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 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.
