Ben Franklin sagely advised, “Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.”
But watching pennies could become a gainless pursuit now that Donald Trump has ordered the Treasury Department to stop making them.
The logic is understandable – it costs more to make a penny than it’s worth and most people think of it as a nuisance rather than legal tender.
Still, we owe a lot to the penny; it has infused our language, memorializes a revered president, and reminds us that there’s value in simplicity and humility.
As well, there’s latent power in this modest coin: The philosopher Orison Swett Marden, who in 1897 founded Success magazine, observed, “One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring.”
The penny shows up in poetry by the likes of William Butler Yeats and Robert Graves, and in songs by artists including Lionel Richie, Willie Nelson, and Dolly Parton.
In the movies, Bing Crosby minted a hit in 1936 when he famously sang, “Every time it rains, it rains pennies from Heaven.” And Cary Grant was an Oscar nominee for his performance in the 1941 melodrama Penny Serenade.
The penny also had success in fashion: Slipped into cutout slots on casual shoes, the coins brightened many a pair of “penny loafers” decades ago.
Unpretentious though it is, the penny in our culture has long been thought of as a symbol of good luck – hence the proverbial couplet, “Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.”
The penny even holds a place in military ritual: Those familiar with it know that leaving a penny on a veteran’s grave announces that the site has been visited.
The penny is of limited monetary worth, but our language is all the richer for it: references abound to penny pinchers, bad pennies, penny-wise, penny candy.
American journalism was invigorated in the19th Century by bargain-priced newspapers known as the “Penny Press,” and Victorian England was once flooded with cheap sensational publications that became known as “Penny Dreadfuls.”
Trump’s order – it was unclear whether it requires congressional approval – wouldn’t mean an immediate end to pennies, since there are some 114 billion of them already in circulation.
And if production is stopped, that wouldn’t be a first in North America. Canada stopped minting its one-cent coin in 2012.
Abe Lincoln, whose image has appeared on the penny since 1909, once famously said, “All men are created equal.”
That’s not the case for pennies, some of which can bring heavy returns on today’s collecting market. Rare ones from 1943 and 1944 are valued at up to $2 million because of minting errors.
It’s mere coincidence that a musical trio from that same era, the Andrews Sisters, sang, “A penny a kiss, a penny a hug, we’re going to save our pennies in a little round jug.”
The sisters were unaware that their song might be a requiem for these humble coins, many of which nowadays, rather than brightening the flow of commerce, do indeed lie forsaken in kitchen penny jars.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.
