of money, as a universal equivalent, and, therefore, appear to be directly exchangeable for it. In so far as the price of a commodity is _realized_ in gold, it is exchanged for gold as a commodity, as a particular embodiment of labor-time; but in so far as it is the _price_ that is realized in gold, the commodity is exchanged for gold in its capacity of money and not of a commodity, i. e., it is exchanged for gold as a universal embodiment of labor-time. But in either case the quantity of gold for which the commodity is exchanged in the process of circulation is not determined by exchange, but the exchange is determined by the price of the commodity, i. e., by its exchange value estimated in gold.[67] Within the process of circulation gold appears in everybody’s hands as the result of sale C―M. But since C―M, sale, is at the same time M―C, purchase, it is apparent that while C, the commodity from which the process starts, is passing through its first metamorphosis, another commodity, which confronts it as the opposite pole M, is completing its second metamorphosis and is, therefore, passing through the second phase of circulation, while the first commodity is still in the first phase of its course.
As a result of the first phase of circulation, the sale, we get money which is the starting point of the second phase. In place of the commodity in its first form appears its golden equivalent. This result may now form a resting point, since the commodity in this second form possesses a lasting existence of its own. The commodity, a non-use-value in the hands of its possessor, is now on hand in an always useful, since always exchangeable, form, and it depends upon circumstances when and at what point of the surface of the commodity world it will again enter circulation. Its formation into a gold chrysalis constitutes an independent period in its life which may last a greater or less length of time. While in the case of barter the exchange of one particular use-value is directly bound up with the exchange of another particular use-value, the universal character of labor which creates exchange value is manifested in the separation and lack of coincidence of acts of purchase and sale.
_M―C, purchase_, is the inverted movement of C―M and at the same time the second or final metamorphosis of the commodity. As gold, i. e., in the form of the universal equivalent, the commodity can be directly represented in the use-values of all other commodities; the latter aspire to gold as their hereafter, but at the same time indicate in their prices the key in which it must sound in order that their bodies, their use-values, may take the place of money, while their souls, their exchange-values, may enter gold. The universal product of the alienation of commodities is the absolutely alienable commodity. There is no qualitative and only a quantitative limit to the transformation of gold into commodity, namely, the limit of its own quantity or magnitude of its value. “Everything is to be had for cash.” While in the movement C―M, the commodity, through its alienation as a use-value, realizes its own price and the use-value of somebody else’s money; it realizes in the movement M―C, through its alienation as an exchange value, its own use-value and the price of the other commodity. While through the realization of its price the commodity transforms gold into actual money, it turns gold into its merely fleeting money-form, through its own retransformation. Since the circulation of commodities implies an extensive division of labor and consequently a diversity of wants on the part of individuals, a diversity which bears an inverse ratio to the specialization of their own products, the purchase M―C may appear as an equation with one commodity equivalent or split up into a series of commodity-equivalents limited by the variety of the demands of the purchaser and by the amount of money in his possession. Just as a sale is a purchase, so is a purchase a sale. M―C is at the same time C―M, but the initiative belongs in this case to gold or the purchaser.
Coming back now to C―M―C, or to circulation as a whole, it is apparent that it contains the combined series of metamorphoses through which a commodity passes. But at the same time as one commodity enters the first phase of its circulation and completes its first metamorphosis, another commodity enters the second phase of circulation, completes its second metamorphosis and falls out of circulation; the first commodity enters at the same time the second phase of circulation completes its second metamorphosis and falls out of circulation, while a third commodity enters circulation, passes through the first phase of its course completing the first metamorphosis.
