Vanished Gold

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XXIV, Issue 4248, 19 February 1921, Page 4

Vanished Gold

WHEN WILL IT RETURN? THE DAY OF PAPER MONEY. F!or over six years the rivers of gold which carries all the world's argosies of trade on its bosom has ceased to flow. It has been conserved at its source, and :^tliat is i'why-'the: ordinary man never sees a sovereign nowadays. He gets merely scraps of paper—honour-, 1 able scraps, if rather insanitary; i ."■ A leading financial man inAuckland was asked if gold would soon ; return to circulation, and the i'amij liar coins of pre-war days replace ! the bank-notes which now form j our currency: " Not "for a long I time," he said. "The return of the''sovereign is indefinitely postponed because it has too much work to do elsewhere." Andjie went on to explain that it was just as well'that sovereigns did not appear in circulation at this juncture, because with the fluctuation of trade and ' values throughout the world there would be a race to acquire ami to hoard them, thus curtailing the .work-in-the commercial world that the sovereign had to do. ■.=■ The United States absorbed great quantities of gold during the war. Trainloads of it came down from Ottawa and Vladivostok to pay for the munitions Great Britain and Russia bought The immediate effect was an inflation of currency, easy credits, trade expansion, wild extravagance, aiid the inevitable reaction from",which America is now suffering/. Nevertheless, because Great Britain has a world trade, and is setting herself to win it back she must sooner or later recover her gold, and then there will be a- return tq normal in the use of it. Meanwhile, however, general circulation of the precious commodity must .naturally be restricted, and paper money issued as against gold reserves must take its place. : "Sovereigns are not likely to be in general circulation^ again in New Zealand'for a lone; tihue to I come,'' said the authority questioned on the matter. -"Tjhoii? return depends on so many unknown factors in trade and finance that he would be a wizard indeed who ' could make an accurate forecast. But that need make no., difference jto the ordinary man. His notes I are just as good as gold for all purposes, and he has the assets of the country behind them."