The Million Dollar Nickel

[first lines]

Narrator:
Here in Philadelphia since 1793, they make money. Silver dollars, and half dollars, quarters and dimes, and pennies and nickels. And of all the coins minted in this building the nickel was once the most important to the average American. Yes, for a nickel any of us could buy most of the little things we needed. Remember when for a five cent piece we could get this... and in moist cases, a free lunch bees ides? And for that same nickel we could buy ourselves a shave, and for two nickels, a haircut. And if we wanted to see Mary Pickford or William S. Hart all we needed to do was pay our nickel at the box office and all the world opened, to the accompaniment of a tinny piano. Well, it's a rare cigar you can buy for five cents now, but what this man still sells for a nickel is worth a million dollars. It is a stamp to send letters abroad.

[last lines]

Narrator:
This is one of the largest radio transmitters in existence. Yet all of us together have even more power than this with our pens, for we can transmit personally to other men in other places, and tell the truth. And by act of Congress, we can do it for a nickel, a nickel that's worth a million dollars. For a letter from a friend goes out not only to the mind, but to the heart of all the world.