Rough stone gave place to flint because the latter would take a better edge. For the same reason the people of central Europe sent to the deserts of central Asia for jade wherewith to make axes and knives. Again, for the same reason, jade was discarded, because an alloy of copper and tin produced a bronze that would not only take a sharper edge than stone, but it was hard enough to cut and dress the latter. Egypt rose to a commanding position because of her control of the copper mines in the Sinaitic peninsula, and subsequently of the gold products coming from the upper Nile.
A meridian drawn through Cairo, Egypt, practically divides the world into two kinds of civilization. East of this meridian the population is almost wholly agricultural and, excepting Japan and India, the character of the civilization has changed but little in the past 2,000 years. West of the line the population is essentially characterized as metal-workers. It controls the world—not especially by virtue of a high degree of intellectual development, but because it has availed itself of the properties and characteristics of metals and their applications to commerce.
The four metals that have had the greatest influence on western civilization are gold, silver, iron, and copper. The discovery of gold and silver has always resulted in a rapid settlement of the regions in which the discoveries were made, and usually in the building of great industrial centres. Thus, the discovery of gold in California was the first step in making the United States a world power. The acquisition of so large an amount of gold caused an industrial expansion that hurried the Civil War, and led to the manufacture of iron and steel both for agricultural machinery and railroad transportation. This, in turn, brought the country so closely in touch with the affairs of China and Japan, that European and American diplomacy in eastern Asia are a common concern. The commercial position of Great Britain is very largely due to her iron mines.
The production of Bessemer steel at a price far less than that of iron at the beginning of the nineteenth century lowered the cost of transporting commodities to the extent that large areas, once of necessity very moderately productive of food-stuffs, are now densely peopled because food-stuffs can be transported to these regions more economically than they can be grown there. Thus, owing to the improvements in iron and steel manufacture, the farmer of Minnesota, the planter of Louisiana, the miner of Colorado, and the factory operative of Massachusetts have each the same comforts of living that are enjoyed by all the others, and have them at scarcely more than half the cost of fifty years ago.
STEEL MANUFACTURE—THE NATIONAL STEEL COMPANY'S SMELTERY AND ROLLING-MILLS, MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO
The gradual decrease in the production of the silver mines near the present site of Ergasteria proved a beginning of the fall of Athens; and when gold was discovered in the Perim Mountains of Macedonia, the seat of Greek power moved thither. Philip of Macedon hoarded the treasure from the mines of Pangæus, and with the capital thus acquired his son, Alexander the Great, conquered the East, implanted Hellenic business methods there, and drew the various trade routes between Europe and Asia under one control.
In the fifteenth century copper from the mines near Budapest and silver from the Schwarz Mountains of Germany were the resources that made Germanic Europe pre-eminent. The wresting of the trade in these two metals from Venice caused the rise of Antwerp and brought immense gains to Lübeck, London, Brussels, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. In the latter part of the nineteenth century copper again reached a high position of importance from the fact that upon it largely depends electric motive power and transportation.