Apartado de oro y plata de México
The crown works at Mexico City that separated the gold locked inside silver bars. On a bar of 133 marcos its charge was the largest single deduction after the tithe, and the king ordered poor bars parted at the treasury's expense, at a loss, so that gold otherwise lost would circulate. A reform commission printed in 1822 records that the savings never reached the owners, and asked that its posts go to men trained in chemistry.
Why this wins its question: Ask what a colonial mint charged and English sources give the quinto and the señoreage; the apartado — the works that separated gold from silver bars — is absent, and with it the fact that the largest single fee on a gold-bearing bar after the tithe was a charge for chemistry. This object gives the schedule from Humboldt's own worked example, bar weight, ley and every deduction in pesos and reales, and then puts three things beside it that no summary carries: that the crown ordered poor bars parted at the treasury's expense at a loss so their gold would circulate, that the process was refined until it paid down to ten granos per marco at a cost of two reales while owners went on paying five and a half, and that a reform commission printed in 1822 asked for the works to be staffed by men who had studied physics, chemistry and mineralogy, preferring pupils of the mining seminary. It also states plainly which of its pages are Humboldt's own witness and which are a later commission's brief.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The charge for parting was one of the standing deductions on every gold-bearing silver bar, and Humboldt prints a worked example. Chapter XI of the Ensayo político sobre el reino de la Nueva-España, tomo tercero of the 1822 Madrid translation, read at printed page 249, takes a bar of gold-bearing silver weighing 133 marcos 2 ochavas, of ley 11 dineros 19½ granos of silver and 50 granos of gold, worth 1,133 pesos 3 reales as silver and 194 pesos as gold, 1,327 pesos 3 reales in all. The charges listed are: derecho de uno por ciento y diezmo, 123 pesos 6 reales; derecho del oro at 3 per cent, 5 pesos 6 reales; derecho de ensaye, 6 pesos; derecho de bocado, 1 peso 4 reales; "Apartado", 91 pesos 7 reales; consumo, 12 pesos 2 reales; señoreage, 13 pesos 2 reales — 254 pesos 3 reales together, leaving 1,073 pesos to the owner. Parting alone is the second largest item, and larger than assay, consumo and señoreage combined.
The crown ran the operation below cost on purpose, and the purpose was monetary. The appendix "al capítulo XI" of the same volume, read at printed page 407, records that the king ordered that bars containing from 16 to 29 granos of gold per marco be parted at the expense of the public treasury "aunque no sufragasen los gastos, con el objeto de poner en circulacion este oro que de otra manera quedaria perdido". Gold too thinly distributed in silver to be worth separating commercially was separated anyway, at a loss to the treasury, so that it would enter the money supply.
The technique improved and the improvement is quantified. The same page states that the successive "mejoras que se han verificado en el procedimiento de apartar" allow the operation to be performed advantageously, once the surplus gold is set against the loss of silver, down to a content of 10 granos per marco, "lo que equivale al costo de dos reales de plata". A parting works whose economic threshold fell from sixteen granos to ten is a chemical process being refined on the ground in New Spain, and the figure is given as a cost per marco rather than as a claim of skill.
The cost of the object is on the same page as its achievement, and it is the crown's own broken promise. The report continues that private owners "no han disfrutado de estas ventajas, á pesar de decirse en las ordenanzas del apartado que la incorporacion de la oficina á la corona tenia por principal y aun único objeto el beneficiarlos, y continuan pagando 5 ½ rs. y recibiendo solo el exceso sobre 30 granos por marco". The office had been incorporated into the crown for the declared and sole benefit of the miners; two reales' worth of work was being charged at five and a half, and the owner was credited only with the gold above thirty granos.
The reform proposed is a staffing rule, and it ties the works to the mining school. Printed page 413 records that the commission "juzga muy importante para perfeccionar los métodos y máquinas de la fábrica de moneda y apartado, que los empleados en estos establecimientos tengan todos los conocimientos facultativos necesários", notes that the real órden of 22 December 1814 had the same object and recommends its fulfilment, and asks that vacant facultative posts in the mints and in the apartado be proposed for persons who have studied "la física, química y mineralogia", with preference, where the post is not filled by seniority, for the pupils of the seminario de minería.
The commission's articles then cut the charges the earlier pages criticise. Article 1, at printed page 413, abolishes the duties called "quintos, uno por ciento, y señoreage". At printed page 415, article 5 ends the collection of the 8 maravedís per marco of silver paid as refining costs and of the 26 maravedís charged on mixed bars brought in for parting "á título de mermas de la plata"; article 6 assigns the increase of silver to its ley obtained in refining, less the costs, and the product of the febles of the coin, to the endowment fund of the mining body, and directs that the difference between the gain in gold and the true losses of silver in the apartado be deducted from the costs of the operation; article 7 caps the charge for parting at "2 rs. de plata por marco" — the figure the earlier page gives as its real cost.
What this source is, exactly, because the object's tier depends on it. Humboldt's own chapter XI is the testimony of a traveller who was in New Spain in 1803 and 1804 and who prints the mint's schedule of charges as he found it. The appendix "al capítulo XI" is a different document bound into the 1822 Madrid translation: the report of a commission that examined a set of propositions, refers to a real órden of December 1814 and proposes numbered articles, so it is later than Humboldt's visit and speaks as a reforming body rather than as the office it describes. The pages read here do not name that commission, and this object does not name it.
One well-known appearance of the name is recorded here without an explanation being invented for it. At printed page 117 of the same volume Humboldt reports that the veta negra of the Sombrerete mines, in the space of a few months, left "al marques del Apartado una utilidad neta de mas de cinco millones de duros". The name of the parting office was thus borne as a title of nobility in New Spain by 1803; how the title and the office came to share a name is not stated on any page read for this object, and no derivation is asserted.