German silver

“ In Germany all silver manufactures are placed under Imperative control, and lower standards than those given in the table, under their respective heads, cannot be worked. The German style is similar to that of the French, but the former manufacture an unusually large quantity of filigree articles, very light in construction, tasteful, and cheap; and the possession of these advantages enables them to export to England and other countries their wares at a cheap rate. They are commonly sold by weight, and not so much per article ”

“ If the ore subjected to fusion was abundant in silver, this mixture approached near to the noble metals; if poor in silver, it consisted chiefly of lead. When it consisted of silver and lead only, it was soft and ductile; but if other metals, difficult of fusion, such as copper, iron, or zinc, were intermixed, it was harder and more brittle, and in that case approached nearer to what the German silver refiners call abzug and abstrich.
That this stannum was employed as an article of commerce, and that the ancients made of it vessels of various kinds, cannot be doubted. ”

“ At a bright red heat it melts, losing its zinc by oxidation unless protected from the atmosphere. At a heat above dull redness it becomes exceedingly brittle. German silver in various modifications of composition is much used in the arts. Alloys, of which about 50% is copper and the residue zinc and nickel in about equal proportions take a fine polish, and are used as imitation silver for knives and forks. ”

“ The purity of the Esterling coinage was above reproach, whereas that of England anterior to the mission of the Hansa merchants to reform it had long become debased.
Sterling Silver. Genuine silver in its natural purity as opposed to “German Silver,” an alloy of copper, nickel, and zinc first made in Germany. See “Sterling Money.”
Stick a Pin there. An Americanism for “make a note of it as a reminder.” Dressmakers always stick a pin to mark the place where material is to be stitched or taken in.
343Stiletto. Expresses the diminutive of the Italian stilo, a dagger. ”

“ The German Imperial Parliament passed a resolution, in June, 1895, in favor of Bimetallism, and the Prussian Parliament passed a resolution favoring an international bimetallic convention, provided England joined it, May 22, 1895.
The great increase in the gold product of the world, and the constant diminution in the value of silver, have put an end to the danger of the movement for the free coinage of silver, and made the question purely academic or theoretic, at any rate for a good while to come. ”

“ The currency was eked out by the Austrian gold ducats and by vast quantities of foreign silver, French 6-livre thalers (current for 2 florins 48 kreutzers) and the crown or Brabant thaler (current for 2 florins 42 kreutzers) . From 1807 onwards this latter coin was imitated by the South German States, Bavaria especially, in their crown thaler, minted on a fresh basis of 24 1⁄2 guldens to the mark of fine silver.
The selfish initiative of Austria was followed by Prussia and the South German States. The latter, the Rhenish and South German States, adopted in 1761-65 the 24-gulden ”

“ The movements of the precious metals in Germany—which, as far as the ratio of the two metals is concerned, may be held to include the Netherlands up to 1552, when Flanders withdrew from the monetary system of the Holy Roman Empire—is a record of exactly the same process of natural and gradual appreciation of the metal (i.e. depreciation of the weight and fineness of the coin) as in Spain, France, and England. In the accompanying tables the movement of silver is illustrated by means of the groschen, and that of gold by the Rhenish gulden. ”

“ Having left France much behind in this respect, it now rivals Great Britain and the United States.
Germany produces more silver than any other European state, and the quantity is annually increasing. It is extracted from the ores in the mines of Freiburg (Saxony) , the Harz Mountains, upper Silesia, Merseburg, Aix-la-Chapelle, Wiesbaden and Arnsberg. Gold is found in the sand of the rivers Isar, Inn and Rhine, and also, to a limited extent, on the Harz. The quantity yielded in 1905 was, of silver, about 400 tons of a value of £1,600,000, and gold, about 4 tons, valued at about £548,000. ”

“ In the coinage system of Great Britain the function of silver remains as it has for a long period, almost as unimportant as that of copper. In Germany, "although the imperial mark is now everywhere recognized as the standard, all Germans, whether they live in Bavaria, Prussia, or Hanover, are able to sell their commodities with the consciousness that the 'marks' they receive in payment for them are good money, with the same purchasing power, whether paid out as silver thalers or as gold crowns." ”

“ The present currency systems of England and the Scandinavian Union are based on the composite system, and afford the greatest satisfaction to the inhabitants of those countries. The bimetallic system of the Latin Union has been suspended, the introduction of silver as the principal money not being desired by the various peoples concerned. Germany has lost considerably by the sales of depreciated silver, and, were a gold standard once firmly established, it is not likely that any wish for change would be manifested. With silver countries the case is different. ”

“ The imports are, besides all kinds of raw material (cotton, pig iron, copper, coal, &c.) , coffee, sugar, rice, wine (from France and Hungary) , cloth, laces, machines, the finer qualities of silk fabrics, jewelry, &c. The silver standard prevailed in Germany until the establishment of the empire, when the gold standard was adopted. The unit in the northern states was the Thaler (30 thalers to 1 Zollverein pound of silver, equal to 1.389 lb. avoirdupois) ”

“ But during this first quarter of the sixteenth century, possibly more influence on the maintaining of equilibrium is to be attributed to the largely increased home production of silver. The silver mining in the Saxon Harz, in Bohemia, and the Tyrol, had received a strong impulse towards the close of the fifteenth century, while gold was obtained during the same period in appreciably greater quantities in the archbishopric of Salzburg, and in Hungary, as well as from Africa. ”

“ The borderers, however, set a value on gold and silver for the purpose of commerce, and have learned to distinguish several kinds of our coin, some of which they prefer to others: the remoter inhabitants continue the more simple and ancient usage of bartering commodities. The money preferred by the Germans is the old and well-known species, such as the Serrati and Bigati. 36 They are also better pleased with silver than gold ”

