Description and research notes
This specimen represents an official county-level school tax scrip issued by the County of Atlantic, New Jersey, dated November 1, 1934, and denominated Ten Dollars. It belongs to a category of legally authorized educational finance instruments created during the Great Depression, when counties were confronted with the collapse of normal revenue flows and were forced to adopt extraordinary measures to sustain public schooling.
Unlike informal emergency substitutes or privately issued local notes, this instrument was grounded in a defined statutory and administrative framework. The engraved certificate explicitly states that the County of Atlantic was holding nine thousand one hundred eighty-five dollars in obligations of the Borough of Longport, New Jersey, received on account of the nineteen thirty-three state school tax. These obligations were pledged as security for payment to bearer, embedding the scrip within an intergovernmental structure linking municipal debt, county administration, and state-mandated education funding.
The instrument bears interest at the rate of four percent per annum from the date of issue until redemption, a feature that distinguishes it from circulating municipal scrip and aligns it more closely with short-term debt obligations. It was transferable by delivery and functioned as both a payment medium and an interest-bearing acknowledgment of indebtedness, designed to bridge the gap between delayed tax collections and immediate educational expenses such as teacher salaries, maintenance, and instructional operations.
The obverse is executed in bold red engraved security printing by E. A. Wright Bank Note Company of Philadelphia, a prominent American printer of municipal and financial instruments. The design features an ornate guilloche border, clear identification of the County of Atlantic and the State of New Jersey, and a large central denomination cartouche reading TEN DOLLARS. The reverse is dominated by a complex radial lathe-work medallion, a professional anti-counterfeiting device consistent with established security printing standards rather than ad hoc local production.
This example is a true printer-issued specimen, identified by the serial number P0000 and the overprinted word SPECIMEN. It was not intended for circulation and was produced solely for approval, authorization, or archival reference during the establishment of the issue. Specimen material of this type was typically destroyed once authorization was complete, as it had no role in the operational funding process.
School scrip issues such as this provide direct evidence of the severity of the Great Depression’s impact on public education. Counties were legally obligated to maintain schooling but lacked liquid funds, forcing them to monetize future tax receipts through interest-bearing instruments secured by municipal obligations. Once fiscal conditions stabilized, issued scrip was redeemed and cancelled, erasing most physical traces of the system.
No other specimen example of this County of Atlantic school scrip issue is documented in institutional collections, auction records, certification census data, or standard reference literature. Based strictly on observed and recorded evidence, this piece stands as a unique surviving specimen and serves as a definitive documentary artifact of Depression-era county-level school finance in the United States.