6,000 Tons of Gold

What would happen if one man suddenly owned more gold than most governments on earth?

Aboard a steamer bound for Buenos Ayres, the composed American Robert Brent falls into conversation with a shrewd Scotsman named Duncan Fraser. Out of that meeting comes a secret hidden in the Cordilleras of South America, and out of the secret comes a hoard beyond counting: six thousand tons of gold, enough to unsettle every price, wage, debt and treaty in the world.

Brent does not hide his fortune or spend it on palaces. He turns it into a lever. He breaks the speculators of Wall Street, showers mysterious benefactions on the world, and moves at last to head off a European war. But gold is only valuable because it is scarce, and a man who can end scarcity cannot do it without breaking something.

Written in 1894 by Henry Richardson Chamberlain, London correspondent of The New York Sun, 6,000 Tons of Gold is an adventure story, an early scientific romance, and a financial satire all at once. It appeared one year after the Panic of 1893, while America tore itself apart over the gold standard, and it reads today as a sharp fable about abundance promised without cost.

This Carrier Press Annotated Edition includes:

• An original Preface on the novel and the money quarrel it was written into
• Notes on the Text explaining the period’s financial and geographic vocabulary
• A Reader’s Guide for book clubs and classrooms
• Chamberlain’s own footnote on short selling, preserved