Noblesse Oblige

At Wytheville, Va. a girl child named Edith Boiling was born in 1872 with the noteworthy distinction of being a descendant (in the ninth generation) of Pocahontas. In 1915 she acquired further distinction by becoming the third woman in history* to marry a U. S. President while he was in office. Last week as sole proprietor of a famed 131-year-old business she acquired distinction for business ideals. When the present Widow Wilson married Norman Gait in 1896 she married the scion of an established institution. The jewelry firm of Gait & Bro. was founded in Alexandria, Va. in 1802. In 1825 it moved to Pennsylvania Avenue in the Capital and began a century-long career as purveyor of jewels by appointment to the most majestic Washington society. Into the Gait store the great ladies of U. S. history were wont to drop and carry off valuable jewels--as much as $200,000 worth at a time--without so much as signing a receipt for them. There wealthy hostesses picked out $20 souvenirs to give their guests. When Norman Gait died in 1908 his widow inherited the store. She watched over it as carefully as she watched over her second husband's dearest institution, the League of Nations. When Depression hit the great ladies of Washington, Gait & Bro. suffered even as the League of Nations suffered from other mundane circumstances. Mrs. Wilson could not liquidate the League of Nations to save its prestige from declining but last week she decided to liquidate Gait & Bro. for that purpose. Not willing to compromise with commercialism, she would not sell to anyone who would purvey cheap goods under the Gait name. William H. Wright, her store manager, intimated that a buyer willing to operate the store as "ethically" as it has always been operated might still get it at "a very advantageous buy" but he added (in announcing a liquidation sale of the firm's jewels): "A business that has lived clean for 131 years is not going to die dirty." Painfully lamented in the jewelry trade is the present want of buyers. Insurance firms report increases in jewelry insurance during the last few months, but trace them to people taking their jewels out of vaults and wearing them; not to new jewelry buying, despite a 40% increase in diamond imports. Distress stocks of defunct jewelry firms still hang unsold over the market and even the desire for possession of tangible goods as a hedge against Inflation has not led to any appreciable buying of jewels--possibly due partly to fear that if the South African diamond syndicate operating under that dominion's Precious Stones Act of 1927 ever let go its artificial limitation of supply, owners of diamonds might be left high & dry. But although Americans are not hoarding precious stones, and cannot hoard the No. 1 precious metal, gold, there has been a large demand for the No. 2 precious metal, silver. Last week the price of silver on the Manhattan Commodities Exchange reached 40 7/8-c-, the highest in three years. Of last year's world production of 160,000,000 oz., 102,000,000 oz. were mined by six U. S. companies (American Smelting & Refining, American Metal, U. S. Smelting, Cerro de Fasco, Anaconda, Phelps Dodge) who dig silver as a by-product of copper mining. Most of the U. S. output is usually exported to China and India. Normally stocks of silver in Manhattan run from 2,000,000 to 10,000,000 oz.--most of it awaiting shipment. Last week it was estimated that stocks in Manhattan amounted to 100,000,000 oz. Rumors have had heavy trucks rumbling through Manhattan streets at night carrying the purchases of big silver hoarders to banks for storage. Silver is no hedge for piddling hoarders for it is traded in lots of 25,000 oz. costing, at last week's prices, over $10,000 a lot. Part cause of heavy speculation in silver is hope or fear that President Roosevelt may add monetization of silver to his inflation schemes.

Whether speculating in silver will prove profitable depends on numerous factors: for several years the world price of silver has been slumping. Last week's U. S. price of 40 7/8-c- an oz. if recalculated to allow for the 35% discount of the dollar in foreign exchange represented a world price of only 29-c- (compared to an all-time low established last December of 24-c-). If silver after large abnormal purchases in the U. S. is only 5-c- above the all-time low in the world market, it may slump even lower when U. S. demand drops back to normal, But if the dollar slumps further than the world price of silver, silver hoarders will be able to show a profit in dollars.

* The others, Julia Gardiner, married John Tyler in 1844; Frances Folsom, married Grover Cleveland in 1886, is now wife of Professor Thomas J. Preston Jr. of Princeton.

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