It is proper that I should tell you what I know of the rumors which have prevailed about the company in California, and I address this to you personally because it is only as there may chance to be some false ideas about them, which you would otherwise not be able to remove that what I can say would be of any consequence to the Trustees.

I perceived soon after my arrival here that there had been a good deal of talk of the sale of the estate as a swindle—though it never came to me in a distinct form from any respectable quarter or from where it could not be connected with political or personal hostility to Mr Park. It was only commonly said among his political friends in San Francisco that he had managed to make a very good sale. Occasionally a newspaper made a jocose reference to the company with an implication of the same idea. The rumor of a swindle has however become more and more distinct so that when Collector James suddenly left for New York, among the first reasons assigned for his doing so, was that of his having been called there on account of the [discovery of] frauds in the sale of the Mariposa estate. This appeared in the Bulletin & from that was copied in other papers. A week or two afterwards a report was published in a paper in Nevada Territory derived from San Francisco, that Mr Park had been arrested for fraud. This report was apparently telegraphed back to San Francisco and then appeared in various forms and with sundry additions in all the papers. A German paper stated that Park had been arrested for “salting” the Princeton mine and that James had been sent for to help him through the scrape & this was repeated. Articles enclosed will give you the latest forms of the report current in print. I believe the more common idea hereabouts is that Mr Park had kept a body of the best ore ever found in the Princeton mine in reserve, working all around it, until about the time you came here, when he was thus able to make a magnificent show of the richness of the mine to you. I am told that some discharged miners have propagated this story.

How much of all this has been done by the bears of the stock, you can judge better than I. It has been my impression that the rumors came in part from New York, and were started there for a purpose. What I think of the grounds of them I have stated in the General Report and I did this in such form that you could readily quote me, if, as I thought when I was preparing the Report, it was not unlikely you might wish to do, at some time. I have taken pains to prevent knowledge of our affairs— [197]especially of the yield of the mills—from being unnecessarily extended without giving occasion for the thought that there was anything we were particularly anxious to conceal.

By the last steamer’s mail, leaving here day before yesterday (Monday’s), I informed you (addressing the Secretary) that our men were on a strike. Monday night some laborers at Princeton who had kept at work were taken from their cabins and beaten. Some others at Green Gulch were threatened and declined to work yesterday. We kept the contractors upon the new shaft at Princeton at work through Monday night, but yesterday morning a mob visited the shaft and threatened to kill them and they knocked off. I saw them afterwards and offered to take any measures they might think necessary to protect them but they were not willing to return. They are afraid of being attacked when out of the mine. We have one set of hands still at work upon the new Pine Tree tunnel. They have been threatened and are kept at work with some difficulty—will quit probably, if any demonstration of force is made. There is a good deal of drunkenness and the gambling houses are filled. One man was shot in a drunken brawl before the office yesterday.

I trust that you will think as I do that whatever the immediate result, this battle had got to be fought, before we could have our business stand on a firm ground for improvement. Mr Park did a good deal in the time he was here to bring about order and quiet from the original anarchy & mob-rule, but he was a candidate for an important political office and beyond all other grounds for pursuing a conciliating and yielding policy, he had the strongest personal motive to make himself popular with the men. There is a considerable body of men here—“old Californians” who have once been paid five to ten dollars per day, and when they came here received from Fremont $4 or $4.50 per day, and did much as they pleased about work. These men are by habit discontented and unwilling workers. They hate regularity, order and discipline, and they influence the whole body of our hands. They have never done with their recollections of the days when the working miners governed matters as they wished, with revolvers in their belts as they worked. We have got to get the better of these traditions of the Estate and to get rid of the men who sustain them before we can have even the beginning of a sound working community.

I had not expected a strike, all the Superintendents & Captains being confident that the men would, with few exceptions, be perfectly satisfied with the slightly reduced rates. (Taking board into account the money difference of the old and new rates is with the miners only 2 per cent, though as I shall work in laborers so as to reduce the proportion of miners, and Chinese at 1.75 to take the place of laborers at $2.75 & [198] $3—it will in the end help to a much larger gross reduction of expenses). But as it has come, I only feel the more satisfied that the trial has not been any longer delayed. There was a strike here on a point of discipline, last summer, in which Mr Miller yielded to the strikers. Williams says that if he had not, there would have been none now. I don’t want the men to think they can ever expect to gain anything from me by striking,—and the sooner they learn this the better in every respect shall we be situated.

Jewett Adams behaved insolently in the office the other day, and was requested to keep out of it until his temper had improved. There have been some reasons found lately for doubting if he has been as honest in his dealings with us as I represented in the General Report. We have secured $5000 of his debt to us and it was on account of our taking what I thought proper precautions to secure more that he showed fight. He will still owe us clearly something over 1,500 while there is some evidence of a debt of 1,000 thrown upon a bankrupt, for which he received a consideration. I shall think we have been fortunate in getting off so well, if we get nothing more. I suspect that he and some of the other gamblers and drinking-shop keepers at Princeton are encouraging the strikers. He was seen by Mr Williams attending the movement of the mob, which visited the shaft yesterday, with evident satisfaction.

By a letter yesterday recvd from the Secy I am informed of the appointment of Doctor Adleberg as Consulting Metallurgist to the company. I don’t understand the purpose of the appointment nor do I care to be informed, but I wish to let you know privately that I have not the slightest respect for Adleberg’s principles, which are all founded on a theory of the deposit of gold which I do not think is sustained by facts either here or elsewhere. As to the practical question I have already started a tunnel at Benton Mills & if he is right we shall find it out. I fully adopt your opinion of Mr Ashburner & shall consult his judgment on all important mining & metallurgic questions the decision of which will have extended results.