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TREASURY SHYER A Presidential order to provide unallocated Treasury silver for use by industry and business as suggested by the jewelry trade or any new legislation is not necessary to make available an ample supply of silver for all possible uses* The simplest and best solution is a modification of 0* P* A* General Maximum Price regulation including the one word "silver* among the items exempted from that order* If the jewelers and silversmiths are driven out of business due to their inability to purchase silver under the present conditions, the principal financial burden will fall upon the Treasury Department of the United States* The Treasury Department will be deprived of all the taxes that would otherwise be paid:- by the hundreds of corporations affected and by their hundreds of thousands of employees and stockholders* These employees are artists and highly skilled artisans accustomed to high wages and for whom other employment may not be available* Jewelry, art goods and silver-ware are not necessities of life* They are not included in the cost-of-living index* Thqy are luxuries* But they are desired by all - and are bought out of surplus earnings or savings - to satisfy personal vanity or as a form of harmless hoarding* Such purchasing should appeal to the 0* P* A* to help siphon off excess spending power* The weight of silver and difference in cost in the finished goods is so trifling that advance to Mint price would not decrease the demand* In fact demand may well increase due to increased earning power of the large majority of the population* - 2 - The aotion of 0. P. A. in raising the ceiling on foreign silver from 55-3/8£ to per ounce effective August 31, 194-2 is a step in the right direction, but only a step. It will not stop the speculation which is withholding and will oontinue to withhold large supplies in Mexico and South America. A free market will make available a supply far greater than any possible demand. All the profit on sales from this supply will redound directly to the benefit of the American people for that supply is their own reserve of three and one-third billion ounces in the U. S. Treasury, accumulated at an average "cost" of less titan fifty cents per ounce. Production of silver has been decreasing, but demand has been steadily increasing, and every study indicates a continuous uptrend in demand for the duration at least. Requirements in the United States for the next twelve months may be estimated assOunces War Production Goods 175,000,000 Essential Industries 90,000,000 Arts and Non-Essentials Loan to England, Australia-coinage Total 100,000,000 60,000.000 425,000,000 Available Supply on Free Market Current Production-United States Imports Total The balance of could come only from Treasury Stocks 70,000,000 115.000.000 185,000,000 240,000,000 - 3 - On this basis, the Treasury would receive for the 240,000,000 ounces at the Mint price approximately $310,000,000 and would be relieved of purchase of current production of 70,000,000 ounces about or a total gain in cash of 50.000*000 360,000,000 On basis of actual average cost of silver on hand the Treasury would make a real profit on sale of 24-0,000,000 ounces of about 192,000,000 Only the various companies could individually estimate the advantage to the Treasury Department of Corporation Taxes ? Employees Personal Income Tazes ? Stockholders Personal income Tazes on dividends ? So far as price advance would benefit mining companies in the TJkited States and other American countries, such advance would merely decrease cost of production of copper, zinc, lead and other strategic metals. Most of the higher price would revert directly to the United States Treasury in tazes, and the burden of finanoial support to the Americas under our Good Neighbor policy would be proportionately decreased. But the all important factor is the benefit to the War Effort in greater production of strategic metals that are produced from the same tons of native ores which yield the silver. Copper, Zinc and Lead are essential to winning the war. Recent survey shows a loss of about twenty per cent in man-power of - 4 - non-ferrous mines to the armed services, shipyards, airplane factories or government "cost plus fixed fee" jobs, because ot wage scales higher than can possibly be paid by non-ferrous metal mines on prices for their products fixed by 0. P. A. Exemption of silver from maximum price regulation would solve the problem of the jewelers and silversmiths, would yield large revenues to the Treasury and would contribute more toward winning the war than any other single action within the power of the Government • E. L. Bert New York, N. Y., August 28, 1942.
@FedFRASER