CHAPTER III.

EOOT DIGGERS AND GOLD DIGGERS.

Con legno legno spranga mai non cinse
Lorte cosi: oiid ei, come duo becchi,
Cozzaro insieme, tanb ira gli viuse.
DelC Inferno.

ONE hot day in July 1848, such as the middle prong

of the American river has long been subject to,
perched upon one of the high boulders time had
tumbled into the defile, sat a philosophic savage, his
hairless chin resting on his naked knees, his
bony
hands clasped over his bushy head, and his black
eyes gleaming with dim intelligence as they strained
their powers to encompass the scene before him. On
either side, scattered up the stream and down it, far
as the eye could reach and until the steel-and-silver
band was lost behind precipitous banks, were strange
beings engaged in a strange business.
Some were in red and black, some in white and
gray; many were almost as naked as himself, their
bare arms and legs whiter than the white stones over
which the waters skipped. Crawling between the
rocks, and turning up the red earth, and kneading
with their hands the mud they made, through the
dry baked air tremulous with rarefactions, they looked
not unlike variegated bugs
rolling their delectable
dung-balls. Some were swinging over their heads
large double-pronged clubs, and smiting the earth
therewith some were standing bare-legged and bare-
;

armed in the rushing waters, peering into them as if

to read their records or fathom the secrets of the
^

mountains some were on their knees in an attitude

;

(54)
 THE MEDITATIVE SAVAGE. 55

of worship or supplication; others lay like lizards on

the rocks pecking with their knives. Some with
shovels were digging in the sands and gravel, leaving
beside the earth-heaps holes half filled with water.
"

These must be graves,"

the savage thought, "pre

pared before the coming sacrifice." Right, my big-

lipped brother! These are graves, every one of
them, graves of sense and soul, of high hopes and
the better quality of manhood. Indeed, of all this
fine array of mind-driven mechanism, of beings that
in this wilderness might rise to the full stature of

gods were they not under curse to crawl about these

canons serpentine upon their bellies; of all of them,
I say, there will be little left this day twelve-month
not buried in these holes. For most of the gold the
foothills gave, brought like that of Nibelungen, noth
ing but ill-luck to the possessor.
"What are they digging for?" the meditative

aboriginal asks himself. "My

faithful wives dig roots
and so sustain the lives of their liege lord and little
ones, as in duty they are ever bound but these poor
;

pale fools will find no nourishment beneath those

stones. I will tell them so. But stop What is !

that he holds aloft with out-stretched arms midst

yells and waving of his hat, the one more frantic than
the rest ? By the dried bones of my grandsire I
believe it is the heavy yellow dirt that often as a
child I gathered to see it glitter in the sun, though
it is not half so beautiful for that as the snake s back.

Once I hammered handfuls of it into a dish for crush

ing grasshoppers in, or for boiling fish, but the stones
my greasy darlings hollow out are better for the one
purpose, and their baskets for the other. Besides,
willows and grass are easier worked than that heavy
stuff. So I kicked the old dish into the river and
was glad to see it sink. The young chief tried that
same dirt for his arrow-heads, but it was not fit the ;

women forged it into chains for ornaments, but there

was nothing ornamental about them ;
so after trying
56 ROOT DIGGERS AND GOLD DIGGERS

itfor one thing and another it was finally let alone as

good for nothing.
"But
heavenly spirit! we found that out ages ago.
It must be that these white scramblers have not been
long upon this earth to be so taken by so poor a
glitter. Mark their posture. Even their eyes are
turned downward. They cannot see the sun, which
is brighter than their
gold. And the stars are
brighter; and the dancing water, and the purple haze
that lies on misty mountains, and the awful cragginess
hereabout are a thousand times more beautiful and
grand. Can they eat this they so covet? No. It
is good for
nothing or for very little for which there
are not other better things. I have it. The stuff
melts I saw some running down the edges of my
;

dish when they put the fire to it. They want it for
images, for molten gods. Alas alas that through
! !

out this universe intelligences yet exist possessed of

such insensate folly."
Softly, bad-smelling barbarian Though thou art
!

