Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1919-12-20
SZL YER COMES BACK

since the Civil war. Before the Civi
 war silver ranged regularly around z
 dollar thirty to thirty-five. It was
 probably in those days that the pres
 ent amount of it came to be put intt
 our coins, thus giving them an actua
 intrinsic value about equal to theil face value.
 The present boom in the silver mar
 ket is due principally to the demand
 for the metal in the far east. There is likewise demand from several of the European nations that have issued
 large amounts of paper money and are
 anxious to get metal back of it to
 steady that currency. But the chief
 demand is from India, China and
 Japan, all of which are on a silver
 monetary basis.
 The big run on American silver
 came when, in the midst of the war,
 Great Britian came to us in much per-
 turbation. The trouble was in India.
 The situation there is unique. The
 East Indian has an unsuitable ap- petite for the precious metals. India is known as the sinkhole of the world for gold and silver. These metals g., to India in shiploads, are absorbed and disappear. There is no coinage with which to transact business and the outside world sends more gold and sil- yer. It is indifferent. If India wants to bull the precious metal market the producers are glad of the fact
 But in the midst of the war there was no coin in India. London had al- ways been the silver market of the world, and India and China had bought through London. But now England was without silver. The on- ly agency which could save India was the United States. Would We furnish silver for the orient?
 We would. We had a little matter of three hundred and fifty million silver dollars, ready coined, that we would sell to Great Britain for use in the orient. It had cost us from fifty to seventy cents an ounce. We were offered a dollar an ounce. The amount wanted was about 11,000 tons of sil- yer, enough of it to load two big ocean liners, enough of it to load a string of freight cars two miles long. We would pour these dollars into gr at cauldrons at our hints would melt them and mold them into bars about the size of an ordinary brick. We would keep constant stream of boxes laden with these bars bound for the Golden Gate for shipment to the orient. We did all of this. It took a year to do it. But We glutted India with silver and averted a crisis.
 Now the orient is buying silver di- rect from us. No longer is the silver business done through London. New York is the silver center of the world. Probably England, which produced no silver, will never become the silver enter again. Probably the orient will ,id direct through America. America S interested in good prices for silver which England was not. Possibly per nenent high prices for silver may re- ;ult from these changes.
 And dead towns of the west are coming to life as result of the silver ,oom. There were towns in Colorado md Nevada and Arizona, which, un- Ter the influence of silver in those lays after the Civil war burst into,a wild, rich life that has no parallel in History as a background for motion picture scenarios. From all the west country comes the word that the dead ,ones of those deserted silver towns Ire beginning to rattle again. The tir of life is among the ruins. Clouds if dust are rising along the trails that cad across sageb,ush plains. The mining engineer, present day success or of the prospector and his burro, is stir in the silver country. There is 10 need to look for new mines. They re going back to the old shafts that 'ielded wealth when silver was above
 dollar. With the advance in mining processes in the last four decades, the hances of profits are many times 
 There is the Crescent mine, at Flu eka, Nevada, where Ray Baker, direc- or of the mint, was born. In its almy days it produced sixty million ollars worth of silver It has been He for thirty years. This winter the | ,rescent mine is being refinanced and A ten million dollar com any is just beginning to pump new fe into it. New machinery, new new railroads, are to tap the Id sources of silver. The Crescent is ut typical The same thing is taking lace at many points,. Eureka cares ot how fanatical Brahams of India r Mandarins of China may hoard it's roduct. It will pour out the metal nd profit the more. Thus will orien- al hoarders make occidental profits, 1