Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1894-04-11
HOW GOLD GETS LOST.
Causes That Tead to Curtail the Worries
Supply of the Precious Metal.

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The two most eminent living writers on
the preious metals, Suess and Soetbeer,
have published a very alarming statement
TO the effect that the total amount of gold
dug out of the earth annually suflices only
TO supply the present demand for that val
liable substance for use in the arts. Not
a bit of the new product of the mines Is
available for coinage Trinket use ana
waste in manufacture exhaust the whole
Weld. II this is correct. then gold must
vanish from circulation before long, because
the output of the gold mines OF the world
is diminishing rather than increasing, and
there are few fields left to explore. But
Uncle Sans metallurgists say that 1t IL
not so. The writers quoted fail to consider
the fact that the gold employed in the arts
is utilized over and over again. 1t goes
through sort of cycle
Articles of jewelry often disappear, but
are seldom lost. When, through accident,
they pass out of the possession of the well
to do, they go to the poor and sharp eyed,
who sell them or pawn them. Some jewel
nv is lost by fire and some in the sea, and
these losses are absolute and hopeless, but
iewelry otherwise is certain, practically
all of it, to find its way sooner or later to
the pawnshops or into the hands of dealers
in old gold Thus it is melted up eventu-
ally and reappears again in other shapes.
This is what is termed the invisible sup
ply of that metal.
There are number of unavoidable
causes of loss of gold. The first and most
important of these is by abrasion. Jewel
ry loses much weight in that way, espe-
cially rings, which are usually Is carat
and are worn rapidly. Coins suffer much
less. but still considerably from wear. All
gold leaf is total loss to the gold stock
of the world. Where used for decorative
purposes it is never recovered. 1t is not
employed for filing teeth nearly so much
as formerly, "porous gold'' being substi
tuted. But, of course, the gold utilized
for teeth is total loss, and in the aggre
gate il is enormous. If it be supposed
that the average dweller in cities of this
country has so cents worth of gold in his
or her mouth, which is placing the figure
very low, it will be seen how great is the
loss in this form Each succeeding gen
Grafton takes so many millions of dollars
worth of the metal from the worlds stock
in this way.
Some gold is lost in remelting, though
all possible means are taken to reduce it to
the lowest possible figure. Not only are
the floors swept and the dirt treated for
the recovery Of the yellow substance, but
the wooden planks are burned eventually
with the same object. Even the shoes of
each man who works with the metal are
subjected to the chemistry of fire, yielding
a small button" of the precious material
At Tiffany's workshop in New York each
artisan engaged in polishing gold stands
in front of a big funnel, with a wide
mouth, which has strong suction draft.
This draft takes in all dust and floating
particles from the air. 1t swallows the
filaments ground from the buf1ing wheels,
and these, with whatever else has been
caught, are deposited in n receptacle, form
ing a sort of felt. This felt is scraped
out, pressed into bricks and burned. being
thus made to yield the gold it contains
Incidentally the workmen get pure air
Washington Star.