Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1921-02-18
ARIZONA MAINTAINS
 ITS GOLD PRODUCTION

Every gold mining district in the
 United States and Canada shows a big drop in gold production for the year
 1920, with the exception of Arizona. The primary cause of gold depreciation is high costs and labor problems.
 Gold is not appreciated as it should
 be in the business life of the country,
 but the men who are the greatest ben eficiaries are those that pound the
 metal down to the lowest price that
 it can be produced for. Yet every
 country that gets four bits above its
 normal needs is going on a gold basis,
 although all it's business has to be
 done in depreciated paper currency.
 It is noticeable fact in the United
 States that every bank and individual,
 as we'll as the government itself, is
 hanging onto every gold dollar with
 a strangle hold that cannot be broken,
 and at the same time every one of
 these interests are telling the people that gold is not necessity. If it is not, why don't they ditch the yellow
 stuff and do business as they are ask ing others to do it, on a paper basis, with the faith of the Nation" back
 of it. How long, think you, would
 such money maintain it's parity with gold? Not for very long. As soon
 as the people got wise to the fact that there was no gold back of the issues of money, no matter how big or great the nation, there would be one of the
 greatest panics the world has ever known. It will be remembered that in 1907 the banks of the country is- sued certificates, instead of paying cash, and there was an incipient panic that would have grown to abnormal proportions had the government not found way out. And it was to this condition that the country owes the organization of the federal banking system of today, with it's assurance to depositors. But even this would not keep the country from panic today were it not for the enormous gold backing that federal notes have. And back of every bank in the country is also enormous wealth, which fact stab ilizes these institutions and make them the real Repositories of the peo- pie. Banks are unlike the affairs of the old days, when these institutions could be crushed as easily as an egg shell by rival interests. Their rami- fications are now so great and they are protected so heavily that no mat ter how small they may be in the big financial scale only crude manipula- tion can put them out of the running. Yet every one of these institutions, large and small, are predecated on gold basis, the production of which in terests no one outside of the mining country.
 Gold production is so essential to the progress and welfare of the Unit ed States that some active support must be given the producers of the metal, instead of putting every ob- struction possible in it's way. Tariffs are proposed on other metals and manufactures, but gold is held with a death grip by the government and no chance given it to enter the marts of the world. The government sets the price on it and refuses to allow anyone to bid against it. There is no fostering of infant industry when it | comes to gold production, nor will there be while the eastern manufact- lrer and speculator has his way and say.