Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/428

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��Popular Science Monthly

��a man. War is a costly undertaking.

It was once even less efficient and more costly. In the Civil War, the num- ber of Northern soldiers who died was 360,222, while the South lost, at the low- est estimate, 250,000. That war cost the North $6,189,929,908, while the South's bill was at least 83.000,000,000.^ It therefore cost approximately $15,059.97 to slaughter a man. Killing is done in a more wholesale fashion nowadays.

Fortunately, the warring nations are not obliged to gather together the forty billions and transport it at one time to the front. If they did, it wOuld require fifteen trains of seventy cars each, and one of fifty-seven, each car being of the fifty-ton pattern used in hauling coal from the Pennsylvania mines to tide- water at New York harbor. This would interfere with the movement of food sup- plies, guns and other munitions of war for the time being. The weight of the gold would be 55,440 tons.

Even if it were desired to do this, there is not enough visible gold in the world to permit it. According to the figures of the director of the mint, the world's production of the precious metal between the years 1850 and 1913 inclus- ive, was $12,072,058,618, or less than one-third the estimated cost of the war. This, added to the $225,000,000 assumed to be in the hands of the potentates and other wealthy Europeans prior to the discovery of America, and the $3,383,- 224,000 figured to have been brought to view between the time Columbus first saw the Western Continent, and the dis- covery of gold in California, still leaves a deficit of nearly twenty-five billions to be made up otherwise.

But let us suppose there were forty bil- lions of gold in the hands of mankind, and that through some gigantic financial operation it had reached America and been coined into double eagles. There would be, if the gold were alloyed with other metal to the usual degree of fine- ness, 2,222,222,220 of them, enough to cover the site of the Woolworth Build- ing to a depth of seven feet eight inches, or form a pillar the height of the build- ing, seven hundred and fifty feet, and twenty-two feet square. If placed on edge and face to face, they would form a roll 3,653.42 miles long. This roll

��would extend from New York to a point in the Pacific Ocean about six hun- dred miles west of San Francisco. Or, taking their diameter as one and five-six- teenths inches, they would pave a boulevard three hundred and tifty-one feet wide extending from one end to the island of Manhattan to the other a distance of thirteen miles. What a shining road that would be! The Irishman who expected to pick up dol- lars in the streets as soon as he landed, would literally be able to do it, assum- ing that the gold pieces were no better secured than is the surface of some of New York's thoroughfares. That great highway, broader than Broadway, would be the nearest approach to the streets of the New Jerusalem described by John, that the world could ever expect to see. And if all these gold pieces were laid flat in a single row, edge to edge, they would extend 43,841.12 miles around the waist- coat of the globe.

This would, indeed, be a "demonstra- tion of power and wealth" that would make the display of jewels, relics and gold plate of the Teutonic ruling families look like a penny peep show.

A Mystifying Chemical Trick

AP L A I N blue handkerchief is shown to the audience. Wlien the handkerchief is warmed it turns white and when heated resumes its former color.

Make a starch paste and add enough water to the paste to thin it. Then add sufficient tincture of iodine to color the liquid blue ; a few drops will be enough. Dye a white handkerchief with this blue liquid and when the handkerchief is dry it is ready for the trick.

Raising a Motorcycle Stand Automatically

A MOTORCYCLIST may save the time and trouble of raising the stand when the machine is pushed off, by fastening one end of a door-spring to the stand near the bottom, and the other end to a convenient place on the luggage carrier. While the machine is on the stand, the spring is stretched, but the removal of the weight releases it, and the stand is pulled back into place.

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