0 
MONEY 
Lane and sometimes starve in Soho or on unproduc- 
tive and unhealthy diggings, but all that they do get 
is got in the same way—by exchange of gold for 
money which is immediately paid away for other 
commodities and services—these being the real thing 
ultimately got in exchange. Every ounce of gold 
coming into the commercial world is exchanged for— 
“sold,” if we may turn the word round to signify 
its converse—for commodities and services other than 
gold, and when plentiful in relation to them, it will 
tend to be of smaller value—will be cheaper—than 
when it is less plentiful. The truth of this is illus- 
trated by the high prices of commodities and services 
in newly discovered or inaccessible gold-producing 
areas. In an area in which gold has only just been 
discovered gold will be of small value (general prices 
will be high) because it is plentiful therein compari- 
son with commodities which have to be brought 
there, and with services which have to be performed 
by persons brought there: if the area is easily 
accessible, this will only be temporary, for the high 
prices and earnings will speedily attract commodities 
and workers. But if the area is and continues to be 
difficult of access from the rest of the world, like the 
Australian goldfield of the eighteen-fifties, and the 
Transvaal and the Yukon later, the value of gold 
will remain lower (general prices will remain higher) 
there than in the old-settled thickly peopled parts of 
the world because the supply of commodities and 
workers to the area will remain restricted by the cost 
of getting them there. If any one doubts this explan- 
ation he has only to ask himself whether he believes 
that if goldfields like those of Australia and the Yukon 
had been discovered in Yorkshire or on the banks of 
the Rhine or the Hudson, there would have been any 
long continuance of much higher prices in the imme- 
diate neighbourhood than in the rest of the world.