ore
than three hundred million dollars in 1900.

A considerable part of the gold product is used in gilding
picture-frames, book-titles, sign-letters, porcelain, and ornamental
brass work. Practically, all of this is lost, and in the United States
alone the loss aggregates about fifteen million dollars yearly. The
abrasion and unavoidable wear of gold coin is another great source of
loss.

An enormous amount is used in the manufacture of jewelry, most of which
is used over and over again. By far the greater part, however, is used
as a commercial medium of exchange--that is, as coin. For this purpose
its employment is wellnigh universal; and indeed this has been its chief
use since the beginning of written history. Gold coin of the United
States is 900 fine, that is, 900 parts of every thousand is pure gold;
gold coin of Great Britain is 916-2/3 fine. In each case a small amount
of silver, or silver and copper, is added to give the coin the requisite
hardness. The coining of gold, and also other metals, is a government
monopoly in every civilized country.

The fiat value of gold throughout the commercial world is the equivalent
of $20.6718 per troy ounce of fine metal; an eagle weighs, therefore,
2580 grains. The real value, however, is reckoned by a different and a
more accurate standard, namely, the labor of man, and this, the
sporadic finds of placer gold excepted, has not changed much in two
thousand years or more. The increased production has scarcely equalled
the demand for the metal; moreover, the longer a mine is worked the
greater becomes the expense of its operation. Improved processes for the
extraction of gold have not created any surplus of gold; indeed, the
supply is not equal to the demand; and this fact keeps the metal
practically at a fixed value.

=Silver.=--Silver is about as widely diffused as is gold, but it is more
plentiful. It is found sparingly in most of the older rocks and also in
sea-water. It was used by the Greeks for coinage more than eight hundred
years before the Christian era, and was known to the Jewish people in
very early times. According to the writer of the Book of Kings (1 Kings
x. 21), "It was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon," but
Tacitus declares that in ancient Germany silver was even more valuable
than gold. The mines of Laureion (Laurium) gave the Greek state of
Attica its chief power, and the failure of the mines marked the
beginning of Athenian decline.

S