The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1896-02-29
THE IMMENSELY OF 1T.
Wonderful Things That Might Be
Done With the Bond Money.

|
From the New York World,
The people of the United States have
offered their government GOO million
dollars in gold for per cent bonds.
This you must remember, is not their
fortune. They have silver and green
backs and houses and lands and cattle
and household goods and raiment and
jewelry. This is merely the gold that
| they have saved or have been able to
buy.
They have laid this money aside for
a rainy day, and now they want to IN
vest it in such way that they will not
nation has money to burn. The trouble
would be to find place to burn it. If
you were to take this enormous sum of
money in 81 bills and fasten them end
to end, they would make string 3d.
200 miles long, which you could easily
wind around the equator three times
and even leave 5000 miles or so hang
ing out in airy space. To make a
bonfire OF these bills would require one
of our biggest parks.
The Immensity of this sum, the
gigantic dimensions of its bulk in gold,
or, what is even more startling, in
silver, and its value and purchasing
power in this world are bewildering to
contemplate. Distributed among the
population of the land, it would give
every man, woman and child $40.
Distributed among the population of
New York, each woman and child
would receive 1858.
1t you will consult your Worlds
Almanac you will find that there are in
this country 7S,045 paupers. If this
gold that is lying idle were divided
among them, each would receive over
SO, 200, small fortune. This amount
of money would buy the whole British
navy, if that navy were for sale, and
leave enough surplus to carry on a
pretty lively war. Or, If you did not
care to invest the whole sum in one
enterprise, you might, for less than
one-half of it, or 500 million dollars,
buy or duplicate all of the following
interesting things:
A feet of thirty or thirty-five first
class battleshIps.
The Chicago Worlds Fair.
The Brooklyn bridge.
Half dozen buildings like the capt.
tol at Washington, the houses OF Par
lament, Westminster Abbey, Notre
Dame Cathedral in Paris and handful
of castles on the Rhine.
Half dozen crack racing. stables,
each one bigger than any now in exist
ence, with a couple OF modern steam
yachts as big as the old Great Eastern
thrown In.
Then after buying few gold mines
and such things you would find ii diff
cult to spend all you had left of this
half. to say nothing of the other 800
million dollars, which you have not
touched. If all this gold were rolled
into one ball it would make a sphere
thirteen feet, eight inches in diameter,
which would weigh in the neighbor-
hood of 2,20Q,0Q0 pounds. If you
were to divide it into six balls OF 100
millions each and fssce them upon
heavy wagons it would require long
train of elephants to drag them.
Really this is a marvellous sum of
money when you come to measure it.
Ii 1t were given you in So gold pieces,
which according to the report of the
director of the mint, are .056 of an
inch thick, and you were able to stack
them one upon the other as gambler
piles his chips, you would have a
golden rod 100000 feet high-more
than eighty-six miles. If you would
rather have the pile thicker you might
take the gold in cubic blocks, one foot
in thickness, each one of which would
be worth 100000. If you were to
pile these blocks Qne upon another,
your coo million dollars would make a
column $500 feet high. A cubic foot
of silver is worth $4,000 in these |
days. A moments figuring will show |
you how high your column would be if |
you could exchange this gold for silver.
If all the gold in the world were to be |
rolled into one sphere it would make a
globe of twenty five feet and three |
inches in diametcr Our 500 million
dollars would be one-seventh of this |
quantity. 1t would make enough gold |
to build house.
AS matter of fact, there is hardly
thing in the world that this enormous
sum of money would not buy, except
ing an honest man.
Tho average price of a first-class
is $75 a carat. Our 600 mil
lion dollars would therefore buy 8
million diamonds each about the size
Of pea. Diamond merchants reckon
that 100 million diamonds of this size
would Gil y gill measure. At this
rate you can easily figure that these
million diamonds would occupy a little
over 334 cubic feet of space. You
could pile them in a flashing, spark
ling, scientillating cone that would be
,eyen feet In diameter at the base and
nearly fourteen feet high.
Farm for Rent.
100 acres, mile and aone-half east of
Kansas City on good road. 50 aorsss choice
ulti waiting land, Good house, good