Thus, the combined circulation C―M―C, as a complete metamorphosis of a commodity always constitutes at the same time the end of the complete metamorphosis of another commodity and the beginning of a complete metamorphosis of a third commodity, i. e., a series without beginning or end. To illustrate this let us call C in either extreme C’ and C” respectively, in order to distinguish the commodities, the series reading thus: C’―M―C”. The first member, C’―M, presupposes in fact that M is the result of another transaction C―M, and is thus itself merely the last member of a series C―M―C’, while the second part M―C” is merely a result of C”―M, or appears as the first part of C”―M―C’”, and so on. Furthermore, although M is the result of only _one_ sale, it appears that the last part M―C, may be represented as M―C’ + M―C” + M―C’”, etc., i. e., it may be split up into a number of purchases, and consequently a number of sales, or into a number of first members of new complete metamorphoses of commodities. Since the complete metamorphosis of a single commodity thus appears as a link not only of one endless chain of metamorphoses, but of many such chains, the process of circulation in the world of commodities presents a hopeless confusion of intertwined movements constantly ending and starting anew at a countless number of points. But every single sale or purchase stands as an independent isolated act, whose supplemental act may be separated from it in time and place, and therefore does not need to follow it directly as its continuation. Every separate process of circulation, C―M or M―C, as a transformation of one commodity into use-value and of another into money, i. e., as the first and second phases of circulation respectively forms an independent halting point from either direction; but, on the other hand, all commodities commence their second metamorphosis in the common form of the universal equivalent, gold, and stop at the starting point of the second phase of circulation; for that, reason any M―C dovetails in actual circulation with any C―M; the second chapter in the life-course of one commodity with the first chapter of that of another commodity. A, e. g., sells £2 worth of iron. He thus completes the transaction C―M or the first metamorphosis of commodity iron, but postpones his purchase until some other time. At the same time B, who sold 2 quarters of wheat for £6 a fortnight since, buys with the same £6 a coat and trousers of Moses & Son, thus completing M―C or the second metamorphosis of the commodity, wheat.
The two transactions M―C and C―M appear here merely as links of one chain, because a commodity expressed in gold looks like any other commodity, and one cannot tell by the looks of the gold whether it is transformed iron or transformed wheat. C―M―C appears, therefore, in the actual process of circulation as a jumble of countless accidentally coinciding or successively following members of different complete metamorphoses. The actual process of circulation thus appears not as a complete metamorphosis of a commodity, not as its movement through opposite phases, but as a mere agglomeration of many accidentally coinciding or successive purchases and sales. The process thus loses all clearness of outline which is so much more the case since every single act of circulation, e. g., sale, is at the same time its opposite, purchase, and vice versa. On the other hand, the process of circulation is nothing but the movement of metamorphoses in the world of commodities and, therefore, must reflect them also in its movement as a whole. How that reflection takes place we shall consider in the following chapter. It may be added here that in C―M―C the two extreme Cs constitute two forms of commodities which do not bear the same relation to M. The first C relates to money as a commodity of a special class to a universal commodity, while money relates to the second C as a universal commodity to an individual commodity. C―M―C can, therefore, be reduced by abstract logic to the final form S―U―I in which S, standing for species, forms the first extreme; U, signifying universality, forms the connecting medium, and I, individuality, constitutes the last extreme.
The owners of commodities entered the sphere of circulation simply as guardians of commodities. Within that sphere they confront each other in the opposite roles of buyer and seller, one as a personified sugar-loaf, the other as personified gold. As soon as the sugar-loaf is turned into gold, the seller becomes a buyer. These definite social functions are no outgrowths of human nature, but are the products of relations of exchange between men who produce their goods in the form of commodities. They are so far from being purely individual relations between buyer and seller that both enter this relation only to the extent that their individual labor is disregarded and is turned into money as labor of _no_ individual. Just as it is, therefore, childish to consider these economic bourgeois roles of buyer and seller as eternal social forms of human individuality, so it is on the other hand, preposterous to lament in them the extinction of individuality.[68] They are the necessary manifestations of individuality at a certain stage of the social system of production.
Moreover, in the opposition of buyer and seller the antagonistic nature of capitalistic production is expressed as yet so superficially and as mere matter of form, that this opposition belongs also to precapitalistic forms of society, since it merely requires that the mutual relations of individuals should be those of owners of commodities.
Now, if we consider the result of C―M―C, it comes down to mere interchange of matter, C―C. A commodity has been exchanged for a commodity, a use-value for a use-value, and the transformation of the commodity into money, or the commodity in its form of money, serves merely as a means of effecting this interchange of matter. Money thus appears merely as a _medium of exchange_ of commodities; not as a medium of exchange in general, but as a means of exchange in the sphere We have seen that the process of circulation of commodities comes to a completion in C―C, appearing as mere barter carried on by means of money; further, that C―M―C represents in general not only two isolated processes, but their dynamic union as well; but to draw from that the conclusion that purchase and sale form an indivisible unit, is a mode of thinking the criticism of which belongs to the domain of logic, and not to that of economics. The separation of purchase and sale in the process of exchange destroys all local, primitive, patriarchal and naively genial barriers to interchange of matter in society. It is, moreover, the general form of the separation of the points of coincidence and opposition in this interchange, carrying within it the possibility of commercial crises, because the antagonism of commodity and money is the abstract and general form of all antagonisms with which the capitalistic system of labor is pregnant. Hence, circulation of money is possible without crises, but crises can not occur without money circulation. In other words, where labor based on the system of private exchange has not reached the stage marked by the existence of money, it is less capable of producing those phenomena which presuppose the full development of the capitalistic mode of production.
