The Coolidge examiner., 1933-09-22


Of America can now be definitely
located. says the director Of the
United States mint.
Half Used in Industry.
Since 1892 the world has mined
more than $Z2,0OO,OOO,OO0, as Off
cially reported. OF this, about 80
per cent was produced since 1850.
But today, the worlds nations
hold, as monetary gold stock, only
about $11 ,940,OOO,0O0.
What, you ask, has become Of
the rest of It? Where are the miss
ing ten billions or more?
II went, much Of II, just as in
olden times. into ornaments. In
1881, for instance. OF, roughly, $49,-
100000 OF gold mined in the United
States alone, about S29,000000 was
consumed in industry.
To understand COLDS place In the
world today and how 1t affects our
well-being, one must first swiftly
trace its use through other times.
EurOpe's gold when Columbus
first sailed westward amounted TO
less than some present-day family
fortunes. Part of this Europe had
mined, part she had plundered from
other lands. Cadmus. Phoenician,
opened a gold mine In Thrace about
1894 B. c., and carried thither the
alphabet and other germs Of civill-
zation." Jason, on his piratical gold
quest to Argos in 1868 b. c., gave
the name Argonauts TO gold-seek-
ers. Croesus gained wealth from
ancient placer mines Of Smyrna; {;
so did Midas of the legendary gold
en- touch,
Darius Of Persia looted Asia
Minor, Greece, and Egypt, and lev
led gold and silver tribute. Part
OF this Alexander retrieved when
he In turn plundered Babylon and
other lands Of enormous sums.
Holes dug by Harun-al-Rashid
when he worked the gold veins of
what now Is HejaZ were recently
seen. Diodorus tells In dramatic
detail how naked slaves, with cam
dies tied on top of their heads,
worked the hot tunnels of Egyptian
gold mines in the cruel days Of
the Pharaohs.
Some of early Europe's gold came
from Siberia. Gmelin. the German
traveller, says the tunnels were so
small that men had TO crawl on
their bellies to get at the quartz,
from which they picked gold fila
ments with tools pointed with boars'
fangs.
Egyptian kings worked their gold
mines with slaves, and Carthage
not only enslayed people in what
is now Spain, but also brought
hordes of African slaves TO help
work these mines.
India Hoards Gold.
India, in time, became the worlds
greatest gold hoarder. 1.-The treas
ure sink of the world" she has
been called. Just how much gold
Is still hidden in the secret vaults
Of her princes, nobody knows; from
1878 to 1880. however. the records
show that India imported about
S2.S00000,000 in gold.
Even after America was discov-
cred. Europe, though her own gold
supply was increased, continued to
obtain less by mining than by con-
quest and plunder. C0rtez and Pi-
zarro robbed in the New world as
Scipio and Alexander had done in
the Old
Few books record the fact, yet
| Japan in the Seventeenth century
supplied Europe with an important
stock of gold. The Portuguese and
Dutch managed this, beginning gen.
erations before the American Com
modore Perry opened Japan's ports
to world trade.
Fernao Mendes Pinto. a pirate
from the Portuguese colony at
Ningpo. China. was driven upon the
japanese coast during a storm in
1545. When he returned TO Ningpo
with tales of much gold in Japan,
other Portuguese fitted out ships
and began trading.
Nothing stirs mans Imagination
more than tales of huge nuggets.
Small ones have appeared in the
craws of chickens and turkeys
children at play have found others.
A fourteen-year-old California boy
named Perkins. playing with a toy
water wheel in a Calaveras county
creek. picked up a nugget worth
1880.
Near Dutch Flat, in the same
state. an old miner, Dan Hill,
stopped to wash his hands in a
brook and saw in the water a
chunk of gold as big as his head.
He got $4,000 for it.
North Carolina does not come to
mind first as a gold state. Yet rec
ords in the United States mint show
that it mined gold as early as 1893.
FROM its old Reed mine, in Cabar-
rms county came veritable stream
of nuggets that ranged from beam