Gold bullion

“ But if the increase in the supply of silver bullion and the decrease in that of gold is such that the outflow of silver bullion into currency reduces the level of the silver bullion to the old level, but the outflow of gold bullion from currency does not suffice to raise the level of the gold bullion to the old level, or if the outflow of gold from currency raises the level of the gold bullion to the old level, but the inflow of silver into currency does not result in the reduction of the level of silver bullion to its old level, bimetallism must fail ”

“ So at this time, when France is engaged in a most expensive war, while she is daily exporting immense quantities of both gold and silver coin, to pay her armies and subsidies, the price of gold bullion in her market is 24 livres 18 sols per marc below the value of her coin. ”

“ The word bullion, which we hear so often mentioned among commercial men, is a misnomer, for it is legitimately applied only to unwrought gold, washed grains or gold dust, 19 amalgamated cakes and balls, and melted bars and cakes; and the word ingot is applied to a bar of gold, which may be manufactured into two hundred half eagles, or one thousand dollars. ”

“ In ordinary times, the marginal value of this function of money sinks to zero, but in emergencies it may become very great. In ordinary times, during the Greenback period, uncoined gold bullion, or gold coin used, not as money, but simply by weight in exchanges, played an important rôle, competing with the Greenbacks in various employments, particularly as bank reserves, and as secondary bank reserves, and so reducing the marginal value of the money-employment of the Greenbacks themselves. Gold bullion is not the only thing which can thus serve, however. ”

“ Why silver bullion is dearer than coin. When you sell standard silver bullion at the mint, you are paid in weighty money; that is, you receive for your bullion the very same weight in standard coin; the coinage costs nothing; but 563when you sell bullion in the market, you are paid in worn out silver, in gold, in bank notes, in short, in every species of lawful current money. Now all these payments have some defect: the silver you are paid with is worn and light; the gold you are paid with is over-rated, and perhaps also light ”

“ All I know is the Sub-treasury has bought over two billion dollars' worth of gold bullion in the last four months... and what can we do in the face of that?
PLIM. No wonder that prices went up to the skies!
RUTH. I had the White House on the 'phone this afternoon. We can demonetize gold... the government can refuse to buy any more. ”

“ Gold, or any other metal when raised from the mine and purified, converted into Coin, Dollars or Doubloons, is purchased with other articles deemed by the proprietor equivalent, and though one piece of gold of any given purity must be always equal to another piece of gold of the same purity and weight, it does not follow that they will be of the same value when measured by other articles: when in the same day and the same place bullion will be often dearer in the morning than in the evening, like three per cents. and will follow the demand of the market. ”

“ Perhaps we may fairly sum this evidence up by saying that it goes to show the existence in India at the present time of an enormous demand for gold bullion, a very considerable demand for sovereigns for purposes of hoarding, and a relatively smaller demand for them, chiefly confined to the United Provinces, the Punjab, Madras, and Bombay, for purposes of currency. ”

“ It is plain, that to form our whole circulation exclusively of the precious metals, is impossible, and that some system, not of mere intrinsic value, but of confidence, is to be resorted to.
It is plain, that to circumscribe a circulation by this identity of price between Bullion, Coin, and Bank Notes, is absurd; since there can be no connexion between things limited and things unlimited in value. The principle has no analogy to a currency. ”

“ Mr. R. M. T. Hunter, an avowed bimetallist, in a report to the United States Senate, said:
"The mischief would be great indeed if all the world were to adopt but one of the precious metals as the standard of value. To adopt gold alone would diminish the specie currency more than one-half; and the reduction the other way, should silver be taken as the only standard, would be large enough to prove highly disastrous to the human race."
He evidently did not consider the purchase of silver bullion at its coinage value by the government, instead of the free coinage of silver, as monometallism. ”

“ If, as the most reliable statistics affirm, there are nearly $7,000,000,000 of coin or bullion in the world, not very unequally divided between gold and silver, it is impossible to strike silver out of existence as money without results which will prove distressing to millions and utterly disastrous to tons of thousands. ”

“ When the expences of a war, or a wrong balance of trade, have carried off a great many heavy guineas, it is natural that bullion should rise; because then it will be paid for more commonly in light gold and silver; that is to say, with pounds sterling, below the value of 113 grains fine gold, the worth of the pound sterling in new guineas.
A demand for exporting bullion. 565II. This wrong balance of trade, or a demand for bullion abroad, becoming very great, may occasion a scarcity of the metals in the market, as well as a scarcity of the coin ”

“ For a long time these consignments were delivered with perfect safety. Then, after a particularly rich vein had been struck, it became necessary to forward a very large consignment of bullion. Contrary to the usual practice, only two men were sent in charge of it. Their dead bodies were afterwards discovered, and the gold was never recovered. ”

“ These are the only sensible and legitimate ways of controlling and lowering the price of Gold: not the contracting our currency, distressing our merchants, increasing our taxes, and withdrawing those means of credit and accommodation by which we have gained our power and superiority in the commercial world.
No one can be more aware than the writer of the evils which spring from over trading, which often results from too great facility in acquiring credit and currency: but it is an evil which has a tendency to cure itself. ”

“ If, just previous to the introduction of bimetallism, the silver level in Sb is below the gold level in Gb the statute introducing bimetallism will be inoperative, i.e. the silver bullion will not flow uphill, as it were, into the money reservoir; but if, as in Figure 6 a or in 7 a, the silver level is higher, then as soon as the mints are open to silver, it will flow into circulation. Being at first cheaper than gold, it will push out the gold money through the left tube (i.e. by melting) into the bullion market. ”

