demanding $2.50 gold pieces for Christmas. He had not complied. Did you want to see a copy of that letter?
Through the bronze window tellers slid printed sheets: “Whereas, the distribution of $2.50 gold pieces by savings banks as well as commercial banks during the past few years has been a constant cause of irritation to banks and to the public; and
“Whereas, [it] is increasingly popular as a Christmas coin and for savings banks to have to refuse more than one to a depositor beginning Dec. 1, only to run out of them entirely a week before Christmas, is humiliating; and
“Whereas, the savings banks not only dissatisfy their depositors, but positively incur their enmity; . . .
“Therefore [the association wants] put in circulation before Christmas, 1927, an adequate number. . . .”
There exist ample $5, $10 and $20 gold pieces. But a $2.50 piece appears just as big to a Christmas recipient. So depositors clamor for the smaller coins. This year the Treasury minted 388,000 of them and distributed them among the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. And not even at the request of many bankers would it mint more. In the New York Federal Bank district, members last week could only get ten $2.50 gold pieces each. Bonuses. Banks and investment houses are notorious for the low salaries they pay their clerks. Handsomest presents reported last week were First National Bank of New York’s bonus of a year’s salary to each of its employes; the half-year’s salaries paid by Hoit, Rose & Troster, Manhattan security sellers; the quarter-year’s salaries paid by Harris, Ayers & Co., another Manhattan investment house.
The Wall street financial houses last year gave between $35,000,000 and $50,000,000 to employes for Christmas. This year the estimates are between $50,000,000 and $60,000,000.
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