WHERE BANK NOTES ARE "NO GOOD."

Hokitika Guardian, 28 December 1920, Page 4

WHERE BANK NOTES ARE "NO GOOD."

By L. E. Nenme. JOHANNESBURG, S.A. Tho Government of South Africa, and th 0 banks and all sorts of currency experts are hard at work on a scheme for with-idrawing gold coins from circulation in this country. Under it bank-note's Will be inconvertible Until gold is at par again. “They say” tho measure will go through. Nearly everybody’s views on the subject have been obtained. A 600-page Blue-book is full of them, and the newspapers have been publishing so many letters on currency that tho conscientious reader can hardly tell the difference between a shilling and half a. crown.

Yet curiously enough nobody seems to have ascertained the opinions of the gentlemen upon whose attitude the smooth working of the change will largely depend. The Kaffirs swear by the sovereign. .Tim, the houseboy, who, according to housewives, eats soap and candles and matches, and his brother Whisky, who hammers a steel rod into rock underground, and Sixpence, his first cousin, who works on a. farm and eats sheep when lie can catch them in a corner with nobody loking, have absolute faith in gold coins. They want nothing else. Offer Jim three il bank notes when you pay him at the end of the month and he shakes his head and says, “No good.” Ho won’t have them. The sovereign ho knows. These hits of paper he does not know 'and does not want to. He puts his gold coins in a purse strapped under his arm or buries them under the floor of his outside room, and

watches them accumulate a&d calculates Low many cattle he can buy towards ■ tho winning of sonic dusky maiden at a i distant kraal. With gold lio can do anything. But pieces of paper —“Ikrona. No good” ***** The Kaffir is suspicious about money. A florin is still called a “Scotsman” in somo parts of tho Transvaal, because many years ago, the legend runs, a Scotsman with a railway contract paid his boys in silver and give them twoshilling pieces as half-crowns, paying them eight as £1 for a long time before tho trick was discovered. As for paper, a police court case on tho Rand the other day revealed the fact that a “crook” presented a Kaffir with a piece of illuminated label from a cigar box and got hint to change it as a £5 note! No wonder Jim says, “No good.” So while the theoretical economists and financial experts are going gaily ahead, people are wondering how Jim, Whisky, Sixpence and Co. will take the disappearance of their beloved sovereigns. In offioal circles it is stated that “educational propaganda” is to he begun in order to persuade Jim and his brothers that a piece of paper is just as good as a sovereign when the month’s pay is given out. But suppose Jim say “Ikonn. No good ?”