Pedantic Pennies

One day last week 14 students of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute roved with studied aimlessness through the city of Troy, N. Y. Everywhere they went they collected pennies from shopkeepers and gasoline station attendants for a "penny-ante poker game." Other students marched in to Troy's four commercial banks, flourished paper currency, demanded change--in pennies. In one bank the manager reluctantly dumped 100,000 pennies into canvas bags, turned them over to students for $1,000 in bills.* A laundry truck driver toured the city collecting pennies from housewives. Unaware of this concerted raid until too late, merchants, housewives and bankers by nightfall had given up to the penny-pinching students some 250,000 pennies, half of the city's supply. By that time Troy was beginning to mutter, and retail commerce was all but crippled. Merchants adjusted their odd-cent prices to the nearest nickel, used postage stamps for change, sent out emergency calls for pennies to banks in neighboring towns.

Meanwhile, on the Rensselaer campus, Robert G. Baumann, 160-pound captain of the college football team and president of the Student Union, briskly assembled his associates and their penny plunder, organized the Taxcentinels. Purpose of the stunt, explained Baumann, was to protest against "hidden taxes." The Taxcentinels signed a pledge "to help fight the growth of taxes which now consume 25-c- out of every dollar spent by the average person . . . [by paying] one-quarter of the price of all purchases in pennies, in order to dramatize this situation. . . ."

The National Association of Manufacturers quickly wired its approval of the plan. "Called in to help," a representative of Carl Byoir & Associates, Manhattan pressagents, began to send out press releases from a Troy hotel suite. Meanwhile, the Taxcentinels set up a booth on the campus, sold pennies to all comers. First purchaser ($5 worth) was Rensselaer's 59-year-old president, neat, energetic Dr. William Otis Hotchkiss, onetime farmer, geologist, consulting engineer and chairman of the Wisconsin State Highway Commission. Said sage Dr. Hotchkiss: "A sure sign of spring. . . . I think it is a laudable purpose for the students to be tax conscious."

Next day a large part of Rensselaer's 1,400 students toted their canvas and paper bags into town, proceeded to give merchants another bad day. One student bought a $50 suit, banged down five pounds of pennies in part payment.

* One dollar in pennies weighs about seven ounces.

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