Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/58

48 Colorado, where the production of gold rose from $5,300,000 in 1893 to $7,527,000 in 1893, and to about $12,000,000 in 1894. The production for 1895 in Colorado is confidently expected to reach $20,000,000. The Director of the Mint is of opinion that the production of the United States rose from $33,014,981 in 1892 to about $39,500,000 in 1894, while other good authorities put the production for 1894 at $50,000,000. The annual product of other great producing countries shows a large increase of late years. In his notable article in the North American Review, Mr. Preston states that the world's production of gold for 1893 was "the largest in history, amounting in round numbers to $155,522,000." The product for 1894, however, very largely exceeded—probably by twenty-five per cent—the product of 1893. There is scarcely any assignable limit to the gold known to exist in the world or even in the United States. It is said that simply by the removal of the restrictions on hydraulic mining California can produce half a billion of gold. The quantity easily obtainable in Colorado is stupendous. Other parts of the United States are also rich, while Australia and Russia probably possess a stock equal to our own, and are increasing the annual output every year.

But the most surprising and, so to speak, revolutionary facts regarding gold that have recently come to light are those concerning the great Witwatersrandt mines of South Africa. There gold is found in enormous quantities and in a cheaply workable form in a new geological situation—"in strata the component parts of which are pieces of quartz held together by a clayey cement." A part of this tract—about one fifth of the whole—has been separately explored by a mining expert sent by the German Government and by a distinguished American mining engineer, Mr. Hamilton Smith. Each of these gentlemen concluded that the minimum amount of gold obtainable from the tract surveyed was upward of a billion dollars. These mines began production in 1887, when their product was about $500,000. In 1893 it was nearly $30,000,000. It is therefore not hazardous to predict that from this one mine will come in the near future enough gold to double the total existing stock of about $4,000,000,000.

There is therefore, in my opinion, not the slightest fear of an appreciation of gold arising from its scarcity. It is as certain as anything can well be that the abundance of gold will be such as not only to prevent a rise in its value, but materially to accelerate its fall. It is not probable that the increased production will be relatively as great as that of the Californian period; but the absolute increase may well be larger, and it would not be surprising to see an annual production of $300,000,000 worth of gold by the