“Two years ago,” said the “Alta California” in 1851, “trade was a wild unorganized whirl.” Staple goods went furiously up and down in price like wild-cat mining stocks. There was no telegraph by which supplies could be ordered from the East or inquiries could be answered, and several months must elapse before an order sent by mail to New York could be filled. A merchant at Valparaiso once paid twenty thousand dollars for the information contained in a single letter from San Francisco.

Consignors in the East were almost wholly ignorant as to what people needed in California, and how goods should be stowed for the long voyage around the Cape. Great quantities of preserved food it was before the days of canning were spoiled en route. Coal was shipped in bulk without any ventilating appliances, and it often took fire and destroyed the vessels in which it was carried. One unfortunate woman, the wife of a Cape Cod sea-captain, was wrecked thrice in this way, having been transferred from one coal-laden schooner to another, and later to a third, all of which were set on fire by the heating of the coal, and burned to the water’s edge. In one of these adventures she was lashed to a chair on deck, where she spent five days, in a rough sea, with smoke and gas pouring from the ship at every seam. Her final escape was made in a row-boat which landed at a desolate spot on the coast of Peru.

Elaborate gold-washing machines which proved to be useless and ready-made houses that nobody wanted were among the articles shipped to San Francisco. The rate of interest was very high, capital being scarce, and storage in warehouses was both insecure, from the great danger of fire, and extremely expensive. It was, therefore, nearly impossible for the merchants to hold their goods for a more favorable market.

In July, 1849, lumber sold at the enormous rate of five hundred dollars a thousand feet, fifty times the New England price; but in the following Spring, immense shipments having arrived, it brought scarcely enough to pay the freight bills. Tobacco, which at first sold for two dollars a pound, became so plentiful afterward that boxes of it were used for stepping stones, and in one case, as Bret Harte has related, tobacco actually supplied the foundation for a wooden house.

Holes in the sidewalk were stopped with bags of rice or beans, with sacks of coffee, and, on one occasion, with three barrels of revolvers, the supply far exceeding even the California demand for that article. Potatoes brought sixty dollars a bushel at wholesale in 1849, but were raised so extensively in California the next year that the price fell to nothing, and whole cargoes of these useful vegetables, just arrived from the East, were dumped into the Bay. In some places near San Francisco it was really feared that a pestilence would result from huge piles of superfluous potatoes that lay rotting on the ground. Saleratus, worth in New York four cents a pound, sold at San Francisco in 1848 for fifteen dollars a pound. The menu of a breakfast for two at Sacramento in the same year was as follows:

1 box of sardines, $16.
1 pound of hard bread, 2.
1 pound of butter, 6.
1/2 pound of cheese, 3.
2 bottles of ale, 16.
------
Total, $43.00

Flour in the mining camps cost four and even five dollars a pound, and eggs were two dollars apiece. A chicken brought sixteen dollars; a revolver, one hundred and fifty dollars; a stove, four hundred dollars; a shovel, one hundred dollars. Laudanum was one dollar a drop, brandy twenty dollars a bottle; and dried apples fluctuated from five cents to seventy-five cents a pound. It is matter of history that a bilious miner once gave fifteen dollars for a small box of Seidlitz powders, and at the Stanislaus Diggings a jar of raisins, regarded as a cure for the scurvy then prevailing, sold for their weight in gold, amounting to four thousand dollars. As showing the dependence of California upon the East for supplies, it is significant that even so late as 1853 six thousand tons of hard bread were imported annually from New York.

Wages and prices were high, but nobody complained of them. There was in fact a disdain of all attempts to cheapen or haggle. Gold dust poured into San Francisco from the launches and schooners which plied on the Sacramento River, and almost everybody in California seemed to have it in plenty. “Money,” said a Pioneer in a letter written at the end of ’49, “is about the most valueless article that a man can have in his possession here.”

