THE GOLD INDUSTRY.
The latest report of the Union Corporation, Ltd., is an interesting one in several respects. In the first place, it was a profitable year, the realized profit of £290,907 showing an increase over the previous year, while the dividend leas been raised to 3s. 6d. (English currency) per share, and the Reserve Account has been increased materially and has been raised to a total of £726,000. The chairman of the Corporation is Sir Henry Strakosch and that fact lends particular interest and value to the comments made by the directors upon the future of gold. After remarking that the abandonment of the gold standard by so many countries has raised the question whether gold is likely to lose its status as a basis for money and to cease to function as a medium of international exchange, the report marshals almost unanswerable arguments in contention of the extreme improbability of the abandonment of gold as standard. The comments conclude thus : " The age-long demand for gold therefore, is likely to continue ; the ' gold premium ' now available on the production of new gold in countries no longer on the gold standard should lead to increasing production of the precious metal ; and the later possibility of reduced gold parities, and therefore of a stabilised increase in the price of gold, gives hope that the present prosperity of the gold mining industry is more than a passing phase."
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