right, it is for gods they want the stuff, and very

good gods it makes. None of your deaf and dumb
effigies, nor even invisible, impalpable spirits perched
on high Olympus, hell-bound, or be-heavened beyond
space. Appeal to these golden gods and they answer
you. Invoke them and forthwith they procure you
food, obeisance, and eternal life.
And yet you question, tawny friend, why this insa
tiate humanappetite for bits of yellow earth, for cold,
dead metal, and why for this more than for any other
kind of earth ? Not for its utility, surely, you argue ;
though economists say that it is an absolute equivo-
lent as well as a measure of value. It is scarcely
more valuable than other metals, scarcely more valua
ble intrinsically than the least of all created
things.
It is less valuable than stone, which makes the moun
tains that rib and form the valleys, than
grass which
offers food, than soil which feeds the
grass. For or
nament, if ornament be essential to human happiness,
 PHILOSOPHY OF GOLD. 57

shells or laurel serve as well for plate, porcelain is

;

better. True, some little of it may be used for filling

teeth, but tons of it might be employed in vain to
fill the stomach. Other metals are just as rare, and
beautiful, and durable. "Then what magic power
lies wrapped within its molecules ? you seem to
Will it heal the sick or raise the dead ; will it
"

say.
even clothe or feed, or add one comfort to naked,
houseless humanity ? Hidden beneath its cold and
weighty covering may we hope to find an elixir vitse,
a fountain of youth or will it save a soul from hell,
;

or a body from the grave ? Surely there must be

some innate virtue there, some power, natural or
supernatural, that thus brings intellect and all the
high attributes and holy aspirations of intelligent rea
soning creatures beneath its sway."
Peace, brute Nothing
7 O of the kind.
I Yes and no.
Have I not told you that in the civilization which so
sage a savage even as yourself can but faintly com
prehend, gold is god, and a very good god ? All men
worship it, and all women. It buys men and it buys
women. It buys intellect and honor; it buys beauty
and chastity. There is nothing on earth that it will
not purchase, nor yet anything in heaven, or in hell.
Lucifer has his broker on every street corner, and
Christ his agent in every pulpit. All cry alike for
gold gold
! Men cannot
! live without it, or die with
out it. Unless he finds an obolus in their mouth to
pay the ferriage over the stygian stream, Charon will
not pass them. You do not know Charon ? Well,
you shall know him presently. Charon is a very good
god, but not so good as gold. Indeed, gold is Charon s
god, and every god s god, as well as every man s.
You are somewhat like Charon, oh sooty and filthy ! !

Charon he who, while with Mercury on a visit for

is

a day to the upper world to see what life was like,

wondered how men should so wail while crossing Styx
when there was so little on earth to lose.
No, shock-head gold is not wealth even, and yet
!
58 ROOT DIGGERS AND GOLD DIGGERS.

men give all their wealth for it. Money, as intrinsic

wealth, has little value, and yet wealth is valued only
as it can be converted into money. Nor is it long
since the doctrine prevailed that money was wealth,
the only wealth; but after commerce and industry
had begged for centuries, and men and nations had
fought for the enforcement of this principle, the world
awoke one day and found it fallacy found that money,
;

instead of being wealth, was only the attendant on-

traffic and not actual wealth. Money is synonymous
neither with capital nor wealth. It is capital only
when it is bought and sold like any other commodity ;
it is wealth only
according to its worth as a measure
of values. Gold is not value, or the representative
of value, until it is made such by the stamp of the
image and superscription. All men desire it, and in
limitless quantities; yet those who have it are anx
ious to be rid of it, as it is the most profitless of all
things to hold.
Know, then, the truth of the matter, Oh red- !

painted and tattooed 1

Long ago, before Adam Smith
or John Stuart Mill, when those diggers to the gods
down there were little less wild and beastly than your
self, craving your pardon, at the instigation of
Pluto, perhaps, though some hold opinion that the
creator made gold specially to be used by man as money,
it so happened that a conventionalism arose concerning
this metal. It was agreed
o between the fathers of the
Pharaohs and Job s ancestors, that this heavy durable
substance, chiefly because it was hard to get, should
be baptized into the category of wealth nay more,
;

that it should be endowed with the soul of riches, be

coined into idols, worshipful crowned pieces, and be
called money, as children in their play cut paper into
bits and call it money, or as certain tamed tribes have

sought to use for money merely the name, without all

this trouble and
agitation about the metal, computing
value by means of the idea instead of the substance.
Since which time their descendants and offshoots, that
 THE MONEY INFATUATION. 59

is those of the Jobs and the Pharaohs, have kept up

the joke, and it appears that we of this boasted scien
tific and economic nineteenth-century civilization can

do no better than to keep it up. It requires as much

labor to find and dig a certain quantity of it as it does
to raise a field of grain, so we swear it to be worth as
much as the grain. So subtle is its energy, that
moulded and milled into the current image of wealth,
it assumes all qualities and virtues. Call it land, and
it is land; labor, and straightway the fields sweat with
labor. It is health and happiness, it is body, intellect,
soul, aye, and eternal salvation. Thrice lucky metal
to be so humanly endowed, so divinely inspired Oh 1 !