Bearing this in mind we can appreciate the depth of the criticism which proposes to do away with the “shortcomings” of capitalistic production by abolishing the “privilege” enjoyed by the precious metals and introducing a so-called “rational monetary system.” As a sample of economic defence of an opposite character may serve the following piece of reasoning which has been proclaimed exceedingly keen. JAMES MILL, the father of the well-known English economist, John Stuart Mill, says: “Whatever...be the amount of the annual produce, it never can exceed the amount of the annual demand...Of two men who perform an exchange, the one does not come with only a supply, the other with only a demand; each of them comes with both a demand and a supply...The supply which he brings is the instrument of his demand; and his demand and supply are of course exactly equal to one another. It is therefore, impossible that there should ever be in any country a commodity or commodities in quantity greater than the demand, without there being, to an equal amount, some other commodity or commodities in quantity less than the demand.”[70] Mill restores the balance by turning the process of circulation into direct barter and then smuggling into direct barter the character of buyer and seller borrowed by him from the process of circulation. To put it in his own confused language, during certain periods when all commodities are unsaleable there are really more buyers than sellers of one commodity, _money_, and more sellers than buyers of _all other money_, commodities; such was, e. g., the case at certain moments during the commercial crisis of 1857-58 in London and Hamburg. The metaphysical balance of purchases and sales amounts to this, that every purchase is a sale and every sale is a purchase, which is a poor consolation to the guardian of the commodity who can not bring about its sale and therefore can not buy.[71] The separation of sale and purchase makes possible a large number of fictitious transactions side by side with genuine trade before the final exchange between the producer and the consumer of commodities takes place. It enables a host of parasites to penetrate the process of production and exploit the separation. But this, again, means that with money as the universal form of labor under the capitalist system, there is _the possibility_ of the development of its contradictions.
b. THE CIRCULATION OF MONEY.
Actual circulation appears at first sight as a mass of purchases and sales accidentally taking place side by side. In buying as in selling, commodities and money always stand in the same mutual relation: the seller, on the side of the commodity; the buyer, on that of money.
Money as a medium of circulation always appears therefore as _a means of purchase_; and in that way the difference in its destinations in the opposite phases of the metamorphosis of the commodity becomes indistinguishable.
Money passes into the hands of the seller in the same transaction in which the commodity passes into the hands of the buyer. Commodities and money thus flow in opposite directions and this change of place in which the commodity passes over to one side and money to the other side, occurs simultaneously at an indefinitely large number of points on the entire surface of bourgeois society. But the first step which the commodity makes in the sphere of circulation is also its last step.[72] Whether it leaves its place on account of its attraction for gold (C―M), or on account of its attraction by gold (M―C), with one move, with one change of place it falls out of the sphere of circulation into that of consumption. Circulation is a continuous flow of commodities, but different commodities all the time, since each commodity makes but one move. Every commodity enters upon the second phase of its circulation not as the same commodity, but as another commodity, gold. Hence the movement of a metamorphosed commodity is the movement of gold. The same piece of gold or the identical gold coin which changed places with one commodity in the act C―M, reappears from the opposite end as the starting point for M―C and thus changes places for the second time with another commodity. Just as it passed from the hands of buyer B into those of seller A, it now leaves A’s hands who has become a buyer and passes into C’s hands. The path described by a commodity in its transformation into money and its retransformation from money, i. e., the movement of a complete metamorphosis of a commodity assumes the aspect of an apparent movement of the same coin that changes places twice with two different commodities. No matter in how scattered and haphazard fashion purchases and sales may take place near each other, there is always in actual circulation a seller for each buyer and the money which moves into the place of the commodity sold, before it came into the hands of the buyer, must have already changed places with another commodity. Sooner or later it again leaves the hands of the seller, who turns buyer, to pass into the hands of a new seller and this frequently repeated change of place forms the interlacing of the metamorphoses of commodities. The same coins are moving, some more, others less frequently, from one place in the sphere of circulation to another, always in the direction opposite to that of the commodities moved, thus describing a longer or shorter circulation-curve. The different movements of the same coin can follow each other in point of time only, and on the contrary, the many scattered purchases and sales which appear as so many separate changes of place between commodities and money, occur simultaneously separated only in point of space.
