372	THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
	with the industry in localities where the fisheries are pursued are a sufficient number of persons to populate a city the size of Boston, and to these we may safely add an equal number as herein noted, aggre­gating about 1,000,000 people whose livelihood is directly dependent upon the production and traffic of the pearl industry, and who for lack of it would be forced to seek some other employment. Brought thus to a concrete form, one may readily grasp the important bearing which the pearl has in a comprehensive estimate of the complexity of the world's civilization as we know it to-day.