in the world had been swept by a panic. Gold was more common than
iron. Every government was compelled to demonetize it, for when once
gold had fallen into contempt it was less valuable in the eyes of the
public than stamped paper. For once the world had thoroughly learned
the lesson that too much of a good thing is worse than none of it.

Then somebody found a new use for gold by inventing a process by which
it could be hardened and tempered, assuming a wonderful toughness and
elasticity without losing its non-corrosive property, and in this form
it rapidly took the place of steel.

In the mean time every effort was made to bolster up credit. Endless
were the attempts to find a substitute for gold. The chemists sought
it in their laboratories and the mineralogists in the mountains and
deserts. Platinum 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, etc., not one was found to answer the
purpose. In short, it was evident that since both gold and silver had
become too abundant to serve any longer for a money standard, the
planet held no metal suitable to take their place.

The entire monetary system of the world must be readjusted, but in the
readjustment it was certain to fall to pieces. In fact, it had already
fallen to pieces; the only recourse was to paper 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 country. Exports and imports practically
ceased. Credit was discredited, commerce perished, and the world, at a
bound, seemed to have gone back, financially and industrially, to the