The circulation of commodities C―M―C in its elementary form is completely described in the transition of money from the hands of the buyer into those of the seller and from the hands of the latter, as soon as he has turned buyer, into those of a new seller. This completes the metamorphosis of the commodity and with it the movement of money in so far as that movement is the expression of the metamorphosis.
But since new use-values are continually produced in the shape of new commodities and must thus be constantly thrown anew into circulation, the process C―M―C is repeatedly renewed by the same commodity owners.
The money which they have spent as buyers gets back into their hands as soon as they appear again as vendors of commodities. The constant renewal of the circulation of commodities finds its reflection in the continual circulation over the entire surface of bourgeois society of a quantity of money which, passing from hand to hand, describes at the same time a number of different small cycles starting from numberless points and returning each to its own starting point, to repeat the same movement over again.
The change of form on the part of commodities appears as a mere change of place on the part of money and the continuity of the circulation movement is all on the side of money, since the commodity always makes but one step in the direction opposite to money, while the latter makes in each case the second step for the commodity; the entire movement seems, therefore, to proceed from money, although in the case of a sale the commodity draws money out of its place, i. e., it circulates money as much as it is circulated by the latter in the case of a purchase.
Furthermore, owing to the fact that money always confronts commodities in its capacity of a means of purchase, and in that capacity moves commodities only by realizing their price, the entire movement of circulation appears as a change of place between money and commodities, the former realizing the prices of the latter either by separate acts of circulation taking place simultaneously and side by side, or by successive transactions when the same coin realizes the prices of different commodities one after another. If we consider, e. g., the series C―M―C’―M―C”―M―C’”, etc., without regard to the qualitative aspects which become indistinguishable in the process of circulation, we witness the same monotonous operation. After realizing the price of C, M successively realizes those of C’, C”, etc., and commodities C’, C”, C’”, etc., constantly take the place which money has left.
Money thus appears to keep commodities in circulation by realizing their prices. In discharging this function of realization of prices, money is itself constantly circulating, now changing its place, now describing a curve of circulation, now completing a small circuit where the starting and returning points coincide. As a medium of circulation, money is subject to a circulation of its own. The change of form of the circulating commodities appears, therefore, as a movement of money which furthers the exchange of commodities, motionless in themselves.
The movement of the circulation process of commodities thus takes on the form of the movement of gold as a medium of circulation, i. e. of the _circulation of money_.
Since owners of commodities give the products of their individual labor the appearance of products of social labor by turning one object, viz. gold, into the direct expression of universal labor-time and therefore into money, their own movement by which all of them effect the interchange of the material products of their labor now appears to them as the direct movement of that one object, as the circulation of gold. The social movement itself appears to the owners of commodities partly as an outward necessity and partly as a mere formal intermediary process which enables every individual who puts any use-value into circulation to get other use-values out of it of an equal value. The use-value of commodities comes into play with their disappearance from the sphere or circulation, while the use-value of money as a medium of circulation is in its very circulation. The movement of a commodity in the sphere of circulation is of a transitory kind, while ceaseless motion in that sphere constitutes the function of money. Through this special function which it performs within the sphere of circulation money acquires a new capacity, which we have to consider now more closely.
In the first place, we see that the circulation of money forms an endlessly split up movement, since it reflects the splitting up of the process of circulation into an infinitely large number of purchases and sales and the independent separation of the mutually supplementary phases of metamorphoses of commodities. In the small cycles described by money, where the starting and returning points coincide, we do find a return movement, i. e., an actual circular movement, but the fact that there are as many starting points as there are commodities and that the number of these cycles is infinitely large puts them beyond all control, measurement, or computation. The time between the start and the return of a commodity is just as indefinite. Moreover, it is immaterial whether or not such a circuit has been actually described in a given case. No economic fact is more generally known than that one can spend money with one hand without getting it back with the other.
