Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1893 — FACTS ABOUT SILVER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FACTS ABOUT SILVER.

UNCLE SAM OWNS 5500.000.000 WORTH OF IT. It Would Take Three Hundred Thousand Able-Bodied Hen to Carry It—The Makta* of Silver Money—Money Vaults at Washington. Bullion In the Mints. Uncle Sam is carrying a heavy load of silver just now. Being “dead weight,” the stock of the metal now on ,his tands would burden 300,000 ablebodied men. Sustaining 100 pounds each and marching six feet apart, they would stretch in a single file 350 miles, or as far as from Baltimore to Boston. Stacking their freight in a single heap, they would find that its total bulk was 125,000 cubic feet. Transported by rail, it would require thirty trains of twen-ty-five cars each, each car taking twenty tons. The silver-mine owners sell their ore to the smelting and refining works; the latter sell the metal in bricks to the dealers in bullion, who dispose of them at the best price they can get. What they cannot sell to Uncl’e ,6am they dispose 'of in London, which is the world’s market for silver. Under the Sherman laws which recently caused so much discussion, the Treasury bought 4,500,000 ounces of silver every month. On three days in each week the Director of the Mint received bids from dealers in bullion who wished to sell the commodity to Uncle Sam. Offers had to be sent in before 1 o’clock p. m. They came by telegraph—nearly all of them between 12:30 and 1 o’clock, because the silver merchants wished to take advantage of the latest quotations. The telegrams were recorded in a book, and those bids were accepted which seemed reasonable. The Treasury at Washington never handles any bullion. All of it is kept at the mints. In the great coin factory on Chestnut 6treet, Philadelphia, is now stored $101,000,000 in silver bricks. Uncle Sam owns at present almost exactly $500,000,000 worth of this metal. Of this mass of value $175,000,000 is in standard dollars and subsidiary coins, the balance being bullion. 'Yet only 68,700,000 silver dollars are to-day in circulation, more than fi.e times as many being locked up in the Government vaults unused. They take up a lot of room. One million of them will occupy a space of 250 cubic feet. Oddly enough, a box containing only 150 cubic feet will hold $1,000,000 in quarters or dimes, because they pack so much better. Disappearance of Silver and Gold. Nobody has ever been able to explain what becomes of all the silver and gold

produced in the world. The total loss of both these substanoes from shipwreck, fire and wear and tear has been reckoned at $1,400,000 per annum. The entire amount of silver now in the possession of mankind is only equal to what has been produced during the last eighty years. What has been the fate of the great balance? The white treasures of past centuries —where are they? It is an unsolved mystery. At the beginning of the Christian era the precious metals in the Roman empire amounted to $1,640,000,000. This store shrunk so rapidly during subsequent centuries that at the date of the discovery of America the stock of silver and gold money in Europe did not exceed one-tenth of the sum mentioned. The depleted currency of the old world was made full again by supplies from the new. To-day America furnishes nearly all of the silver used by the inhabitants of the globe. The great source of supply is what geolofists term the Cordllleran system, emracing the Rocky Mountain region, the Mexican plateau and the Andean chain of South American. In fact, the metal is not produced to any important extent anywhere else.

Silver coin undergoes a loss in weight due to wear and tear of circulation. It falls on Uncle Sam and amounts to about 3 per cent. The “life" of a standard silver dollar rolling through the channels of trade is only fifteen or twenty years, while a quarter does not last half as long, and a dime is even more rapidly perishable. But, whereas only a reduction of one-half of 1 per cent, is allowed on gold, no limit is set by the treasury against silver pieces. The latter are accepted at face value so long as the mint stamp on them is visible. This rule, of course, does not apply if they have been purposely punched, mutilated or otherwise ‘sweated.” The gold coins of the United States, you see, are the people’s money. Uncle Bam issues them at his own expense, the yellow metal in them being worth their face. But the silver dollars and subsidiary pieces are circulated by the

