75+ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it was expected that the bonds would sell readily. But early in 

 1867 the Bank of California syndicate began to perceive that the 

 Sutro Tunnel, delivering ore at the Carson River mills and mining 

 supplies nearly two thousand feet below the surface, might very 

 easily destroy their control of the Comstock and its dependent 

 industries. Therefore they declared war, and opened hostilities. 

 Stewart resigned ; subscriptions were all withdrawn ; shrewd law- 

 yers and politicians were employed to obtain the repeal of the 

 franchise and of the act of Congress ; financiers in New York and 

 Europe were warned not to touch Sutro bonds. 



Years after Sutro said in conversation : " Ah, it was a hard 

 thing to have so many old friends in San Francisco and Virginia 

 City actually afraid to be seen talking to me after the fiat had 

 gone forth that I must be crushed at any cost. But I kept 

 on fighting. There was one time, I remember, when I had to 

 go to Washington to save my interests from destruction. I 

 had no money. All the profits of my mill had been swallowed 

 up. But I had a lot in a little California town, and I sold it 

 for two hundred dollars, and with that I managed to get to 

 Washington. I stayed there somehow that winter, poor as I 

 was, and fought my enemies, and came out ahead. But their 

 newspapers said I had bribed Congress — out of my two hundred 

 dollars ! " 



Afier making the most strenuous efforts Sutro failed to place 

 his bonds. In 1869, turning for help to the working miners, he 

 delivered a remarkable address in Virginia City. Large cartoons 

 illustrated his bitter eloquence. One showed Bill Sharon's Big 

 Woodpile, another Bill Sharon's Crooked Railroad, a third the 

 then recent fire in Yellow Jacket, where forty-two lives had been 

 lost that might have been saved had the Sutro Tunnel existed. He 

 appealed to the miners' unions for stock subscriptions with which 

 to begin work. " Will the people of Nevada see me crushed out 

 now ? . . . Come in together. Let two thousand laboring men 

 pay in ten dollars apiece a month, and insure the construction of 

 the tunnel, carrying with it the control of the mines. . . . From 

 dependents you will be masters." With such sentences he ad- 

 dressed the working miners of the Comstock, who actually raised 

 fifty thousand dollars in a few weeks, and on October 19th reso- 

 lute Sutro broke ground in his great undertaking. Nevertheless 

 the tunnel was steadily opposed by the California and Nevada 

 Senators and by nearly all the mining men on the Comstock. 

 The history of the long struggle is embalmed in the pages of the 

 Congressional Record and innumerable public documents. Sutro 

 bonds were finally sold, but the difficulties of the undertaking 

 proved greater than had been expected, and the period of the 

 bonanzas passed before the lode was reached. 