Money proceeds from an endless number of points and returns to as many different points, but the coincidence of the starting and returning points is a matter of chance, because in the movement C―M―C the turning of the buyer again into a seller is not a necessary condition. Still less does the circulation of money resemble a movement radiating from a common centre to all points of the periphery and back from the peripheral points to the centre. The so-called cycle described by money, as it is pictured, amounts simply to this, that at all points we observe its appearance and disappearance, its never ceasing transition from place to place. In a higher, more involved form of money circulation, e. g. bank-note circulation, we shall find that the conditions of emission of money include those for its return. But in the simple money circulation it is a matter of chance for the same buyer to become again a seller. Where we really see constant cycle motions taking place, they are only reflections of deeper forces in the sphere of production, e. g., the manufacturer draws money from his banker on Friday, pays it out to his working-men on Saturday, the men immediately pay out the greater part of it to the storekeepers, etc., and the latter turn it in on Monday back to the banker.
We have seen that money realizes simultaneously a certain number of prices in the variegated purchases and sales which take place side by side at the same time. On the other hand, in so far as its movement represents the movement of the combined metamorphoses of commodities and the interlacing of these metamorphoses, the same coin realizes the prices of different commodities and thus makes a larger or smaller number of moves. If we take the circulation of a country for a given length of time, say a day, the quantity of gold required for the realization of prices and, consequently, for the circulation of commodities, will be determined by two conditions: first, the sum total of the prices; second, the average number of moves made by one coin. This number of moves or the rapidity of circulation of money is in its turn determined by or expresses the average rapidity with which commodities go through the different phases of their metamorphoses, the rapidity with which these metamorphoses succeed one another, and with which those commodities that have gone through their metamorphoses are replaced by new commodities in the process of circulation. We have seen that in the process of the determination of prices the exchange value of all commodities is ideally converted into a certain quantity of gold of the same value and that the same amount of value is present in a double form in either of the isolated acts of circulation M―C and C―M, first embodied in the commodity, and second, in gold; yet gold enjoys the capacity of a medium of circulation not by virtue of its isolated relation to separate commodities in a state of rest, but owing to its active presence in the dynamic world of commodities, viz., its function of expressing the change of form of commodities by its change of place and expressing the rapidity of their change of form by the rapidity of its change of place. The extent to which it is present in the sphere of circulation, i. e., the actual quantity of gold in circulation, is thus determined by the extent to which it is discharging its function throughout the entire process.
The circulation of money implies the circulation of commodities; money circulates commodities which have prices, i. e., which are beforehand ideally equated to certain quantities of gold. In the determination of the prices of commodities, the value of the quantity of gold which serves as a unit of measure, or the value of gold, is assumed to be given. Under that assumption the quantity of gold necessary for circulation is determined first of all by the sum total of the prices of commodities that are to be realized. But this sum is itself determined: 1. By the level of prices, the relatively high or low exchange value of commodities estimated in gold; and 2. By the mass of commodities circulating at fixed prices, i. e. by the number of purchases and sales at given prices.[73] If one quarter of wheat is worth 60 shillings, then twice as much gold is required to circulate it or to realize its price as would be the case if it were worth only 30 shillings. To circulate 500 quarters of wheat at 60 shillings, twice as much gold is necessary as for the circulation of 250 quarters at the same price. Finally, to circulate 10 quarters at 100 shillings only half as much money is necessary as when circulating 40 quarters at 50 shillings. It follows that the quantity of gold required for circulation may fall in spite of a rise in price, if the mass of commodities in circulation declines in a greater ratio than the rise of the combined sum of prices; and, inversely, the quantity of the circulating medium may rise in spite of a decline of the mass of commodities in circulation, if the sum total of prices rises in a greater ratio. Thorough and minute English investigations have demonstrated e. g. that in the early stages of a dearth of grain in England the quantity of money in circulation increases, because the total price of the diminished supply of grain is greater than the former total price of a larger supply of grain, while the circulation of the other commodities continues undisturbed for some time at their old prices. At a later stage of the dearth of grain, there is a decline in the quantity of circulating money, either because less goods are sold at old prices besides grain, or the same quantity of those goods is sold at lower prices.
