THE COLONIST. Published Every Morning. Tuesday, March 22,1910.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12749, 22 March 1910, Page 2

THE COLONIST. Published Every Morning. Tuesday, March 22, 1910.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF CASH.

An English writer" 1 vvlld recently' made exhaustive investigatiohs into the proportion of distribution of hard cash among the liatiohs, brought to light some interesting and a few surprising facts. Leaving paper money out of the calculation, and confining himself to gold and silver available as a circulating medium, he finds tKatihe ii^ed concern himself with only three nations— the United States, Britain and France— for all the rest are comparatively poor, and'have no great reserves of coin and_ bullion. According to tho report of ihe Secretary of the United States Treasury on January 2nd, 1909, it' was estimated that the" Treasury contained in gold coin or gold bars the sum of £330,000,000. Of silver, it hadf £112,600,000, against most of which silver certificates were in circulation. It was estimated also, the country had, of subsidiary, silver coins (fractional money), £30,000,000. Therefore, throughout' the length and ■breadth of the United States, with a population estimated at eighty-eight million souls, there was either in circulation or in the Treasury some £474,000,000 in actual coin, a sum. equal to about £7 per head of , population. In Great Britain, which is Ihe home of -scientific finance, the exchequer contained only about; of gold and silver, with perhaps £100,000.000 of coin in circulation. The Englishman doos not hoard cash. Ho invests it, and draws the interest from his investments; but he is' quite as likely to make this investment in a foreign country as in his own. Therefore, the actual money in circulation in Great Britain, is little" more than: £120,000,---000. The : wofldrhas been very mucli astonished during t|ie past year because of ; the monetary movement set oh foot by the Bank of Frar.ce. This great national institution has hot i»nly been acquiring gold, but has been rapidly drawing it from other countries in heavy balances, especially from "Germany, and even, from the 'UfiitedVStaies. ~ Just 'why this policy, should have been adopted was not 5-etealed until lately, : when it came oiit ;: thatf French financiers had undertaken -to float- a new Russian loan of £56,000,000. Yet, even ..this docs not account for the fact that France has stocked its vaults with bo H»ioli

gold and silver. In November last the Bank of France contained, in actual gold coin, more than 3,300,000,000 francs,, or nearly -£133,000,000, an increase within one year of more than £25,000,000. Since then it has steadily added to its hoards, so that now it holds several times the amount of gold which lies in the vaults of the United States Treasury. France, in fact, is in a position to be the banker of the whole world. Its Government immediately controls an. amount of coin appreciably near the whole mass of coin existing in the United States, while to this must be added, according to the. estimates of M. de Foville, some £200,000,000 in actual specie, circulating among the people or hoarded by them. In the savingsbanks of France, there aro, deposited almost this sum, and no one can form any accurate estimate of how much gold and silver are stored away by the thrifty peasants of the thriftiest nation in tho world. No one realises the widespread wealth of France. That country contains^no such number of multi-millionaires as the United States; but, on the other hand, it is populated by men and women who make the saving of money almost a religion. Every sou is weighed and counted. Every source of; waste is stopped, and, therefore, the public are almost all engaged in hoarding money. Hotv much they have'accumulated, no one can guess ; but Bismarck, in 1871, made, one of his few mistakes when he underestimated their resources. At the treaty of Frankfort, which ended the FrancoPrussia war, it was the - purpose of Bismarck to impose a war indemnity -fclia-fe would oxij>j>lo I*x*»no© for many years. The amounts stipulated was £200,000,000, and German troops were to remain in occupation of some of the richest French, provinces until the indemnity had been paid in cash. The treaty of Frankfort was sighed on May 10th, 1871-. In September of 1873, tho last franc of the irdemnity had been paid, and the last spiked helmet had disappeared from France. iVwas a wonderful demonstration of patriotic feeling. It was, perhaps, a still more wonderful demonstration of the financial strength of a nation which, then held, precisely as it holds to-day, the greatest store of 'actual money to be found anywhere in the world, the estimate for 1909 being nearly £9 for every human being within its borders.