In the larger political arena, the fight over silver and gold continued unabated. Coloradans waited anxiously for the 1896 presidential election, when they were sure silver would triumph, and eagerly anticipated the final rout of the gold bugs. The issue was immediately set forth when the Republicans nominated William McKinley, who ran on a gold platform. That left the silver issue up to the Democrats, who met in hot, humid Chicago in July. They were not unified behind the silver banner until Nebraskan William Jennings Bryan rose to speak, in what became one of the transforming moments in American political history. He concluded with the words that quickly enthralled Coloradans and turned into their rallying cry.
If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.6
For a moment stunned silence greeted Bryan, then a cheering, yelling, boisterous demonstration burst throughout the hall, with the delegates carrying Bryan on their shoulders. The “silver tongued” orator would be nominated on a silver platform, and the issue now rested with the people. Before the convention was over, the Democrats had stolen the Populist reform program as well, and the Populists were reduced to also nominating Bryan, though they stubbornly selected a different running mate.
The fever, the excitement, the expectations of that campaign have seldom been equaled. Poet Vachel Lindsay captured the moment when the debtor West stared angrily at the creditor East and looked to a silver savior.
I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan
Candidate for president who sketched a silver Zion,
The one American poet could sing outdoors . . .
And all these in their helpless days
By the dour East oppressed,
Mean paternalism
Making their mistakes for them,
Crucifying half the West,
Till the whole Atlantic coast
Seemed a giant spiders’ nest . . .
July, August, suspense.
Wall Street lost to sense
August, September, October,
More suspense,
And the whole East down like a wind-smashed fence.
When the voters had their say, Bryan received almost 6.5 million votes and carried twenty-two states. Coloradans rallied to the cause with a fervor unmatched before or since, with 83.6 percent of their votes going to Bryan. Many mining counties gave their hero an even higher percentage. It mattered not: McKinley, with more than 7 million votes, carried twenty-three states and a majority of electoral college votes. His strength lay in the highpopulation states of the Midwest and East.
Election night at midnight:
Boy Bryan’s defeat.
Defeat of western silver. . . .
Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,
The blue bells of the Rockies,
And blue bonnets of old Texas,
By the Pittsburgh alleys.7
The agrarian and mining states simply were not populous enough to carry the election. Silver would never rise again; it would not be resurrected for another national campaign; Colorado and the other silver states found themselves on the outside looking in at a changing urban-industrial America.
Putting that misfortune behind them, Coloradans could now pay more attention to the mining situation. It was definitely not as gloomy as Colora-dans perceived and the silverites proclaimed. Without question, small silver mining districts, such as Animas Forks, Lulu, Vicksburg, Ruby/Irwin, and Montezuma, looked more to the past than toward the future. So, too, did marginal gold districts like Hahn’s Peak and Apex. However, offsetting these cases was flourishing Cripple Creek, joined by the revived San Juans. Mining there evolved from gold to silver and then, amazingly, returned to gold, coming in second only to Teller County in gold production. As the Engineering and Mining Journal forecast in its July 12, 1890, issue, “San Juan mines have never before looked as promising as at the present time.” The shift from silver back to gold was taking place already, especially in the rich triangle with Ouray, Silverton, and Telluride at its points.
In Telluride, three mines in particular rose to national fame: the Tomboy, Smuggler-Union, and the Liberty Bell. Located high in the mountains, all at or over 11,000 feet and liable to be cut off by winter storms, they were so rich that work went on without letup regardless of conditions. Following the general trend, each mine was owned by a company controlled by outsiders, not Coloradans.
Even Telluride’s small neighbor, Ophir, prospered. New properties were opened, and older ones saw “renewed activity,” reported the San Miguel Examiner on Christmas Day, 1897. With typical optimism, the article concluded that “prosperity and growth are now but a matter of two to three years [away].” Even older districts such as Summitville and Carson attracted a few optimistic articles.
Besides Telluride, though, only Ouray and Silverton had any real reason to brag. Thomas Walsh’s Camp Bird was becoming one of the great mines in San Juan and Colorado history, and at Silverton, the Silver Lake was only a step or two behind. New mills were built in the nearby valleys, often connected to the mines by long trams.
These aerial tramways became a normal feature of Colorado mining in the 1890s. Sporting ore buckets running along cables, strung between towers, they climbed and circled mountains and spanned canyons while connecting mine portals with mills, smelters, and railroad sidings. Despite being vulnerable to snow slides, they allowed ore, supplies, and even miners to be transported quickly and easily. Well-known mining engineer and reporter T. A. Rickard said of them, “These numerous aerial ropes spanning the intermountain spaces like great spiders’ webs, are an important feature of mining in the San Juan region.” Indeed, the region has been called “the tramway capital of the American west” because of the large number of trams built there.8
With these mines so high and isolated from civilization, the companies had to provide for their workers. Miners at the Tomboy Mine lived in a nearby boarding house. They had access to a YMCA, general store, and bowling alley—all within their building. The Silver Lake Mine, high above Silverton, offered a four-story boardinghouse capable of accommodating 300 men and a dining room that could seat 250. The kitchen was “supplied with every convenience for cooking,” and a pipe line furnished “healthy water for domestic purposes.” The boarding houses, and “all inhabited buildings,” were heated by steam and had hot water for washing. The owners, the Stoiber brothers, did all this in the hopes that “such accommodations” would provide them with a “superior class of miners and mill men” who would stay put and not tramp off to the next rush.
