ng at
a considerable discount outside of England, other countries could afford
to bid, in terms of British currency, far above the British mint price.
The result is that the South African miner of gold receives a premium
due to depreciation of sterling exchange, while the American miner still
receives the regular mint price. The agitation for a bonus therefore
continues in the United States. However, with the removal of war-time
restrictions gold has been allowed to go to the arts, the demand from
which is already equal to one-third of the world's gold production, is
rapidly increasing, and is temporarily acute due to the accumulation of
requirements resulting from war restrictions. This situation has a
general tendency to improve the position of the gold miner, though the
outlook is still far from bright.

It is an interesting fact that India is absorbing a good half of the
free gold. India, in regard to its demand for precious metals and
stones, has been described as "an abyss from which there is no return."
This is an important contributing cause of the shortage of gold in the
rest of the world.

Looking forward to the future, it seems that increased exploration,
which is resulting from the present premium on gold, is likely to bring
in new reserves to increase production. Because of lack of important
discoveries in recent years, there is pessimism in some quarters as to
the possibilities of large increase of production; but, considering the
history of gold discoveries, and the amount of ground still to be
explored both areally and vertically, this pessimism does not seem to be
wholly justified from the geologic standpoint. Curves representing the
world's gold production in past years show periods of increasing annual
production as new fields are discovered, followed by periods of
decreasing production when no new ore bodies are coming in to replace
dwindling reserves. It is entirely possible that in recent years the
gold-mining industry has been merely in one of these temporary stagnant
periods. There are many regions, both in the vicinity of worked-out
lodes and in unsettled and poorly explored countries, where gold may
still be discovered; there may be far greater resources of this metal
still covered up than all those which man has thus far uncovered. A
single new deposit or district may make a great difference in the
world's production, as suggested by the experience of the past. Regions
which are especially a