introduced. If not one was passed, every project sought to unsettle in some way existing conditions. This threat of instability is one of the penalties of the great blessing of free speech and unstinted right of petition. The day must have its shadows a well as its sunshine. The confession that weak links can be found in our financial chain shall not drive us into pessimism. We know the growth and the reserve of strength. Under the act of March 14, 1900, every dollar is equal to every other dollar, and all are interchangeable. Because they are most in use among all the people everywhere, the small notes are in greatest demand. If conditions point at all to a premium, the ones, twos and fives will command it first. But the level is well maintained. Whatever winds blow or storms beat, our currency has a surface as clear and even as a mirror. That surface is not of mercury, shifting and undulating; it is formed of the minted gold.

The stronghold of our financial system is its actual gold, as well as our statutes. The world has about $5,500,000,000 of this metal, of which the United States has in its stock $1,342,422,740. In the last reported year, the world produced less than $300,000,000, of which our mines gave $80,000,000. Our treasury holds $700,000,000 in gross, and our banks, national and other, have $300,000,000, approximately. So over one fifth of all the world's gold is in the United States, and the bulk of it is in the banks and the treasury. The increase in gold in both forms in our currency in five years has been just less than $300,000,000 ($299,853,457), and in the past year from August 1st to August 1st, $137,727,920. The charge is put forth often in spirit, and sometimes in words, that we are extravagant and wasteful in the possession of so much of the precious metal. Are we? A leading financial journal of New York quotes the president of one of the largest banks in San Francisco as alleging that it costs $20 to get a dollar of gold out of the ground. Was the metal all that the picks of the miners and their self sacrifice took out of the earth? Did not the argonauts of 1849 and their successors create the California of to-day? The ranches, the orchards, the wheat and the fruit, the factories and shipyards, the cities, the churches, the universities, the civilization of that

prosperous commonwealth, are a part of the harvest planted by that $20 of the miners.

A writer in the Nineteenth Century alleges that in Australia the balance in gold mining has been adverse, and in the same review we read that on the whole gold discoveries have not been of use. For all fields response may be given on the same lines as for California. Is not California now, is not Australia, worth all they cost? But we are not studying whether gold prospecting or gold mining as an industry is profitable or the reverse. Loss may befall the miners in direct results, and yet by extending population, opening up new districts, creating new centers of production, they may add largely to the welfare of mankind.

Quite another question is whether the supply of yellow metal in this country and in the world is in excess. That problem is important and far reaching. We are to note that gold here is in the ratio of 44.9 to the total currency, while in Great Britain it is 70; in France, 62.12; in Germany, 66.10; in Russia, 87.71, and in Austria-Hungary, 68.90. In all these countries combined, gold is 69.6 to the total circulation. If the world's experience is to be accepted our gold is not in excess, although our whole volume of money may be too great. Gold, whether in coin or certificates, becomes elastic as currency just to the extent that it comes to the treasury and goes out from the vaults. This counterflow has no limit save the operations of trade. No payments or deposits in this form will be rejected, and the treasure will be held intact until the public use draws it out. Coin and certificates are interchangeable, and elasticity may assert itself to any degree. Our total circulation per capita at $31.06, exceeds that of every other nation save France, where it is $39.22. But our industry and enterprise and local traffic also lead in the comparison. The question is grave whether our currency is not in excess of our needs.

American finance connects itself with world movements. While we cannot follow the debate relative to the profit of gold mining, we must recognize the fact that among the great commercial nations the yellow metal is the only instrument for the final adjustment of trade differences. The experience