WORK OF THE ROYAL MINT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13781, 20 June 1908, Page 5 (Supplement)

WORK OF THE ROYAL MINT.

118,853,028 COINS. The place where money is made—is actually and visually created—must always have a, fascination for the ordinary human being, who is often short of cash. Yet the main impression which one carries away from a visit to the Royal Mint is the overwhelming truth of the proverb that familiarity breeds contempt. After only an hour or two spent in the constant society of gold and silver one's initial feeling of awe shapes towards boredom, and one" can readily understand that a working life-time of the same experience must result in a complete dulling of the sense which puts silver above copper, and gold above' sdver. To the staff of the Royal Mint gold and silver and bronze and nickel and aluminium —the last a recent addition to the colonial currency just so much raw material. If the King of Metals is held in greater respect than the others it is only because gold requires more caretul handling than they do. to avoid 1055.., Though the ruling powers at- the Mint are doubtless as convinced as a casual visitor may hi of the safeguards attaching to constant association with money, they do not relr altogether for protection upon this process of. inoculation, even among their own workmen. Imagination, imperfectly directed, may conjure up a vision of every employee and every visiter being minutely searched for contraband on leaving the precincts of the Mint. In reality the system is far more simple, and quite as effective. Even,' department, in the factory is self-contained and iron bound: there are locked doors, of which only those in authority have the- keys, at every turn. Not a bit of metal, whether it be in' ingots or bars, or blanks, or finished coin, leaves one room for another until it has been weighed and checked. Consequcntb- at the end of the day's work there is a perfect record of where every ounce of metal should be. Nobody leaves the building until the reckoning is complete. Should the smallest quantity be missing it has to bo accounted for. The greatest testimonial to the efficiency of the process was tendered by a workman" who has spent 36 years at the Mint. He complained, half comically, that the overseer wouldn't accept his offer to "make it right" out of his own pocket if three penn'orth of silver had concealed itself, but insisted on its being found ; as it always was eventually, though sometimes at the expense of more than three penn'orth of time. Parenthetically, it may be remarked that this man is by no means the oldest employee at Tower Hill. How- much money had passed through the Mint since he went fiierc, as a lad? It works out to the amazing total of 2000 millions of coins of the value of about 250 millions sterling.

To those who are familiar with the processes of smelting and rolling there is not much to impress in this department of the works', for they are, of course on a comparatively small scale, and only magnificent when you realise that it is gold and silver, and not iron or steel that is being treated. It is when one comes to the workshop." peculiar to a mint that one's interest is thoroughly roused. In the cutting room for instance you may see the machines spitting out blanks which* will ultimately become current coin, with astounding rapidity. At one end of the machine the strips of gold or silver or bronzeof a thickness carefully tested, are insertedout of the other the discs fall with increasing clattermaking a dent in the brass mouth-piece on which they impinge.

TRAPPING "MISFITS." As fast as they fall they arc moved away in tray? to be passed through a sieve, which roughly separates the perfect discs from those which are defective. This process is presided over by mere lads, who have an unerring eye for a defective blank, and it is seldom that any obviously imperfect piece escapes them. If it does there are many ways of trapping it before it troubles the weighing machine, and is discarded as a misfit. It has to pass the man who presides over one of the presses in the coining room. None but blanks which are superficial! v perfect can obtain admission to the slot of this instrument, which turns metal into minted coin. Whatever the materia! mav be, just one movement of the machine does all that is necessary. It goes in an indistinguishable bit of bullion, it falls into the trav below a coin of the realm. • Each side is stamped with its device and the bevel or raised edge done in a moment. With such rapidity and accuracy do these presses work that they can each tun) out over a hundred coins a minute. And there are more than a score of them. Recently it has been found necessary to instal some new ones in order to cope with the increased demand for "coppers." In the last annual report —that for 1906 issued by the Deputy Master and Comptroller of the Mint, Mr* William Ellison-Macartney, are given some very graphic particulars of this phenomenon, which led to an issue of bronze coin which has not been exceeded in any year since 1862. A proportion of the demand was due to the activity of trade, which had penetrated even to the travelling and street hawker class, while the recent extension of electric tramways throughout the United Kingdom had also had a stimulating effect on the public appetite for pennies. But the chief cause was undoubtedly the wonderful development of the use of automatic machines operated by pence. £250,000 IN AUTOMATIC BOXES. An inquiry which was set-on foot by the department, among the various railway, electric, gas, and automatic machine companies resulted in some very interesting information being obtained. In the area covered by the inquiry it appeared that a gross total of about 425 tons, or £190,500, was thus withdrawn from circulation and locked up in automatic machines. Having regard to the extent of the area not covered by the inquiry, it was fairly assumed that at least another £60,000 was similarly absorbed in the remainder of the United Kingdom, giving a total of about £250,000 in bronze permanently withdrawn from active circulation. This, by the way, is not at all a bad thing for the Mint, or the nation. A net profit of over £158,000 was made on the coining of bronze during 1906, which did much to swell the excess of receipts over —amounting to close on half a million sterling. On the whole indeed the Mint shows a very creditame balance to the good, for in the years since 1872 there has been a net annual average profit of nearly n-qnarter of a. million. It is all made out of silver and bronze, for there is an actual, if a small loss on the gold coinage. As far as gold is concerned, the Mint merely puts the hall mark upon it when received in bullion from the bank. The other coins are tokens : the British sovereign is worth a pound sterling (and frequently more than a pound in ex... change) all the world over. This integrity of value means a constant loss to the Mint, because minted British gold saves the jeweller the trouble of assay, and is therefore freely used for purposes for which it was not originally designed. In the last 36 years not far short of two hundred millions worth of gold coin have been minted at Tower Hill, and how much of it still exists as British currency would be an interesting calculation, were there any means of arriving at a correct result.

Sooner or later every coin arrives at the weigh ; ng-room. Here there are 50 delicate instruments ceaselessly trying to detect errors in the coins submitted to their judgment. Eeach weighing machine is enclosed in a glass case, so that it shall not be disturbed by dust or atmospherical influences. Pronerly adjusted it weighs a threepenny bit or a sovereign with the like sever© impartiality. From a feeder the coin passes on to thetscale. If it should be light it is thrown into one receptacle, if heavy into another, if just right, it joins the elect in the central chamber, from which it is removed to fulfil its destiny in the world's exchange and mart. As an evidence of the activity of these machines it may be mentioned that in the last recorded year they examined 118,853,028 pieces, and passed 112,909,830. By far the greatest proportion of those rejected were gold coins: more than a-quarter of these were turned back, and it is interesting to observe that this is clue to the inferior quality of. much of the gold bullion received for coinage. Not the least remarkable of the wonders of the Mint is the counting machine in the stores. Its industry is equal to dealing with £12,000 of silver in an hour —without a mistake-—and it disposes of a ton of pennies, 110,000, in forty-five , minutes.