EXIT GOLD COINS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18163, 10 August 1933, Page 3

EXIT GOLD COINS

NOT MADE AT MINT METAL NOW TOO SCARCE LONDON, Juite 30. Gold coins have vanished - for ever from British pockets.* Never again \yill John Bull he able to throw a ringing sovereign on the counter in discharge of a debt. Just when the World Economic Conference is struggling to find a currency that will be proof against fluctuations that wreck trade, comes the announcement that gold is no longer to be coined. 'vi “So far as the Royal Mint is concerned,” said Sir Robert Johnson, the deputy master, “gold coinage as currency is for ever dead. And considering that we have struck at the Royal Mint and at its branenes in the Dominions, more than one thousand million sovereigns, we feel that we have earned pur rest.” This does not mean that the Royal Mint, which dates from Anglo-Saxon times in these islands, will gp out of business. It will still deal with silver and copper which, as all the World knows is Only “token” money and legal tender for small amounts only.

MORE SILVER COINS

In fact, it may make -more silver coins than over. Also silver of a better quality. In 1920 the British Government debased its silver curt'enay by removing nearly half the silver content. It reduced them from 925 parts silver, per 1000 to 500 parts per 1000. The result was that this country had some of the shabbiest coins of any in the world. They looked as if they were made altogether of base metal. However, of late nickel from Canada and zinc have been added to them, and now they wear the Same color all through. Gold, however, has become too scarce fo bo used for the making of sovereigns and half-sovereigns. It' has a 'banking Value now far above that which it cofild have for the ordinary citizen were he at liberty to buy and sell with it. And

so the banks collar it and lock it up m their vaults, issuing paper money against it as the law permit?- Indeed, the tendency is for gold ornaments to disappear into the financier’s keeping—as well as the gold chins. For more than a year and a-half people in the United Kingdom and in other non-gold-standard countries have been selling their gold trinkets and other decorative possessions and the bullion dealers in turn have been selling the gold to the batiks. But the supply is far from adequate. More gold is wanted. It would seem as if- the'world could never get enough.' ... ; -*' " RECORD ' GOLD OUTPUT -As the Economic Conference has learned, there is about £2,235.000,000 worth of monetary 'gold shared out among the nations'to-day. The output Of gold mines ha? ftegn steadily rising. Bast year was a re'eoird, tlie total for the world being 22.100,000 ounces. Of this amount the British Empire contributed abodt! 16,860,000, ounces, or about three-quavers. Half of the British production came from South Africa and 14 per cent, from Canada. The. output front South Afrifca is in itself a record.

Yet, in spite of enhanced production, the world’s supply of the metal that mankind regards as above all others ip, value, increases very slowly. One to' two per cent, iit output is the yearly aveFa£e. ‘ And not all of this goes into monetary gold, for a proportion’ is retained for tlie arts and' fqr, ornam^qfcs. : The ieceitt' private selling of personal gold has helped to swell the bankers’ supplies. But tips increase is naturally oiily temporary. There is still A shortage which is not made any better 'by the calculations df experts that after this year there will fie a decline in productibn unless new fields are discovered somewhere on the globe. Gold output iff 1940, -it is estimated, will be only worth about as compared with the present- figure of £80,000,000. These are the facts which have led to that amazing financial and social change, the disappearance of gold from everyday use and its replacement ]}y paper—that is, by promises to pay goldwhich will never again be, paid.