456

AN IMMENSE PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.

[1865.

note into the mail, making an engagement for the next week with a gentleman residing a mile from our hotel. Three days after the appointed time his friend appeared and explained:

'I have but just received your your letter. Why didn't you send it by Wells Fargo?" To found and systematize a great enterprise like this, extending over half a continent, new, thinlysettled, with poor means of communication, along routes infested by robbers and Indians, requires more capacity than to 'run' the Government of the United States in ordinary times.

asked the gentleman who has chiefly conducted it: 'What new lessons has your experience taught you?' His answer pleasantly confirms one's faith in human nature: 'It has taught me to trust men.'

I

The uniform charge for delivering letters is twelve and a-half cents. The company carries them only in stamped envelopes, thus paying a Government tax of three cents on every half-ounce. Yet the post office department constantly endeavors to suppress it. Twenty-five years ago, when postage was twenty-five cents for distances over four hundred miles, and Hall's express carried letters from Boston to New York for five cents, the authorities did their utmost to stop him; but with Daniel Webster for his counsel, he defeated them and hastened the era of cheap postage.

When the operations of the Wells-Fargo company were confined to the Pacific coast and the steamers between San Francisco and New York, it transported twenty-three hundred thousand letters annually. Two and a-quarter millions of writers paid nine

1865.1 THE SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPERS.

457

and a-half cents extra not to have their letters pass through the Circumlocution Office! What stronger proof of the folly of Government's conveying letters? It might with as much propriety sell groceries, convey heavy freights, or deliver washing. Abolish the post office department. Leave this, like other carrying trade, open to private competition, and the mail service of the United States would be performed fifty per cent. cheaper and one hundred per cent. better than it is to-day.

The San Francisco Alta* California and the Evening Bulletin print from seven thousand to nine thousand daily, and earn from twenty thousand to forty thousand dollars per annum. Their terms (in specie) are, eighteen dollars per year for the dailies; five dollars for the weeklies; single copies, ten cents. Advertising rates are very high. The Sacramento Union, also successful, is one of the very best newspapers on the continent. The Alta once cleared eighty thousand dollars in ten months. It is the pioneer journal, the Californian, from which it sprang, first appearing in Monterey, on the 15th of August, 1846, immediately after the hoisting of the American flag in northern California. The next year it removed to San Francisco, which then contained less than five hundred inhabitants. Its first issue was about as large as two pages of this book, and was printed upon brown wrapping paper. It was put in type in an old Spanish office; and the fact that there is no W in the Castilian compelled the clumsy manufacture of that letter from two V's. Part of its contents were in Spanish and part in English. The following is a literal copy of an explanatory paragraph from the editor:

'OUR ALPHABET.-Our type is a spanish font picked up here in a cloister, and has no VV's [W's] in it, as there is none in the spanish alphabet. I have sent to the sandvvich Islands for this letter, in the mean timé vve must use tvvo V's. Our paper at present is that used for vvrapping segars; in due time vve vvill have something better: our object is to establise a press in California, and this vve shall in all proba

*When American forces captured the country, it was in two divisions-Baja (lower) and Alta (upper) California. After a few years the Americanized portion became known throughout the world simply as California and the adjective was dropped. But the peninsula is still known as 'Lower California.' The word 'California' was first applied by Cortez. He obtained it from Spanish novels of his day, in one of which it was the name of a heroine, and in another, of an imaginary island.

458

A BIT OF HISTORICAL RECORD.

[1865.

bility be able to accomplish. The absence of my partner for the last three months and my buties as Alcaldd here have dedrived our little paper of some of those atten. tions vvhich I hope it vvill hereafter receive. VVALTER COLTON.'

I am indebted to Albert S. Evans, of San Francisco, for the sixth issue of the Californian, September 19th, 1846, which says:

'California is now lost forever to Mexico; not a shadow of hope can remain that she can recover a foot of the Territory, and we do not believe that one inhabitant in ten, really regrets the result.'

CIRCULAR.-You are hereby advised that war exists between the United States of North America and Mexico, and are cautioned to guard against an attack from Mexican privateers, and all vessels under the Mexican flag.

'The Territory of California has been taken possession of by the forces under my command, and now belongs to the United States, and you will find safe anchorage and protection in the harbor of San Francisco during any season of the year.

'R. F. STOCKTON, Commodore and Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces of the United States in the Pacific Ocean, and Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Territory of California.'

