Most of that gold was "flight capital." It wasn't in payment for American exports, It was sent here for safekeeping from the shadow of the European war. The volume has increased steadily in recent years until last year's flood. But now the flood is abating.
Practically all the world's gold reserves have been drained to this country. That goes for Britain. Canada, France, Japan—South Ameriea—name any country. Our Federal Reserve Board now reports the gold holdings of the Bank of England—guardian of the gold standard for over a century—at $i—a rather nominal sum. So now there's no more gold to come to this country except the newly mined gold.
Many economists think that this is just due to the war. and that aft bookkeeping.
Some of the bankers want us to try to force some of it into circulation, but people don't want it, and we'd be lucky if half a billion out of the 22 billions went into coin use. We can lend it to foreign countries, but that's something like a consistent winner at poker offering to lend indefinitely to the © steady losers. We can stop buying, but that, too, would upset foreign exchange and hurt the British, and we can continue to buy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.