Roughing It
the committee were flying hither and thither and working with all their
might and main, and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office
would be ready, books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive
contributions. His voice was drowned and his information lost in a
ceaseless roar of cheers, and demands that the money be received
_now_—they swore they would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued,
but, deaf to all entreaty, men plowed their way through the throng and
rained checks of gold coin into the cart and skurried away for more.
Hands clutching money, were thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped
this eloquent appeal would cleave a road their strugglings could not
open. The very Chinamen and Indians caught the excitement and dashed
their half dollars into the cart without knowing or caring what it was
all about. Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their
way to the cart with their coin, and emerged again, by and by, with
their apparel in a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest
mob Virginia had ever seen and the most determined and ungovernable; and
when at last it abated its fury and dispersed, it had not a penny in its
pocket.
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To use its own phraseology, it came there “flush” and went away
“busted.”
After that, the Commission got itself into systematic working order, and
for weeks the contributions flowed into its treasury in a generous
stream. Individuals and all sorts of organizations levied upon
themselves a regular weekly tax for the sanitary fund, graduated
according to their means, and there was not another grand universal
outburst till the famous “Sanitary Flour Sack” came our way. Its history
is peculiar and interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of
Reuel Gridley, was living at the little city of Austin, in the Reese
river country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor.
He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the defeated man
should be publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the
successful one, and should carry it home on his shoulder. Gridley was
defeated. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it
and carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper
Austin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrived
there, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the people
thought he had better do with it. A voice said:
“Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund.”
The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted
a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher
and higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till
at last the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty
dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour
delivered, and he said:
“Nowhere—sell it again.”
Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the
spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired
till the sun went down; and when the crowd dispersed he had sold the
sack to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand
dollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession.
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The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:
“Fetch along your flour sack!”
Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass
meeting was held in the Opera House, and the auction began. But the sack
had come sooner than it was expected; the people were not thoroughly
aroused, and the sale dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars
had been secured, and there was a crestfallen feeling in the community.
However, there was no disposition to let the matter rest here and
acknowledge vanquishment at the hands of the village of Austin. Till
late in the night the principal citizens were at work arranging the
morrow’s campaign, and when they went to bed they had no fears for the
result. At eleven the next morning a procession of open carriages,
attended by clamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display
of flags, filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a
huzzaing multitude of citizens. In the first carriage sat Gridley, with
the flour sack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint
and gilt lettering; also in the same carriage sat the mayor and the
recorder. The other carriages contained the Common Council, the editors
and reporters, and other people of imposing consequence. The crowd
pressed to the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the sale to
begin there, but they were disappointed, and also unspeakably surprised;
for the cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased to be of
importance, and took its way over the “divide,” toward the small town of
Gold Hill. Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill, Silver City and
Dayton, and those communities were at fever heat and rife for the
conflict. It was a very hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a
short half hour we descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and
colors flying, and enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole
population—men, women and children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in
the main street, all the flags in town were at the mast head, and the
blare of the bands was drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked who
would make the first bid for the National Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W.
said:
“The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars,
coin!”
A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia,
and fifteen minutes afterward that city’s population was massed in the
streets devouring the tidings—for it was part of the programme that the
bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a new
dispatch was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the excitement grew.
Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley to
bring back the flour sack; but such was not the plan of the campaign. At
the end of an hour Gold Hill’s small population had paid a figure for
the flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand
total was displayed upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade
moved on, a giant refreshed with new lager beer and plenty of it—for the
people brought it to the carriages without waiting to measure it—and
within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver City and
Dayton by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move
had been telegraphed and bulletined, and as the procession entered
Virginia and filed down C street at half past eight in the evening the
town was abroad in the thoroughfares, torches were glaring, flags
flying, bands playing, cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the city
ready to surrender at discretion. The auction began, every bid was
greeted with bursts of applause, and at the end of two hours and a half
a population of fifteen thousand souls had paid in coin for a fifty-
pound sack of flour a sum equal to forty thousand dollars in greenbacks!
It was at a rate in the neighborhood of three dollars for each man,
woman and child of the population. The grand total would have been twice
as large, but the streets were very narrow, and hundreds who wanted to
bid could not get within a block of the stand, and could not make
themselves heard. These grew tired of waiting and many of them went home
long before the auction was over. This was the greatest day Virginia
ever saw, perhaps.
Gridley sold the sack in Carson city and several California towns; also
in San Francisco. Then he took it east and sold it in one or two
Atlantic cities, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he
finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being
held, and after selling it there for a large sum and helping on the
enthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks which Nevada’s
donation had produced, he had the flour baked up into small cakes and
retailed them at high prices.
It was estimated that when the flour sack’s mission was ended it had
been sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
greenbacks! This is probably the only instance on record where common
family flour brought three thousand dollars a pound in the public
market.
It is due to Mr. Gridley’s memory to mention that the expenses of his
sanitary flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and
returning, were paid in large part if not entirely, out of his own
pocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months. Mr.
Gridley was a soldier in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian. He
died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870, greatly regretted.
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CHAPTER XLVI.
There were nabobs in those days—in the “flush times,” I mean. Every rich
strike in the mines created one or two. I call to mind several of these.
They were careless, easy-going fellows, as a general thing, and the
community at large was as much benefited by their riches as they were
themselves—possibly more, in some cases.
Two cousins, teamsters, did some hauling for a man and had to take a
small segregated portion of a silver mine in lieu of $300 cash. They
gave an outsider a third to open the mine, and they went on teaming. But
not long. Ten months afterward the mine was out of debt and paying each
owner $8,000 to $10,000 a month—say $100,000 a year.
One of the earliest nabobs that Nevada was delivered of wore $6,000
worth of diamonds in his bosom, and swore he was unhappy because he
could not spend his money as fast as he made it.
Another Nevada nabob boasted an income that often reached $16,000 a
month; and he used to love to tell how he had worked in the very mine
that yielded it, for five dollars a day, when he first came to the
country.
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The silver and sage-brush State has knowledge of another of these pets
of fortune—lifted from actual poverty to affluence almost in a single
night—who was able to offer $100,000 for a position of high official
distinction, shortly afterward, and did offer it—but failed to get it,
his politics not being as sound as his bank account.
Then there was John Smith. He was a good, honest, kind-hearted soul,
born and reared in the lower ranks of life, and miraculously ignorant.
He drove a team, and owned a small ranch—a ranch that paid him a
comfortable living, for although it yielded but little hay, what little
it did yield was worth from $250 to $300 in gold per ton in the market.
Presently Smith traded a few acres of the ranch for a small undeveloped
silver mine in Gold Hill. He opened the mine and built a little
unpretending ten-stamp mill. Eighteen months afterward he retired from
the hay business, for his mining income had reached a most comfortable
figure. Some people said it was $30,000 a month, and others said it was
$60,000. Smith was very rich at any rate.
And then he went to Europe and traveled. And when he came back he was
never tired of telling about the fine hogs he had seen in England, and
the gorgeous sheep he had seen in Spain, and the fine cattle he had
noticed in the vicinity of Rome. He was full of wonders of the old
world, and advised everybody to travel. He said a man never imagined
what surprising things there were in the world till he had traveled.
One day, on board ship, the passengers made up a pool of $500, which was
to be the property of the man who should come nearest to guessing the
run of the vessel for the next twenty-four hours. Next day, toward noon,
the figures were all in the purser’s hands in sealed envelopes. Smith
was serene and happy, for he had been bribing the engineer. But another
party won the prize! Smith said: