SILVER DOLLARS CREATE AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 148, 25 June 1938, Page 27

SILVER DOLLARS CREATE AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM

Since Italy bought up the dies- of the silver Maria Theresa' thaler (dollar) from the Vienna Mint during the Ethiopian War, several other mints have decided to enter competition with the Italians in producing this coin which for the past 150 yeare has been the. favourite currency along the Red Sea littoral and down the east coast of Africa to Zanzibar, says the "Christian Science Monitor." Competition really began when the Italians, having bought' up the dies, first started to use a different alloy and then stopped using metal- altogether and put paper money in circulation. Native labour gangs and most purveyors of goods bought by the Government in Italian East Africa are paid in paper. Evidently the Italian authorities had not been brought up on Sir Thomas Gresbam's law which says, "the worse coins will tend to drive the better from circulation, but the better will never drive out the worse." Be thai as it may, the effect of their action was to send the silver thaler into hiding,, whereas no> one would take the paper thalers unless forced to do so. .Consequently there was a shortage of silver thalers not only in Ethiopia and the rest of Italian East Africa but in the rest of the thaler zone. Their market value rose to as high as 30 pence in the.days of acute shortage in 1938. The actual silver content of the thaler is about sixpence halfpenny, so it became an attractive proposition to mint fresh thalers of standard fineness, and this the French,.British, and Belgian Mints began to do—but not, apparently, the Italian. It came about in this way: In the old days when the Vienna Mint had

I a monopoly of thaler production, it . obtained the silver for the new coins (all of which bear the same date, ' 1780) from a London firm of. refiners. ' This firm, on discovering the'mistake i of the Italian authorities, decided to i invite the Royal Mint to supply the i deficiency. The Royal Mint did its I best but was too busy to be able to ; provide the full amount required, so ! the French and Belgian Mints were also called in. With this triple pump in ; action the market value of the thaler , soon began to fall, and today il.is.re- ' ported to be around eighteenpence. Meanwhile the Italians have been • vigorously protesting to the Govemt ments of the three countries concern- . Ed, but the protests jo far appear to [ have been ignored. Maria Theresa thalers do not circulate exclusively [ in Italian territory, so failing interna- : tional action there is no reason why : any recognised banking institution or • mint should not enter the business if I it feels inclined. The only criterion appears to be the readiness of the local • population to accept the coins, which, . apparently, they do : quite readily, pro- : vided the thalers are of the right i standard of purity and bear the recog- . nised hall-mark which i includes not . only the effigy of the Empress Maria : Theresa on the one side, but the Aus- • trian royal crest and—this is essen- ; tial—the Invariable date 1780 on the i obverse. With the signature of the Anglo- . Italian Agreement in April, it is prei sumed that some attempt will soon be made to straighten put . the present I . tangle. But it is thought to be highly improbable that the old monopoly of production which was.: tacitly 7 left to the Austrian Mint as the legal heir i to Empress Maria Theresa will be,re-. I vived in favour of Italy. '. ?