"'A little while ago I heard of an Egyptian gentleman who died leaving a fortune of £80,000 [$400,000], the whole of which was in gold coin in his cellars. Then, again, I heard of a substantial yeoman who bought property for £25,000 ($125,000). Half an hour after the contract was signed he appeared with a train of donkeys bearing on their backs the money, which had been buried in his garden. I hear that on the occasion of a fire in a provincial town no less than £5,000 ($25,000) was found hidden in earthen pots. I could multiply instances of this sort. There can be no doubt that the practice of hoarding is carried on to an excessive degree.'"
In round figures the approximate amount of gold remaining for commercial or banking purposes is approximately $4,000,000,000 (four thousand million dollars), in addition to what we had in 1890, making a total of $8,000,000,000 (eight thousand million dollars).
Of this total amount the United States has $1,800,000,000 (one thousand eight hundred million dollars), or nearly one-quarter of the monetary gold supply of the world.
However, if we had our proper proportion of the world's monetary gold, considered from the standpoint of our bank resources, we should have upwards of $3,000,000,000 (three thousand million dollars).
Mr. Banker: How do you make that out?
Mr. Lawyer: The banking resources of the entire world are now about $55,000,000,000, while those of the United States are about $25,000,000,000, or two-fifths of the bank resources of the world, and therefore we are entitled to two-fifths of the eight billion of monetary gold of the world. This would give us $3,200,000,000.
While, as I have just said, it is true that there have been no discoveries of new fields since 1890, with the exception of the Klondike, a most important event occurred in the discovery of the Cyanide process, which was, with the circumstances attending it, well described by the Mining World and Engineering Record of London, which said:
"The discovery of the Cyanide process must be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of modern time. And there can be no doubt that Cyaniding will be held by the coming generation for its importance, not so much to the mineral industries directly, as for its bearing upon world economies in rendering possibly a greatly increased output of gold and silver year after year. In a comparatively brief twenty-year interval since 1890, when Messrs. McArthur and Forrest brought the modern perfected Cyanide process prominently before the mining world, the output of gold has amounted to 284,081,289 fine ounces. This is a most astonishing showing, especially when compared with a total output of 401,311,148 fine ounces for the entire 397 years previous from 1493 to 1890, a period lacking just three years of being four centuries.
"For the great expansion in the world's output, particularly noticeable in the past fifteen years, the spread of the Cyanide process is directly responsible. Nor, if we except the Klondike, has this record production been boomed by the development of new fields. The cream of the world's gold fields had already been skimmed in previous years in California, Australia, South Africa, Siberia, India, and elsewhere. It is mainly on the cast-off leavings of the old field that the Cyanide process has achieved a record production of the yellow metal. And among those leavings, we must not forget the innumerable low-grade properties whose exploitation has been rendered fundamentally possible only by the Cyanide process. It is these latter which now furnish the bulk of the world's supply of gold, and upon which the world must depend very largely for its future requirements."
Mr. Banker: Those figures are startling. We must be getting more gold than we need for banking purposes.