Business: Gold Report

• Share

Last week the gold delegation of the financial committee of the League of Nations made an interim report. From leading gold-mining experts the committee obtained the general opinion that gold production will rise during the next few years, slump gradually until 1940, then drop sharply. On this hypothesis, the committee foresaw a possible gold shortage, a great depression in prices. Remedies were suggested against this theoretical danger.

The general nature of the committee's suggestions was that use of gold as a currency should be further contracted, various credit means expanded. It suggested that the traditional concept of the necessary gold reserve be modified, admitted that since such a change by a single nation would hurt its credit, all nations would have to concur.

More concerned with their own reserves than with the future of gold are gold-producing companies. For the price is always fixed, the market unlimited. Gold facts all the world should know:

Price: $20.67183462 per five ounces in the U. S., the equivalent in other currencies.

Largest Producing Country: South Africa.

Biggest Tycoons: Solomon ("Solly") Barnato Joel and brother, Jack. Solomon is lord of the world's diamond industry, chairman of Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Co. Ltd., potent South African holding company whose shares are known in London as "Johnnies."

Bulk: All the gold mined in the world since 1492 would make a cube whose sides would be only 38.5 ft. long.

Statistic: The average man weighs 150 lb. If he were worth his weight in gold he would have a rough value of $45.000.