74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



What effect on the commerce and trade of the world will result from 

 the creation in so short a time of so immense an amount of new and 

 indestructible wealth, with a debt-paying quality based wholly on tacit 

 agreement among nations, remains to be seen. That a general advance 

 will occur in the market price of all other commodities may be confi- 

 dently expected. That interest rates as a whole will decline should 

 be quite as certain. That wages should advance seems also natural, 

 for with that amount of new capital arising in so short a time every 

 department of human activity is bound to be stimulated, and this will 

 create an enormously increased demand not only for all those things 

 that machinery and art can produce, but also for those that can only 

 be brought into being by human hands and human service. 



Of course strikes, tumults and wars may for a time cut down even 

 the normal output, as was the case when the South African mines were 

 closed by the Boer war, but this is very unlikely. The financial world 

 has experienced the discomfort that occurs when its gold supply is 

 interfered with, and is not likely to permit another such happening. 

 In other words, the gold-mining industry, like all other international 

 industries, makes for international peace. 



An examination of the table of production for 1906 shows that 

 nearly eighty-three per cent, of the total output was made by the Anglo- 

 Saxon world. This is a most significant fact, and the proportion is 

 so overwhelming as to leave no doubt whatever as to the communities 

 that are to stand at the apex of material humanity during the twentieth 

 century. When one looks for the causes that have led up to this aston- 

 ishing predominance it is necessary candidly to admit at once that it 

 can not be only a question of race, for the gold mines of North America, 

 Australia and South Africa were unknown when Britain sent out her 

 sons to these new lands. It was the lust for gold that sent the Span- 

 iards and the Portuguese abroad, but it is the desire for homes that 

 has spread the English people over the face of the earth. Back of 

 this is the love of freedom, resulting from a national life that has 

 evolved through the centuries a code of human laws fostering indi- 

 viduality and encouraging individual effort. So long as the great 

 men of the race whose dwelling places encircle the globe preserve 

 these ideals, so long will they remain secure and in the lead. 



And the commanding position they hold at the present time may 

 be credited entirely to the establishment and growth during the thou- 

 sand years of English history of the principle (somewhat obscured in 

 certain parts of the English-speaking world) that the land and all 

 that is in it belongs to the people, and that the usage thereof is their 

 direct and inalienable and rightful heritage. 



