274 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



the year 1899, when the product of our mines amounted to about 2,100 

 tons. 



Tons Per Cent. 



Produced in connection with lead ores 750.75 35.75 



Produced in connection with copper ores 514.50 24.50 



Produced in connection with gold 504.00 24.00 



Produced in connection with iron and manganese . 173.25 8.25 



Produced from straight ores 157.50 7.50 



In Mexico, on account of the activity in Parral, Pachuca and 

 Guanajuato, the proportion of silver coming from straight ores is 

 larger, and perhaps the same is true for South America. But in 

 Europe, Asia and Africa practically the entire product of silver comes 

 from the distinctively lead and copper mines, so that for the entire 

 world the proportions quoted in the above table would be about correct. 



The demand for the metal is growing and may be expected to 

 increase markedly in the near future. The largest consumers now, 

 as in the past, are the three great backward races of the far east, the 

 Hindus the Malays and the Chinese. It takes from 2,500 to 3,000 

 tons every year at present to maintain trade with them, and but one, 

 the people of Hindustan and Farther India, may be said to have been 

 more than wakened from their sleep of centuries. These number 

 about three hundred millions of frugal, industrious and acquisative 

 people. When the four hundred million of Chinamen are thoroughly 

 aroused, and the one hundred million of mixed races that include the 

 Filipinos and the inhabitants of the East Indian Islands, there will come 

 at least as large a call for the metal as that which now exists. For silver 

 is the only money that the orient recognizes, or can use. The capacity 

 of that part of the world for absorbing it has always been the wonder of 

 economists, to whom Asia is known as " the sink of silver/' Statistics 

 show that an average of not less than 600 tons of the metal has been 

 sent to the east by Europe annually during the last 300 years. Prac- 

 tically none of it has ever come back. Among the thousand million 

 Asiatics it has disappeared as hoards of coin, or bars, or as ornaments, 

 or is afloat as money. This curious process is in progress to-day with 

 nearly fivefold the vigor of the past. Practically seventy per cent, 

 of all the silver produced in Europe and America since the dawn of 

 history is now in the possession of the Chinese, Japanese, Malays and 

 Hindus. Yet we regard them as a poverty-stricken people, which in 

 fact they are, for with all this immense hoard of what was once the 

 paramount money metal of the world, famine or pestilence is abroad 

 nearly every year in one or more parts of the orient. This vast 

 metallic accumulation will not save them when crops fail and starva- 

 tion is at hand, for the west, having demonetized silver will not ac- 

 cept it in exchange for food except on the basis of a pure commodity. 



