CONCLUSION. 371 



these respects we are as the Scribes and Pharisees, giv- 

 ing tithe of mint and cummin, but neglecting the 

 weightier matters of the law. 



Equally disastrous in many respects has been the wild 

 struggle for gold in California, Australia, South Africa, 

 and elsewhere. The results are hardly less disastrous, 

 though in different ways, than those produced by the 

 Spaniards in Mexico and Peru four centuries ago. 

 Great wealth has been obtained, great populations have 

 grown up and are growing up ; but great cities have also 

 grown up with their inevitable poverty, vice, overcrowd- 

 ing, and even starvation, as in the Old World. Every- 

 where, too, this rush for wealth has led to deterioration 

 of land and of natural beauty, by covering up the sur- 

 face with refuse heaps, by flooding rich lowlands with 

 the barren mud produced by hydraulic mining; and by 

 the great demand for animal food by the mining popula- 

 tions leading to the destruction of natural pastures in 

 California, Australia, and South Africa, and their re- 

 placement often 'by weeds and plants neither beautiful 

 nor good for fodder. 



It is also a well-known fact that these accumulations 

 of gold-seekers lead to enormous social evils, opening a 

 field for criminals of every type, and producing an 

 amount of drink-consumption, gambling, and homicide 

 altogether unprecedented. Both the earlier gold-dig- 

 ging by individual miners, and the later quartz-mining 

 by great companies, are alike forms of gambling or 

 speculation; and while immense fortunes are made by 

 some, others suffer great losses, so that the gambling spirit 

 is still further encouraged and the production of real 

 wealth by patient industry, to the same extent dimin- 



