448 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



the whole country ? The assertion that the sale of the min- 

 eral lands would offer dangerous advantages to capital, is 

 as much as to say that the sale would be followed by the in- 

 vestment of capital, and a general rise in the value of prop- 

 erty in the mines, and an increase in the amount of their pro- 

 duction. 



This "monopoly" argument has been used for years, and 

 the miners have come to believe it without ever examining it 

 or seeing its absurdity. Instead of capital driving poor men 

 out of the mines, it would bring them in ; it would create a 

 demand for labor ; and the ten thousand men who are now in 

 the mines, anxious to obtain permanent employment, would 

 then get what they have been seeking in vain during the last 

 four years. If capitalists buy up mining lands, of course they 

 will do it with the intention of digging for the gold, and to do 

 that they must employ laborers. This kind of labor is not dis- 

 honorable ; it is such labor as most of the mechanics in Cali- 

 fornia, as well as elsewhere, are engaged in all their lives : that 

 is, labor for a fixed salary. It is just such labor as is done 

 now by a large portion of the quartz, and hydraulic, and tun- 

 nel miners, who consider themselves quite as independent, and 

 their occupation as honorable, as if they were cabinless and 

 claimless surface diggers. The labor for fixed wages will not 

 be unprofitable ; on the contrary, it will remove all precarious- 

 ness from the workman's mode of life, and will give him a 

 good and certain income, with which he Avill always be able to 

 live comfortably. It is not improbable that wages would rise 

 after a sale of the mineral lands. Of course, every purchaser 

 would wish to open his claims at once, and workers would be 

 in demand. The great danger, if the mineral land were offered 

 for sale, would be, not that too much capital, but that not 

 enough would come into the mines. Just in proportion to the 

 amount of land sold would be the amount of benefit done to 

 the state. If none were sold, the present state of afiairs would 

 continue, and the greatest enemies of the sale could not say 

 that any harm had been done ; if a little were sold, the change 