But, as we have seen, the quantity of money in circulation is determined not only by the sum total of prices of commodities that are to be realized, but also by the rapidity with which money circulates or with which it completes this work of realization. If the same sovereign makes ten purchases a day, each of a commodity having a price of one sovereign, and thus changes hands ten times, it does as much work as would be accomplished by ten sovereigns each performing but a single act of circulation a day.[74] Consequently, rapidity of gold circulation can make up for its quantity, or the presence of gold in the sphere of circulation is determined not only by its presence as an equivalent of a commodity side by side with it, but also by its participation in the movement of metamorphoses of commodities.
The rapidity of the circulation of money, however, can serve as a substitute for its quantity only to a limited extent, since at any given moment an endless number of isolated purchases and sales takes places in different localities.
If the total price of the commodities in circulation rises, but in a smaller ratio than the increase in the rapidity of circulation of money, the volume of the circulating medium will diminish. If on the contrary the rapidity of circulation decreases in a greater ratio than the total price of the commodities in circulation, the volume of currency will increase. An increasing volume of currency combined with a general fall of prices or a diminishing volume of currency in connection with a general rise of prices is one of the best known phenomena in the history of prices. But the consideration of the causes which bring about a simultaneous rise in the level of prices and a still greater rise in the rate of velocity of circulation of money, or the opposite phenomenon, falls outside of the sphere of simple circulation. By way of illustration, it may be mentioned that in periods of prevailing credit, the rapidity of circulation of money grows faster than the prices of commodities, while in times of declining credit the prices of commodities fall slower than the rapidity of circulation. The shallow and artificial character of the simple circulation of money is manifested in the fact that all the elements which have a determining influence on the volume of currency, such as the volume of commodities in circulation, prices, the rise or fall of prices, the number of simultaneous purchases and sales, the rapidity of the circulation of money,―depend on the metamorphic process which takes place in the world of commodities, and that again depends on the general character of the methods of production, the size of population, the relation between city and country, the development of the means of transportation, the greater or less division of labor, credit, etc.; in short, on circumstances all of which lie _outside_ of the sphere of simple circulation of money and are only reflected in it.
The rapidity of circulation being given, the volume of currency is simply determined by the prices of commodities. Hence, prices are not high or low, because there is more or less money in circulation, but on the contrary, there is more or less money in circulation, because prices are high or low. This is one of the most important laws, whose demonstration in detail by means of the history of prices constitutes perhaps the only merit of the post-Ricardian English Political Economy.
If experience shows, that the level of metallic circulation or the mass of gold and silver in circulation in a given country is subject to temporary ebbs and tides and very violent ones at times,[75] but on the whole remains stationary for long periods, the deviations forming but small oscillations about the average level, this is explained by the antagonistic nature of the circumstances which determine the quantity of money in circulation. Their simultaneous modifications neutralize their effects and leave everything where it was before.
The law, that with a given rapidity of circulation of money and a given total sum of prices of commodities the quantity of the circulating medium is determined, may also be expressed as follows. If the exchange values of commodities and the average rapidity of their metamorphoses are given, the quantity of gold in circulation depends on its own value. If, therefore, the value of gold, i. e. the labor-time necessary for its production, should rise or fall, the prices of commodities will rise or fall in inverse ratio, and corresponding to that rise or fall of prices, the rapidity of circulation remaining the same, a larger or smaller quantity of gold would be required to keep the same volume of commodities in circulation. The same change would occur, if the old standard of value were superseded by a more or less valuable metal.
Thus, Holland required from fourteen to fifteen times as much silver as it had previously required gold, in order to circulate the same volume of commodities, when out of tender regard for the government creditors and out of fear of the effects of the discoveries in California and Australia it substituted silver for gold money.
From the fact that the quantity of gold in circulation depends on the variable sum total of prices of commodities and the varying rapidity of circulation, it follows that the volume of the circulating medium must be capable of contraction and expansion; in short, that according to the requirements of circulation, gold must now enter, now leave the sphere of circulation in its capacity of a medium of circulation. How the circulation process itself realizes these conditions, we shall see later on.
C. COIN AND SYMBOLS OF VALUE.
In its capacity of a medium of circulation, gold acquires a shape of its own, it becomes _coin_. In order to prevent any technical difficulties in the way of its circulation, it is coined according to the standard of the money of account. Gold pieces whose imprints and legends show that they contain certain weights of gold corresponding