People's Pilot, Volume 2, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1893 — An Honest Confession. [ARTICLE]

An Honest Confession.

A Los Angeles paper approvingly quotes the estimate that there is $618,000,000 of gold in the United States, of which $518,000,000 is in ’circulation. Such a quantity is only mythical. At the date of reports wade early in last March the national banks in the fourteen reserve cities held a total of sllß,000,000, and it is probable that not more than $60,000,000 ©t this was in actual gold, the rest being in the shape of certificates issued against gold held in the national treasury and otherwise counted as as part of the available supply. Allowing for the $10,000,000 understood to be held by the state banks in New York and estimating liberally for what is held by other banks throughout the country, in safe depositories and private boards, it is difficult to see how there can be a total of more than $150,000,000 outside of what is held by the government If we suppose this estimate to bs too small by as much as 25 per cent, the necessary conclusion is that the aggregate of public and private holdings, in the national treasury as well as outside of it, does not exceed $400,000,000 or barely twothirds of the amount clai joed.—Chicago Tribune. —Gold is not money, but money can be made out of gold, by law only.*-Ex-change