Gold has always been the standard of values among all civilized nations. But its quantity is increasing so fast that its purchasing power is diminishing, and prices of all commodities are increasing correspondingly. When we will be producing one billion dollars of gold annually, which will be in about ten years at the present rate of increase, there must be a new standard of values agreed upon among the nations of the earth to fit the purchasing power of gold, or there will be an upheaval in the financial affairs of the world that will shake it to the very foundations, and affect the lives of every one of its inhabitants. The over-production of gold is relieved in a measure by the utter disappearance of a part of it. What becomes of all the gold? Nearly one million five hundred thousand dollars a day is taken from the mines of the world. Only a portion of this output is consumed by the arts and in jewelry, and in the natural legal reserve of Governments. From the best information obtainable, much of the surplus goes into the hoarding places of all classes. The people in poor and medium circumstances hide it away, and it is treasured in the vaults of the rich princes of India, and the dynasties of China and Egypt, who for centuries have been building vast burglar proof receptacles underground, where it is stored, and its hiding places are never allowed to become known. It is wrested from out of its hidden recesses in mountain fastnesses, by pick, drill, dynamite and arduous toil, flows through the arteries of trade, and again goes into its burial places to remain hidden for ages. CHAPTER XIII. SOME MEN OF VISIONS. [Sidenote: 1859] In this story of Colorado it has been the aim of the writer to leave the present, crowded with the interesting events that are passing before us in kaleidoscopic changings, to the enviable writers of a future period; and to keep well within the boundaries of the remote past, touching but briefly, if at all, upon those subjects so ably covered by the historians of the State. They have fully recorded the growth of the country, the towns and cities; the beginning of the railroads and telegraph lines that were such important factors in the development of the state; and the part that men of prominence, living and dead, took in the upbuilding of our commonwealth. It is all found in detail in the following histories: Frank Fossett's "Colorado," published in 1876; "History of Denver," compiled by W. B. Vickers in 1880; Frank Hall's Four Volumes which began to appear in 1890; Hubert Howe Bancroft's "History of Colorado," published in 1891; William N. Byers "Encyclopedia Biography of Colorado," in 1901; Jerome C. Smiley's elaborate "History of Denver," in 1901; Eugene Parsons "The Making of Colorado," in 1908.