CHAPTER IV.
“Gold is the strength of the world.”
Morning concluded it would be unwise to make another trip to his location, lest suspicion might be excited and discovery follow, so, breaking camp early the next day, he returned with his comrades to the copper-lodes, which they reached before noon.
Work was resumed by Steel and his two miners in clearing the old shaft, and Morning, taking a fowling-piece, avowed his purpose to look for quail down the ravine. Having reached a point where he felt secluded from observation, he began a critical examination of the quartz specimens, which until now he had not dared to withdraw from his pockets.
As with his microscope he scrutinized piece after piece, he grew pale with excitement and astonishment. With the habit of a mining expert, he had sampled the ledge as for an average, and the average value of the twenty different specimens of quartz, taken from twenty different localities, enabled him to determine the true value of the property with great accuracy. He discovered that the amount of gold in each one of the twenty specimens would not vary materially from the amount of gold in proportion to the quartz in each and all of the others. In other words, the entire body of quartz was uniformly impregnated with gold, and, therefore, of uniform richness and value.
There was no better judge of quartz in all Colorado than David Morning. He had been accustomed, after careful inspection, to estimate within ten or twenty percent of the value per ton of free milling gold quartz, and his accuracy had often been the subject of amicable wagers among his friends. He was able in this instance to say that each one of the ore specimens carried not less than five hundred ounces of gold to the ton of quartz, or that the entire lode would yield, under the stamps, an average of $10,000 per ton.
This was marvelous! unprecedented! phenomenal! No such deposit for richness and extent had ever been found in the history of the world.
Ten thousand dollars in gold, distributed through two thousand pounds of quartz, may not make much of a showing in the quartz, for in bulk there is fifty times as much quartz as gold; but one hundred tons of such quartz would yield a million dollars, and the ledge uncovered by the waterspout was forty feet in width and thirteen hundred and sixty feet in length to where it ran under the basalt wall. It cropped twelve feet above the ground, and extended to unknown depths below the surface. Thirteen feet of rock in place will weigh a ton. In that rift in the mountain there was now in sight above the surface, all ready to be broken down and sent to the stamps, six hundred and fifty thousand cubic feet, or fifty thousand tons, of quartz, containing gold of the value of $500,000,000.
What was to be done with the vast amount of gold which might be extracted from the Morning mine? How was it to be placed in circulation without unsettling values, reducing the worth of all bonds, inaugurating wild speculation, and revolutionizing the commerce and the finances of the world?
Would not the nations, so soon as they should be made aware of the existence of this deposit, hasten to demonetize gold, make of it a commodity, change the world’s standard money to silver exclusively, and so lessen the value of the Morning mine to a comparatively small amount?
Under the plea that increased production of silver necessitated a change in relative values, that metal was demonetized in 1873 in Europe and in the United States, and its value reduced one-third. Might not gold now be similarly dealt with, and, with such a vast deposit known to be in existence, be diminished by demonetization to the value of silver or less?
The entire production of gold in the world for the last forty years, or since the California and Australia mines began to yield, had been but $5,000,000,000, and as much might be extracted from the first one hundred and twenty feet in depth of the Morning mine. All the gold money of the world was but $7,600,000,000, or less than might be excavated from the first two hundred feet in depth of this marvelous deposit. The total money of the world—gold, silver, and paper—was but $11,500,000,000, and a similar sum might be extracted from the first three hundred feet in depth of the mine.
If the ledge extended downward a thousand feet, it contained as much gold as three times the sum total of all the gold, silver, and paper currency of the world, and its value was equal to the value, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety, of one-half of all the real and personal property in the United States.
How much of this gold could be added to the circulation of the world with safety? and how could the existence of the vast quantity held in reserve be kept secret?
His studies in political economy had taught David Morning that gold, like water, if fed to the land in proper proportions, would stimulate its fertility and add to its power of beneficent production, but if precipitated in an unregulated and mighty torrent, would, like the waterspout, prove a destructive power.
Knowledge of the existence of the gold, if generally diffused, would be nearly as injurious to the world as to extract it and place it in the channels of finance. Yet how could the secret be kept? The ledge as it stood could not be worked without half a hundred men knowing its extent and value. No guards or bonds of secrecy would be adequate. The birds of the air would carry the tale. Even now a vagrant prospector or wandering mountain tourist might reveal the secret to the world.
Not in any spirit of self-seeking did David Morning ask himself these questions. All his personal wants, and tastes, and aspirations might be gratified with a few millions, which could easily be mined and invested before knowledge of his discovery could destroy or lessen the value of gold. But the purpose now beginning to take possession of him was to use, not merely millions, but tens and hundreds and thousands of millions, to bring peace, and progress, and prosperity to the nations, to ameliorate the conditions under which humanity suffers, to raise the fallen, to aid the struggling, to curb the power of oppressors, to remedy public and private wrongs, to solve social problems, to uplift humanity, and comfort the bodies and souls of men. To accomplish this work it was necessary that he should have vast sums at his command, and it was also necessary that his possession of vaster reserves should not be known.
