Now who does exactly appreciate what is a million? A young friend of mine asked me to show him "a million of anything." I might have taken the grains of sand on the sea-beach, and counted and weighed out an ounce of them, but that would have been troublesome work. Had I done so, however, I could have shown him a million of grains of sand. I had, however, some No. 9 shot, just such shot as are used for snipe-shooting, and then, as luck would have it, a No. 9 shot is just about the size of the letter "o" in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE. The manufacturers of shot, who know exactly what are the diameters of their leaden pellets, tell me that a No. 9 drop-shot has a diameter of 8/100 of an inch, and that 568 of such shot weigh one ounce. Therefore 1,000,000 of such shot would weigh 110 pounds, and a trifle of an ounce over.
I wanted, however, to get some idea of bulk. I had a box made one inch high, one inch deep--in fact, a cubic inch. This I filled with No. 9 shot, and it held just about 2000 pellets. Now a million of these shot would be, of course, 500 times 2000 pellets, or 500 little boxes would hold the million. If, then, I had a big box made to contain the million, this receptacle would have to be about eight inches on all sides. I can get of this some idea as to the bulk of these small shot by the million.
The more ways I could look at a million, the better I thought I would understand it. I wrote to the Treasury Department in Washington, and I put two questions, which one of the leading authorities answered in the most obliging manner. All I have to do, then, is to copy this gentleman's letter.
TREASURY DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE TREASURER, WASHINGTON, D. C., _March_ 16, 1893.
SIR,--You ask me the following questions: 1st. How long does it take, under the most advantageous circumstances, for an expert to count 100,000 silver dollars? 2d. How long does it take, under the most advantageous circumstances, for an expert to count one hundred thousand notes?
In reply to the first inquiry, permit me to state that for a continuous count of an expert it will require twenty hours to handle 100,000 standard silver dollars. Under ordinary conditions, and observing the rules and regulations of the office for count as to correctness, and at the same time keep a careful eye for the detection of counterfeits, 4500 per hour, or 27,000 per six working hours each day is about the limit of capacity of our experts in that line.