Gnomes and Dwarfs

To the imaginative, Saxon gnomes and dwarfs shuffled their twisted, contorted bodies about the money markets of Manhattan last week. They were the blue-gummed, loose-wristed, grimacing gentry who ages ago clambered out of gloomy, endless pits in Saxony, bearing queer ores, green and blue and variegated, ores which they melted down with Loki's fires and pounded with Thor's hammer into shapes useful for the villagers.

These dwarfs and gnomes were the primitive Saxon miners of copper, lead, silver and nickelite (nickel arsenide) from mines which have been yielding their wealth for centuries. For 725 years, since the beginning of the 13th Century, a mine has been operated by the same company -- the Mansfeld Mining and Smelting Co. -- in Prussian-Saxony, northwest of Leipzig.

Last week this company with all its medieval aura of fantasy came to Manhattan to borrow $3,000,000. It was reliable, its officers asserted. The families of many of its 27,000 employes had worked in the same pits for generations. Brown Brothers & Co. and Lee Higginson & Co., two of the greatest U. S. financial houses, announced an issue of $3,000,000, 7% mortgage bonds.