45. CHAPTER XLV.
THE "flush times" held bravely on. Something over two years
before, Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer, had
borrowed forty dollars and set out from San Francisco to try their
fortunes in the new city of Virginia. They found the
Territorial Enterprise,
a poverty-stricken weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to
die. They bought it, type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a
thousand dollars, on long time. The editorial sanctum, news-room,
press-room, publication office, bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen
were all compressed into one apartment and it was a small one,
too. The editors and printers slept on the floor, a Chinaman did
their cooking, and the "imposing-stone" was the general dinner
table. But now things were changed. The paper was a great daily,
printed by steam; there were five editors and twenty-three
compositors; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a year; the
advertising rates were exorbitant, and the columns crowded. The
paper was clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month, and
the "Enterprise Building" was finished and ready for occupation—a
stately fireproof brick. Every day from five all the way up to
eleven columns of "live" advertisements were left out or crowded
into spasmodic and irregular "supplements."
The "Gould & Curry" company were erecting a monster
hundred-stamp mill at a cost that ultimately fell little short of a
million dollars. Gould & Curry stock paid heavy dividends—a
rare thing, and an experience confined to the dozen or
fifteen claims located on the "main lead," the "Comstock." The
Superintendent of the Gould & Curry lived, rent free, in a fine
house built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair of
horses which were a present from the company, and his salary was
twelve thousand dollars a year. The superintendent of another of
the great mines traveled in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight
thousand dollars a year, and in a law suit in after days claimed that
he was to have had one per cent. on the gross yield of the bullion
likewise.
Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not how to
get it,—but how to spend it, how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander
it. And so it was a happy thing that just at this juncture the news
came over the wires that a great United States Sanitary
Commission had been formed and money was wanted for the relief
of the wounded sailors and soldiers of the Union languishing in the
Eastern hospitals. Right on the heels of it came word that San
Francisco had responded superbly before the telegram was half a
day old. Virginia rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee was
hurriedly organized, and its chairman mounted a vacant cart in C
street and tried to make the clamorous multitude understand that
the rest of 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.
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.
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 calvacade 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.