The first piece of domestic gold in the United States is said to have been found in Meadow creek, North Carolina, in 1799. Now, our annual product of the precious metals reaches about one hundred and ten millions of dollars annually; from eighty to ninety millions, gold; the residue silver. Eighty-five per cent. of the gross amount is from quartz mining.

In the early days of California, before the establishment of the

F.D.KOHLER

STATE ASSAYER

CATE

DW!

CARAT 21

60

1850

4 CTS 54.09

Government Mint, much gold of private coinage circulated, to meet absolute business wants. Many gold bars, slugs,' and five, ten, twenty, and fifty dollar coins were issued in 1849-50. These coinages have now disappeared, and are rare, even as curiosities. The illustration is an exact representation of one of the slugs,' issued from the United States assay office in 1850. Having no alloy in its composition, it was very soft, and wasted rapidly by wearing down.

$54

AN EARLY CALIFORNIA COIN.

1865.]

HALF AN HOUR IN THE MINT.

459

The United States Branch Mint is one of the most interesting features of San Francisco. The crude metal, received in bars, is melted and mingled, two parts of silver with one of gold; then poured into water, where it cools in fragments like suddenlycooled lead, or popped corn. It is thus broken into fine pieces, that acids may work upon it more readily-as fire kindles shavings and chips more easily than solid sticks of wood. The nitric acid turns the silver, copper, and lead into liquid; but leaves the gold a dirty brown powder. We saw a rough pile of this, looking as valueless as brick-dust; but worth three hundred thousand dollars. Next, the gold has the water squeezed out by an immense weight; is molded into bars; and rolled into long, thin, narrow strips. From these the round coins are cut, then milled, stamped on both sides, and corrugated-all by machinery. Metallic fingers seize each piece and place it under the stamps, where it is subjected to a pressure of one hundred and sixty tons.

Another machine counts the coins, picking out five dollars worth of coppers in one minute, with perfect exactness. Here are scales, too, which will weigh one four-thousandth of a grain.

Our coins of precious metal contain nine parts of gold and silver to one of copper. Common salt and zinc are used in hardening the liquid silver and separating it from lead and copper. At night, the employees all leave their working clothing in the mint. When these garments are worn out, they are burned, and the ashes washed, to save the gold. The water in which the workmen wash their hands is also carefully drained off for the same purpose. Through these two sources about fifteen thousand dollars per annum is saved. Practically, there is no loss. In 1864, upon a coinage of twenty-one millions, the deficit was only two thousand dollars, though at the rates allowed by Government for wastage it would have reached seventy thousand.

For the excitement of strangers, the workmen pour a glowing, red-hot stream of melted gold into their hands for a moment, and then empty it out, without receiving a burn. The perspiration protects them, as plumbers thrust their fingers, wet with cold water, into liquid lead, and smelters, into molten iron.

Until the completion of the Pacific railway no man living can comprehend the vastness and variety of our mineral resources

460

THE GREAT PACIFIC RAILWAY.

[1865.

between British Columbia and Mexico, and stretching from the eastern wall of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific.

The road will protect our military interests. Whenever we can transport men and munitions from the Mississippi valley to San Francisco in one week the Monroe Doctrine will enforce itself.

It will revolutionize trade and finance. Travelers in every country will require exchange on New York instead of London. It will give our continent-'its Atlantic front looking upon Europe and its Pacific front looking upon Asia'—the carrying trade of the world. The light, costly silks, teas, and spices of the Orient, rich in barbaric pearl and gold, will seek this route for our markets and for the old world.

It will strengthen us socially. The bane of new countries is the absence of the restraining and humanizing influence of women. The oldest States have a surplus of women; the newest suffer for them. With cheap, easy, rapid communication the laws of demand and supply will correct the evil.

It will strengthen us politically. There is infinite pathos in hearing everybody on the Pacific coast, from children to grayhaired men, speak of the East as 'home.' Still, at the outset of the great rebellion, a large party favored a Pacific republic. It was promptly put under foot; and California, debarred from sending her iron, sent her gold to the front. She gave more money proportionately to the great charities of the war than any other State. The Pacific coast contributed to the Sanitary Commission alone almost a million and-a-half of dollars.

Great indeed must be the vitality of the republic when the warm blood from its heart pulsates to these remote extremities; yet we cannot afford to repeat the experiment.

'Mountains interposed

Make enemies of nations who had else,

Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.'

Do away with isolation; cut through the mountains! This enchanter's wand will make New York acknowledged queen of cities and San Francisco her eldest sister—this magic key will unlock our Golden Gate, and send surging through its rocky portals a world-encircling tide of travel, commerce, and Christian civilization.