Arizona republican., 1919-12-14

makers, in the very beginning. took a | precaution which fits exactly into the | present situation. It would be inter esting to know if that action was from | foresight or by accident. Anyway they | put less silver in proportion to their | value into the subsidiary coins than ! they did into the silver dollars. Ten dimes, four quarters, or two halves, l weigh exactly the same amount when l they come from the mint. But dollar in any of these subsidiary coins weighs less than does a dollar coin. While silver must be worth more than S1.29 an ounce to affect the dollar coinage, it must be worth more than $1.3S to endanger subsidiary coinage.
 As a matter of fact it will have to be around $1.45 or S1.50 to pay for the trouble, take care of abrasion and pay anything like worth while profit on the melting business.
 | So the government is not yet worry ing about having it's dimes and quar- l ters melted. When the point of danger ! is reached, there are several lines ot l government action possible. During 1 the war there was an embargo on sli- yer. If this embargo were put back | the demand would be cut off and the nrice might tumble. Then there is the possibility of prohibiting the melting of subsidiary coin. This would dis courage the industry. The treasury | has many million of dollars worth or | silver and could readily replace lesser losses. There is much silver in treas ury vaults in bullion. There are vaults in New York, Philadelphia, Denver, in which gold and silver is stacked up like sacks in a granary. It is meas tr in, shiploads.
 To appreciate the present silver sit nation one must go back to that forty eight cents an ounce in 1914. He must follow the record back and find that the price has played back and forth from fifty cents to seventy cents for thirty years. Never before since 1890 has silver gone above a dollar an ounce Not since 1866 has it been up it's present price. Until this war came, the decline had been constant since the Civil war. Before the Civil war silver ranged regularly around dollar thirty to thirty-five. It was probably in those days that the present amount of it came to be put into our coins, thus giving them an actual intrinsic value about equal to their face value.
 The present boom in the silver mar
  for the metal in the far east. There is likewise demand from several of the European nations that have issued large amounts of paper money and are anxious to get metal back of it to steady that currency. But the chief demand is from India, China and Japan, all of which are on a silver monetary basis.
 The big run on American silver came when. in the midst of the war Great Britain came to us in much per- turbation. The trouble was in India The situation there is unique. The East Indian has an unsuitable ap- petite for the precious metals. India is known as the sinkhoIe of the world for gold and silver. These metals gc to India in shiploads, are absorbed and disappear. There is no coinage with which to transact business and the outside world sends more gold and sil- yer. It is indifferent. If India wants to bull the precious metal market the producers are glad of the fact
 But in the midst of the war there was no coin in India. London haC always been the silver market of tht world. and India and China had bough ! through London. But now England was without silver. The only agency which could save India was the United States. Would we furnish silver fol the orient?
 We would. We had a little matte of three hundred and fifty million silver dollars, ready coined, that W, would sell to Great Britain for use il the orient. It had cost us from lift, to seventy cents an ounce. We wer offered dollar an ounce. The amour l t-0v fnh nh xf -fIx enough of it to load two big oceal liners. enough of it to load a string o freight cars two miles long. We woul, pour these dollars into great chaldron at our hints, would melt them am mold them into bars about the size o an ordinary brick. We would keep constant stream of boxes laden wit these bars bound for the Golden Cat for shipment to the orient We did al of this. It took a year to do it. Blu we glutted India with silver an averted a crisis.
 Now the orient is buying silver di rect from us. No longer is the silve business done through London. Ne, York is the silver center of the world Probably England which produced n silver. will never become the silve center again. Probably the orient wi bid direct through America Americ is interested in good prices for silve which England was not. Possibly per manent high prices for silver may re suit from these changes.
 And dead towns of the west are com ing to life as result of the silve boom. There were towns In Colorad and Nevada and Arizona, which, unde the influence of silver in those day after the Civil war burst into a vii, rich life that has no parallel in his tory as a background for motion pic ture scenarios. From all the we: country comes the word that the dea bones of these deserted silver towr arc beginning to rattle again The st