precious metal, how I do love thee Oh holy metal,

1 !

how I do worship thee 1

Thus you see, thrice honored scalper and cannibal,

that these men down among the boulders are slaves
of a slave. To serve us in our interchanges we endow
with imaginative miraculous power the yellow sub
stance which you see them all so eagerly snatching
from the all-unconscious earth. They snatch it to
make it their slave, but being beforehand deified, as
heathen idolaters deify the little images which their
fingers have made, and their mouths call gods, they
Straightway find themselves in bondage to their ser
vant. Sage though you are, and a most respectable
wild man, you cannot yet fairly comprehend this pe
culiarity of civilized liberty, wherein you are permitted
to call yourself free only in so far as you are in bond
age to something. You find one wife good, but sev
eral wives better; one wife finds
you good, several
also. You may now marry as many wives as you
please; as many women as please may marry you,
provided you mutually agree. Doubtless you will be
surprised to learn that the liberty of civilization per
mits you but one wife, howsoever half a dozen love
you. This is technically called giving up some portion
of your natural rights for the benefit of all as a matter
;

of fact, it is falling into the tyranny of the majority,

60 ROOT DIGGERS AND GOLD DIGGERS.

however stupid or unjust that may be. Again, gamble

commercially, and your piety is not impeached gamble ;

with money only, and you are an odious thing. You

may not marry but one wife, but you may keep as
many mistresses as you please you may keep them,
;

always in proper retirement, unchidden by society,

though she whom you have enticed into such connec
tion is forever anathematized by the whole sisterhood.
But as I said, you do not understand such things,
and I will confess it to you, greasy brother, neither
do I.

Coming back to our gold- -for however much we

may despise it, we cannot do without it- -we have
seen that money is wealth only by sufferance. Men
have agreed to call gold stamped in a certain way
money, but for all that, only in as far as it serves a
purpose, like anything useful, in so far it is wealth.
You might ask, to what good is this great expenditure
of time and energy, of health and life, when we con
sider that in proportion as the quantity of gold in
circulation increases, its value
diminishes, that the
aggregation of money is not aggregation of wealth,
and that the uses of money are not facilitated by in

creasing the quantity Increase the volume of money

?

and you increase prices; diminish the quantity in cir

culation and prices diminish. Give to every man in
the world a boat-load of it, and not one of them is
the richer; take from every man living half he hath,
and not one of them is the poorer. Why, then,
is the result of the labors of these ditch-gods re

garded with such concern throughout the commercial

world?
In answer to which queries, gentle savage, I re
spectfully refer you to the libraries. You must ask
me easy questions respecting the present order of
things among so-called civilized societies if you would
have answers. I can get no answers even to many
simple questions. Some medium for exchanges, some
materialization of the spirit of commerce is certainly
 COMMERCE AND CURRENCY. 61

convenient, as business is now done. That there is

room improvement upon our present system I am

for

equally certain. In extensive transactions barter is a

cumbrous process; there must be money, but is it
necessary that money should be made of metals ? Is
it necessary for a measure of values that the world

should expend as much labor as for the values meas

ured? As it is now, the value of money depends
upon the cost of the metal composing it. If the metal
exists in large quantities and is easily gathered, the
amount produced is large, and its value correspond
ingly low. Could a bushel of gold dust under ordi
nary circumstances be produced with no more labor
than a bushel of potatoes, then a bushel of potatoes
would be worth a bushel of gold dust. Gold, because
of its scarcity, and consequent cost of production, its
divisibility, and its imperishable qualities, was tacitly
adopted by almost all nations as money.
Its very
intrinsic worthlessness adds to its importance as a
make-believe value, for not being used to any great
extent for other purposes, it is not subject to sudden
or violent fluctuations in value. I have actually heard
men in the pulpit, who professed to be teachers of
their fellow-men, say that God not only made gold
specially to be used as money, but that he kept some
of it hidden, and let men find it only as commerce re
quired it. This may be true in the sense that he
made death that the living might have standing-room
upon the earth, but being too slow at his work disease
and war were sent to help him.
I say
something of the kind, as matters are now
arranged, seems to be necessary. You, yourself,
tawny sir, have felt the need of a currency medium
hi your petty barters. You have taken shells and
beads, and have called them money, making the long
est shells and beads of a certain color to
represent the
higher values, just as others have invested the yellow
metal with a greater purchasing power than the white
or the copper-colored.
Money is a convenience, a
62 HOOT DIGGERS AND GOLD DIGGERS.

