It was busy times at Waterspout, for such was the name given to the new camp, for the next six weeks. By that time the sawmill and shingle machine had turned out sufficient material, and with the carpenters and a number of the wood-choppers who were drafted for the purpose, eighty comfortable board houses had been constructed, with large buildings for shops and offices, and a suitable edifice for a schoolhouse. Water was piped to the little plaza about which the buildings were gathered, and all was ready for the miners.
The sawmill was now set to work getting out timbers for a mill, and for timbering tunnels. The men were all alive with curiosity to know where was the mine for the working of which all these preparations were made, but both Morning and Steel were reticent, and those who were too pressing in their inquiries were quietly given to understand that a continuation of questioning might cause their services to be dispensed with.
All being ready, the teams were sent to Tucson at the appointed time and returned with the miners and their household effects, a number of wagons chartered for the purpose bringing the women and children. Twenty or more adventurers on horseback and in wagons accompanied the party, as by this time curiosity was all ablaze at the proceedings of Morning, whose location notices had been read by hundreds, and been made the subject of frequent comment in the Tucson papers.
Numerous prospecting parties were dispatched to the Santa Catalinas during the next few months, and their members climbed all over the mountains, examined Morning’s location monuments, and returned to Tucson with the report that the Colorado man was clean crazy, that there was not a sign of quartz, or any place where quartz could exist, and that Morning’s friends—if he had any—would do well to appoint a guardian for him.
The plan of production upon which Morning had settled was to extract sufficient gold to gradually substitute that metal for paper, or to make it instead of bonds or credits the basis for paper money in all the civilized world, and to increase the circulation of all countries to the volume per capita of the country having the largest amount.
He learned from the statistics with which he had supplied himself that the money circulation of France, the most prosperous and the most commercially active nation in Europe, was $42.15 per capita, of the United States $24.10, of Great Britain $20.40, of Italy $16.31, of Spain $14.44, and of Germany, $14.23. In the Asiatic, semi-Asiatic and South American countries the money circulation was still less, being but $5.20 per capita in Russia, $3.18 in Turkey, $4.02 in British India, $4.90 in Mexico, $4.29 in Peru, $1.79 in Central America, and $1.29 in Venezuela.
Morning noticed that the greater the money circulation of a country, the greater the civilization, prosperity, and refinement of the people; and metallic money, or paper currency calling for metallic money, being the best money, it would be sure wherever obtainable to drive out all other currency. He proposed, therefore, to increase, as rapidly as was possible, the metallic money of the United States and Europe to the standard per capita of France, beginning with the United States, following with England, and then proceeding to the Continent.
The process of accomplishing this was to be exceedingly simple. He would ship gold bars to the mints of the country whose currency he proposed to increase, and ask that they be coined into the money of the country. The coin received he proposed to deposit in the banks of that country for investment or use therein.
The one danger against which he had to provide was demonetization of gold by the nations. He could only effectually guard against this by withholding all knowledge of the extent of his mine until he should have accumulated a vast deposit of gold bars—say $2,000,000,000 worth—and then deposit these for coinage suddenly and simultaneously at the mints of the world before any law could be enacted depriving gold of its quality as a money metal. Yet it would take several years for the mints to coin so large a sum, and in the meantime gold might be demonetized. In order for Morning to place his gold beyond the reach of such legislation, it was essential to have it coined, or put in form of money having a legal tender value. A slight change in the currency and coinage laws would effect this. In the United States it might be accomplished by an act of Congress requiring the government to receive gold bars, and to issue legal tender gold notes thereon, without actually coining the gold at all. The mints of the United States, working to their full capacity on gold alone, could not turn out more than $50,000,000 in coin per month, while a government printing press could issue $500,000,000 in a day.
Morning concluded that one of his earliest duties would be to visit Washington while Congress was in session, and promote the necessary legislation.