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to be a "sickly season in the autumn at the mines; and many of the miners sank under fever and diseases of the bowels. A severe kind of labor, to which most had been unaccustomed, a complete change of diet and habits, insufficient shelter, continued mental excitement, and the excesses in personal amusement and dissipation which golden gains induced, added to the natural unhealthiness that might have existed in the district at different periods of the year, soon introduced sore bodily troubles upon many of the mining population. No gains could compensate a dying man for the fatal sickness engendered by his own avaricious exertions. In the wild race for riches, the invalid was neglected by old comrades still in rude health and the riotous enjoyment of all the pleasures that gold and the hope of continually adding to the store could bestow. When that was the case with old companions, it could not be expected that strangers should care whether the sick man lived or died. Who, forsooth, among the busy throng would trouble himself with the feeble miner that had miscalculated his energies, and lay dying on the earthen floor of his tent or under the protecting branch of a tree? ...

Provisions and necessaries, as might have been expected, soon rose in price enormously. At first the rise was moderate indeed, four hundred per cent. for flour, and five hundred for beef cattle, while other things were in proportion. But these were trifles. The time soon came when eggs were sold at one, two, and three dollars apiece; inferior sugar, tea, and coffee, at four dollars a pound in small quantities, or, three or four hundred dollars a bar rel; medicines—say, for laudanum, a dollar a drop, (actually forty dollars were paid for a dose of that quantity), and ten dollars a pill or purge, without advice or with it, from thirty, up, aye, to one hundred dollars. Spirits were sold at various prices, from ten to forty dollars a quart; and wines at about as much per bottle. Picks and shovels ranged from five to fifteen dollars each; and common

wooden or tin bowls about half as much. Clumsy rockers were sold at from fifty to eighty dollars, and small gold scales, from twenty to thirty. As for beef, little of it was to be had, and then only jerked, at correspondingly high prices. For luxuries — of which there were not many; if a lucky miner set his heart on some trifle, it might be pickles, fruit, fresh pork, sweet butter, new vegetables, a box of Seidlitz powders or of matches, he was prepared to give any quantity of the "dust" rather than be balked. We dare not trust ourselves to name some of the fancy prices thus given, lest we should be supposed to be only romancing. No man would give another a hand's turn for less than five dollars, while a day's constant labor of the commonest kind, if it could have been procured at all, would cost from twenty to thirty dollars, at least. When these things, and the risks of sickness, the discomforts of living, and the unusual and severe kind of labor are all balanced against the average gains, it may appear that, after all, the miners were only enough paid.

When subsequently immigrants began to arrive in numerous bands, any amount of labor could be obtained, provided always a most unusually high price was paid for it. Returned diggers, and those who cautiously had never went to the mines, were then also glad enough to work for rates varying from twelve to thirty dollars a day; at which terms most capitalists were somewhat afraid to commence any heavy undertaking. The hesitation was only for an instant. Soon all the labor that could possibly be procured, was in ample request, at whatever rates were demanded. The population of a great State was suddenly flocking in upon them, and no preparations had hitherto been made for its reception. Building lots had to be surveyed, and streets graded and planked-hills leveled-hollows, lagoons, and the bay itself piled, capped, filled up and planked,- lumber, bricks, and all other building materials, provided at most extraordinarily high prices - houses

built, finished and furnished

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great warehouses and stores erected wharves run far out into the sea- numberless tons of goods removed from shipboard, and delivered and shipped anew everywhere- and ten thousand other things had all to be done without a moment's unnecessary delay. Long before these things were completed, the sand-hills and barren ground around the town were overspread with a multitude of canvas, blanket and bough-covered tents,the bay was alive with shipping and small craft carrying passengers and goods backwards and forwards, the unplanked, ungraded, unformed streets, (at one time moving heaps of dry sand and dust; at another, miry abysses, whose treacherous depths sucked in horse and dray, and occasionally man himself,) were crowded with human beings from every corner of the universe and. of every tongueall excited and busy, plotting, speaking, working, buying and selling town lots, and beach and water lots, shiploads of every kind of assorted merchandise, the ships themselves, if they could,- though that was not often- gold dust in hundred weights, ranches square leagues in extent, with their thousands of cattle- - allotments in hundreds of contemplated towns, already prettily designed and laid out,— on paper,— and, in short, speculating and gambling in every branch of modern commerce, and in many strange things peculiar to the time and the place. And everybody made money, and was suddenly growing rich.

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The loud voices of the eager seller and as eager buyer the laugh of reckless joy- the bold accents of successful speculation the stir and hum of active hurried labor, as man and brute, horse and bullock, and their guides, struggled and managed through heaps of loose rubbish, over hills of sand, and among deceiving deep mud pools and swamps, filled the amazed newly arrived immigrant with an almost appalling sense of the exuberant life, energy and enterprise of the place. He breathed quick and faintly his limbs grew weak as water—and his heart sunk within him as he thought of the dreadful conflict, when he ap

proached and mingled among that confused and terrible business battle. . . .

We are, however, anticipating and going ahead too fast. We cannot help it. The very thought of that wondrous time is an electric spark that fires into one great flame ail our fancies, passions and experiences of the fall of the eventful year, 1849. The remembrance of those days comes across us like the delirium of fever; we are caught by it before we are aware, and forthwith begin to babble of things which to our sober Atlantic friends seem more the ravings of a madman than plain, dull realities. The world had perhaps never before afforded such a spectacle; and probably nothing of the kind will be witnessed again for generations to come. Happy the man who can tell of those things which he saw and perhaps himself did at San Francisco at that time. He shall be an oracle to admiring neighbors. A city of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants improvised the people nearly all adult males, strong in person, clever, bold, sanguine, restless and reckless-But really we must stop now and descend to our simple 66 annals."

Frank Soulé, and Others: The Annals of San Francisco, pp. 201-204, 209-217, passim. D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1855.

QUESTIONS

What effect did the discovery of gold have at first on the growth of San Francisco? How did the discovery of gold later aid the city's growth indirectly? Describe how the rush to the gold fields paralyzed all ordinary business. How much did the price of labor rise? What was the character of the people at the mines? Describe the methods of mining. What prices were paid for commodities at the mines? What do you think caused such high prices the abundance of gold or the scarcity of commodities? This is a question which probably cannot be answered authoritatively one way or the other. Economists are still uncertain whether or not the amount of money in circulation determines the price of commodities.

PART VI

SLAVERY AND ABOLITION

XXXIII

GARRISONIAN ABOLITIONISM

It is not natural for a reformer filled with enthusiasm and zeal for a great ideal, to be tolerant of existing conditions; nor does he easily put up with legal or conventional restrictions which keep him from reaching his goal at a single bound. To this class of reformers belonged William Lloyd Garrison and his followers. They found much in the Constitution and laws to complain of: the Constitution recognized or made a union of States, in some of which slavery existed, and under the forms of law slavery in a State could not be touched by Congressional or other governmental action; the Constitution contained certain expressions which appeared to give recognition to slavery or even protect it. To the Garrisonians, therefore, it was sinful to participate in a government or accept the validity of a political system which recognized slavery, for slavery was itself a sin. Naturally because of the very nature of the crusade moral warfare against evil—they had no sympathy for the plodding, circuitous methods of practical politics.

A

SLAVERY A POSITIVE EVIL

a

This declaration of policy appeared in the first number of the Liberator, the abolition newspaper begun at Boston by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831. This manifesto is usually quoted as the beginning of a new era in the movement against slavery. Thousands of prominent men before Garrison had deplored the existence of slavery and prayed for its extinction; but they had all believed in cautious and gradual remedies. It was left for

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