The several uses of gold are constantly competing for it: its uses for rings, pens, ornaments, championship cups, photography, dentistry, delicate instruments, and as a circulating medium.

If the metal becomes worth more in any one use, its amount is increased there and is correspondingly diminished in other uses.[3] When coinage is free and gratuitous[4] the standard money is a commodity.

Such coinage is essentially but the stamp and certificate that the coin contains a certain weight and fineness of metal.

Where coinage is free and gratuitous each coin will be worth the same as the bullion that is in it so far as the citizens exercise their choice.
They will not long keep uncoined metal in their possession when it is worth more in the form of money, nor will they long keep money from the melting-pot when it is worth more as bullion.

Yet there may be a slight disparity between the bullion value and the monetary value before the metal is converted into coin or the coin melted down into metal.
This adjustment of the value of commodity-money to other things is made also on the side of supply, in the use of labor and material agents to produce the precious metals and to produce other things.
Gold-mining, for example, is one among various industries to which men may apply their labor and their available material agents.