There is an echo here of the silver's thematic descent from the mountain in Part One, representing the corruption of the pure ideal through the process of realizing it. Or, as Mrs Gould articulated in the last chapter, the difficulty of converting the "idea" into "action" without "moral degradation." In Nostromo's case, turning the silver into spendable money involves more than physical difficulties, it involves "crime," as the next paragraph makes clear.

Allegorically and symbolically, Nostromo's "treasure" represents the ideal of the People's independent worth, separate from fidelity to the rulers. The "difficulty of converting it into a form in which it could become available" sums up the socialist quest to reform society into something based on that ideal.