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 will 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 
amouut of land sold would be the amount of benefit done to 
the state. If none were sold, the present state of affairs 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 
