Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1878-02-14

pelah-the earliest known money being coe, a
with the earliest known grave. Economists
talk to US superbhr says writer on this
subject, about circulation about the laws
that regulate the movements OF the precious
metalr,' about demand and snpply,' so that
in our confding trlthfulness we Immediately
suppose that, according to their statements,
money keeps on running restlessly about, like
the Wandering Jew, or q white mouse in Q
revolving cage, and having thus induced us
innocently TO believe that money leads alife
like that of water, perpetually moving. per-
petually varying, perpetually modifying and
reconstituting its shape, but never disappear
ing, they turn round and tell US with appall-
ing figures and the stateliest proofs that mon
ey is constantly abandoning all shape what,
ever, and that the truest of all. facts concern
it is that it goes out Of sight and comes buck
no more =
We all remember the boards we read Of in
our school books-ths treasures as EraspsE
Darius, Solomon, Cyrus Sesostris and Senna-
cherib. Where are those treasures now By
what process can the precious metals of
which they were composed have disappeared?
A recent Russian writer has made elaborate
calculations as to how much gold and silver
! the whole world owned from Noah down to
Christopher Columbus, and places that
amount at nine thousand millions of dollars
(S9, 600, ,OOO, ,0OOs or, if you please to take the
other mode of enumeration, nine billions of dol.
lars. This might appear purely fanciful had
not monetary congress held in Brussels in
1878 published official calculations, by which
discovery Of our own continent the world has
acquired nearly twice as much actual wealth
as it had before, viz: 5000, 900, 900. In
other words, the worlds wealth from Noah
to Mr.. Bland has been $25, ,000, 600, 900. Ac-
cording to the Brussels calculation, the entire
stock of gold and silver five years ago in
Europe, Americs and Australia was $40, ,00O,-
600, 900. Of this SO, $50, ,ooo, 900 was supposed
to exist in coin and to be in active circulation
(and on this part of their subject economists
seemed to be pretty much all of the same
mind), $1,000, ,ooo, 900 was supposed to rep
resent the plate and ornaments of civilized
society, while 81, Zoo, ooo, 900 was boarded,
scattered or unaccounted fOr-lOst, in fact,
to the assets OF Christendom. In other
words, two-sixths of the Western Worlds
share of the precious metals are in active cir
culation as money, one-half is held as plate
and ornaments and one-sixth is hidden away.
The actual loss on gold and silver by friction,
accidents and shipwreck in Christian lands is
calculated at one and a-half per cent. on the
cash in circulation; for waste and wear on
metals used in the arts, one-half per cent,
while the loss on the boarded treasure is set
down at as much more, making total Of
about ninety millions of dollars worth of an
nual waste and loss upon our precious metals
The annual production of gold and silver is,
however, worth about $2oo, 900, 900, so that
the supply is erery year increased and the
loss more than supplied. There then remains
TO be accounted for, besides the wealth of
Christian countries, the fifteen billions worth
Cor fifteen thousand millions WORTH of gold
and silver not assigned to Christendom.
A vast proportion of these millions are un-
doubtedly in Asia, and thither, we are in
formed, our new trade dollars are to find
their way. Enormous quantities of gold and
silver are em; loyed in the East in personal
ornaments and trinkets, but the actual burial
of silver is carried on so actively that in six
years only (from 1852 to 1850 five hundred
million dollars worth of silver was buried Gas
McCulloh, the great writer on political econo
my, tells us) in Hindostan alone. From the
days of the Phenicians to the dawn of our
trade dollar the expectation of our precious
metals from the West to the East has been
steadily going on, and it is accepted on all
hands ''that the sums successively inferred
there are altogether beyond measurement, and
that the richest metallic deposits upon earth
are sprinkled over Eastern Asia in forgotten
hiding places"
For three thousand years the commerce Of
the world was carried on without coined
money. There was none in the Homeric ages,
and among all the treasures Dr. Scheimann
disinterring at Mycene he will find no
money. But weighing and testing silver, as
was done in the transaction Between Abraham
and the SONS of Heth, became so ineonvenient
that II was a great step in the worlds progress
when about nine hundred years before the
Christian era certain king of Argos invented
small change and stamped tortoise on his
coins. The act of coming confers no value
on the metal coined, as the signature on q
bank note gives to piece of paper. 1t is
| simply Governments guarantee that the
piece of coin which bears its impress is actu-
ally worth as much as it claims to be. The
real value Of piece of money rests exclusive
ly from the quantity of pure metal employed
in it, and when Governments in past times
found it handy to, debase their coinage, the
act of coinage was simply deception. Gold
money was first coined in England under
Henry VIII, 1927. 1t is only of late years
that it has become the official standard of
value in the United States or England. From
the discovery Of America to 1850 the annual
silver crop was worth about four times that of
gold. Since the discoveries in California and
] Australia the gold crop has become worth
three times as much as the annual harvest of
silver. II BALTIC. American.
Recent Facts About Gastric Juice
Hartford Tines
DR.. Charles Richet not very long ago read
paper before the French Academy of Sci
ences, in which he treated of the acidity of
! the gastric juice in man. 1t seems new case