Source Documents - Financial Operative

 

Source Documents - Financial Operative.

Operational records of the U. S. Sub-treasury and New York Assay Office for this period have not been located. With regard to U. S. Sub-treasury records:

... If gold is exported under present conditions, it will not appear in the report of the transactions of the banks with the Sub-Treasury, because the Assay Office has no bars available for export [which would appear in Assay Office export records - which have not been located -], and exports of coin do not appear in the Sub-Treasury operations. Gold coin is obtainable in payment of gold certificates and the transactions are not reported in Sub-Treasury operations any more than would be the exchange of any form of currency for another. ...

Wall Street Journal, January 21, 09, 8:1

Daily records of the Sub-treasury would, however, be helpful, but have not been located.1

Correspondence from both the U. S. Mint at Philadelphia and the N. Y. Assay Office to the Director of the Mint, Washington D. C., regarding the exchange of gold coin for bullion (bars) have been located and utilized in this report.2

Conspicuously missing, however, are correspondence from the N. Y. Assay Office, numbers 274 059, 274 490, 275 103 and 275 319, which deal with engagements between and including December 11, 1908 and January 12, 1909.

FOOTNOTES

1In his book War Treasures I (Seven Seas Publishing, 2002), at Page 29 Footnote 47, author Alan Riebe states: Virtually all Sub-treasury and Assay Office records from this period [circa World War I] were purposely destroyed by the Federal Government in the early 1970s. 
2Bureau of the Mint, Letters Received, R.G. 104, Stack 10E1, Row 11. U. S. National Archives, Washington, D. C.

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