FEDERAL RESERVE BANK NOTES

With the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, a new type of currency came into existence. The notes issued under this system are the Federal Reserve Bank Notes and the Federal Reserve Notes.

The Federal Reserve Bank Notes were also inscribed “National Currency”; the Federal Reserve Notes are not so inscribed and are currency of the system proper, and not of the individual banks in the system.

The obverse designs of these two issues are markedly different; the reverses are similar. See the illustrations.

There were two separate issues of the Federal Reserve Bank Notes, the series of 1915 and the series of 1918.

The first issue was authorized by the Federal Reserve Act of December 23, 1913 and consisted only of 5, 10 and 20 Dollar notes. These were not issued by all twelve banks in the system but only by the banks at Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas and San Francisco. The last named bank issued 5 Dollar notes only.

As mentioned above, these notes are inscribed “National Currency”and are similar in general to National Bank Notes. The obligation to pay the bearer on demand is made by the specific Federal Reserve Bank and not by the United States.

The obligation on the first issue of Federal Reserve Bank Notes is similar to that on the National Bank Notes of the First Charter Period, which see. There is a slight variance in the wording but not in the meaning.

The second issue of Federal Reserve Bank Notes were authorized by the Act of April 23, 1918 and all notes of this issue are series of 1918. The denominations consisted of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 Dollar Notes and these notes were issued by all twelve banks. Each bank did not necessarily issue all the denominations. For example, the 50 Dollar Notes emanated only from the St. Louis Bank, the 20 Dollar Notes only from the Atlanta and St. Louis banks, etc. Please see the text for the full list.

Part of the obligation on this issue differs from that on the first issue, as follows, “Secured by United States bonds or United States Certificates of indebtedness or United States one year gold notes, deposited with the Treasurer of the United States of America. . .” The rest of the obligation is the same. Although modern, Federal Reserve Bank Notes are all quite scarce and are avidly collected. Most of the issue has long since been redeemed and according to Treasury Department records only a little more than 2 million dollars is still outstanding out of a total issue of nearly 762 million dollars.