ABSTRACT
Reason is no less disconcerted by the thought that the discovery of the most precious metal has up to now been scarcely more than the result of chance, and that geological science has found no means of regulating its quantity in proportion to the needs of mankind. A number of tales have been written about what would happen if gold could be produced at will. :Nevertheless in our own day the periods when the production of the precious metals has accelerated or slackened seem to depend rather less than formerly on pure chance. As the methods of exploitation have improved, mining responds more rapidly to alternations of profit and loss, which correspond with periods of falling and rising prices. The devaluation of the pound sterling, by increasing the profits of the mines, stimulated the production of gold at the very moment when the world dreaded a shortage. This is a new factor in world economy which was not present during the eighteenth century. To a certain extent it modifies the workings of chance in a field which formerly
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seemed to depend wholly on accidental discoveries. But the impossibility, from the technical point of view, of adjusting gold output to requirements (supposing that these were known) still troubles many minds. Up to the present, man has not discovered a way of controlling the gold price level, any more than he has succeeded in regulating the amount of sunshine or rain that the different seasons bring to the earth. Fortunately he did not have to wait until he could exercise this impossible power before cultivating the soil and adapting his activity to the changing seasons. Nor did he wait until he knew how to control the price level before working, producing, inventing and saving. And no doubt it is better so. F or the supreme power charged with tlxing the amount of sunshine and rain would create as much discontent as satisfaction every time a decision was taken. Whatever body had the power of fixing the price level would, even if it were purely national, certainly excite the same disappointments and the same grievances; if that body were international, its decisions would be followed by wars.