As an illustration of the lavish manner in which business was transacted, it may be mentioned that the stamp box in the express office of Wells, Fargo and Company was a sort of common treasury. Clerks, messengers and drivers dipped into it for change whenever they wanted a lunch or a drink. There was nothing secret about this practice, and if not sanctioned it was at least winked at by the superior officers. Huge lumps of gold were exhibited in hotels and gambling houses, and the jingling of coins rivalled the scraping of the fiddle as the characteristic music of San Francisco.

The first deposit in the United States Mint of gold from California was made on December 8, 1848, and between that date and May 1, 1850, there were presented for coinage gold dust and nuggets valued at eleven million four hundred and twenty thousand dollars. A lot of land in San Francisco rose from fifteen dollars in price to forty thousand dollars. In September, 1850, bricklayers receiving twelve dollars a day struck for fourteen dollars, and obtained the increase. The wages of carpenters varied from twelve dollars to twenty dollars a day. Those who did best in California were, as a rule, the small traders, the mechanics and skilled workmen, and the professional men who, resisting the temptation to hunt for gold, made money by being useful to the community. “It may truly be said,” remarked the “San Francisco Daily Herald” in 1852, “that California is the only spot in the world where labor is not only on an equality with capital, but to a certain extent is superior to it.”

Women cooks received one hundred dollars a month, and chambermaids and nurses almost as much. Washerwomen made fortunes and founded families. A resident of San Francisco went to the mines for four weeks, and came back with a bag of gold dust which, he thought, would astonish his wife, who had remained in the city; but meanwhile she had been “taking in washing,” at the rate of twelve dollars a dozen; and he was crestfallen to find that her gains were twice as much as his. It was cheaper to have one’s clothes sent to China or the Sandwich Islands to be laundered, and some thrifty and patient persons took that course. A valuable trade sprang up between China and San Francisco. The solitude became a village, and the village a city, with startling rapidity. In less than a year, twelve thousand people gathered at Sacramento where there had not been a single soul.

Events and changes followed one another so rapidly that each year formed an epoch by itself. In 1853 men spoke of 1849 as of a romantic and half-forgotten past. An old citizen was one who had been on the ground a year. When Stephen J. Field offered himself as a candidate for the newly-created office of Alcalde at Marysville, the supporters of a rival candidate objected to Field as being a newcomer. He had been there only three days. His opponent had been there six days.

But in 1851 the material progress of California received a great, though only a temporary, check. As commerce adjusted itself to the needs of the community prices and wages fell. A drink cost fifteen cents (the half of “two bits"), instead of fifty cents, which had been the usual price, and the wages of day laborers shrank to five dollars a day. The change was thus humorously described by an editor, obviously of Southern extraction: “About this time the Yankees began to pour into San Francisco, to invest in corner lots, and speculate in wooden gingerbread, framed houses and the like. Prices gradually came down, and money which was once thrown about so recklessly has now come to be regarded as an article of considerable importance.”

In San Francisco there was almost a commercial panic. The city was heavily in debt, many private fortunes were swept away, property was insecure, and robbery and murder were common events. Delano relates that a young man of his acquaintance, a wild and daring fellow, was offered at this time a salary of seven hundred dollars a month, to steal horses and mules in a large, systematic and business-like manner.

The tone of the San Francisco papers in 1851 was by no means cheerful. The following is the description which the “Alta California” gave of the city in December of that year: “Our city is certainly an unfortunate one in the matter of public accommodation. Her wharves are exposed to tempestuous northers and to the ravages of the worm; the piles that are driven into the mud for houses to rest upon are forced out of their perpendicular and crowded over by pressure of sand used in filling in other water lots against them; a most valuable portion of the city survey is converted into a filthy lake or salt water laguna filled with garbage, dead animals and refuse matter from the streets; the streets are narrow and are constructed with sidewalks so irregular, miserable, and behampered as to drive off passengers into the middle of the street to take the chance of being ridden over and trampled under foot by scores of recklessly driven mules and horses; with drays, wagons and carriages without number to deafen, confuse and endanger the unfortunate pedestrian. A few thin strips of boards, pieces of dry-goods boxes or barrel staves constitute the sidewalks in some of our most important thoroughfares, and even this material is so irregularly and insecurely laid that the walks are shunned as stumbling places full of man-traps; more than all this, the sidewalks of the principal streets in the city are strewn and obstructed with shop wares.”

