“HAVE GOV’T MAKE SENSE (BY NOT MAKING CENTS)” screeched the cover page of my Jan. 24 New York Post. Say what? I went to the inside story. 

President Trump’s newly minted Department of Government Efficiency has a shiny new target for its cost-cutting mandate—the United States penny which now costs over three cents to manufacture.

Ah, the old Dump the Penny movement. It’s been an occasional news filler item for all 40 of the years I’ve been living in the USA. It’s also been a legislative issue, says the Post: “A debate that has raged for decades in Congress.” Why do we still have pennies cluttering up our pockets and purses? And yes, one penny costs 3.07¢ to make. So … should we dump it?

As a conservative by temperament, I’d hate to see the little thing go. Coinwise, I am one with New Hampshire poet Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911), who rhapsodized about the moment

When a man feels in his pocket, flushed with full financial glory,

And he hears the nickels rattle, and he hears the quarters ring.

On a shelf in my basement I have a coin-sorting gadget that I’m fond of. You toss a handful of coins in at the open top, press the button, and the gadget sorts and decants them to four 4-inch vertical catchment tubes, one each for quarters ($10 when full), nickels ($2), pennies (50¢), and dimes ($5).

The tubes are lined with paper wrappers my bank hands out for the asking. After a year or two my stash of paper-wrapped coins adds up to over a hundred dollars; then I walk them to the bank and deposit them into our checking account with Fossian satisfaction.

I’m reluctant to lose that satisfaction; the more so as, according to the Post, the nickel might follow the penny into oblivion. Like pennies, nickels cost more than their face value to produce — 11.5¢ per coin. If Dump the Penny triumphs at last, shall we then soon lose our nickels too? 

If the penny does go, it won’t be the first time I’ve seen a coin disappear. Back in the Mother Country, farthings were still in circulation, just barely, during my 1950s childhood. A farthing was a quarter of a British penny. I can only recall actually spending a farthing once: to buy a Trebor mint chew at the candy store on the corner of Prestbury Road and Whitehead Road in Birmingham. (That store is now the Bangla Bazar, “Quality Asian Spices.”) 

The farthing was officially decommissioned in 1961. Ten years on from that, the UK decimalized her currency. For centuries, the pound had been worth 20 shillings, each shilling worth 12 pence. As of Feb. 15, 1971, the shilling was abolished, the pound divided into a hundred new pence. (The new penny was further divided into two new halfpennies, but inflation killed the new halfpenny in 1984.)

I had commenced my career as a programmer on the big old mainframe computers a year and a half before Decimal Day. Programming was still quite a new line of work at the time. Computerized banks, big firms, and government departments were desperate for help decimalizing their accounting and payroll systems. I copped a lot of overtime—a lot—from currency decimalization.

I was none the less sorry to see the old currency go. Pounds, shillings, and pence—£.s.d.—had the awkward charm of so many traditional English things, few of which have survived to the present. For example: in some areas of commerce—furniture, professional fees, a few others—prices were traditionally quoted in guineas, a guinea being one pound and one shilling. To buy an armchair or engage a lawyer you had to be able to mentally compute the £.s.d. equivalent of 39 ½ guineas. (Answer: £41. 9s. 6d.) 

My own favorite coin was the pre-decimalization British penny. It was a big, noble thing, far superior to the puny U.S. cent, and it lasted forever. In the 1960s, you might still find a Queen Victoria penny among your loose change. In the change from one purchase I found myself looking at a George IV penny from the 1820s.

The penny was handy, too. The private cubicles in public restrooms would open to you only after you’d deposited a penny into the slot under the door handle. Thence came the everyday euphemism “spend a penny” for a visit to the restroom, public or private, which I have heard from perfectly well-mannered middle-class ladies. Thence also the lament often seen as wall graffiti inside those cubicles: “Here I sit, broken-hearted / Paid a penny, and only farted.”

All this coinage sentimentality is of course absurdly reactionary. The 21st century promises us a cashless society. Debit cards, credit cards, payment apps, QR codes… What need for printed banknotes, let alone coins? Even checks are on the way out: you can arrive at middle age today without ever having written a paper check. The dubious assurance that “the check’s in the mail” has disappeared from common usage.

Isn’t this digitization of everyday finance a gift to control-freak totalitarians? Doesn’t it put our money at risk of annihilation by EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) blasts from enemy nations or solar eruptions? 

Faugh! There is no stopping the march of progress. Away with the fool penny! The nickel, too, and dimes and quarters and banknotes and checks. There is a brave new world of digital money a-beckoning. Let’s answer the call, comrades! ◆