212 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 
But the New England leaven though possibly not the New England personality 
is dominant in their ambition, their education, their morality, their progressive 
spirituality. The pioneer miners, the ‘‘prospectors,” are a class of characters by 
themselves. Properly they never mine; to dig out and reduce ore is not their voca- 
tion; but they discover and open mines and sell them, if they can; at any rate they 
move on and discover others. Men of intelligence, often cultivated, generally hand- 
some, mostly moral, high toned and gallant by nature, sustained by a faith that 
seems imperishable, putting their last dollar, their only horse, possibly their best 
blanket into a hole that invites their hopes, working for wages only to get more 
means to live while they prospect anew and further, they suffer much and yet enjoy 
a great deal. Faith is comfort and that is theirs; they will ‘strike it rich” some 
day; and then, and not till then, will they go back to the old Ohio, Pennsylvania, 
or New England homes, and cheer the fading eyes of father and mother and claim 
the patient, waiting, sad-hearted girls, to whom they pledged their youthful loves. 
The vicious, the loafers, the gamblers, and the murderers have mostly ‘‘moved on;” 
what is left is chiefly golden material; and the men and the mines and farms of 
Colorado, all alike and together, are in a healthy and promising condition, and 
insure for her a large growth and a generous future. The two things she lacketh 
now are appreciation at the East and women; what she has of both are excellent, 
but in short supply; but the Railroad will speedily fill the vacuums.* 
As the proportion of women was 4.85 to Ioo men in 1860, the force of 
the words “‘short supply’’ is at once apparent. 
The number engaged in mining did not again equal that of 1860 until 
after the Leadville strikes shortly preceding 1880. Just previous to 
that year a large increase of immigration had taken place so that the 
census reported 28,970 persons in the mining industry. There was the 
usual number of adventurers who were soon disappointed and returned 
so that ten years afterward the number in the mining industry was again 
reduced considerably, there being in that year 20,067 so employed. If 
the statistics were available for the number of men employed in mining 
for each year from 1890 to 1900 the first half of this decade would cer- 
tainly prove a period during which fewer men were so engaged. The 
closing of the mints to silver in India, and the repeal of the silver purchas- 
ing clause of the Sherman act causing an enormous decline in the price 
of that metal resulted in closing a multitude of silver mines in Colorado 
and throwing a great many men out of employment. According to a 
perhaps somewhat exaggerated estimate 45,000 were thrown out of em- 
* Bowles, Our New West, 1860, p. 105. 