Nothing better illustrated the change in Colorado mining than what was occurring in Cripple Creek and the San Juans. Mines in Boulder, Gilpin, and Clear Creek Counties still mined gold, with Gilpin producing in the $1 million range, but they were no longer newsworthy. Beyond that were declining districts and ghost towns—with one exception. That was Lake County, which made the successful transition to gold mining. From 1894 through 1917, both gold and silver production topped $1 million; for two or three of those years, both surpassed $2 million. Further, Lake County’s production of lead, copper, and zinc was the best in the state. Lake County had shown “great advancement” since the troubles of 1893 and 1896.
In these transition years, between hand drills and power drills, the old ways and new ways, a working “stiff,” Frank Crampton, left an account of his Cripple Creek days. It gives a very good idea of what it like to work underground.
Single jacking was a one-man job with no resting, but the double jacking gave some rest with striking and turning being alternated at one or two minute intervals.
It was hard working by candlelight that flic
kered every time one moved, but there was nothing else used for light. The mine operators issued three candles to a shift, sometimes four at the better mines, often only two at the penny-pinching outfits. If the candles issued burned too fast, one had to work alongside a stiff who had a candle left, or in the dark.
It was harder getting used to the smell of dead power smoke and the reeking, water-soaked timber, but I did.9
The “working stiffs” faced death every time they went underground. Though not nearly as dangerous as coal mining, hard-rock mining took a constant toll on miners. For example, the November 16, 1894, Creede Candle told of four bodies being recovered eighty-two days after the miners had been crushed by debris that fell when the shaft timbering and shaft house caught fire. “The inexcusable loss of life in the Cripple Creek district is not due to the heartlessness of the mine owners as many believed,” claimed the Cripple Creek Star (January 1, 1900). Rather, it was “due to their ignorance of mining methods and the incompetence of mining superintendents.”
Such arguments, which pitted miners against owners and companies, helped stimulate the union movement in Colorado and elsewhere. Interestingly, when a panel was summoned to review the causes of an accident, invariably it determined that the death or deaths were caused by “careless actions” of the deceased. Usually, the widow and the family received some small compensation, but then were left on their own. Anne Ellis’s experience after her husband was killed in Cripple Creek was typical for the time.
A lawyer from the mine [came] with a paper for me to sign, but I knew enough not to. In these times there was no Compensation Fund. I do sign this paper later, releasing the mine from any fault in the matter, and they give me six hundred dollars; in addition to this each man working in the mine gives me a day’s wages. This I take with a feeling of shame, because I know what a day’s pay means to some of their families.10
In the midst of all the revived gold excitement, few people noticed a new innovation in Colorado mining: the introduction of dredging. The idea was new to the state, though not to other western mining states such as Montana and California. The dredge seemed the ultimate answer to profitable working of low-grade placer deposits. The Blue and Swan Rivers in Summit County had been worked for decades, with less profit each time. Now the dredge owners planned to use “bulk” mining to make them pay once more.
A power-driven chain of small buckets, mounted on an anchored barge or boat, was lowered to cut into the ground beneath the “pond” on which it floated. The chain could work huge amounts of gravel as the buckets brought “pay dirt” to the surface. A washing plant on the boat then treated the gravel to recover the gold. It was hoped that this method could produce a profit with low-grade gravel where other methods had failed. Unfortunately, as it worked its way along the stream, the dredge left behind its “dung,” repulsive piles of washed rock that would mark its course for decades.
Breckenridge and Fairplay were the main bases for the dredges, which could operate much of the year except during the coldest winter months when the water levels became too low. Mining engineer Ben Stanley Revett recognized the potential of working the deep gravels along the Blue River. Using Boston capital, he had two dredges built, but they failed because they were too light to handle the gravels.
The dredges potentially offered an economical method to work Colorado’s low-grade placer deposits, but they left an environmental mess. That disarray shocked even some turn-of-the-century Coloradans. Up north in Alaska, poet Robert Service described destruction similar to that occurring in Colorado:
And there a giant gold-ship of the very newest plan
Was tearing chunks of pay-dirt from the shore.
