The Infamous King Of The Comstock: William Sharon And The Gilded Age In The West

Chapter Four: The Lamb

 Chapter Four THE LAMB T     was assessments.When they deemed it necessary,mine trustees posted an amount per share levied upon capital stock, payable immediately. A month later, unpaid assessments would be deemed delinquent and advertised for sale at a public auction to be held one month after the advertisement. Comstock papers filled columns with names of those who were delinquent, the number of the certificates, and the number of shares. There were legitimate reasons for assessing shareholders; whether mines were earning profits or not, wages needed to be paid. The mines needed to explore ever deeper, securing lumber and building frameworks to prevent collapse. They needed to purchase and run equipment to remove water, hoist rock, and cool oppressive tunnel air. Upon striking a vein, they needed to transport and mill the ore. Mine superintendent I. L. Requa, who spent twenty-five years on the Comstock, said finances rendered it impossible to mine the lode any other way.1 But Sharon, above all others,milked the assessment system.He used it to drive the stock market, assessing mines whose stock he wanted to devalue.Dan DeQuille told of a character named Nat Codrington who was affected by Sharon’s intrigues: “Whenever things went wrong with Nat,‘Uncle Billy,’as Nat affectionately called Mr. Sharon, was at the bottom of the business. When Nat bought stock it was sure to go down at once; then he would say: ‘That’s Uncle Billy, he’s turning the crank again!’ As soon as Nat sold short on a stock, up it would go, and he would say ‘Well, Uncle Billy’s at it again—grindin’ of ’em the other way this time!’”    Eventually DeQuille wrote: “Nat Codrington is off for California. . . . Sharon—‘Uncle Billy,’as Nat affectionately calls him—‘turns the crank too much.’Poor Codrington’s all was in stocks,and there his all still remains.”2 Money was the primary basis for the era’s social prestige, with wealth and power held in heroic regard. DeQuille’s anecdotes illustrate how the populace in the West laughed at the acquisitiveness of men of achievement , winking at their unethical means.3 H. R. Linderman, in his Report of the Director of the Mint for , wrote that the mining industry was succeeding because of the efforts and expenditures of men “of superior energy and business qualifications.”4 Comstock chroniclers of the age subscribed unreservedly to the proposition that looting or corruption by the enriched (the new American nobility ) might be overlooked; were their efforts not benefiting all? Eliot Lord noted that Sharon and the Bank Ring “lifted the Washoe Mining District out of a slough of despond.” He philosophized: “It is for achievements and not for possibilities that this world is in debt. The bones of mute Miltons and guiltless Cromwells rot justly in unmarked graves.”He proposed that Sharon, in expending capital when needed, was of “more real service to the working people of the district than a hundred professed charities.” In response Sharon demurred, indicating that self-interest was the motive for Comstock speculation.5 In  Sharon had rebuilt his fortune and was a man of stature on the West Coast.6 When members of the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives came to Virginia City in May of that year, he hosted them. In August, when Vice President Schuyler Colfax arrived with Senator Nye, Sharon again played ambassador. His residence was decorated with colored lanterns, a brass band played, and the principals addressed an appreciative crowd in the street.7 But by the end of , the local economy was again faltering: lesser mines shut down, and others were operating with reduced workforces. Sharon’s were among the few producing mines. On September , , an advertisement in the Territorial Enterprise attacked his management of the Yellow Jacket. It requested that anyone dissatisfied with its manage-     ment meet on October  in Virginia City’s courtroom and directed San Francisco stockholders to communicate by correspondence. The Gold Hill News derided the notice, pointing out that it was published anonymously and that officers had been duly elected only two months earlier. “Every stockholder in that company had a fair chance at the election, and he could vote, according to his interest, just for whoever he pleased.”8 When nothing came of the meeting, a man stepped forward to take on Sharon, the Yellow Jacket and Virginia & Truckee Railroad...