A History of the American People

Twain masterwork, Roughing It, which has an exact description of all the mining processes then
in use and the skulduggery, violence, greed, and disappointments which surrounded them.
But nothing could beat the original Forty-nine Rush for glamour and riches. The yield of gold
in the first decade, 1848-58, was $550 million. In the years 1851-5, California produced over 45
percent of the world's entire output of gold. It was a man's world, for fathers, sons, and brothers
left to make their fortunes, telling their womenfolk to wait to be summoned. In 1851 Nevada
County contained 12,500 white males, 900 females of various colors, 3,000 Indian coolies, and
4,000 Chinese cooks, laundrymen, and camp-workers. Lola Montez 1818-61), the Irish actress
who had been the mistress of Louis I of Bavaria and had run his government, made her
appearance, was a sensational success, and then retired to Grass Valley (her house is still there).
When the editor of the Grass Valley Telegraph attacked her in print she literally horsewhipped
him and he had to slink out of town. Grass Valley and Nevada City became centers of the richest
and most continuous gold mining in California, with the North Star Mine, the Eureka, and the
Empire setting the pace. Until the opening up of the Rand deep-level mines in South Africa in
the 1930s, they were the most successful gold mines in history. Indeed, the California gold rush
as a whole was a world-historical event of some importance. Until its gold came on the market,
there had been a chronic shortage of specie, especially gold bullion, from which the United
States, in particular, had suffered. Until the I850s in fact there was no true gold standard simply
because there was not enough gold to maintain it. Once California gold began to circulate, the
development of American capital markets accelerated and the huge expansion of the second half
of the century became financially possible. That too (it can be argued) was the work of the
`Unknown President Polk.'
The great California gold rush of 1849, attracting as it did adventurers from all over the world,
was the first intimation to people everywhere that there was growing up, in the form of the
United States, a materialistic phenomenon unique in history, a Promised Land which actually
existed. Not that there was any shortage of routine, detailed information. Josiah T. Marshall's
Farmers and Immigrants Handbook: Being a Full and Complete Guide for the Farmer and
Immigrant (1845) was nearly 500 crammed pages. Minnesota set up a State Board of
Immigration in 1855 and other states copied it. By 1864 Kansas was sending emissaries abroad
to whip up enthusiasm among would-be immigrants. From the early 1840s railroads began
obtaining both state and federal land for the use of immigrants. The Illinois Central advertised
abroad; so did the Union Pacific and Northern Pacific. Railroad land departments organized trips
for newspapermen and land-seekers and regularly dispatched agents all over Europe. By the
I850s a great deal of public and private money was being spent on telling the world about
America.
There was also-more important, perhaps-word of mouth and traveler's tales. By European
standards, wage-rates, even for unskilled men, were enormous. After about 1820, no one got less
than a dollar a day in the cities. Farmhands got $7.50 to $15 a month, with full board. Thomas
Mooney, an Irish visitor, asserted (1850): ‘You can, as soon as you a get a regular employment,
save the price of an acre-and-a-half of the finest land in the world every week, and in less than a
year you will have money to start for the West, and take up an 8o-acre farm which will be yours
for ever.' He calculated that a careful immigrant could save 7-8 English shillings a week. This
was irresistible news. Immigration was going up all the time, allowing for fluctuations which
reflected the trade cycle. After the first crisis dip in 1819, it rose to 32,000 in 1832 and 79,000 in
1837, then down following the credit panic, then up again to 100,000 in 1842, and then an
immense increase, 1845-50, produced by bad winters in Europe, the Irish potato famine, and the