Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

But this addition to the gold money of civilization was gradually made, and the product of forty years of all the gold mines in the world was not equal to the sum which in less than four years might be taken from the Morning mine.

If, as a consequence of Morning’s find, gold should not be demonetized, if it should be permitted to remain as a measurer of all values, and the extent of the deposit should be made known to the world, the inevitable result would be to quadruple the prices of land, labor, and goods, and to reduce to one-fourth of their present proportions the value to the creditor of all existing indebtedness. The farmer whose land was worth $10,000 would find it worth $40,000, and the man who had loaned $5,000 upon it would find his loan worth but $1,250 practically, because the purchasing power of his $5,000 would be reduced to one-fourth of its present capacity.

All government bonds of the nations, all county, city, and railroad bonds, and all the mortgages and promissory notes and book accounts in the world, would, if all of Morning’s gold should be poured at once into circulation, without preparation or warning, be reduced at one blow to one-fourth of their present value, and all the owners of land, and implements, and horses, and cattle, and merchandise would find their value at once increased fourfold. The laborer who had only his hands or his brains would remain unaffected. His wages would be quadrupled, and so would the cost of his living.

Knowledge of the extent of the Morning mine would immediately enrich the debtors and ruin the creditors of the world, unless the governments of earth should demonetize gold, deny it access to the mints, refuse to coin it, and so degrade it to a commodity.

An illustration in a small way of the operations of this immutable law of finance may be found in the history of San Francisco. The foundations of some of the great fortunes of that city may be traced to the days of the Civil War, when San Francisco wholesale merchants paid their Eastern creditors in legal tender currency, the while they diligently fostered a public sentiment which made it discreditable to the honesty and ruinous to the credit of any California retailer who should attempt to pay his debt to them in the despised greenbacks. The interior storekeeper glowed with pride when Ephraim Smooth & Company gathered in his golden twenties, and commended his honesty for “paying his debts like a man, in gold, and not availing himself of the dishonest legal tender law.” But Smooth & Company paid their New York creditors in greenbacks, and pocketed the difference.

Inflation of the currency, or an increase of the money of a nation, if it can be gradually made, need not prove disastrous to the creditors, and must prove a benefaction to the debtors of the world. The relation of wages to the cost of living, whether the volume of money in a country be contracted or inflated, practically remains the same. It may be claimed that the workman who receives an increase of wages, and whose cost of living is correspondingly increased, is no better off at the end of the year, yet economy brings to him larger apparent accumulations, and he is thereby encouraged to practice frugality.

The American mechanic who wandered to the Canary Islands, where he received $400 a day in the local currency for his wages, was enabled to save $100 a day by denying himself brandy and tobacco, and but for this dazzling inducement he might have surrendered to temptations that would have made him a proper subject for the ministrations of the W. C. T. U.

But though an inflation of values which should be beneficent might follow the discovery and working of the Morning mine, clearly the first thing for the discoverer to do was to take effectual measures to conceal from human knowledge the extent of his discovery.

David Morning remained for some time in deep thought, and then, rising from his seat upon a bowlder behind the manzanita bushes, he tore into fragments the paper upon which he had been making calculations, and, excavating with his foot a hole in the sand, he dropped into it and covered the specimens of gold quartz which he had taken from the ledge, and, retracing his steps, was soon at the copper-camp, where, in answer to the queries of his companions, he replied truthfully that during his absence he had not seen a single quail.

Two days elapsed, and, the shaft having been cleaned out and the copper lode thoroughly exposed, Morning took samples of it, and also of croppings of the other lodes included in the ground located by Steel, and the party broke camp and started for Tucson, where they arrived early in the afternoon of the second day.