Page:Coin's Financial School.djvu/120

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102
COIN'S FINANCIAL SCHOOL.

ence that nine twenty-dollar gold pieces placed in a row was one foot long, and that hence eighty-one of them would go in a square foot.

He then stacked up the gold pieces a foot high, placing the rule by the side of them, and announced that the 125 in the stack measured one foot.

And then said:

"Multiply 81, the number in a square foot, by 125, the number in each stack, to make them all a foot high, and you have as a result 10,125 twenty-dollar gold pieces. Multiply this by twenty, the value of each, and you get the value of this cubic foot of gold coins, viz., $202,500.

"A cubic foot of gold coin has in it 10 per cent of alloy; this, together with the unoccupied space between the stacks of coin, is nearly as much space as that occupied by the pure gold in the coins. So you can see that if it was pure solid cast gold the cubic foot would contain the $398,098+.

"All the gold in the world cast into solid blocks may be stacked behind the counter of the Metropolitan National Bank."

Coin then turned to the teller and invited him to a seat on the platform until he reached the silver illustration.

"Most of your offices would hold it all," Coin began again.

"It is in this quantity of gold that it is proposed to measure the value of all the other property of the world. Its significance is written in our present low prices and depression in business.

"When the transformation now going on in India, which is changing her from the silver standard to a gold standard, and when Mexico and South America, and the