The first Vigilance Committee of 1851 checked crime and restored order for a short period, and the second Vigilance Committee of 1856, together with the election which followed it, effected a most decided and lasting improvement in the government of San Francisco, and especially in the management of its police. In the brief account already given of James King and his career, this episode in California life has been touched upon.

The fires which successively overran the cities of California, and especially San Francisco, were another source of disaster to the business world. There were many small fires in San Francisco and six conflagrations, all within two years. The first of these occurred in December, ’49, the loss being about one million dollars. A characteristic act at this fire was that of a merchant whose shop had been burned, but who had saved several hundred suits of black clothes. Having no place for storing them, and seeing that they would be stolen or ruined, he gave them away to the bystanders. “Help yourselves, gentlemen!” he cried. The invitation was accepted, and the next day an unusual proportion of the citizens of San Francisco were observed to be in mourning.

In May, and again in June, 1850, there were large fires, and it was after these disasters that the use of cloth for the sides and roofs of buildings was prohibited by law. Up to that time the shops of the city had been constructed very commonly of that highly inflammable material.

In September, 1850, there was another but less destructive fire, and on May 4, 1851, occurred the “great fire,” in which the loss of property was at least seven million dollars. It was estimated at the time at fifteen million dollars. This conflagration produced a night of horror such as even California had not seen before. The fire started at eleven P. M., and the flames were fanned by a strong, westerly breeze. The glow in the sky was seen at Monterey, one hundred miles distant. So rapidly did the flames spread that merchants in some cases removed their stock of goods four or five times, and yet had them overtaken and destroyed in the end. Since the burning of Moscow no other city had suffered so much from fire. Delicate women, driven from their homes at midnight, were wandering through the streets, with no protection from the raw wind except their nightclothes. A sick man was carried from his bed in a burning house, and placed in the street, where, amid all the turmoil of the scene, the roaring of the flames, the shouts, cries and imprecations of men, amid falling sparks and cinders, and jostled by the half-frenzied passers-by, he breathed his last.

Among the brave acts performed at this fire was that of a clerk who picked up a burning box which contained canisters of powder, carried it a block on his shoulder, and threw it into a pool of water. It was during this fire, also, that an American flag, released by the burning of the cord which held it, soared away, above the flames and smoke, while a cry that was half a cheer and half a sob, burst from the throats of the crowd beneath it.

But, great as this disaster was, the merchants rallied from it with true California courage. “One year here,” wrote the Reverend Mr. Colton, “will do more for your philosophy than a lifetime elsewhere. I have seen a man sit and quietly smoke his cigar while his house went heavenward in a column of flame.” This was exemplified in the great fire. Men began to fence in their lots although the smouldering ruins still emitted an almost suffocating heat. Contracts for new stores were made while the old ones were yet burning; and in many cases the ground was cleared, and temporary buildings went up before the ashes of the burned buildings had cooled. Lumber, fortunately, was abundant, and the morning after the fire every street and lane leading to the ruined district was crowded with wagons full of building tools and material. The city resembled a hive of bees after it has been rifled of its honey.

The smaller cities suffered almost as severely from fire. Sacramento was burned twice and flooded three times before the year 1854. In The Reincarnation of Smith, Bret Harte describes the appearance of the city when the river upon which it is situated suddenly burst its banks and “a great undulation of yellow water” swept through the streets of the city. Two other stories, In the Tules and When the Waters Were Up at “Jules’," deal with the floods of 1854 and of 1860, and in the first of these the escape of Martin Morse, the solitary inhabitant of the river-bank, is described. “But one night he awakened with a start. His hand, which was hanging out of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water. He had barely time to spring to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling tank before the door fell out as from inward pressure, and his whole shanty collapsed like a pack of cards. But it fell outwards, the roof sliding from over his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he was swept from his feet against it, and thence out into what might have been another world! For the rain had ceased, and the full moon revealed only one vast, illimitable expanse of water! As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the bough, at last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree.”

