A while back TGOM of Drink This sent me the following bit of money related trivia:

August 7, 1928, marks the day the dollar shrank. Neither rampant inflation nor the impending stock market crash were the culprits. Rather, the Treasury unveiled a new version of the note that was one third smaller than its predecessor. The dinky dollar was part of a veritable fleet of smaller bills: the Bureau of Engraving and Printing ran the presses to the tune of one billion new bills which were printed in denominations ranging from one to ten thousand dollars. As part of the announcement of the new currency, the Treasury also promised that they would begin production on a new two-dollar note. Lest the public grow bored with their existing money, the Treasury kept on fiddling. A year later the department rolled out yet an even smaller version of the dollar. The bill had shrunk by 25 percent and was graced with the now standard set of portraits and emblems.

Notice anything missing?

Among all the statistics about size and quantity, there is not a single mention of WHY this change took place.

And this piece was from the History Channel website.

Now I realize that this is just a bit of trivia and not critically important in the grand scheme of things, but it seems to me that giving the "what" of history without giving the "why" does the reader a great disservice. Without the "why" to explain the causes, all the names, dates, and events of history become a confused and random jumble of unimportant noise, and history's lessons will remain unlearned.

For example, some people don't know why we're fighting the War on Terror. We go here and there, blowing up this and that, seemingly without purpose.

But there is a why, and history can teach it to us.

A couple centuries ago, pirates routinely attacked ships on the high seas, and most countries just lived with it. The US decided to do something about it. We attacked the pirate bases ("shores of Tripoli" ring a bell?) and eventually piracy stopped stopped being a problem.

The lesson we can take from that is that terrorism, like piracy, has bases that can be attacked and a collective will that can be broken. We don't have to just sit back and take it - we can do something about it.

That is WHY we fight. Because we CAN win if we persevere.

Oh, and as to why the bills were made smaller?

Simple.

Smaller bills means less room for graffiti on the currency ;-)

Posted by: Harvey at 08:54 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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