Salt Lake Tribune | 1919-11-12 | Page 18 | Yellow Metal Demand Heavy

YELLOW METAL j DEMAND BEffi; Trading in Gold Breaks Previous Records; Manufacturers Manu-facturers Need Supply. There is an unprecedented demand for gold for domestic, commercial and manufacturing man-ufacturing purposes, according to ihe Boston News Bureau. Sales of the metal to tho trade in October broke all records. The New York assay office sold approximately $(5,500,000 of the yolloW metal in October, the largest month's sales in the history of the office. Total sale of gold for the first ten months of the calendar year were approximately ap-proximately (43,000,000, and it is estimated esti-mated for the year, they will run close to 960,000000. Total sales to the domestic do-mestic trade in ISIS amounted to about Si 1.000.000. During the war period the manfacture of gold jewelry was curtailed considerably, consider-ably, owing to government restrictions upon the sale of gold. As soon as those restrictions were removed, the metal began be-gan to flow out of the assay office in large volume. Sales since January of this year have ranged from $3,500,000 to $6,000,000 monthly. The inability of the manufacturing trade to obtain the metal in the war period naturally depleted to a considerable consider-able extent the supply of manufactured jewelry in the country. It WES only natural nat-ural such a heavy demand should arise later for commercial bars. The huge purchases during the past few months are attributed to the desire of the trade to place upon the market sufficient jewelry for a big holiday business. busi-ness. Jewelers are looking forward to record sales this year. They point out that gifts of costly jewelry were more or less frowned upon during the four years of struggle, but this year will see an 'Unprecedented demand. During the war period many people of the wealthier class disposed of their gold trinkets to the goverhmeut. and it is now felt there will be liberal buying by these people this year as well as by others who have enjoyed prosperity as a result of the war. The high wages" paid labor in the manufacturing towns is also expected expect-ed to result in lavish expenditures on jewelry and other luxuries during the coming Christmas season.