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Show f Little Journeys in f Americana $ " o By LESTER B. COLBY J; Most Profitable Investment in History. nuEEN ISABELLA, of Spain. (J hocking her royal earbobs , to make possible the discovery of America Amer-ica has given the world a romantic story. But the actual cost of He ex pediton and the method by which it was financed reveals another picture Recent' research has shown tnai the "overhead" of the entire voyage only amounted to about 30,000 pesetas pese-tas which, reduced to good, hard United States coin, would be about $700' Or less than one per cent of' what a modem pugilistic champion cham-pion has been paid for socking an ambitious rival through ten rounds ot rough bouse with pillowed mitts. Martin and Vicente Pinzon, broth ers, it now appears, did more than anyone else except, perhaps, Columbus Colum-bus himself, to organize the expedition. expedi-tion. Their old account books, recently re-cently discovered, reveal the part they played in the affair and indicate that no member of the party would suffer much today in matters of income tax. The Pinzons not only supplied two ships for the voyage, the Pinto and Nina, but captained them as well. Columbus, as commander of the expedition, ex-pedition, was paid the equivalent of $300 and the two Pinzons got $1S0 each. Members of the crew got $2.50 a month, and the cost of food per man was fixed at $1.20 a month. All of the guns on the three ships were invoiced at an equivalent of about $2,S00 or approximately the cost of one loading for a modern heavy caliber gun. The entire pay roll of Columbus, for pilots and sailors, sail-ors, cooks and cabin boys, for the round trip, figures out- about $3,6G0. The purchasing power of money, of course, was far greater at that time. For a number of centuries very little new gold had been brought into Europe Eur-ope and silver was scarce. Gold wears out For hundreds of years the gold supply of Europe had been dwindling. Much of it was lost because it has always been the custom to bury more or less gold with the dead in form of ornaments. Shortage of gold had brought centuries cen-turies of ever-increasing poverty to Europe, for only with a plentiful supply sup-ply of money do prices for commodities commod-ities advance. Paper banknotes were a later Invention. Prosperity returned to Europe as a result of Columbus' discovery of the New world. When the Spanish conquistadores' discovered the lavish stores of gold and silver in the hands of the Indians of South and Central America and Mexico, they straightway straight-way grabbed it, loaded it into chests and shipped it borne to Spain. .il is imeresuug lo kuow mat an expenditure of $7,200 invested in the first expedition of Columbus lifted all Europe out of a period of depression and despond that had persisted with Increasing acuteness for centuries and gave it prosperity. It is probably prob-ably safe to say that the money spent for the voyage of the Santa Maria, Nina and Pinto was the most profitable commercial investment in the history of the world. The thing that amazes us today is the fact that this new-found discovery, discov-ery, the account books of the Pinzons, Pin-zons, reveals the smallness of the financial investment. It is apparent that Queen Isabella's self-denial in donating the royal baubles was not great. It is evident that what she gave was largely prestige much as Mrs. John J. Smith, wife of the village banker, might loan her name, along with donating a cake, to put over an Epworth league supper. But Isabella's Isabel-la's gesture had rare value for pub-'icity pub-'icity purposes. ((c). 1023. Lester B Colby.) |