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Show oo HOLDING DOWN PRICE OF SILVER I WASHINGTON, Oct. ' 20 Six million mil-lion Mexican silver pesos have been bought by tho treasury department at 884 cants aploco,,for minting into half dollars, dimos and" quartors. The treasury treas-ury acted when faced with the necessity neces-sity of buying Bilver for coinage at steadily Increasing prices, which att their hoight brought tho value of the, metal dangerously closo to the minted value. Now tho price of silver In this country coun-try has dropped precipitately. The swift collapse from $1.16 to elght-flvc conts por ounce within three weeks has resulted in an investigation to de-' termine whether tho market had been! manipulated. The high prices recently prevailing are regarded as wholly unwarranted un-warranted by officials hero. The purchase of the great volume of Mexican dollars, the largest purchase pur-chase by the government of the minted silver coin of another country ever recorded, placed the United States in possession of a sufficient quantity of silver to run the mints for two or three months and withdraws from tho silver market here the largest single buyer. Negotiations havo been proceeding between representatives of the Car-ranza Car-ranza government and Director Baker of the mint, for some time past, for the big sale. It Is understood that the Mexican dollars are to be delivered soon and federal reserve board officials, offi-cials, who have been in touch with the various phases of the negotiation, have indicated their willingness to permit per-mit the exportation to Mexico of approximately ap-proximately $5,000,000 in gold as payment pay-ment In return the Carranza government is understood to have lifted its virtual embargo on the exportation to this exportation to this country of silver and copper and that these and other commodities, needed here soon will be crossing the international line freely. free-ly. Mexico needs the gold badly to Increase In-crease its scanty storo of minted gold coin. The importation by that country of ?5, 000,000 for this purpose, it Is assumed, as-sumed, also will tend to relieve the difficulties dif-ficulties of American operators In tho I oil fields there In paying their heavy burden of taxes, which, under the Mexican Mex-ican law, must be paid in Mexican minted gold. The net result of the transaction, as viewed by officials' hero, is that the danger of par silver for mintage has been averted and that Mexico will be in a stronger position financially than before that the somewhat strained fl- j nanclal relations hetweon the two gfjyytTiT Tr!-! i If" '"'r I Hill I I hlhlT PTarfTTTTT I countries will be eased perceptibly and j that Mexican copper and silver, needed , here, will be a-vailable in the future. I oo |