[232] Pp. 358-372, vol. I.
[233] Loc. cit., p. 160. Cf. our chapter on "Barter."
[234] The fact that prices are often high in gold mining regions, as compared with prices in the general world markets, has been taken by many writers as proof of the quantity theory. Cf. Kemmerer, Money and Credit Instruments, pp. 50-51, 58; Cairnes, J. E., Essays in Political Economy, particularly the discussion of the Australian episode. It seems to me that this is particularly inconclusive. High prices characterize remote mining regions of all kinds, whether gold, silver, copper, diamonds, tin or what not be the quest. Prices are not lower in the tin and copper region in the northern part of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska than they are in the gold region about Nome in the southern part of that peninsula. They are high in both places, not because of the abundance of gold or of money, but because of the great value of goods, which have to be brought with great trouble and expense from the United States. They are higher in the region of the Saw Tooth Mountains, in the centre of this peninsula, where hydro-electric power for the use of the gold miners about Nome, and for the copper and tin mines further north, is being developed, than they are at Nome itself, on the coast, where the gold is being mined. They were high in Australia because the discovery of gold led everybody to abandon everything but gold mining, and to bring in virtually everything from a distance. Wooden beams were imported to Australia from Sweden! (Pierson, N. G., Principles of Economics, I, p. 389.) One would expect prices in gold money to be higher in a silver or copper mining region, which is prospering, than in a gold mining region, equally remote, where a great deal of gold is being mined, but at a cost too great to make the region prosperous.
[235] Loc. cit., p. 51.
[236] Meaning of Money, p. 18.
[237] Price's address before Western Econ. Asso'n, Nov. 26, 1915; Holt's letter; Dec. 2.
[238] Loc. cit., p. 172.
[239] See our discussion of "money rates" and "interest rates," supra, in the chapter on "Capitalization," and infra, in the chapters on "The Functions of Money," and on "Credit."
[240] Infra, chapter on "Functions of Money," and supra, chapters on "Capitalization" and "Dodo-Bones."
[241] Cf. our chapters on "Supply and Demand," and "The Origin of Money."