It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung;
It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs;
Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung.11
Notwithstanding all these innovations, the key to success still lay in reducing the ore to profitable minerals. For decades, the need for more reduction works had been of primary concern. In the decade of the 1890s, some of the most modern plants in the country were located in Denver, Pueblo, Leadville, and Durango; the latter held the title of a regional smelter center, as it was tied by railroads to all the major San Juan mining districts. Many still voiced complaints about reduction charges, freight costs, and other matters, but the smelter shortage crisis appeared to have been resolved.
As often happens, appearances were deceiving. Colorado found itself caught in the middle of the growing American trend of consolidation and the rise of big business—a natural outgrowth of progress, according to some. It was happening in the oil business, the steel industry, railroad lines, and elsewhere. Although consolidation promised better products, more efficiency, and sometimes lower prices, it came at the cost of less competition and the end of the American dream for many. The individual enterprise, small business, and local company had almost no chance against the national monopolies and trusts.
It happened right before the eyes of concerned Colorado miners and mining communities. Smelting had become increasingly complicated and technical, with the introduction of new processes such as chlorination and cyanida-tion, and a host of new machines working a variety of ores. It had become a big business in the state and throughout the West, and what happened in Colorado paralleled what was occurring elsewhere.
Prosperous smelting corporations moved to buy out or drive out less successful rivals in an effort to achieve a larger and more efficient organization. Suddenly, in April 1899, Coloradans learned abruptly what big business and monopolistic control would mean to them. The American Smelting and Refining Company, incorporated in New Jersey (joining numerous mining companies based in that state, which had few regulations), gained control of smelters in Denver, Pueblo, and Durango. Overnight, it became the nation’s largest smelter corporation. Among the major smelters, only the Guggenheims and their operations were not subsumed into the AS&RC. Competition among the smelters virtually disappeared, as did the choices as to where miners and mining companies could take their ore. More than ever before, corporations dominated all aspects of Colorado mining. Complaints arose immediately, but little could be done.
Another developing trend, the abandonment of railroad lines, did not bode well for the industry either. For years, some of the more marginal routes, built to tap a district on the assumption that development would occur, had been running in the red as that promised development failed to transpire. With steadily decreasing passenger and freight traffic, these lines proved a burden on the companies. Railroad companies, like smelters, were being consolidated under ownership that would not maintain unprofitable business that had little future.
When a district lost its railroad, the cost of living, mining, and everything else went up, and it became harder to convince investors that the area had a prosperous future. Isolation once again stared residents in the face. Locals watched as first fewer trains arrived, then trains became combination of freight and passenger cars, and finally the depots closed, with the last train disappearing down the canyon or valley leaving only a whistle’s echo and a smoky tail that soon drifted away like the era it was ending.
One piece of “modern” technology remained. With some initial reservations, Colorado mining had adopted electricity as the answer to the old problem of an economical power and light source. Managing the Gold King Mine high in the mountains southwest of Telluride, Lucien Nunn tired of losing money because of the expense of hauling fuel. He tried a different approach: After discussions with the Westinghouse Electric Company and some experimentation, Nunn built a hydraulically generated electric plant in 1891 at the little San Juan camp of Ames. He used alternating current rather than the more popular direct current, because it could transmit higher voltages more cheaply and easily over longer distances.
Soon Telluride was lit, as was Aspen, which was already using lights based on direct current. In the years thereafter, electricity proved a godsend
to mining and to communities as well, although it took trial and error to make it work successfully and safely. Bare wires strung through wet mines gave miners quite a jolt (sometimes killing them) if they stumbled into one, or touched a hot wire.
Some of these safety concerns were dealt with when Colorado’s legislature took the positive step, in March 1895, of creating the state Bureau of Mines and the Commissioner of Mines to replace the weak “inspector of metaliferous mines” post established six years earlier. The new commissioner was charged with supervision of mine inspection and enforcement of mine safety and health laws. His jurisdiction included the mills, mines, smelters, sampling works, rock quarries, and railroad tunnels of the hard-rock mining industry; it did not include coal mining. The Bureau was also charged with collecting and exhibiting mineral specimens and mining data. Writing and publishing books were on the commissioner’s agenda as well. These projects, however, were often shunted aside in the effort to accomplish the main objective of supervision.
By the close of the 1890s, Colorado had experienced its greatest gold and silver mining decade. When 1900 was added, it became the greatest period in Colorado’s history. The three best years were 1898, with more than $37 million in production; 1899, which topped $40 million; and 1900, which set the all-time record of more than $41 million. Even in their wildest dreams, the fifty-niners could not have imagined this bonanza.
With typical optimism, many Coloradans assumed that the best days were yet to come, even though Colorado had a rival far to the north. They need not have fretted about the Klondike rush, to this “unknown artic region,” taking away investors and miners. As Cripple Creek’s Morning Times told readers in its Thursday, December 16, 1897, edition: “Why not divert as much of its [money] as possible to Cripple where results are certain. It will only require the magic touch of money to start dozens of mines here on a career of production that will astonish the world, and so swell the output of the camp.”
The Trail of Gold and Silver Page 22
