Mohave County miner. [volume] (Mineral Park, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1882-1918, 1911-11-04
As | Remember Them
The Old Time Miners.

cere reverence for the Pioneers; for
those men and women who began
their western march almost three
hundred years ago; first in grotesque
little ships across the Atlantic, and
made their first stopping places on the
eastern shore of the ocean; then a
little later began to push their way
against the wilderness and the saw
ages; as one generation sank into the
earth another taking up the slow
march and pursued its way, until the
deep woods gave place for smiling
homes all the long way to and
beyond the Mississippi.
Looking back we mark a few of
their achievements, the unremitting
labor of their lives; the courage that
never faltered; the poverty that bound
them around in merciless coils; the
selfsacrifces which they accepted as a
matter of course; the tenacity with
which they never failed to assert that
their free citizenship should never be
trenched upon; the carrying with
them the little red school house; the
high manhood, the divine womanhood
which upheld them as they pushed
their way,-all these and other char
acteristics shine out as we look back
over the trails they blazed and mark
the temples they upreared, and to the
eyes of the minds of all Americans,
they make a picture of enchantment,
not one tint of which fades as the years
advance and receed.
But there came a time when the
order of a hundred and fifty years
was changed.
Though for more than two hundred
years the race had been toiling;
though their heroic work had trans
formed a mighty section of the new
world; though an empire of measure
less natural wealth had been explored,
the country was poor in that thing
called money, the one thing that cleo
trifes enterprise and provides a Just
reward for toll.
Then there came first whisper that
on the other shore of the continent
gold had been discovered. This was
swiftly confirmed by succeeding news,
and then the exodus began.
Within a few months there were
tossed upon that western shore two
hundred and fifty thousand men.
They were nearly all young men, and
every state of the then union was rep
resented.
The journey had steadied and broad
ened them. Whether by the long
journey across the continent, whether
by lonely ships around Cape Horn, or
through the scramble and the rush by
the pestilential Isthmus, they all had
taken on new ideas by the experience
they had been through.
AS rule they were all more or less
home boys and the best of them had
full quota of provincialism.
But this last melted away faster
than it had ever before in any country.
The secret was that the mothers
they kissed when they left home were
American mothers, and the differences
there are among American mothers
are the differences of environment.
and it did not require long for their
sons to recognize that fact.
Many of the new comers stopped on
the seashore or in adjacent valleys,
but am not dealing with those today.
1t is the company which never rested
by the sea nor in the soft valleys, but
hurried to the hills. For them moth
ing would do but the native gold.
The art Of extracting it was simple
and quickly learned. And when at
night the days proceeds were panned
and cleaned and weighed, then the
miner held it before his eyes and in
vented the phrase: That's the stuff"
And who we're these miners? They
were as a rule just American boys
and young men. They had come from
every field, from every school; they
were, as it were, the nation looked at
through the big ends of the opera
glass.
All recognized that they were living
in land that had no government, but
they got together in the different
camps and resolved that while there
was no law, there should be order