The Need for a Gold Rush

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 52, 24 May 1927, Page 14

The Need for a Gold Rush

Mr. L. S. Amery, Secretary of State for the Dominions, in proposing “The mineral and metal industries of the Empire,” at a function in London, said it was the gold rush that made Australia, and the search for diamonds that made South Africa. “It is possible that the new discoveries of gold may have a great stimulating effect in bringing about the recovery of the world from the depression which followed the war. For us it has a peculiar interest. We are under the obligation of paying to the United States a great lump of gold—six thousand seven hundred tons of it. In fact, we shall probably pay for that debt in work spent to acquire the gold which we must hand over. So the problem of our debts to America is more one for the prospector and mining engineer than for the financier.” Sir Alfred Mond said he quite agreed that the world required at the present day a new gold inflation. How much of the prosperity of America was caused by the fact that by most ingenious elaboration they had in America mobilised dead credit and credits which had found no form of expression, and had harnessed them to the wheels of industry? With regard to the big chemical merger, Sir Alfred said that in a few months they were obtaining results from it which he did not think they would obtain in years. “We made that whole merger in only six weeks from start to finish,” he said. “Britain has got to do these things unless we are to go under.”