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.
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 into the world. The pounds (if you have any), the shillings, and the pence which you carry in your pockets are the result of a combination of experience and skill which you, perhaps, little suspect.
When the bullion—the metal in its pure state—arrives at the Mint, it is assayed—that is, tested. It is then passed on to the Melting-room, and, together with the baser metal which forms the alloy necessary to reduce it to the proper standard, placed in the crucible, or melting-pot. Let us take the coining of silver as an example. The crucible used is made of mixed clay and graphite, each vessel holding about three thousand ounces. On two sides of the Melting-room are coke furnaces, and into one of these the crucible is dropped.
Here it remains until the metal is at a molten heat, when it is lifted by means of a crane on to an apparatus shown in our illustration. This forms a pretty sight. The crucible is red-hot, and the boiling metal, as it is stirred vigorously by one of the men with an iron rod, emits a lovely bluish flame. The apparatus tilts the pot, and the metal runs into a series of moulds which move on a carriage underneath. These moulds being well oiled, the metal has no chance of becoming part of them. The bars formed in this way are twelve inches long and three-eighths of an inch thick. When removed from the moulds their edges are ragged, but a revolving file soon makes them smooth, and the bars are ready to be again assayed. A piece is chipped from one of them, and if the necessary standard of fineness has been secured, the bars pass to the next department.
This is the Rolling-room. The metal, it must be understood, is far from hard, and the reduction of the thickness and consequent increase in the length, due to the rolling of the bars, are not so difficult a matter as to the uninitiated they may seem. The bars are placed between adjustable cylinders and rolled into strips, or "fillets" as they are called.
They pass several times through the machine, being reduced the one-nineteenth part of an inch in each rolling at first, but, finally, only the one-hundredth part of an inch. Naturally the process makes the metal very hard, and it has to be annealed—that is, heated and softened—constantly until it is the right thickness. We need only state that the strips from which half-sovereigns are made must not vary more than 1-20,000th part of an inch—in other words, they must be within 1-10,000th part of an inch of the nominal thickness—to give an idea of the minute care with which every stage of the development of the coin has to be watched. Two-tenths of a grain is the divergence allowed in the weight of the sovereign, but even this margin may mean a difference of more than £3,000 on a million sovereigns.
