No attempt is made in this little work to cover the whole field of operations in gold, infinite in scope as they are and of every conceivable variety. But from the examples given above it ought to be possible to work out a fairly clear idea as to why gold exports and imports take place and as to what the conditions are which bring them about. While not failing to realize the importance to the markets of the movement back and forth of great amounts of gold, it may nevertheless be said that from the standpoint of the foreign exchange business the importance of transactions in gold is very generally overestimated. Most dealers in foreign exchange steer clear of exporting or importing gold whenever they can, the business being practically all done by half-a-dozen firms and banks. As has been seen, the profit to be made is miserably small as a rule, while the trouble and risk are very considerable. Import operations, especially, tie up large amounts of ready capital and often throw the regular working of a foreign department out of gear for days and even weeks. There is considerable newspaper advertising to be had by being always among the first to ship or bring in gold, but there are a good many houses who do not want or need that kind of advertising. Some of the best and strongest banking houses in New York, indeed, make it a rule to have nothing to do with operations in gold one way or the other. Should they need drafts on the other side at a time when there are no drafts to be had, such houses prefer to let some one else do the gold-shipping and are willing to let the shipping house make its one-sixteenth of one per cent. or one-thirty-second of one per cent. in the rate of exchange it charges for the bills drawn against the gold. Particular attention has been paid all through the foregoing chapter to the gold movement in its relation to the New York markets, the movement between foreign points being too big a subject to describe in a work of this kind. In general, however, it can be said that of the three great gold markets abroad, London is the only one which can in any sense be called "free." In Paris, the ability of the Bank of France to pay its notes in silver instead of gold makes it possible for the Bank of France to control the gold movement absolutely, while in Germany the paternalistic attitude of the government is so insistent that gold exports are rarely undertaken by bankers except with the full sanction of the governors of the Reichsbank.