Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1915-09-21
AMERICAN FABLES BEING MADE FROM
 ENGLISH MCNEY
Sovereigns Are Re Melted and Sent to U. $. Mints
 for Stamping.
(By Gotham Knickerbocker.)


 ! New York Sept. 2O.--Gcod by, English sovereign! All hail. Amer | ican sagls!
 You have heard lot lately abou5 the dollar ruling the world and some undoubtedly have been bit puzzled by all this talk of drops in for ign sxchange, balance of trade and the like.
 But if you had been down in the big Uni ed States assay office with me last week you could naEe seen something that child could under stani-two million pounds of Eng lsh gold disappearing and rough, dirty gold bricks taking their places. The bricks will scon become good American money
 New Ycrk has recently got three gold shipments from England, each Of about $20,O0000O, brought by ai fast British cruiser to Halifax and then carried overland with elaborata precautions.
 The first two consignments were in Uni'el States coin-some we have had to ship over to Europe in other years when the trade balance was the other way Then the Bank of Eng land evidently ran out of etagles, for in the last shipmenI we're $7,S50,O0O in United States coins and $11 1,615 000 in soveriegns.
 The British trsat our eagles most shamefully. They ship them by w fight. To bring each bag up to ahe required heft they chop coins into many trlanglar bits and add these piece by piece until the scales tip. Getting Back at John Bull. Tn sub-treasury here credits the importer only with the whole coins and the chips are turned over to the assay office which melts them up into bricks. These chips amount.d to several thousand dollars in the recent three big shipments. As tc the sovereigns, the assay of- flee found iself with 2,550.000 on it's hands. The importers were anxious to get the hsnefit of ths' amount. A law has been passed allowing thsm to be credited with the sover eigns as bullion without melting them l up. but there has been dispute over the deductions to be made fer waar on the ccins, dirt, am other consider i ations which could not be sci lesh anal thic has made the law dead letter ! Uncle Sam chi3rges $i a thousand ounces fer melting he gold. This dcas not ccVer the cost by lot.
 It takes ones breath away at first to lcok around the furnace room of the assay office, or gold is lying l1bout in an apparently most careless way The scveriEns are heaped into wooded throughs.. Thc furnace men /, wear hsavy wooden shirts and asbes- tos gloves to protect thslr bodies from the intanse dead heat.
 Eagles Prem SOveriegns.
 The gold is melted in rough three gsllcn crucibles which rest upon a grate on which jets spray crude oil. A fi,rce flame beats around the cruci- bles.
 A workman seizes a few pounds of geld coins. protects his face with one hand and throws them into the retort. In few minutes the mass is a gold liquid.
 Another workman ladies the preci- ous metal into what look like extra large muffin tins. These moulds are greaseI as cook would, to, and the lard flames up as the hct gold strikes,
 The 20 00O,000 soverelgns are now nothing mere than a stack of dirty, oharccnl smudged bricks, each worth about S7.000 They are smaller than building brick but weigh between 9 and 80 pounds apiece.
 They arc not as careless as they look a. the assay office. however. The gold given to each furnace man is weighed bsfora being given to him and the bricks he produces must contain just that much metal, with a slight allowance for the disappear pearance of par, Of the alloy. Tn a few days a call Tor gold will come hers from the mint at philadel- phia. Then part of these bricks, erst- while British sovereigns. will go out on their way to become good Amer 1 ican eagles. an additional bulwark to
 he world supremacy of the American dollar