Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/124

122 gold wrought a greater change throughout the United States and the financial relations of this country to other nations than any other fact subsequent to the independence of the United States.

Scarcity of Gold"Prior to the year 1848, the United States possessed a very narrow base for a circulating medium; and that was mostly silver. Gold coin was exceedingly scarce; and on this account the financial standing of this country and the rating of its securities were practically at the mercy of the Bank of England and the House of Rothchilds, which institution controlled the great bulk of the gold coin of the world. When the mines of California commenced to pour out their flood of wealth, every kind of business throughout the United States took on new life. Within five years after this discovery, there were more manufacturing establishments started in the United States than had been for a generation before that time. Banking institutions took on a new phase altogether and began to accumulate gold. Gold begot confidence a nothing else ever had before, and people more freely deposited their savings in banks, while the banks were enabled to extend accommodations to manufacturers and producers of wealth. And railroads that had been for twenty years creeping out slowly from the Atlantic seaports to the Allegheny Mountains found sale for their securities, pushed on over the mountains into the great Mississippi Valley, and on across the continent reaching Portland, Oregon, a quarter of a century before they were expected to reach Chicago under die old paper money system. The flood of gold changed the whole face of affairs, put new life into all business and commercial undertakings, brought all the states and communities together under one single standard of values, and pushed the United States to the front as the greatest wealth-producing nation."