SOUTH AFRICA: The Rand!

General James Barry Munnik Hertzog, bushy-eyebrowed Premier of South Africa, decided last week that “pound” is no longer a fit name for the Union’s unit of currency. “Pound” suggests something that has gone off the gold standard, namely Great Britain’s pound.

South Africa’s pound has not left the gold standard. Moreover, the Union’s House of Assembly passed 78 to 53 last week the Emergency Finance Bill brought in by Finance Minister Nicolaas Christiaan Havenga expressly to keep South Africa’s currency on a gold basis. Puffing with patriotism. Cape Town papers besought the Government to drop a monetary term so misleading in the circumstances as “pound.”

Tactfully Premier Hertzog said no more last week than that his Government “plans” to have the South African branch of the Royal Mint strike very shortly a new basic coin containing 113 grains of fine gold. Great Britain’s pound, while on the gold standard, was also equivalent to 113 grains of fine gold, and South Africa’s pound still is. Thus the Union’s new unit will have exactly the same value as her present unit; but it will have a gorgeous, glowing 100% South African name, “the Rand.”

Coal-black golddiggers have sweated $5,200,000,000 worth of the precious metal out of South Africa’s Rand goldfields—which stupendous total is nearly half the world’s supply of monetary gold.