MEN WHO MAKE MILLIONS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2595, 1 September 1909, Page 3

MEN WHO MAKE MILLIONS.

£9O MADE IN A MINUTE. '''' ’ - ' _ 25,C00 SOVEREIGNS—A FAIR DAY’S WORK. - Gold, gold, everywhere gold. It seemed like the story of King Midas over again (says the Sydney “Daily Telegraph”). There was gold in the molten state, gold in bars, and gold in “fillets,’- and then these prosaic men, instead of holding out their working aprons to receive the. golden shower, ) actually used a wooden bucket to catch the stream of sovereigns as it gushed fofth from that wonderful fasttapping machine. Truly the Mint is a place which conjures up a'host of thoughts in the mind cf the visitor. How‘easy it seems to. make money I And how strange - it seems that these men, working there all tlieir lives, and making millions of sovereigns, should be content with a comparative pittance to live upon! But let us follow the g;old in, its passage through the Mint. Away up in Queensland a miner has worked hard for a fortnight. He puts, aside his “cradle” and he makes for the township to replenish his supplies. He flings- himself into the ramshackle country store, his .hand dives deep down into his capacious hip pocket, and out comes a bottle half-full of “dust,” won from the alluvial deposits. In the payment of that ration account wo see the gold in process of transition from its natural state into the uses of .sordid commercialism. Thence onwards its' beauty is nothing; its weight, everything.- The storekeeper weighs it'./ He. sells it to a bank ; the bank .weighs it. The bank sells it .to the Mint; the Mint weighs it—not once, but more than a dozen times, before it again passes out in the form of sovereigns.

Tlio Mint receives gold in various forms-for minting—in bullion, retorted, or, as mentioned above, alluvial gold. The bullion office furnishes the sender with a receipt for so many ounces, “said to contain gold.” . Note the caution displajred by the institution. Then the gold passes into the melting room, where its weight is again checked. It is then placed in a fire-clay pot (each pot holding about 1200 ounces), and this is inserted in* *the kerosene blast furnace. The kerosene is carried by a pipe to the furn'ace, where a blower atomises it, and when the kerosene is lighted it works spirally around the pot, which in a minute or two is seen to be whitehot. Then the gold is poured‘into' barmoulds, and, after samples have been taken -for two independent assays, is returned to the bullion room. Once more it comes back to the melting room —thi s time for the refining process. Again it is weighed. It is refined by means of chlorine gas, which is passed, through the molten metal by means of a clay-pipe. The resultant fine gold is then melted with copper to form standard bars 2ft 4in long of 22 carat—24 carat being pure gold. The scene then shifts to the rolling room where the standard bars of gold 2ft 4in long and four-tenths of an inch thick; pass' through three pairs of rollers. 32 times, finally, emerging in the form; of “fillets” (suggestive of the yeal butcher), _ 9ft long, and one-twen-tieth of an inch thick—the standard thickness of a" sovereign. The nest consists of i punching the blank sovereigns out of the “fillets” and ringing' them to detect any that are “dumb,” i.e., split or defective. The most difficult work here is that of the • “tryer.” He ascertains the relative weights of the .various “fillets” of gold, and apportions them.to various machines, so that the slightest reduction in the thickness of the “fillet” may be compensated for by a minute crease m the diameter of the punching instrument. To . ascertain any variation from standard thickness, two sovereign blanks are stamped out of every “fillet,” and tried by weighing in the sensitive assay balance;; Each sovereign is supposed to v’eigh 123| grains, and the limit of variation al- ' lowed—either on the light side or the heavyside—is one-fifth of a grain. : If, however, a thousand sovereigns were made even that infinitesimal heavier than standard, it would represent a loss of 30s to the Mint. “We reckon that 25,000 sovereigns is a fair day’s work,” remarked the officer-in-charge of this department. , After this the greasy sovereign “blanks” are washed in hot water and soda, and dried in a steam tub. Coming out fresh from the bath they go through.a machine which turns up the edges of the blanks, to assist in the process of striking. The annealing machine then takes them in h&nd, and they are heated for about forty minutes in the oven, so as to make them ready for the impression;, Then the blanks pass into the coining machine, which stamps them on both sides and gives them;-the milled edge—the three operations being performed simultaneously. The finished coins pour into a. .wooden bucket on the floor, at the. rate of 90 per minute. The final operation is the testing of the sovereign by automatic balances, which separate the coins into three . recept'acles-r-fo'r light, medium, and heavy coins. The light coins are rejected, and begin the operation, again in the melting room. But the medium and heavy coins pass through the care-fully-guarded gates of the institution, to bring happiness to so many human beings. ; . > •