Page:The National Geographic Magazine Vol 16 1905.djvu/632

ling. They perhaps suggest the possibility of a disturbance of values. It does not follow, of course, that with the production of $400,000,000 of gold per annum the monetary stocks will be increased by that amount. The uses of gold in the domestic arts draw off at least $75,000,000 a year, but that will leave over $300,000,000 a year to add to the gold reserves.

While there will undoubtedly be a tendency to advance prices as a result of this influx of gold into the bank reserves of the world, I do not believe the gold production is likely to become a serious menace. I do not believe that it will so disturb those business relations that are based upon the terms of money as to cause any vital derangement of affairs.

What I do believe is that there is likely to follow just what followed in the two former periods of the world's history when there was an extraordinary production of gold added to the monetary stocks. One of these periods followed the discovery of America, when the treasures of Mexico and Peru were exploited. The other was in the years following the discovery of gold in California and Australia. In each case a mighty impulse was given to the exploitation of virgin fields of development.

It seems to me not improbable that the next few years will witness the expansion of the field of commercial enterprise into new places. Countries that are commercially and industriously backward will yield to this new influence. It seems to me that one of the direct and important effects of this great production of gold will be to give an impulse to the development and industrial exploitation of South America, Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe. At our own hand is South America on one side and China and Japan on the other. We are rapidly awakening to the commercial possibilities within these countries.

Our minister to Peking, Mr W. W. Rockhill, shares the view of Admiral C. E. Clark, published in this Magazine in June, 1905 (page 306), that the population of China is greatly exaggerated. The last official estimate, that of 1885, which was made by the Chinese board of revenue, gave 377,636,198 as the population of the Empire. Mr Rockhill believes that the population does not exceed 275,000,000 at the present time, and that probably it falls considerably below this figure.^[1] He vouches for the fact that none of the northern provinces are overpopulated, and he is inclined to think that China could support a much larger population than it now has, which would be impossible if the number had reached the enormous figure given by some imaginative writers.

There has been a vast deal written about the Philippine Islands in the past five years, much of which is wrong and some of which is false. Contradictory statements abound, and the plain reader is at his wits end to know what to accept and what to reject. Dr Devins, the editor of the New York Observer, spent two months in the Archipelago. It was long enough to learn the situation, but by no means long enough to understand it. The book is largely narrative, describing with interesting detail life on an army transport, on which the