amount
still to be required will be enormous. During the same four years and five
months the Bank of France has increased its holdings of gold from
$260,888,299 to $391,519,658; the Austrian-Hungarian Bank from $26,634,400
to $133,006,312, and the Bank of England from $109,342,800 to
$232,791,709, while the Banks of Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and the
Netherlands have also increased their holdings some $30,000,000. Thus we
see that in these few years the leading nations have added nearly
$500,000,000 to their previous hoards of gold, which shows too plainly
that they are looking forward to a gold famine. How much more will Asia
demand? In my opinion, India, notwithstanding British rule and influence
there, has developed less rapidly than China will when she once comes into
as intimate contact with western nations as has India, for the rigid
system of caste which prevails in India and which does not exist in China
has been and will be the cause of greater immobility. It is not possible
to say how long it will operate as an impediment to a high industrial
development, but from the lessons taught in other countries where race and
religion create similar castes, we may believe in its long continuance. I
take pleasure at this point in referring to the late able work of Prof.
Charles H. Pierson, of Oxford, who passed twenty years in the Orient. In
his "National Life and Character" he points out that China in 1844 had
doubled her population in eighty years, and there since has been a great
increase; that Russia has doubled since 1849, very largely by natural
increase, the Russian peasant being the most prolific of human beings; and
the Hindoos, who had doubled in eighty years, have recently gained
20,000,000 in ten years.

Professor Pierson also points out the great error of assuming that the
black and yellow races will fade away before the white, and shows it to be
far more likely that with the increased security afforded by British and
Russian rule they will increase so rapidly as to industrially force the
white race back to the higher latitudes of the north temperate zone.
Industrial commonwealths will not dispense with great armies--at least not
for a long time--but China has passed the militant age, and reached the
purely industrial. It may be said that work is a pleasure to the Chinese,
as active sports are to Western people. Continuous toil is looked upon as
a matter of course. To them it does not seem a hardship tha