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c h a p t e r n i n e “A Devil’s Opportunity” The Sacramento Daily Union editorial only scratched the surface. Indeed, the second gold rush made many people happy. The wheat boom that began in 1867 gave rise to an extensive export trade, which for the next two decades would play a central role in California’s economic growth—its internal development as well as its commercial relations with the rest of the world. Most obviously, the wheat trade was instrumental in bringing huge tracts of virgin land under cultivation, causing many hundreds of miles of railroads to be built, and facilitating the growth of towns and interior marketing arrangements. It greatly stimulated not only manufacturing, particularly of farm implements and grain sacks, but also flour milling, banking, the lumber trade, shipbuilding, and the construction of storage and loading facilities including, in one notable case, an experimental grain elevator . In conjunction with the huge export trade in wheat, imports increased dramatically in the 1870s and 1880s, coal in particular. Ships sailing into San Francisco Bay for grain cargoes usually carried coal as ballast. The abundant supply met the fuel needs of railroads, river and ocean steamers, forges and foundries, waterworks and gasworks, and steam engines used in farm work, all at prices ranging from just $6 to $8 a ton. Trade expanded, capital accumulated, transportation and manufacturing accelerated, and economic relations with the outside world flourished—all because of wheat.1 No one was happier that wheat had replaced gold as the chief stimulus of the state’s economy than Isaac Friedlander. By 1869, farmers, merchants, and newspapermen alike had dubbed Friedlander the “Grain King” of California, employing the hyperbole characteristic of the times. This particular crowning involved little exaggeration, however. Friedlander’s ever-growing network of agents among local warehouse owners and grain dealers in the state’s wheat districts, his extensive contacts abroad, his dominance of the supply of inbound shipping to San Francisco, his unlimited credit, his daring personality, and his sheer presence (six foot seven, he weighed 300 pounds, wore a stovepipe hat, and had a long, craggy, hawklike face) made him not only a titan of commerce but a veritable celebrity as well. “Bold and aggressive in business, honorable in his dealings, kind and generous in personal relations, everybody liked him,” wrote one contemporary. Even a spokesman for the San Francisco Produce Exchange, which formed in 1867 to challenge Friedlander’s reign, later admitted that for more than ten years the King “held the entire field undisputed by a rival.” From 1867 to 1876, an estimated three-fourths of all the grain exported from California passed through Friedlander ’s hands, a fact that gave him, understandably, a rather proprietary feeling about his position in the marketplace. When someone described the e¤ort under way in the early 1870s to strengthen the authority of the Produce Exchange, Friedlander allegedly slammed his fist on a counter in his oªce and proclaimed, “Here is the Produce Exchange, right here.”2 And if Friedlander was happy, then William Dresbach was happy. Though Dresbach & Co. conducted thousands of transactions every year, often for thousands of dollars at a time, cash flow posed little problem for “the Davisville Grain King.” All he had to do was send a wire to Friedlander’s oªce at the corner of Sansome and California streets in San Francisco and within a day or two he would have whatever he needed to cover his accounts—$10,000 on July 10, 1869 and $14,000 on July 28 and $12,000 on August 25, to cite three typical examples. Widely known as “everyone’s favorite business man in Davisville,” Dresbach not only purchased grain, sold merchandise, and took an active interest in community a¤airs; he also provided threshing and hauling services for those who desired them, issued crop mortgages to financially strapped farmers, and in general, in the words of one local, “assisted very materially in building up the town and its business interest.” By 1873, his company’s assets totaled over $300,000— enough for him to build “the handsomest residence in town,” a nine-room, twostory , $13,000 Victorian mansion “with all the modern improvements.”3 Things were going splendidly for Dresbach, Friedlander, and most farmers, yet they all asked the same question: How can I do even better? The possibilities seemedendless,evenasclearsignstothecontrarywerebeginningtoemerge.Everyone was determined to mine the second gold rush for all it was worth and for...

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