Thousand's Gold

A business concern exists in Germany to commercialize the transmutation of base metals into gold, according to the formulae of a plumber by the name of Franz Tausend (Francis Thousand). Plumber Thousand has claimed since 1925 that he could smelt lead chloride and calcium hydroxide (his "tincture of tinctures") with potassium, sodium and mercury (16 ounces in all) and get one ounce of pure gold. Or that he could produce one ounce of gold from 16 ounces of potassium hydroxide, rock flint and ferric oxide.* Dazzling to laymen was his story. General Erich Ludendorff, neurotic quartermaster general and Wartime chief of staff of the German armies, was one of many Germans who, eager for quick fortunes, supplied Plumber Thousand with $100,000. What money he did not secrete he spent producing a few gold pellets of negligible value. Last winter his dupes, impatient, had him jailed.

Last week his jailers gave Plumber Thousand opportunity to prove his transmutation for his freedom. Before representatives of the German mint, prosecuting attorneys, detectives, the examining judge and his own cronies, he gravely melted his mineral stews, smoking cigarets the while. By and by in the retort the observers saw a drop of gold forming and growing. Convinced for a moment were they of a great alchemy, until an intelligent one of their number snatched from Plumber Thousand his cigarets. They were loaded with gold dust which he had been artfully shaking into the melting pot.&$134;

*A coincidence: 16-to-one is the same ratio which the late William Jennings ("Cross of Gold") Bryan used a generation ago in his arguments for a bimetallic (gold and silver) monetary standard.

/- Artificial gold is possible in theoretical science only by bombarding base atoms with electro-magnetic waves to change their atomic structure.