16S TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



business and of life, capital, drawn from its great reservoirs, and scat- 

 tered in showers, commences at once to circulate back, as it had done 

 before, to the place from whence it came, that there it may again be 

 concentrated and sent forth to repeat its work of beneficence in the 

 earth. 



It is manifest that just in proportion to the extent of the accumu- 

 lation will be the magnitude of the enterprises that it will support. The 

 men of hundreds cannot handle millions; the men of millions will not 

 deal in hundreds. When, therefore, California added a thousand millions 

 to the world's wealth, she increased in equal proportions the scope and 

 power of the men who handled that wealth. Have you ever stopped to 

 think that the great merchants and bankers on the Royal Exchange in 

 London, and the Bourse, in Paris, are not only richer but greater men 

 because California has been doing its work in the world ? Do you know 

 that in the soil of California has been found the motive power that has 

 driven the locomotive over more than fifty thousand miles of European 

 and American railroads, and furnished the track for its world developing 

 career ? 



You may not be ready to admit these great facts even now; but see 

 how plain they are : A thousand millions, gathered through twenty years, 

 gives an average of five hundred millions for the whole time. As inter- 

 est is lost whenever it lies idle, it is the constant study of those who 

 control it to keep it employed. I do not believe that the loss of time in 

 each man's hands will average one week. 80 far as J can judge, by per- 

 sonal experience, the place that wants it is always waiting when it 

 comes, and the loss of time, as thus measured, is wholly inappreciable. 

 But that we may keep the figures where they will not quite blind us, 

 and not because it is right, I will assume that every man who receives 

 any part of the five hundred millions keeps it idle one month before he 

 uses or invests it, and thus that the whole capital only changes hands 

 twelve times a year. Twelve times five hundred is six thousand, and 

 thus we have an aggregate of six thousand millions of dollars as the 

 amount of new business that could be done each year by reason of this 

 addition to the capital of the world. Had it been withheld to that 

 extent, the world's transactions must have been equal!)' reduced, simply 

 because there was nothing with which they could lie carried on. 



The thieves that do not commit legal larceny in Wall street, under- 

 stand this perfectly when they combine and withdraw ten millions from 

 circulation. 80 readily does business expand t<> the lull limit of the 

 means to do it, that the least diminution of supply at once affects it in 

 all its channels. Ten millions withdrawn is. in that boiling, seething 

 centre, ten millions of operations a day contracted or cut off. But the 

 artificial contraction is discovered only when the business has been done, 

 and the usual means to pay for it are found to be wanting. Instantly 

 there is a foray upon the capital that is wanted for other uses. 1 ncreased 

 demand augments the power of the lenders, and the rate of interest is 

 advanced. Weak borrowers can no longer carry the stocks they hold, 

 and thej* are thrown upon the market and sacrificed. The withdrawn 

 ten millions comes out in time to take advantage of the depression, 

 while, by relieving the market, it causes again the advance which enables 

 it to secure the profits of the villany which has been practiced. 



In the light of this illustration, how mighty the part that has been, 

 and is yet performed, by the five hundred millions of California! Six 

 thousand millions a year, for twenty years, is one hundred and twenty 

 thousand millions of transactions, with a month invervening between 



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