Pullman herald. [volume] (Pullman, W.T. [Wash.]) 1888-1989, 1912-06-07

1
mint makes all the one-cent and five
cent pieces, and the SanFrancisco
mint makes all the Filipino coinage,
ana each of the minis makes silver
COINS. Until about year ago gold
coinage was made principally at the
Denver and San Francisco minis, but
the treasury department has suspend
cd gold coinage, as it did the coinage
Oh silYerS about five years ago. Now
the pure gold bars are either sold
as commercial bars to manufacturing
jewelers. and dentists or deposited
In the government vaults and gold
certificates are placed in circulation
In lieu of them. The reason given
by the treasury department for the
suspension of gold coinage was that
large quantities of our gold coins
were shipped to Europe, and also were
mutilated and remelted, and as there
is no seignorage in gold coinage-for
instance a $40 gold piece contains
$I9.96 worth of gold-the govern
ment was at an expense coming gold
coins, large portion of which were
not in circulation.
The assay offices are located at
Seattle, Washington; Boise, Idaho;
Salt Lake City, Utah; Helena, Mon
tana Carson City, Nevada (former-
ly mint; Deadwood, South Dako-
ia; New Orleans formerly a mint
and New York City. Assay offices
were recently discontinued at st.
Louis, Missouri, and Charlottesville,
South Carolina. The intention of the
government in creating so many as
say offices and distributing them so
widely, was to render 1t easy for the
prospector or miner to deposit or ex-
change his gold and silver for money
with the government. The assay Of
fices are merely receivers of gold and
silver, or feeders for the mints. They
purchase the gold and silver, melt it
into bars and assay it, then ship it
to the mint, and there it is refined
and coined. The New York assay
office is an exception to this rule. 1t
receives gold and silver from some of
the smaller assay offices, and does
its own refining,
Upon the purchase of gold or sill
I'M
weight is taken and a receipt given
to the depositor. The gold or silver
is then melted into a bar and weighed
and two samples taken, which are
either Clipped or drilled off the OPP
posite corners of the bar. The sam
Piles are then assayed for the gold or
silver content. The depositor is then
paid $20.67 an ounce, the weight
after melting being used, for the gold
content, and the market price of sill
YER, about so to so cents an ounce.
If the bar was purchased at an assay
office it is shipped to one of the three
minis, where it is again re-assayed
to verify the first assay. Then it is
sent to the electrolytic refinery and
separated into pure gold or silver.
The gold bars are then deposited in
the vaults of the minis or sold as
commercial bars. Gold certificates
are issued in place of the stored bars.
Samples are taken of these bars and
| assayed to make certain they are
within narrow limits of fine gold or
fine silver.
The fine silver bars then are taken
to the ingot melting room, and to ev-
cry 80 parts, by weight, of silver, 10
parts, by weight, of copper are added
The bars are then m cited and cast in
to bars or ingots about II inches
long, l IL inches wide and one-half
an inch thick. From each lot sam
pie is taken to verify the fact that
it is approximately 80 per cent silver.
The ingots are then annealed, or heat
ed to red heat, cooled and passed
through large rolls to the proper
thickness, varying according to the
denomination of the coin to be made.
The long strip of metal resulting
from the rolling of the ingot then
passes through a punching machine
which cuts the coins out, just as you
would cookies. These blank coins,
or blanchets, are then weighed; the
heavy ones are filled to the proper
weight, and the light ones are re-
melted and again pass through the
same process. The blanchets, or
| blank coins, are then taken to a mil
ling machine which passes them
through circular groove and puts
the milling creases on the edge of
the coin. The blanchets are then inn
mersed in a weak solution of sulfuric
acid, which process is called Written
| ing" after which they are placed in
| a revolving riddle or cylindrical