Woman on $10 will launch currency overhaul
WASHINGTON — It was a question that launched a million hashtags.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked Americans in June which historical woman he should put on the front of the $10 bill.
Now, he wants people to think about the back — and not just of the $10 bill, but of the $5 and $20 bills.
"A lot of the debate has focused on one square inch of one bill, and that's not where we intended the focus to be," Lew said. "It’s bigger than this one thing that's going to happen to this one note."
The next generation of bills will be the most complete overhaul of U.S. currency in almost a century. In addition to featuring a woman for the first time, new bills will contain new anti-counterfeiting measures — some of them secret — tactile features for the blind, fewer buildings and monuments and, possibly, fewer dead presidents. Each bill could have more than one figurehead, or there could be different series of the same denomination, each with different designs.
The process, too, is unlike anything undertaken by the Treasury Department before. Unlike previous changes in the look of money, which were dictated by a small number of bankers and Treasury officials, the look of future bills will be a national decision.
"It’s a big moment for sure," said Ellen Feingold, curator of the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution. "It's so much a part of our national identity, but it's really being discussed in public for the first time now."
The decision to put a woman on the $10 bill — for the first time since Martha Washington appeared briefly in the 19th century — has generated 1.5 million comments to the Treasury Department in two months.
Many of those comments objected to the perceived demotion of Alexander Hamilton, who now adorns the $10, and want President Andrew Jackson replaced on the $20 instead. Treasury officials said that debate was coming mostly from the media and from Hamilton's home state of New York, and that Jackson, too, had strong supporters.
Regardless, Lew said Hamilton — who, after all, was his predecessor as Treasury secretary — will remain on U.S. currency.
U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios acknowledged that "Hamilton-versus-Jackson rhetoric" had driven much of the early debate on the $10 redesign. But when talking to everyday Americans, she said, people are focused on the women.
Lew says he's still considering public input. But the main contenders, based on public polling and discussions with historians, seem to be abolitionist Harriet Tubman and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, with some support for civil rights leader Rosa Parks. But there are also social media campaigns promoting the favorite daughters of specific regions, organizations and causes. The Helen Keller Foundation wants recognition for the blind and deaf woman from Alabama who became a global celebrity and advocate for the disabled. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker has nominated Elizabeth Peratrovich, a pioneer for the rights of Alaska natives. A group of students at the University of California, Davis, has launched a "Put a Scientist on the $10" campaign, pushing alumna and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock.
And in perhaps the best-organized campaign, the Girl Scouts of the United States of America are pushing founder Juliette Gordon Low.
Girl Scouts, some shown here in June meeting at the White House, have been pushing for their founder to be on the $10 bill.
"When we get behind something, we can organize," said Girl Scouts CEO Anna Maria Chávez. "And of course we’re a grass-roots organization. So we started by communicating to our membership and we’re really active on social media. It’s already a great win and an opportunity for us as an organization to talk about her legacy."
Rios, the Treasury official whose signature appears beside Lew's on all new U.S. currency, made a personal visit to the Girl Scouts headquarters in New York and has publicly mentioned Low as a contender. But she's also quick to say it's not about who gets the most votes.
If that were the case, the top contenders would be the pop culture icons whose faces have been cropped onto $10 bills and shared on social media: Marilyn Monroe, Oprah Winfrey, Bo Derek. "Beyoncé is another one who might surface, although she is thankfully still alive," Rios said. (Federal law prohibits the image of a living person from appearing on currency.)
"It's not a popularity contest," Lew told USA TODAY in an interview this week. "I don't think it should be. But that doesn’t mean there won't be points in the decision process that reflect some broad popular opinion."
MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA
The Treasury Department has been monitoring social media sites and has set up a special Treasury web site, TheNew10.treasury.gov, to collect feedback. "I look at that obsessively," Rios said. "Anyone who gets an e-mail from me at 2 o'clock in the morning knows I'm on that site all the time."
The week after the announcement, the Treasury Department published a formal noticethat it would track the personal information of people submitting names via social media or the web site, which will become official Treasury records.
Treasury officials have also consulted a wide range of experts and interest groups. Noted feminist Gloria Steinem and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin have been invited for coffee with top Treasury officials. The department has convened panels and conference calls consisting of currency experts and collectors, history professors, an anthropologist and women's advocacy groups, including top Planned Parenthood lobbyist Dana Singiser, a former White House aide.
Lew and Rios have even dropped in on Washington tourists who happened to be visiting the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
The new $10 bill will be the most significant redesign of U.S. currency in nearly a century. In 1928, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon announced a series of changes meant to replace a hodgepodge of silver certificates, gold notes and other bills with a recognizable, standardized system of notes.
It was that redesign that gave us the now-familiar roster of faces for each denomination. The original plan was to use dead presidents exclusively and put Thomas Jefferson on the $10 and Ulysses Grant on the $20, but Mellon promptly overruled that proposal, putting Hamilton on the $10 and Jackson on the $20.
But to most Americans, the most radical change in 1928 was the size. The new bills were one-third smaller, costing $2 million less to produce each year and fitting more easily into wallets. Mellon's redesign also ushered in an era of sameness to paper currency that collectors still lament today.
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