Gold Boom

Never before has the world been so thoroughly grubbed for gold. College-trained engineers zoom across the northlands looking for it. Oldtime prospectors plod the gullies of the Western States. Abandoned shafts have been reopened and assayed. Throughout the world jobless men have taken picks & pans and made off for the hills. Some of them have struck rich pay dirt. In Australia, Ecuador, the Rand, Chile, the Philippines, Mexico and Venezuela their luck has started minor gold rushes in recent months, mostly abortive.

The world's output of gold has mounted steadily. Figures published last week by American Bureau of Metal Statistics showed that October production was 2,033,000 oz., an 18,000-oz. gain from September, a 180,000-oz. gain from October 1931. Canadian production for the first nine months was 2,271,000 oz. against 1,974,000 in the same period of 1931, 1,497,000 in 1930. October gold production in the U. S. was 255,000 oz. against 246,000 oz. in September.

The production gain has been marked by increasing speculation in gold shares. For the rise in production has resulted chiefly, not from the scattered scratching of prospectors but from the speeding of operations of established companies and their opening of known reserves. Lower commodity costs throughout the world have made all gold mining cheaper. But it has worked to double advantage in Canada where the Government buys mined gold at the U. S. rate of exchange, hence at a handsome premium for miners. Canadian gold mines have paid $18,422,000 in dividends this year, a 50% gain over two years ago. Last week Charles McCrea. Provincial Minister of Mines, said that this year's gold mining activities in Ontario alone will split $45,000,000 between wages, supplies, taxes & dividends. Gold shares have soared in Toronto and Montreal. A further whet to speculation was news last week that famed Manhattan Speculator George Forsythe Breen and Sisto & Co. planned to invest $250,000 new capital in Barry-Hollinger Mines, a hitherto only fairly successful company whose shares sold at 3 1/2-c- last month; 9-c- last week.

Only a handful of gold stocks is listed the New York Stock Exchange Best known is Alaska Juneau, of which Bear Bernard ("Sell 'em Ben") Smith is so fond that he named his horse for it. In the past eight weeks it has thrashed forward from $11 a share to $15. Homestake, one of North America's biggest mines and a bulwark of the Hearst fortune, has flared from $120 to $163. Jules Semon Bache's Dome Mines have gone from $11 to $13. Much speculation in McIntyre Porcupine a Canadian producer, has picked it from $16.50 to over $20. Last week Toronto's Financial Post warned: "If investors will keep in mind . . . the fact that 17 1/2 years is required for a shareholder in a mining company whose stock gives a 10% yield to obtain a return of his investment, and at the same time get 6% interest, a sounder foundation is laid for calculating the return necessary from investments in all such wasting assets as gold mines."

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