Government on its own account, the profit on them being its own advantage. Intrinsically they are not equal to their face value; in effect they are merely tokens, the stamp of the Treasury making them current. Accordingly, the Government feels obliged to redeem them at any time without deduction, so long as they are in condition to be identified. In a sense, they are obligation® to pay. It is quite otherwise with gold. With gold coin there is a toss of no small consequence by abrasion la the bags at the Treasury,

through rubbing against one another; but with silver, this damage is not important enough for consideration. Bars of pure silver—9o-100 fine—are made at the mints and sold to jewelers and other merchants, not; so much for their benefit as to save from destruction the coins, which would otherwise be melted for use in the arte. Coin silver is 90-100 fine; sterling is slightly better, or 925-1,000 fine — being the legal make-up of British silver pieces. Deposits of Silver. Whereas gold is found pretty nearly everywhere—in sea water, in sand, in rocks quite generally—silver is an element not often coroe across, comparaively speaking. It readily combines with all sorts of oilier elements, and thus ordinarily occurs in the shape of ohlorides, sulphate?, and carbonatos, being seldom discovered “native” or pure. Produced by nature in such shapes, it is not pretty to look at, the riohest ore sometimes resembling blue sand. That is one reason why it was utilized to only a very small extent by the American aborigines up to the lime of Columbus. They knew little of it, though some of their ornaments were

covered with plates of it, beaten verv thin. The great deposits of silver in Nevada, Colorado, and elsewhere in the world were made by water. That innocent element, percolating through the earth, picked up out of the rocks small particles of the metal and carried them along in solution. Passing through cracks and cavities the subterranean currents deposited their loads of the metal and thus, after thousands of years, pockets and fissures were filled with it. Sometimes these deposits were enormous, as in the case of the Big Bonanza, which was a slice of ore 300 feet wide and of unknown depth, extending across the famous Comstock lode. It yielded SOOO to SI,OOO a ton. This was pretty rich, considering the fact that a ton of ore equals only thirteen cubic feet, but ore has been dug in Colorado recently which produced $12,000 a ton. The great silver deposits of the world have been struck by chance. The Comstock lode was an accidental discovery. Peru’s famous mines were found by a shepherd, who, while climbing a slope of the Andes, lighted some brambles for cooking a frugal repast. A pebble, heated by the llames, attracted his notice by its shining. He took it to Lima, where it was examined and declared to be precious ore. The care-taker of flocks became a millionaire. The richest veins of silver in Chili were found by a mountaineer named Godoy, who hunted guanacos in he Andes. Uncle Sain'ii Cash Box. In these times when the statement is made that much money is hidden in insecure places like old stockings and abandoned coffee pots, it may be interesting to know fy)w Uncle Sam protects the millions of silver and gold in his charge and keeps it circulating throughout the country, and protects the millions which come in and go out from the treasury department every day from those inside and outside of the great building, from which issues the financial current, supplying the outside world of business. The United States Express Company acts as Unole Sam’s messenger boy, and between 8 and 9 o’clock in the

morning or 4 and 5 in the afternoon the visitor to Washington can see the great wagons backed up to the Treasury Building, loading and unloading. These wagons are always accompanied by armed men. They make their way to and fro between the Treasury and railway stations with all possible haste, and never permit their progress to be blocked by other vehicles. The visitor may go down to the vault where the vast amount of silver is stored by obtaining permission from Mr. Daniel N. Morgan, Treasurer of the United States. When this has been obtained you are escorted down two flights of stairs into the subbasement, where the walls are very thick and the corridor very narrow. Here you halt before a heavy gi ated door, behind which a watchman sits night and day. The messenger directs the watchman to open the door and you step inside the corridor where are stored 101,860,000 silver dollars. To enter the vault one must first pass the freat door with its multiplicity of comination locks and time locks. Beyond this is a heavy steel door weighing over six tons, which is rolled into place by a windlass and securely locked. Beyond this is the great silver vault which is eighty-nine feet long and fifty-one feet wide, and twelve feet high. Around the outer side of this vault is a corridor about three feet wide which extends clear around the inner vault, which is composed of steel lattice work, strongly riveted together, and which securely holds the millions within. But even through this steel lattice work you cannot see the white metal which is stored away. All that can be seen is a long row of wooden boxes i which are piled up, tier upon tier, from the floor of the vault to the ceiling. ! All around the sides and lining the central corridor of the vault, these boxes are two tiers deep and form a large room on either side of the central j aisle of the vault. Inside these two rooms formed by the rows of boxes the j silver is stored away in bags, SI,OOO in j » bag, the weight of which is 6ixty pounds; the boxes each hold two bags, •b that a box of silver weighs 120 j