great labor-saving machine, and would be worth all

itcosts provided something cheaper could not be de
vised to take its place. It permits to the fullest ex
tent the division of labor it ameliorates the condition
;

of man by bringing to his door the products of distant

nations; it facilitates industrial activities, promotes
national intercourse, and stimulates the life blood of
society. But a moderate amount of gold, if gold must
be had for a currency, is as valuable to commerce as
a large amount. We may safely say that before the
discovery of gold in California the world had sufficient.
Then were not the labor and lives spent here in add
ing to the store to some extent thrown away ? Though
the discovery of precious metals has hitherto more
than kept pace with the requirements of commerce,
yet so elastic and capacious is the maw of man that
he has been able to appropriate it. The time will
come, however, when the mountains will be exhausted
of their gold and silver, which likewise shall drop out
of commerce. California, Australia, and the Ural
mountains together poured their precious metals into
the world s coffers, and the value of gold soon fell one
half and more. We can wait some time yet with
what we have, but where will we find other Califor-
nias, Australias, and Ural mountains when wanted?
Much more will yet be found, but there is obviously
a limit. When the value of gold was thus so seriously
disturbed, silver was talked of as the chief monetary
standard. Then Nevada poured out her several thou
sand tons of silver, which became such a drug in the
market as to be bought and sold at from one to ten
per cent discount. But even Comstock lodes have
bottoms, and when the end of it all comes, perhaps
mankind will improve its
currency.
Under the present infliction, and relatively in the
proportion of the aggregate product to the work gold
has to accomplish, the race must earn its comforts
once and more. First it must till the land so that it
will bring forth, and then unearth the
gold with which
 LOGIC OF THE RIFLE. 63

to buy and sell the product. Thus is avoided bar

ter, which is cumbersome to commerce and industries,
and every way undesirable. But so far ingenuity
has sought in vain a cheaper substitute. With
changes in the national conditions, however, there
will in due time be a change here. Just as we shall
have new religions, new moralities, and new political
orders, so shall we have new standards of value and
new currencies. Meanwhile we must be thankful for
what we have, and in our present imperfect state

accept as a blessing, as an aid to civilization and

it

all cheating. Then let the diggers continue, let them

sweat in death-distilling labor until they drop in the
graves of their own
digging, so that wealth may have
its image and commerce its superscription. But let
us not pride ourselves too much on intellectual supe
riority over the Pharaohs and Jobs ancestors in this
respect, wherein we make so slight improvement.
And this, my dear root-digger, is civilization, and
religion, and all the rest. If you have acuteness of
and personal magnetism enough,
intellect, eloquence,
you may go out even under the shining skies of
America and play the prophet with the best of those
that gulled humanity fifty or five thousand years
back. You may go to New York, to London, to
Berlin and capture your thousands. The gullibility
of mankind in its extent is a question not so much of
intelligence and enlightenment as of the strength of
the impostor. Some little advance out of the subter
ranean darkness has been made during the last two
thousand years, but it is little comparatively. The
world still, in many respects, prefers falsehood to
truth, and men will believe a lie, though their rea
son, if they have any, plainly tells them it is such.
It not in the power of the human mind to conceive
is

a creed so absurd or diabolical as not to find believers

among o the most enlightened
o nations of the earth, and
that in proportion to the power with which the doc
trine is enforced.
64 ROOT DIGGERS AND GOLD DIGGERS

Suddenly the sharp crack of a rifle is heard, and

the meditative aboriginal tumbles from his seat a
lifeless mass into the stream. Aminer s mustang o
was missing yesterday; some skulking redskin must
have stolen it.

Even
the rattlesnake will not strike until it sounds
the note of battle.