Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1906-12-22
TREASURE-HUNTTNG IN
NEVADA'S FAMOUS CAMP
HuStIing GoIdfieId Does Curious Things Amid the
Struggles of It's Miners, Brokers
and Gamblers
and Gamblers


at 10 degrees above zero, a blizzard was
bowling I'm from the desert and there
wasn't a pound OF coal to be bought
| I'm all Goldheld. So II had been for a
week.
The last coal sold here was disposed
of in small lots at "a n hundred pounds,
or at the rate Of $50 a ton; 500 ton
wouldn't buy It later. A business firm
I'm Goldheld one day offered to pay the
Wells-Fargo Express company $1,000 in
express charges If the company would
send carload of coal here from San
Francisco. The offer was declined.
Scarcity Of freight cars Is blamed for
the fuel famine.
Unless something is done before long
people will be pulling down their
houses for fuel
Postoffice Kept Busy
The tremendous boom in the Goldheld
mines is reflected in the local post
office. Goldfeld does a postal business
nearly four times as large as is required
for a f1rst-class office. Yet It can't get
one because it has no charter.
The difficulty will be obviated as soon
as a charter can be rushed through the
next Legislature. Also the county seat
IS to be moved from stage-reached
Hawthorne to Goldheld.
Civil service rules provide that post
office clerks shall start in on $500
salary. But they can't be had for that
i'm Goldheld, when telegraph messcn-
ger boys get 800 a month and type
writers get $50 or more a week. The
postmaster general has therefore made
a special dispensation in favor of this
mining camp, as a result of which the
poorest-paid postal clerk receives a
$3.50 salary.
The business done by the office is
enormous. It's lobby is packed all day
long, lines of twenty or thirty waiting
at every window.
One day a single firm bought $4,000
worth of stamped envelopes, while three
mining brokers here do so much postal
business that they handle their own
daily mail between their offices and the
postoffice by means of wagons. Another
firm has an advertising bill of anywhere
from $4,000 to 100000 a month.
Last week the local stock exchange
was so swamped with orders that it
had to declare a holiday in order to
catch up with it's business. Brokers
and their clerks have been working un-
til 8 o'clock in the morning trying
vainly to keep the pace set by specu
lators and investors.
Could Not Stand Strain
Goldfeld brokers got up from his desk
at o'clock in the afternoon and adj
dressed his worn and tired clerks.
Boys" said he, ut amt worth while.
Life is too short. We've been hitting
up this pace for six weeks and I'm
doggone sick of it. Lock up your desks
and go home, and don't show up here
again till I send for you Your salaries
will be paid just the same.
He shut his own desk and went out.
He hasn't opened up again yet.
No coal, no wood, little water of any
kind and no good water whatever, yet
Goldfield has electric lights They are
furnished by a Denver company, which
built a plant at Bishops Creek and
strung it's wires sixty-five miles cross
desert to Goldfield.
1t was bonded for 100000. In six
months it has paid off it's bonds and
has declared a dividend of so per cent.
Why not? 1t charges 50 a month for
each light.
The water problem is a serious one.
There are four water companies that
have sunk artesian wells, but the
water is alkaline, unfit to drink and diff
ficult to use for any purpose. The
Montezuma Water company says 1t Is
ready to deliver a fine supply of eX-
cellent water, but it can't do it because
the pipes it ordered are lost somewhere
in the railway blockade that is freezing
and starving this part of the country
AFTER a man gets Million" says
Senator Nixon, "the rest is simply more
figures"
But he, with every other soul in
Goldfield is hustling for the figures.
This if you know Goldfield, is obvious.
Nothing else on earth could keep most
folks an hour in Goldfield. And the
figures are mounting most marvelously
for somebody. In the month of Oc-
tober the value of Goldfield mines as
measured by the stock exchange quo
tations, increased 21,5S3, $50.