pounds, exclusive of the weight of the box. But this is not all the silver that Uncle Sam has in his strong box. At the right hand of the silver vault is the door of another vault in which some of the gold and silver is stored. In this vault are kept the dimes, quarters and half-dollars. Forty-eight millions of this money and eleven millions in gold are kept in this vault, while in the department of the Controller of the Currency are stored all the Government bonds deposited by the national banks as a security for their circulation, and in other vaults are kept the United States Treasury notes. In another is the supply of money used by the cashier of the United States,’ in the daily banking operations of the cash room, which acts as a feeder not only to the banks of Washington, but to the banks of the United States at large. While the Secretary of the Treasury is in a general way considered the representative of the Government on financial matters, still the Treasurer of the United States is the direct custodian of Uncle Sam’s gold and silver.

Although it is certain that with all the watchfulness with which the gold and silver are guarded, none of the contents of the huge vaults can be stolen, nevertheless, with each change of the treasurer all of Uncle Sam’s money is carefully counted, so that the incoming treasurer will only be held responsible for such money as is turned over to him and received by him during his term of office. When the Democratic party came into power in 1885 a careful count of all the money was made and the books and money balanced exactly; when the Republican party came into power in 1889 the count was found

to be exactly what the books showed it to be in the vaults, and upon the turning over of the treasury to the treasurer the money was again counted, and the accounts found to be correct. Of course each silver dollar is not counted, neither is each gold piece. A bag of silver contains 1,000 silver dollars and should weigh sixty pounds, so in counting the money a bag of silver is placed on the scales and if up to weight, the bag is counted as SI,OOO, but if the silver dollars have lost in weight by the wear of circulation then the bag is opened and every dollar counted so that there will be no possibility of a mistake.

Silver In the Bible. The first mention of silver occurs in the Bible, where Ephron values his field at 400 shekels of silver, which are weighed out to him by Abraham. It is stated later on that Josephs brothers sold him for twenty pieces of the same metal. Silver and gold were used by weight long before they were coined. The ratio at which they were first coined was the ratio at which they had previously gone into use by weight. In Greece and the Greek cities of Asia Minor the ratio was 13 to 1, but it fell to 10 to 1 after the conquest of Athens. In ancient times gold was the variable metal; it fluctuated greatly in value, while silver was always the commercial standard. Here are a few unclassi-

fled facts concerning silver: The total production of silver since 1500 is reckoned at 400,000,000 pounds. The “ring” of silver is best imitated in a counterfeit by an admixture of powdered glass with base metal. The silver dollar of 1804 is worth $600; the silver quarter of 1827 is worth S4O; the half-dime of 1802 is worth S3O; the five-cent silver piece of 1872 is worth SSO, and the dime of 1804 is worth $4. What would happen if the United States Treasury would throw its stock of silver on the market? The most

frightful financial that has ever been seen would ensue. The $500,000.000 worth of the metal now held by the Treasury more than equals the present circulation of silver in the world. Such action on the part of this Government, happily impossible, Would almost destroy this substance is money, reducing it to the statue of a base metai. After all, it is only rarity that makes value. If gold were as plentiful as iron it would fetch no’higher price.

THE CASH ROOM.

MAKING SILVER BARS.

THE MINT AT PHILADELPHIA.

BURGLAR PROOF DOOR OF THE SILVER VAULT.

LOADING UNCLE SAM’S MONEY.

DANIEL NASH MORGAN, TREASURER OF THE UNITED STATES.