Evening star., 1935-06-02
MONEY CHAOS BOOMS
LONDON GOLD MARKET
Hoarders Turn Bullion Into Cash and
Spectators Play Freely at Game
Outlawed in America.

phone messages: they know what the
demand for the day Is. They also
know how much gold is available in
the market and what the bids are.
In a minute or two information
and views have been pooled, and the
London gold price is settled. 1t may
be settled on straight demand and
supply basis II the foreign exchanges
arc in a more chaotic state than
usual. But settled it is; telephone
and cable flash the news around the
earth, and in every center dealings
take place and prices are fixed on the
basis of that price decision.
You are an American who holds q
stack of foreign investments. You
sell out and want to put your cur
rency away in gold for a while-may-
be on the calculation that dollars or
francs or pounds or whatever cur
rency you are interested in will pres
emily fall in terms Of gold, thereby
netting you a nice profit.
You want $l,oO0,000 worth Of gold.
Probably you will have to pay from
to 25 cents an ounce more than the
official price for your gold bars-it
depends on whether the demand is
keen or slack that day. The demand,
in turn, is likely to depend on (a)
the amount of gold in the market,
and (b) the views Of big speculating
groups and banks and trading corpo-
rations as to whether gold is likely
to rise or fall in terms OF sterling over
the next few weeks or months. (They
say in the bullion market that they
once put that problem to one Of the
brain robots which solve problems in
the infinite calculus, and the robot
groaned and blew up)
But you will get your gold. You can
wrap all you can handle in brown
paper and carry it away under your
arm, if you like. You will get it in
nice, short, thick FURNISHED bars,
stamped and valued down to the last
cent. But if you ask your bullion
broker whence it comes. he could not
often tell you. 1t is Just gold.
Gold From Everywhere.
1t may come from North Dakota's
single mine, or a river in China. It
may have been won from an outcrop
in Western Australia, or brought up
the 8,O00-foot brick lined shaft OF one
of the five big mines of the Kolar field
in Mysore. 1t may have been charmed
from an ancient Indian hoard by the
boom price; or it may have emerged
from the rock breakers, stamp bat
teries. tube mills and cyanide tanks of
the 80-mile-long, 10.000-foot deep
WitwaterSrand reef, which last year
yielded 100000 ounces, or about
half the world supply of new gold.
But wherever it comes from, and
however it reaches the great market
on Thames-side, the refining plant,
the bullion room and your safe or
bank vault, it is gold-magic stuff
which has survived the collapse Of
great businesses, the ruin Of cur
rencies, the destruction of national
organisms and the passing of whole
civilizations. You pay for it, and you
take it away; some call you fool, and
| some wise man.
In leisure moments, rare in their
overworked lives just now, the bullion
brokers may perhaps mediate on
what will happen to the gold market
when at last currencies are stabilized
and in course of time a new world
monetary order is established, with,
perchance, international control of
gold, that dangerous metal.
A Lure Through the Ages.
But if you probe them about the
prospect they will only respond with
dreamy and evaSive smile and talk
admiringly of Augustus, who put the
old Roman world on gold standard
long, long before two men named
Montagu Norman and Benjamin
Strong levered postwar world back
on gold, and ask if you do not think it
/ strange that gold, symbol of greed,
should also serve Shakespeare and
Keats as favorite epithet for all fair
things, and wonder how the church
reconciles its condemnation of Man,
mon with the gildings Of its sacred
symbols and vestments.
Give them an order for a million in
gold and they will find a seller If the
stuff is not available in the open mar
ket and deliver the bars in exchange
for your certified check. But II you
ask them if you have done wisely to
exchange so many dollars or pounds
for these chunks of metal they will
look at you as Mona Lisa or the
Sphinx does when you murmur your
question about the meaning Of life.
And if you ask them whether they
think gold will rise or fall tomorrow,
making you richer or poorer, they
may, since you have been good GUS
toner. whisper privately that gold, like
most other things, is an illusion. but
human life is built upon illusions, and
if you could only find the Hesperidean
garden where the golden apples grow
you would undoubtedly find buried
there the key to the secret Of the fu-
ture price for gold.