Our Money Manufactory.
UMISMATICS is a science in which the vast majority of people probably take but the faintest interest. Yet the history of coinage, its developments, its ramifications, is bound up indissolubly with the history of the human race. It is the history of money; and money, as Carlyle said of his own time, is the one certain nexus as between man and man. Money is the
determining factor in four-fifths of our relationships. It has made the world what it is; on the one hand it has brutalised mankind, and on the other it has given man unrivalled opportunities of winning popular esteem. Money has ruined and created individuals, families, States. Equally often it has brought worldly happiness and worldly misery; it has broken hearts, unhinged reasons, undone great enterprises; it has shed light in dark places, secured comfort for the weary and the suffering, and involved all that heart can desire. Noble knees have bent before "Lucre's sordid charms"; the humble and the struggling have exalted themselves to place and power by its means. Pope gives us an idea not only of the use but of the abuse to which riches may be put, from the hiring of the dark assassin to the corruption of afriend, and the bribing of a Senate.
Money in the form of cash has been infinitely more to civilisation than mere barter and exchange ever were to barbarous races content to accept one article in payment for another. It is, in fact, only necessary to let the mind dwell for a period on all that the possession or want of coin means to a people, individually and collectively, to render any inquiry into the working of our money manufactory one of considerable fascination. The attractions of the Mint for the ordinary sightseer have, it would seem, yearly become greater, and in 1889, according to the Report of the Deputy Master, the number of visitors was larger than in any previous year, no less than 7,912 persons—that is, an average of twenty-five a day—having been shown over the establishment on Tower Hill. Vivid an idea of the place as the illustrations which accompany this article will convey to those who have never been to the Mint, it may at once be said, that to thoroughly grasp the actual work done there, a visit is essential. It is an institution round which centres so much human energy and scientific achievement that a picture should certainly make most people anxious to know something more about it.
Running silver into moulds.
The Mint, as one approaches it on Tower Hill, suggests that it may be a barrack, and the sentry pacing up and down outside lends colour to this view, until one finds one's passage through the entrance gate blocked by a sturdy policeman. Unless you happen to be fully armed with credentials, or orders, you will not easily run the gauntlet of the keeper of the peace and the gate, affable gentleman though he is. To be shown over the Mint you must get an order from the Deputy Master, and then everything is clear.
Once within the precincts of the establishment, your education—if it is a first visit, as this of ours is—begins. You have probably, when pocketing your salary at the end of the week, never given a moment's thought as to the process by which money comes
