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BEP macerating room, 1912.
Washington, Abraham Lincoln, shoes,
hats, animals and paperweights.11
In the 1880s and 1890s, sales of dry pulp
by the BEP gradually increased, reaching 207,131 pounds of pulp in 1900, more
than double that sold in 1886. In 1904, the
macerator in the Treasury was dedicated
to the destruction of only national bank
notes and the one in the BEP began to
be used for everything else. This move
was made largely because the BEP was
now bleaching its pulp, removing any last
trace of the destroyed notes.12 One result
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These chemicals were designed to destroy
the fibers in the paper and break down
the colors in the ink. Once activated, the
knives in the macerator would cut and
shred the paper into small pieces.6 The
machine would be run for several hours,
but only overnight because the vibrations
from the machine shook the building.7
The output was a liquid, grayish pulp. On
average, the macerator produced 17,500
pounds of pulp a day.8
The BEP did not have its own macerator
until it moved from the Treasury building
in 1880 to its new home at the corner of
14th Street and Independence Avenue.
At that point, both the BEP and the Treasury were operating macerators. The BEP
handled scrap from production while the
Treasury destroyed redeemed currency. It
is unknown what was first done with the
resulting pulp from both macerators; but,
by 1886, the BEP was drying and processing the pulp into bales or “blankets” of
pulp, which were then sold.9 Records for
that year report that the BEP produced
100,000 pounds of dried pulp, selling
94,395 pounds of it.10
Dried pulp was sold to private companies that used it in various ways. Much of
it was used by paper companies for such
items as bookbinder’s board and other
applications where the color and t