Cole’s Book Arcade “Federation of the World” medallion. Melbourne, c.1885.

Gilt bronze medallion/medal/token, 31 mm diameter; obverse with tree fern at centre and legends at left and right: THE GOVERNMENT OF RIGHT THE RELIGION OF GOODNESS / THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IMPROVED BY THE BEST WORDS OF ALL OTHER LANGUAGES; reverse with rainbow, above it the legend UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD TIS’ COMING TIS’ COMING ONE GOVERNMENT ONE RELIGION ONE LANGUAGE BEFORE THE YEAR 2000, and below in smaller lettering FEDERATION OF THE / WORLD MEDALS / ISSUED / BY E.W. COLE / BOOK ARCADE MELBOURNE; pierced for suspension; a good example.

From the Museums Victoria website (https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/76341):

”Federation of the World, the Government of Right’ gilt medal issued by Cole’s Book Arcade, circa 1885. It is one of a series of medals offering maxims and proverbs issued by E.W. Cole at his Book Arcade. He called the medals ‘little missionaries for the spread of educative knowledge’ (George Dean, 1988, A Handbook on E.W. Cole: His Book Arcade, Tokens and Medals, p.36).

According to Sydney Endacott, an employee of Cole, customers were charged three pence for these medals (which he prefers to call tokens) which, when the Arcade was particularly busy, gave them admission to the second-hand books gallery where the orchestra played. Each medal could be exchanged for thee pence worth of goods, but most were kept. The pierced ones were sometimes worn as pendants or on pocket watch chains. The medals served as perpetual advertisements of the Arcade (Victorian Historical Magazine, February 1962). George Dean suggests that the medals were also given in change at Christmas time, and could be used to operate amusement machines (presumably including the symphonion and hens, although these only required one penny to operate).

Cole had his first medal stuck in 1879 and his last one about 1903. The medals were variously gilded, silvered or bronzed, replicating the coinage then circulating, or plated with nickel or white metal. The medal blanks were usually made of copper or brass, but some might have been bronze; aluminium was also sometimes used. In all, perhaps 300,000 medals were struck, in 97 types. Only 50 types are known to have circulated (Dean, 1988).

Cole’s Book Arcade opened in the Bourke Street Mall in 1883, after earlier operating from other sites. It was a shop like no other, crammed with new and second-hand books and other wares, but with the atmosphere of a circus. Cole enticed customers of all ages with a menagerie and fernery, a band, a clockwork symphonion and other mechanical delights. Readers could sit in comfortable chairs, encouraged by a sign: ‘Read for as Long as You Like – Nobody Asked to Buy’. The Arcade’s proprietor, Edward William Cole, was optimist and idealist, believing passionately in the power of education and envisaging a world without borders, expounding his views in pamphlets and books. Cole died in 1918, still dreaming of a better future. Cole’s Book Arcade, one of the wonders of ‘marvellous Melbourne’, closed in 1929.’