such movements may be caused by the efforts of the controlling
financial interests in some market to attract gold. The movement of
exchange and the movement of gold are absolutely dependent one on the
other.

Considering broadly this question of the movement of gold, it is to be
borne in mind that by far the greater part of the world's production of
the precious metal takes place in countries ranking very low as to
banking importance. The United States, is indeed, the only first-class
financial power in which any very considerable proportion of the
world's gold is produced. Excepting the ninety million dollars of gold
produced in the United States in 1908, nearly all of the total
production of 430 million dollars for that year was taken out of the
ground in places where there exists but the slightest demand for it for
use in banking or the arts.

That being the case, it follows that there is to be considered, first,
the _primary_ movement of nearly all the gold produced--the movement
from the mines to the great financial centers.

Considering that over half the gold taken out of the ground each year
is mined in British possessions, it is only natural that London should
be the greatest distributive point. Such is the case. Ownership of the
mines which produce most of the world's gold is held in London, and so
it is to the British capital that most of the world's gold comes after
it has been taken out of the ground. By every steamer arriving from
Australia and South Africa great quantities of the metal are carried to
London, there to be disposed of at the best price available.

For raw gold, like raw copper or raw iron, has a price. Under the
English banking law, it is true, the Bank of England _must_ buy at the
rate of seventy-seven shillings nine pence per ounce all the gold of
standard (.916-2/3) fineness which may be offered it, but that
establishes merely a minimum--there is no limit the other way to which
the price of the metal may not be driven under sufficiently urgent
bidding.

The distribution of the raw gold is effected as follows: Each Monday
morning there is held an auction at which are present all the
representatives of home or foreign banks who may be in the market for
gold. These representatives, fully apprised of the amount of the metal
which has arrived during the preceding week and which is to be sold,
know exactly how much they can bid. The gold, therefore, is sold at the
best possible price, and