The Moon Metal

had done a thousand times for murders, battles, fires, and Wall Street panics, but nobody was excited. In fact, the reports at first seemed so exaggerated and improbable that hardly anybo

with a knife has been found wit

e continent that surrounds it. But while they had sent home many highly interesting reports, there had been nothing to suggest the possibility

ome geologists said this accounted for the greater depth of the Antarctic Ocean. It had always been noticed that the southern hemisphere appeared to be a little overweighted. People now began to p

very respect what had been sent before. Then a New York newspaper sent a swift steamer to the Antarctic, and when this ent

of the northern hemisphere were convinced that boundless stores of gold existed in the unclaimed and u

ly depict th

become universal, and business all over the earth had adjusted itself to that condition. The wheels of industry ran smoothly, and there seemed to be no possibility of any disturbance or interruption. The common monetary system prevailing in every land fostered trade and facilitated the exchange of products. Travellers never

outh polar gold discoveries bu

iscoveries suddenly filled the streets with yelling newsboys. "Get me one of those 'extras'

flood of it, we might manage, but when they begin to make trousers buttons out of the same metal that is now locked and guarded in steel vaults, where will be ou

But most people will not agree with you

we go back to the age of barter? Can we substitute cattle-pens and wheat-bins for the

d look serious

ell you, it i

hurried across the street to the o

enormous that the metal was no longer precious. The price of gold dropped like a falling stone, with accelerated velocity, and within a year every money centre in the world had been swept by a panic. Gold was more common than iron. Every government

hardened and tempered, assuming a wonderful toughness and elasticity without losi

num might have served, but it, too, had become a drug in the market through the discovery of immense deposits. Out of the twenty odd elements which had been rarer and more valuable than gold, such as uranium, gallium, et

per money, but whether this was based upon agriculture or mining or manufacture, it gave varying standards, not only among the different nations, but in successive years in the same count

part in it. The ablest financiers of Europe and America united the efforts of their genius and the results of their exper

rer the end of its undertaking than when it first assembled. The entire worl

s a most unexpected even