50 Centimes - Chambre de Commerce de Roanne 42

Emergency municipal scrip issued by the Roanne chamber of commerce during the acute small-change shortage that plagued French commerce after 1914, when silver and bronze coins vanished almost immediately into hoarding and wartime metal requisitions. Hundreds of French chambres de commerce issued their own notes under a 1916 government authorization, and Roanne was among the more prolific provincial issuers.

Printed locally by Imprimeries et Papeteries Réunies de Roanne rather than by a specialist security printer — an unusual arrangement that the watermark was presumably meant to compensate for.