Martin Morse was saved eventually; but another victim of the same flood, and not a fictitious one, was found dead from exposure and exhaustion in the tree which he had reached by swimming. So close, even in small incidents, are Bret Harte’s stories to the reality of California life!

During this freshet a man and his wife, who occupied a ranch on the Feather River, had an experience more remarkable than that of Martin Morse. They took refuge, first, on the roof of their house, and then, when the house floated off, they clung to a piece of timber, and so drifted to a small island. But here they found a prior occupant in the person of a grizzly bear, and to escape him they climbed a tree, whence they were rescued the next morning.

What with fire and flood added to the uncertainties and vicissitudes of trade carried on thousands of miles from the base of supplies, with no telegraphic communication and only a fortnightly mail; what with land values rising and falling; with cities and towns springing up like mushrooms and often withering as quickly; under these circumstances, and in a stimulating climate, it is no wonder that the Californians lived a feverish, and often a reckless life. The Pioneers could recount more instances of misfortune and more triumphs over misfortune than any other people in the world. But suicides were frequent, they numbered twenty-nine in San Francisco in a single year, and one of the first public buildings erected by the State was an Insane Asylum at Stockton. It was quickly filled.

Nevertheless, contemporary with the feverish life of the mining camp and the city was the life of the farm and the vineyard; and this, too, was not neglected by Bret Harte. The agricultural resources of California were beginning to be known even before the discovery of gold, and many of those who crossed the Plains in ’49 and ’50 were bent not upon mining but upon farming. Others, who failed as miners, or who were thrown out of business by the hard times of ’51 and ’56, turned to the fertile valleys and hillsides for support. Monterey, on the lower coast of central California, was the sheep county; and flocks of ten thousand from Ohio and of one hundred thousand from Mexico were grazing there before 1860. In that year it was said to contain more sheep than could be found in any other county in the United States. Tasajara was known as a “cow county.”

An immigrant from New Jersey, in 1850, brought thirty thousand fruit trees; and by 1859 the Foot-Hills in the counties of Yuba, Nevada, El Dorado and Sacramento were covered with vineyards, interspersed with vine-clad cottages, where, a few years before, there had been only the rough and scattered huts of a few miners.

Immense quantities of wheat were raised, especially in Humboldt County on the northern coast of the State, where we hear of crops averaging sixty bushels to the acre. In 1860 the surplus of wheat, the quantity, that is, available for exportation, exceeded three million bushels; and the barley crop was still larger. The Stanislaus and Santa Clara Valleys, not far from San Francisco, and southeast of the city, were also grain-growing districts, as is recorded in Bret Harte’s story Through the Santa Clara Wheat.

He describes his heroine as following her guide between endless rows of stalks, rising ten and even twelve feet high, like “a long, pillared conservatory of greenish glass.” “She also discovered that the close air above her head was continually freshened by the interchange of lower temperature from below, as if the whole vast field had a circulation of its own, and that the adobe beneath her feet was gratefully cool to her tread. There was no dust; what had at first half suffocated her seemed to be some stimulating aroma of creation that filled the narrow green aisles, and now imparted a strange vigor and excitement to her as she walked along.”

So early as 1851 the newspapers began to publish articles about the opportunities for farming, and soon afterward the “California Farmer,” an excellent weekly, was started at Sacramento, and supplied the community with news in general as well as with agricultural information. One can imagine the relief with which in those strenuous days the reader of the “Farmer” turned from accounts of robbery, murder, suicide and lynching to gentle disquisitions upon the rearing of calves, the merits of Durham steers, and the most approved method of fattening sheep in winter. The Hubbard squash, then a novelty, was treated by the “Farmer” as seriously as the Constitutional Convention, or the expulsion of foreigners from the mines. Practical subjects, as for instance, subsoil ploughs, remedies for smut, and recipes for rhubarb wine, were carefully discussed by this Pioneer agriculturist; and not infrequently he rose to higher themes, such as “The Age of the Earth,” and “The Influence of Females on Society.”