Evening star., 1913-12-07

is much talk in the air of monetary readjust-
ment. The ordinary citizen hopes for the
best, rather vaguely gathering that gold re-
serves and shipments of gold here and there
have considerable bearing on the problem;
also that financial people are said to look
worried when large consignments of gold
start off across the Atlantic The fact is
that our whole estimate of things is SO based
on gold that if to watch gold depart is dis
comforting, to witness it actually disappear
| well, let twenty-dollar gold piece slip out
of your fingers and drop down beyond recov
cry into some hole of the earth, and you will
experience a loss somehow beyond its mere
purchasing power.
Yet practically that is what is happening
before our eyes in the steady stream of gold
that has been flowing for centuries into
India One might say streams of gold flow
| ing thence; for, since India produces COM
paratively little gold herself, she lays the
whole world under tribute. Hardly any of
this gold returns. 1t is as if the earth of
| India had opened and swallowed it up. The
American winter tourist in India who parts
| from a sovereign or a five-dollar gold piece
may be pretty certain it will go straightway
out of circulation and nevermore be seen in
the country of its minting. In 1911 India
imported bar gold valued at 1926, ,675 900
and English sovereigns worth S91, ,71O, 900;
total of 1927 1885, 900, of which little, if
any, found its way back across the Indian
Ocean. Therefore, when one takes into ac-
count that this single years drain of gold
to India represents a stream of the precious
metal set toward that country for centuries,
questions naturally arise concerning it.
WHAT has become of this vast accumu-
lation of our cleaning treasure? To
what use is all this gold put, since India has
not minted gold coinage of her own for many
generations. The puzzle becomes bit curious
when it is remembered that as a whole the
| three hundred-odd millions of natives refuse
absolutely to deposit their savings, gold or
otherwise, into banks, and will take no part
| financially in such productive enterprises as
railroads, irrigation works, or factories. The
| sharpest and most astute get-rich-quick
bucketshop artist that ever soaked gullible
occidental public could no more beguile the
mild Hindu to buy share of stock with the
| glittering promise of a thousand-polnt rise
in value, than the government has been
able to induce him to invest in solid guar
anteed bonds. While the Hindu nightly
enjoys riding on the railroad train packed
like a sardine, and will admit that irrigation
works are helpful in times of drought, by all
his gods! he won't part from a rupee to help
establish any enterprise of material public
benefit With the exception of few en-
| lightened Princes, and the handful of pro-
gressive Parsees, the burden and risk of all
such work is borne by foreign capital.
| 1t has been estimated that "the visible
boarded wealth of India in temples, the
| treasure chests of Princes, and in the jewelry
| of the Indian men and women, amounts to
| 81 800, 100000 As simple portable treas
ure that would look like pretty respectable
pile even for our day, and make the oldtime
buccaneers set sail for India in hurry. Part
of this any American tourist can see for him
self in such toys as the two gold cannon of
the Maharaja Gaikwar, each containing two
hundred and eighty pounds of pure gold,
| and from glimpses caught of temple images
of solid or thickly plated gold and blazing
with jewels. AS a special favor he may be
permitted to glance within the iron-bound
treasure chests of some Highness and plunge
his arm to the elbow in ancient gold mohurs.
| But this would hardly account for the
greater part of that golden current set
toward India since the beginning of record.
| 1t is into the earth that current sinks, year
after year for hundreds of them, to be for
gotten or lost trace of in the violent social
upheavals, plaques, and famines that have
swept over the country. In India man has
but to relinquish his fight against the jungle
growth for short space, to result in the tear
| ing down, overwhelming, and utter oblitera-
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