Los Angeles daily herald., 1889-03-14
The ~TrIbune,s" Mining Boom.


To the just arraignment which the
Herald has made of the senseless cap
ping by the Tribune Of the Santa Clara
placer mines, that journal has lot of rot
about not being jealous Of other sections,
standing in with Southern California,
and SO on, ad nausecm. The connection
that, warning people, who can't afford to
throw away their money, not to do it, has
with standing in with other cities and
counties of this section, is a thing that it
is very hard, even with the aid of strong
msgnifying glasses, to discover. The
Tr5bune's whimper is without a point,
and remarkable only for its idiocy. The
HERALD has never had any but the friend
liest intentions, not only as respects San
Diego, but the Republic of Mexico, of
which Lower California is part. Ithas
expressed righteous indignation at the
part some San Diego newspapers have
played in tanning humbug excitement;
and, consequently, it is hostile to San
Diego. As it denounced in unmeasured
terms the part the Tribune has played in
the same infamous work in this city,
ergo, it must be inimical to Los Angeles,
in which that rdra dvis of a journal is
published. Our contemporary takes
great liberties with the intelligence of its
few readers, but even they must by this
time be revolted by its outrages against
common sense.
The fact is that, of all the frauds, with
out basis and underlined with the pure
swindler's instinct, that have ever been
played in the southern country, this
Santa Clara mountain placers business
has been the boldest and most infamous.
The placers are fraud, delusion and a
snare-a salted proposition, buttressed
by wild Mexican roorbacks. The placer
proposition having already outlined it
self as a fraud, the Jeremy Diddlers,
newspapers and others, who lied worse
than many-tongued Rumor about the
placers, have now fallen back upon the
probability that great quartz lodes
will be discovered as result
of the incursion into Lower California of
concourse of deluded and swindled
prospectors.
Stuff and nonsense! The quartz lodes
are bigger fraud, if such thing were
possible, than the placers themselves.
That whole region has been prospected a
hundred times by skillful miners, and
there is no commercial proposition there.
LNvaollnnf r,ofv,no houa haa,, f0r
and are being now worked, in the Julian,
Banner and Stonewall mining districts of
San Diego county, and the work of de-
velopment would have been carried
years age to the adjoining Lower Cali
fornia mountains if they had not been
tried and found wanting.
Thus, the placers being now acknow-
lodged humbugs, the quartz proposition
being greater humbug, the dernier resort
of our foolish contemporary fails it.
The Tribune, in its pointless structures
of the HERALD, says that we have aban-
doned agriculture to deride the mining
interests upon which San Diego will grow
rich. Our contemporary is mistaken.
we are stlll upon the subject OF agrlcul-
ture-that species of the science which
Wilkie Collins called "moral agricul-
ture," viz, the working of the credulous
for all there is in it on the principle upon
which you would work field for turnips.
Wilkie Collins's moral agriculturists"
were what in the good old days, preced-
ing the modern euphemistic ways of
speech, were called sharpers and conf
dence people. This element figures very
prominently all through this Santa Clara
mining fake. The ordinary swindler
only robs man of his money. This
compound, comminuted fraud despoils
the hard bested victim of money, time,
peace of mind and reputation for good
sense, all at one fell swoop.