Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1918-11-23
WHAT BECOMES OF
 THE SILVER PRODUCED

Ask your bank for gold these war days and you'll find it about as easy to obtain as platinum, palladium. irid- ium-which aren't obtainable at all and for which the government is pay ing prices running from $105 an ounce to $175.
 And though you can still obtain sil- yer, the fact remains that in propor- tion to the demand-especially for the foreign trade-silver is becoming, if not absolutely scarce relatively, rare as the rarest metal.
 Is the day coming when silver, too, will become shy and disappear in the invisible "sink" that absorbs precious metals in times of war? Silver at $1 plus an ounce, which used to cost 5S to 60 cents is far fnore startling phenomenon than coffee at 26 cents, which used to be IA cents a pound. For the silver production of the world is very limited quantity, and except in a few rare silver camps, like Co., bait or Slocan in the early days, sil- yer comes chiefly as a by-product of other metals.
 We talked in the early days of the war of money as "silver bullets". Are we coming to paper bullets ?" For the war has reversed every eco homie theory the world has ever held, and the free coinage of silver today would no more relieve the acute de- mand for silver coin than the free coinage of mud The demand for sil- yer coin in one country alone, India, exceeds for a single year the entire world production of silver.
 The demand for silver is exactly like a great reservoir of water with half a dozen inflowing pipes and an unknown number of leaks in the bot tom. All we see is that the surface level of the water keeps sinking fast CT than the flow comes in. We find one hole and stop the leak. Up comes the water level; but before the world financiers have had a chance to soap their hands with satisfaction, down the water level goes again.
 That is where the whole world is with silver just now-just where King rCanute was when he found he could not command the Aux and reflux of the ocean tides.
 Time was, less than two centuries ago, when the proud silversmiths of London met in pompous satins and wigs behind closed doors and set the price of silver for the whole world rrhey were succeeded by the silver brokers of London; but the war was barely two years old when the whole beautiful scheme of the past sprang a leak. Silver began leaking away through other pipes than London through France, through Mexico, through China, through the Philip pines, through India and through New York and San Francisco to India.
 Stop guages were jammed on in the shape of government regulations by France, by England, by Mexico, by the United States, by India, but they were jammed on too late. Not all the man. made regulations can stop the tide, any more than Canute could com mand the sea. India's demands alone could drain the world of silver.
 Take a few disconnected facts.
 Within a few months the American government melted down 1OO,0OO,O0O silver dollars for export to India, China, and Japan.
 Immediately afterward the treasury fixed the maximum price of silver at $101R. It then announced that ex- port licenses for silver would be grant ed only on condition that the maxi mum price was not exceeded. This was to stop the speculators, who had been buying silver at $1 and reselling it at $1.08,and $1.07. As the govern ment pays only $1 an ounce it's pro- fit is F cents, which covers the ex- penses of melting and recoining. . France tried to stop the leak by de. monetizing silver. When 15,000,00( , small nickel and silver coins were . struck off by France with only 67 pei cent value in real silver they vanished l within a week of issue as if by magic . Who or what sucked them up so fur , lively that the French government die not know the new coins had disappear ed until there literally was not one ir
 circulation. Was it hoarding by peo plC clIcbl Ol CllC wal olCCI SllCNVo or had some broker for a foreigr agent secretely bought the coins up }!
 The financiers do not know.
 , American silver dollars may not bt 1 carried out of the country to an eX tent exceeding $200 for each traveller The story is told of thirty-seven Un ited States coinage presses this sum ) mer being unable to turn off silve1 l dimes as fast as the commercial de . mand for those dimes. You may us' F silver to buy bullets, but you can't us' . silver in bullets. Why did trade sud l denly need so many more dimes? So fast was silver leaking ava!
 from Mexico to Japan and China ant
 India that Mexico, too, clapped on al
 embargo. It was a typical Carranz; , enoharUo-thOSe who axnorted Silye