The discoveries in California and Australia by which in ten years fourteen hundred millions of gold dollars were added to the world’s stock of the precious metals was a beneficent discovery. It lifted half the weight from the shoulders of every debtor; it made possible the payment of every farm mortgage; it delivered manhood from the evil embrace of Apathy, and wedded him to fair young Hope; it invigorated commerce, it inspired enterprise, it led the armies of peace to the conquest of forest and prairie; it caused furnaces to flame and spindles to hum; it brought plenty and progress to a people.
But this addition to the gold money of civilization was gradually made, and the product of forty years of all the gold mines in the world was not equal to the sum which in less than four years might be taken from the Morning mine.
If, as a consequence of Morning’s find, gold should not be demonetized, if it should be permitted to remain as a measurer of all values, and the extent of the deposit should be made known to the world, the inevitable result would be to quadruple the prices of land, labor, and goods, and to reduce to one-fourth of their present proportions the value to the creditor of all existing indebtedness. The farmer whose land was worth $10,000 would find it worth $40,000, and the man who had loaned $5,000 upon it would find his loan worth but $1,250 practically, because the purchasing power of his $5,000 would be reduced to one-fourth of its present capacity.
All government bonds of the nations, all county, city, and railroad bonds, and all the mortgages and promissory notes and book accounts in the world, would, if all of Morning’s gold should be poured at once into circulation, without preparation or warning, be reduced at one blow to one-fourth of their present value, and all the owners of land, and implements, and horses, and cattle, and merchandise would find their value at once increased fourfold. The laborer who had only his hands or his brains would remain unaffected. His wages would be quadrupled, and so would the cost of his living.
Knowledge of the extent of the Morning mine would immediately enrich the debtors and ruin the creditors of the world, unless the governments of earth should demonetize gold, deny it access to the mints, refuse to coin it, and so degrade it to a commodity.
An illustration in a small way of the operations of this immutable law of finance may be found in the history of San Francisco. The foundations of some of the great fortunes of that city may be traced to the days of the Civil War, when San Francisco wholesale merchants paid their Eastern creditors in legal tender currency, the while they diligently fostered a public sentiment which made it discreditable to the honesty and ruinous to the credit of any California retailer who should attempt to pay his debt to them in the despised greenbacks. The interior storekeeper glowed with pride when Ephraim Smooth & Company gathered in his golden twenties, and commended his honesty for “paying his debts like a man, in gold, and not availing himself of the dishonest legal tender law.” But Smooth & Company paid their New York creditors in greenbacks, and pocketed the difference.
Inflation of the currency, or an increase of the money of a nation, if it can be gradually made, need not prove disastrous to the creditors, and must prove a benefaction to the debtors of the world. The relation of wages to the cost of living, whether the volume of money in a country be contracted or inflated, practically remains the same. It may be claimed that the workman who receives an increase of wages, and whose cost of living is correspondingly increased, is no better off at the end of the year, yet economy brings to him larger apparent accumulations, and he is thereby encouraged to practice frugality.
The American mechanic who wandered to the Canary Islands, where he received $400 a day in the local currency for his wages, was enabled to save $100 a day by denying himself brandy and tobacco, and but for this dazzling inducement he might have surrendered to temptations that would have made him a proper subject for the ministrations of the W. C. T. U.
But though an inflation of values which should be beneficent might follow the discovery and working of the Morning mine, clearly the first thing for the discoverer to do was to take effectual measures to conceal from human knowledge the extent of his discovery.
David Morning remained for some time in deep thought, and then, rising from his seat upon a bowlder behind the manzanita bushes, he tore into fragments the paper upon which he had been making calculations, and, excavating with his foot a hole in the sand, he dropped into it and covered the specimens of gold quartz which he had taken from the ledge, and, retracing his steps, was soon at the copper-camp, where, in answer to the queries of his companions, he replied truthfully that during his absence he had not seen a single quail.
Two days elapsed, and, the shaft having been cleaned out and the copper lode thoroughly exposed, Morning took samples of it, and also of croppings of the other lodes included in the ground located by Steel, and the party broke camp and started for Tucson, where they arrived early in the afternoon of the second day.
Making an appointment with Steel for that evening, Morning deposited his copper samples with an assayer, and, walking to the Court House, he filed the notice of location of the Morning mine with the county recorder. Two hours later he had the report of the assayer upon the copper samples, showing an average of twelve per cent of carbonate copper in the ore. This was not so rich as had been predicted by Steel, but was of sufficient value to warrant the purchase of the copper prospects at the low price which had been fixed upon them, provided that arrangements could be made for economically working them, and Morning had already formulated in his own mind a plan of action by which the working of the copper lodes could be made to advance his project of working the gold lode so as to conceal the extent of its yield.