“ It is the fineness of the rix dollar of the Netherlands, of the five-peseta piece of Spain, of the pesos of the Central American states, of the Argentine Republic, of Bolivia, of Ecuador, of Peru, and of Venezuela. To do this and retain the ratio of 15.50 to 1, we must decrease the fine gold in our dollar to 22.43 grains and the standard weight to 24.90. Having done this, if all the mints were opened in all these countries, there would be no disturbance of our monetary circulation. Our silver would be worth no more in Europe than it is at home, and our gold would be worth no less. ”

“ In Germany there are four silver standards—one for the coinage, and three to be employed in the manufacture of silversmiths' wares; and in that country the various standards are severally applied in the production of fine filigree and other artistic work. ”

“ But it can not be doubted that the motive in general which prompted the action of Germany in 1873, and which to-day enrolls so many of the best of the world's thinkers, financiers, and merchants, on the side of gold rather than that of silver in the pending and so-called bimetallic controversy, has been and is a conviction, that the movement in favor of a gold standard, by highly civilized and great commercial nations, is in consonance with the spirit of the age ”

“ The proposed ratio was justified thus: "In France 1 grain of pure gold is counted worth 15 grs. of silver. In Spain 16 grs. of silver are exchanged for 1 of gold, and in England 15 1⁄5. In both England and Spain gold is the prevailing money, because silver is undervalued. In France silver prevails. Sundry advantages would arise to us from a system by which silver might become the prevailing money. This would operate as a bounty to draw it from our neighbours, by whom it is not sufficiently esteemed. Silver is not exported so easily as gold, and it is a more useful metal. ”

“ The tendency of late among commercial nations is to the adoption of a single standard of gold and the issue of silver for fractional coin. We may, by ignoring this tendency, give temporarily increased value to the stores of silver held in Germany and France, until our market absorbs them, but, by adopting a silver standard as nearly equal to gold as practicable, we make a market for our large production of silver, and furnish a full, honest dollar that will be hoarded, transported, or circulated, without disparagement or reproach. ”

“ Germany and the Scandinavian states in adopting a single gold standard, (2) the countries composing the Latin Union in limiting the coinage of silver, (3) the Indian Government by adopting a new method of drawing bills—proved to be the really influential causes for the decline in the value of silver as contrasted with gold. [83]
Before closing this notice of the economical aspects of gold and silver production, the consumption of those metals must be considered. ”

“ How may we bring the two metals together, keep them together, and make them one money throughout the world? We cannot do it by coining at different ratios, with all obstructions removed. Each country by that method will keep the metal which it values the more highly, and lose that which it values lower. If Europe should open her mints tomorrow to the unlimited coinage of silver at the values established by her laws, and we should do the same, we should lose all our silver in a short time, and she would lose her gold. ”

“ In exchange for the manifold products of the East, Europe had only rough woolen cloth, arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, copper, lead, and coral to give; and a balance, therefore, always existed for the European merchant to pay in gold and silver, with the result that gold and silver coins grew scarce in the West. It is hard to say what would have happened had not a new supply of the precious metals been discovered in America. ”

“ If gold were lowered only so as to have the same proportion to the silver money in England, which it hath in the rest of Europe, there would be no temptation to export silver rather than gold to any part of Europe, and to compass this last there seems nothing more requisite than to take off about 10d. ”

“ And when so mixed is called standard silver or standard gold. Before it is mixed with the alloy it is called pure silver or pure gold. The standard of both gold and silver is such that by 1,000 parts by weight, 900 shall be of pure metal, and 100 of alloy. The alloy of silver coins is copper. In gold coins it is copper and silver, but the silver shall in no case exceed one-tenth of the whole alloy. Standard silver and standard gold is the metal when mixed with its alloy.
"I now think we understand," said Coin, "what the unit of value was prior to 1873. We had the silver dollar as the unit. ”

“ With the single exception of England, all Europe forty years ago had the silver standard, not only legally but actually—silver coins constituting the great bulk of the money of actual transactions. To-day, not a mint in Europe is open to the coinage of full-debt-paying silver coins, and the gateways of the Orient have been closed against it. Twenty years ago one ounce of gold exchanged in the markets of the world for fifteen and one-half ounces of silver; to-day, one ounce of gold will buy nearly thirty ounces of silver. ”

“ Again, in 1548, after the expiry of a similar period, the Reichstag at Augsburg declared for another monetary convention to relieve the disorder. The opinions of certain deputies to this convention, which met on the 8th October 1550, were as follows: "For fifty or even eighty years and more the ratio between gold and silver has been between 12 and 13. But in a gulden of those days there was an equivalence of more silver than in seventy-six of our kreutzers. Since then we apprise the Rhenish gold gulden and kreutzers less than foreign nations. Therefore France and England seek them." ”

“ Possibly the existing stocks of gold in Europe and America might be sufficient to serve the purposes of banking reserves and for transmission in the international exchanges; but it is impracticable to use such a valuable metal to the extent required for the purposes of active circulation, and this creates a necessity for a silver legal tender coin for the retail transactions of business. For this reason I regard the use of silver, co-ordinately with gold, as an indispensable element in the world’s currency. ”

“ Gold is the standard and is freely coined. A limited number of silver dollars, worth, moneywise, more than double their value bullion-wise, are a heritage of former bimetallic laws long since rendered inoperative by the paper money of the Civil War and expressly repealed in 1873. The two attempts of 1878 and 1890 to return halfway to bimetallism by the purchase of silver—attempts discontinued in 1893—have greatly swollen the volume of coined silver. ”