South Bend news-times., 1915-09-23
WAKE j. s. EAGLES
OF BRITISH COLD
SOvereignS Are Received in
Shipment and Then Sent
to Assay Office.

NEW YORK. Sept. 23.--Good-b bye.
English sovereign! An hail, Ameri-
can eagleI
You have heard a lot lately about
the dollar ruling the world and some
undoubtedly have been a bit puz-
zled by all this talk OF drops in for
eign exchange, balance Of trade and
the like.
But II you had been down in the
big United States assay office with
me last week you could have seen
something that a child could under
stand-two million pounds OF English
gold disappearing and rough. dirty
gold bricks taking their places. The
bricks will soon become good Ameri-
can money.
NeH York has recently got three
gold shipments from England. each
OF about 2O.OOO.0OO, brought by
fast British cruiser TO Halifax and
then carried overland with elaborate
precautions
The first two cOnsignments were in
United states coin-sOme We have had
to snip over 70 Europe in other years
when the trade baleSce was the other
way. Then the Bank of England
evidently ran out OF eagles. for in the
last shipment were S7.S5O,O0O in
United states cOias and $11,615,000 in
soveriegns.
AIistreat Our Eagles.
The British treat our eagles most
shamefully. They ship them by
weight. To bring each bag up to the
required heft they shop coins into
many triangular bits and add these
piece by piece until the scales tip.
The sub-treasury hefe crSdISs the
importer only with the whole coiIic
and the chips are turned over TO the
assay Office which melts them up into
bricks. These chips amounted to sew
eral thousand dollars in the recent
three big shipments.
AS TO the sovereign, the assey Of
fee found itself with 2.550, 900 on its
hands. The importers were anxious
10 get the benefit of the amount
A law has been passed allowing
them TO be credited with the sover-
eigns as bullion without melting them
up. but there has been a dispute over
the deductions 10 be made for wear
on the coins, dirt, and other consid-
erations. which could not be settled
and this has made the law a dead let
ter.
Uncle Sam charges 81 thousand
ounces for melting the hold. This
does not cover the cost by lot.
It taxes ones breath away at first
TO LOOK around the furnace room OF
the assay office. for gold is lying about
in an apparently most careless way.
The sovereigns are heaped into
wooden trOughs. The furnace men
wear heavy wooden shirts and asbestos
gloves TO protect their bodies from
the intense heat.
Gold is Melted.
The gold is melted in rough three
gallon crucibles which rest upon o
CRATE on which jets spray crude oil.
y fierce flame beats around the cru
cibles.
a workman seizes n few pounds Of
gold coins, protects his face with one
hand and throws them into the retort.
In few minutes the mass is golden
liquid.
Another workman ladies the pre-
ciOus metal into what looks like extra
large muffin tins. These moulds are
creased as a cook would do, too, and
the lard flames up as the hot gold
strikes.
The 100000 sOvereigns are now
nothing more than a stack of dirty
charcoal smudged bricks, each worth
about $1,000. They are smaller than
"a building brick, but weigh between
% and 80 pounds apiece.
They are not as careless as they
look at the assay office, however. The
gold given to each furnace man is
weighed before being given TO him
and the bricks he produces must con-
tain just that much metal. with a
slight allowance for the disappear
ance of part of the alloy.
in a few days a call for gold will
come here from the mint at Philadel-
phia- Then part of these bricks. erst-
while British soveniegns, will go out
on their way 20 become good Ameri-
can eagles, an additional bulwark TO
the world supremacy of the American
dollar.