Morning calculated that the amount of money needed for labor, supplies, machinery, and buildings, to work the mines in accordance with his plans, would be about $300,000, and his first thought was to obtain this money by breaking down, and shipping to reduction works in California or Colorado, about thirty tons of the quartz before he should commence the work which he projected for the concealment of the ledge.
With his own hands he could mine and sack such an amount of ore in a fortnight, and with the aid of half a dozen pack animals, managed by himself, transport it a mile or two from the rift, where it might be thrown into the channel cut by the waterspout, and, with a blast or two, be covered with rocks and dirt until teams should be brought from Tucson for it.
With this idea uppermost, he sought the freight agent of the railroad company of Tucson.
Then he came in contact with the system in vogue on the Pacific Coast—and possibly elsewhere—that of a one-sided railroad partnership with the producer, on the basis that the producer furnish all the capital and suffer all the losses, the railroad company providing neither capital, experience, nor services, but taking the lion’s share of the profits.
“What,” said Morning, “will your freight charges be for three car loads of ore to Pueblo or San Francisco?”
“What kind of ore?”
“Gold-bearing quartz in sacks.”
“What does your ore assay?” inquired the agent.
“What has that got to do with it?” questioned Morning sharply.
“Everything,” answered the official. “We charge in car-load lots $12 per ton to San Francisco, or $24 per ton to Pueblo, and $2.00 per ton in addition for each $100 per ton of the assay value of the ore.”
“Very well,” said Morning, “I believe I will ship thirty tons to San Francisco.”
“Have you it here?” said the agent.
“It will not be ready for some weeks yet,” replied Morning.
“You did not mention its value,” said the agent.
“I will state its value at $100 per ton,” said Morning.
“All right,” said the agent, “we will take it at that, subject, of course, to assay according to our rules by the assayer of the company at your expense.”
“Well, I don’t know that I care to trouble the assayer of your company,” replied Morning. “In fact, the ore is a good deal richer than $100 per ton. But I will ship it at that valuation, and release the company from all liability for loss or damage beyond that. In brief, I will take all the chances, and if the ore shall be lost, or stolen, or tumbled off a bridge, or overturned into a river, the company will only account to me for it at $100 per ton. I suppose that will be satisfactory?”
The agent shook his head.
“It looks as if it ought to be satisfactory,” said he, “but my orders are imperative. The ore must be assayed, and you will have to pay two per cent of its value.”
“But this,” replied Morning, with some heat, “is unreasonable and outrageous. If the tax of two per cent is to be regarded in the light of a charge for insurance, I am sure there is not a marine or fire insurance company in the world that would charge one-fourth of one per cent for such a risk.”
“Company’s orders,” said the agent.
“Suppose you wire headquarters at my cost, and say that David Morning wishes to ship thirty tons of gold-bearing quartz from Tucson to San Francisco, at a valuation of $100 per ton. Say that he will prepay the freight, and load and unload the cars himself if permitted. Say that he does not wish the railroad company to take any of the risks of mining, transporting, or reducing the ore, nor to share any of the profits of the business. Say that he will release the company from all liability even for gross negligence or theft, beyond $100 per ton. Say that he does not wish to acquaint the company’s assayer or the company’s freight agent with the value of the ore, or permit either of them to form any accurate judgment for speculative or other purposes as to the value of the mine from which the ore was taken. Say that he wishes the privilege of conducting his own business in his own way. Say that if the railroad company will kindly fix a rate at which it will consent to carry the freight he offers, without sticking its meddlesome, corporate nose into his business, he will then consider whether he will pay that rate or refrain from shipping the ore at all.”
“Mr. Morning,” said the agent, “if I were to send such a telegram as that, it would cost me my place, and, indeed, my orders are not to communicate remonstrances made by shippers at the company’s rules, except by mail. Of course you can send any message you like over your own name to the head office, but I can inform you now that they will only refer you to me for an answer, and I can only refer to my general instructions, and there the matter will end.”
“Well,” replied Morning, “I will ship the ore by ox teams or not ship it at all before I will submit to the injustice of your general instructions. I suppose I am without remedy in the premises?”
“You might build another road, Mr. Morning,” said the agent, with a slight tinge of sarcasm in his voice.
Morning answered slowly, as he turned away:—
“I may conclude to do so, or to buy up this road, and if I do I will run it on business principles that shall give the shipper some little chance.”
“When will that halcyon hour for the public arrive, Mr. Morning?”
“By and by,” rejoined our hero, “and then you may look for better days.”