Smash Notes

Who Makes the Paper for Every US Dollar Bill?

On Planet Money, David Kestenbaum and Jacob Goldstein visit the mill that makes the paper for every US dollar bill. It is Crane & Co., a small mill in a valley by a river in Dalton, Massachusetts. The Crane family has made this paper for 130 years. Vice president Douglas A. Crane handed Kestenbaum a business card so thick, he joked, that you could cut a steak with it. In an old factory, Crane pointed up at a metal sphere about 15 feet across that holds thousands of pounds of fiber. No trees go into a bill. The paper is 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen, closer to a T-shirt than to ordinary paper.

Planet Money · Where Do the Dollar Bills Come From? · at 0:43 · ·Transcript

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