270 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tremely desirable qualities of the alloy it made with copper (bronze) 

 became known. For many centuries primitive Europe poured its 

 silver into Asia and sold it for tin. In due time the demand became 

 greater than the supply, and at the same time the product of the 

 European silver mines began to fall off. The price of tin in terms 

 of silver increased greatly. So also did the value of silver. In this 

 crisis, which threatened the very existence of the trade between the 

 east and the west, two remedies were tried. The Greeks, the dominant 

 nation of the time, under Alexander the Great, started out to conquer 

 India, and to find and capture the Asian tin mines, but, as we know, 

 he never got any farther on the way than the valley of the Indus in 

 eastern Hindustan, where he died. Simultaneously the Phoenicians 

 began to search the western world for the metal, and finally found it 

 in Britain. When Cornish tin began to come into the market, the 

 corner that Asia had for so many centuries had on tin was broken, the 

 Malaysian mines fell rapidly into decadence, and the ancient value 

 of silver in the east was resumed. Europe then had the advantage, 

 but as its silver product was on the decline, its trade with India fell 

 away, and the two far separated parts of the world almost forgot each 

 other. Europe, now well supplied with tin and copper, devoted itself 

 to strenuous war and destruction. A thousand years or so later, when 

 the Eoman Empire had passed its prime, new silver mines were found 

 in central Europe, and trade with the east began to revive once more. 

 Venice was then the commercial center of the world, and it nourished 

 as long as the Austrian and German silver mines were in bonanza, 

 and when the cream of these was skimmed it began to decline. From 

 that day till the years when Spanish galleons began to bring in silver 

 from the new world, times in Europe were hard, civilization languished, 

 and humanity suffered. Historians call the period the " Dark Ages." 

 History also records the wonderful change that took place when the 

 Mexican and Peruvian silver mines began to pour their flood of treasure 

 into Europe. There was a marvelous revival of industry and of the 

 arts and sciences, and the greater part of it was directly due to the 

 enormous coinage of Mexican silver dollars, and their wide distribution 

 in trade. This coin for three centuries has had a larger circulation, 

 and has become more extensively known than any other tangible 

 product of the hand of man. 



From the date of the discovery of America up to about the be- 

 ginning of the last century, the source of the world's supply of silver 

 was almost entirely the mines of Mexico and of the west coast of 

 South America. The production in this period is estimated by sta- 

 tisticians at nearly 200,000 tons, and its value (then about $30,000 

 per ton), at $6,000,000,000. The bulk of this vast total went first to 

 Europe, and more than half of it in the shape of coins of American 