“ If this Government or a number of governments can offer a market unlimited as compared with the supply, the bullion value of gold and silver can be maintained at the legal ratio. The moment one metal tends to cheapen, the use falls on it and increases its price, while the decreased demand for the dearer metal retards its rise and thus the bullion values are kept near to their legal ratio, so near that the variation can cause far less inconvenience and injustice than the variation in the exchangeable value of the unit would inflict under a single standard. ”

“ The term bullion, as used at the Mint, includes all gold and silver, whether in the shape of bars, lumps, grains, plate, or foreign coins. All these varieties of bullion are received at the Mint for coinage, but no deposit is received of less value than one hundred dollars.
The weights used at the Mint are Troy weights, and they are always expressed in ounces and decimals of an ounce. Thus, 18 oz. 15 dwt. is written 18·15 oz.
The fineness of bullion is expressed in thousandths. The standard of our coins, as fixed by law, is 900 thousandths ”

“ Since the reformation of the gold coin, the market price of standard silver bullion has fallen occasionally to five shillings and threepence, five shillings and fourpence, and five shillings and fivepence an ounce, which last price it has scarce ever exceeded. Though the market price of silver bullion has fallen considerably since the reformation of the gold coin, it has not fallen so low as the mint price. ”

“ But not only those trades, which are altogether, or partly carried on by bullion or money, will be affected by them, but all trade whatsoever: For, as I have before shewn, that bullion, being the medium of the value of all commodities between nation and nation, as money is between people of the same nation ”

“ As long as a thief could find no means of disposing of such plunder all articles of plate and jewellery had been safe, and money alone had presented any temptation to the evil-disposed. When, however, two or three silversmiths and jewellers of the bond or expiree class had been allowed to open shops, in which gold or silver bullion was a legitimate trade possession, the case was altered, and the thief was tempted to resort to the melting-pot if he could manage to lay his hands upon anything of value. ”

“ For the gold could have been kept in England by selling bills at a rate more advantageous than the par of exchange by about this amount. The annual amount which is drawn out by bullion dealers when gold is available all the year round is probably not less than £2,000,000. Thus an important indirect effect of the present practice is to allow bullion dealers in the summer months to get their gold at the Government’s cost slightly cheaper than they otherwise could. ”

“ These events are inevitable, unless we let our money be exported, or turn all our coin into bullion, and make that the medium of domestick as well as foreign commerce; which must soon be our case, and every day grows more and more so: for who will give himself the trouble of carrying his bullion to the mint, to have it made less valuable than before? Whereas if money had the same liberty of exportation as bullion has, all the silver not otherwise manufactured would immediately be carried thither and coined, and less of it be carried out afterwards for the reasons before given. ”

“ This last and the assay offices at Boise City, I. T., Helena, M. T., and Charlotte, N. C., are limited by law to melting and assaying gold and silver bullion and paying for the same from Treasury funds. There is an assay office at New York for the testing of foreign coin or bullion bought by the government to be coined or recoined. All the precious metal purchased for mintage is computed at the value given it at these assay offices. The single letters, O., S., C., etc., stamped under the eagle on American coin indicate where the pieces were minted. ”

“ If the Committees of Parliament have directed their inquiries to the points I have above suggested, and no longer impute, without proof, the state of the price of gold or the cause of exchange to excess of currency, we shall hope that the real truth will at length be admitted and fairly acted upon. ”

“ The price of Coin may be fixed by a Mint Indenture, and confined to home circulation, as the price of tine silver may be fixed by the Hamburgh Bank, so long as it remains in the Bank. But when coin by melting becomes bullion, or when bank silver is taken from the Bank of Hamburgh, and gets into the market, they become subject equally to the variations of the market, and follow the course of demand, and rise and fall in price accordingly. ”

“ Each kind of money, as the penny, nickel, dime, has its own peculiar demand and its saturation point. For the smaller denominations the standard metal is not suitable. A gold dollar cannot well be cut into twenty or a hundred pieces. Thus copper, nickel, silver remain in restricted use. When these are issued at their bullion value, difficulties arise; not only are they too heavy, but as they vary in bullion value, some of them become worth more as bullion than as coin, and suddenly disappear from circulation. ”

“ Now if it appears that there is no excess of currency to which the high price of Gold is attributable, and if it also appears that this high price may arise from our taxation,—does not this consequence directly follow, that as soon as exchanges naturally come round in our favour, by the cessation of loans abroad and the superior balances of our trade, that Gold will flow in as usual, and remain here as before the war, unless some other contravening cause prevents it? ”

“ Since then money or bullion must be exported, when debts are contracted abroad, I think it is eligible to send out the first rather than the latter, or at least to leave the people at liberty to export which they please. Indeed they are the same thing; for all money is bullion, and all bullion is easily converted into money ”

“ Let it be asked of any common logician, whether there is any connexion between the necessity of supplying a circulating medium proportioned to the whole income and transactions of a wealthy community, and the identity of price between Coin of a fixt value and Bullion of a variable value. It is evident that any attempt to prove such a connexion must be preposterous. ”

“ When the Nation is made to understand the question, and to feel that diminution of currency will not tend to bring back our gold, but will most certainly augment the pressure of our taxes, and diminish the powers of production ”

“ If the price of Gold had been raised by excess of issue, to an inordinate height, it could not have been lowered almost to mint price by a great additional excess of issue. If the course of our exchanges had been depressed by a superabundant quantity of paper, it could never have turned in our favour and risen above par, by a quantity of similar paper still more superabundant. ”