50 Centimes - Union des Chambres de Commerce du Tarn [81]

The Chambres de Commerce du Tarn issued this note under the emergency framework that pushed hundreds of French regional and municipal chambers into producing their own fractional currency after 1914. The national coinage had effectively vanished — hoarded, melted, or absorbed by wartime demand — and the Banque de France was neither willing nor equipped to fill the gap at small denominations. The result was a patchwork of local paper, of wildly varying quality and authority, that circulated on nothing more than local trust.

L. Cassan Ainé in Toulouse handled several such commissions for southwestern departments. The JP# 5-09/10/11/12 reference covers four catalogue variants within this 50 centimes type.