EVOLUTION OF THE DOLLAR MARK 529 



In a Mexican book of 1834 on statistics 20 both the ps and the $ are 

 used. Our $ was introduced into Hawaii by American missionaries, 

 in a translation of Warren Colburn's " Mental Arithmetic " in 1845. 21 



The transition from the florescent p s to our dollar mark is seen in 

 Fig. 4. Apparently it is a change introduced unconsciously, in the 

 effort to simplify the complicated motion of the pen called for in the 

 florescent p s . No manuscript on this point is so interesting and con- 

 vincing as the two contemporaneous copies, made by the same hand, of 

 a letter written in 1778 by Oliver Pollock, then " commercial agent of 

 the United States at New Orleans." Pollock rendered great services 

 to the United States, being to the west what Eobert Morris was to the 

 east. Pollock's letter is addressed to George Eoger Clark, who was then 

 heading an expedition for the capture of the Illinois country. Both 

 copies of that letter show the $ in the body of the letter, while in the 

 summary of accounts, at the close, the $ and the florescent p s are both 

 used. These documents show indeed " the modern dollar mark in the 

 making." In the copy from which our photograph is taken, Pig. 4, 

 the 8613 dollars is indicated by the regular $, while in the other copy 

 it is represented by the fancy p s . Carefully examining the two sym- 

 bols in our photograph, we see that the p s is made by one continuous 

 motion of the pen, in this order : Down on the left — up on the right — 

 the loop of the p — the s above. On the other hand, the $ symbol is 

 made by two motions : One motion down and up for the p, the other 

 motion the curve for the s, one symbol being superimposed upon the 

 other. 



Thus the origin of the dollar mark is simplicity itself. It is an 

 evolution from p s . When the p was made by one long stroke only, as 

 in Fig. 3, Nos. 12, 14, 17, 20, then the $ took the form $, as used by 

 Eobert Morris (Fig. 3, No. 21). Before 1800 the regular mark $ was 

 seldom used. In all our researches we have encountered it in eight- 

 eenth-century manuscripts not more than 15 or 20 times. None of 

 these antedates the ones in Oliver Pollock's letter of 1778. But the 

 dollar money was then very familiar. In 1778 theater prices in printed 

 advertisements in Philadelphia ran, " Box, one dollar." An original 

 manuscript document of 1780 gives 34 signatures of subscribers, headed 

 by the signature of George Washington. The subscribers agree to pay 

 the sum annexed to their respective names, " in the promotion of sup- 

 port of a dancing assembly to be held in Morristown this present 

 winter." The sums are given in dollars, but not one of the signers 

 used the $ symbol ; they wrote " Dollars," or " Doll," or " D s ." 22 



20 " Noticias estadisticas del Estado de Chihuahua," par J. A. Escudero, 

 Mexico, 1834. 



21 Copy in the Newberry Library, Chicago. 



-"American Historical and Literary Curiosities," Philadelphia, 1861, 

 plates 52, 22. 



