The captain was one of their number, chosen for his supposed ability to carry out the work; but if they were not satisfied with his performances, it was a very simple matter to call a meeting, at which the business of deposing, or accepting the resignation of the incompetent officer, and appointing a successor, was put through with all the order and formality which accompanies the election of a president of any public body. Those who would not submit to the decision of the majority might sell out, but the prosecution of a work undertaken was never abandoned or in any way retarded by the discordance of opinion on the part of the different members of the company.
Individuals could not work alone to any advantage. All mining operations were carried on by parties of men, varying in number according to the nature of their diggings; and the strange assortment of dissimilar characters occasionally to be found thus brought into close relationship was but a type of the general state of society, which was such as completely to realize the idea of perfect social equality.
There are occasions on which, among small communities, an overwhelming emotion, common to all, may obliterate all feeling of relative superiority; but the history of the world can show no such picture of human nature upon the same scale as was to be seen in the mines, where, among a population of hundreds of thousands of men, from all parts of the world, and from every order of society, no individual or class was accounted superior to another.
The cause of such a state of things was one which would tend to produce the same results elsewhere. It consisted in this, that each man enjoyed the capability of making as much money as his neighbor; for hard labor, which any man could accomplish with legs and arms, without much assistance from his head, was as remunerative as any other occupation—consequently, all men indiscriminately were found so employing themselves, and mining or any other kind of labor was considered as dignified and as honorable a pursuit as any other.
In fact, so paramount was this idea, that in some men it created an impression that not to labor was degrading—that those who did not live by actual physical toil were men who did not come up to the scratch—who rather shirked the common lot of all, “man’s original inheritance, that he should sweat for his poor pittance.” I recollect once arriving in the middle of the night in San Francisco, when it was not by any means the place it now is, and finding all the hotels full, I was compelled to take refuge in an establishment which offered no other accommodation to the public than a lot of beds—half-a-dozen in a room. When I was paying my dollar in the morning for having enjoyed the privilege of sleeping on one of these concerns, an old miner was doing the same. He had no coin, but weighed out an ounce of dust, and while getting his change he seemed to be studying the keeper of the house, as a novel and interesting specimen of human nature. The result showed itself in an expression of supreme contempt on his worn and sunburnt features, as he addressed the object of his contemplation: “Say now, stranger, do you do nothin’ else but just sit thar and take a dollar from every man that sleeps on them beds?”
“Yes, that’s my business,” replied the man.
“Well, then,” said the miner after a little further reflection, “it’s a d—d mean way of making your living, that’s all I can say.”
This idea was natural enough to the man who so honestly expressed it, but it was an exaggeration of that which prevailed in the mines, for no occupation gave any man a superiority over his neighbors; there was no social scale in which different classes held different positions, and the only way in which a man could distinguish himself from others was by what he actually had in him, by his own personal qualities, and by the use he could make of them; and any man’s intrinsic merit it was not difficult to discover; for it was not as in countries where the whole population is divided into classes, and where individuals from widely different stations are, when thrown together, prevented, by a degree of restraint and hypocrisy on both sides, from exhibiting themselves exactly as they would to their ordinary associates. Here no such obstacle existed to the most unreserved intercourse; the habitual veil of imposition and humbug, under which men usually disguise themselves from the rest of the world, was thrown aside as a useless inconvenience. They took no trouble to conceal what passed within them, but showed themselves as they were, for better or for worse as the case might be—sometimes, no doubt, very much for the worse; but in most instances first impressions were not so favorable as those formed upon further acquaintance.
Society—so to call it—certainly wanted that super-fine polish which gives only a cold reflection of what is offered to it. There was no pinchbeck or Brummagem ware; every man was a genuine solid article, whether gold, silver, or copper: he was the same sterling metal all the way through which he was on the surface; and the generous frankness and hearty goodwill which, however roughly expressed, were the prevailing characteristics of the miners, were the more grateful to the feelings, as one knew that no secondary or personal motive sneaked beneath them.
It would be hard to say what particular class of men was the most numerous in the mines, because few retained any distinguishing characteristic to denote their former position.