CONTROL OF THE COMSTOCK  417

CHAPTER XIX.

BY SAM P. DAVIS.

            The titanic struggle which was enacted on the Comstock for the control of the hundreds of millions which was the stake of the contest was the fiercest and bitterest ever enacted on the coast.

            It was a battle to the death between the Bank of California and its branch interests and the Bonanza firm.

            The uncovering of the rich ore bodies in Con Virginia and California resulted in frenzied saturnalia of stock gambling which created an interest throughout the civilized globe.

            At one time the shares in those mines had actually been used to paper miners' cabins and were kicking about or stored in old trunks and it is said that some were sold at 15 cents a share.

            After the discovery of the Bonanza, the existence of which was kept secret as long as possible, the stock began to soar and to check the rise a stock dividend of five shares for one was declared and these shares went to $800 which means that the original shares were worth $4,000 per share.

            As the Bonanza firm held the control they found money pouring in beyond their wildest dreams and they started the Nevada Bank which was practically built on the ruins of the once financial Gibraltar of the Coast, the Bank of California.

            Naturally there was a good deal of bad blood between the rival concerns. Sharon for a time held the entire Bonanza crowd in contempt and once said that Flood and O'Brien were nothing but bit whisky sellers,—alluding to the saloon they once owned on the city front in San Francisco —and that he would make John Mackay pack his blankets over the Geiger Grade.

            Flood retorted that he would some day sell bit whisky over the counter of the Bank of California, and Mackay said that he was able to pack his blankets over any grade and had often done so but that Sharon could

418      THE HISTORY OF NEVADA

not pack a pair of blankets two hundred yards without stopping to rest.

            Subsequently the Bonanza firm acquired a line of heavy liabilities against the Bank of California and engineered a stock deal that caught them napping and closed it down.

            The public had always regarded the Bank of California as a speculative institution which frequently strayed beyond the bounds of safe banking and when the bank closed its doors the street said that it had "turned down its box," employing the phrase which sports use when a faro game reaches the limit of its cash reserves.

            Nothing ever equalled in excitement that caused by the failure of the Bank of California.

            When the word went out that the great banking institution had closed its doors a frenzied mob took possession of the space on California street bounded by Montgomery and Sansome and all the police reserves were called into requisition to hold the howling depositors in check.

            The Bonanza firm took possession of the bank and O'Brien, who had threatened to sell whisky over the bank's counter was there to make good his boast. He planted a wicker demijohn on the counter and set out some glasses. John Mackay, who was a man of liberal horse sense, grabbed his partner by the collar and hurled him away from the counter into another room and sent the demijohn and bar glasses after him.

            "The mob will come in here and hang us all if you start that foolishness," shouted Mackay, and O'Brien subsided.

            That night the city was practically under martial law. Troops guarded the newspaper offices, especially the Bulletin, and extra editions of the morning papers were issued every half hour.

            They were filled with the most sensational rumors of this or that prominent financier having killed some other financier by shooting him down on the streets.

            The next thing to startle the city was the finding of Ralston's body washed ashore at North Beach. He had gone down to the beach to take his daily plunge in the sea and had on his bathing suit.

            It was regarded as a suicide, but opinions differed and differ to this day. Ralston had been the leading financial genius of the coast and the collapse of the Bank of California, whose destinies he had guided so long, was regarded as more than his pride could bear.

CONTROL OF THE COMSTOCK  419

            He was one of the greatest men the coast had ever produced and his death was widely mourned.

            Sharon stepped into the breach with his private fortune and rehabilitated the bank but it never again could compete with the Bank of Nevada that had the wealth of the Comstock behind it. With the failure of the Bank of California the Bonanza firm's conquest of the Comstock was complete.

            It was at all times a grim battle with no quarter asked or given on either side. John Mackay was the chief of the Bonanza forces and his aggressive tactics and good generalship won the day. Mackay was a man who never boasted, never resorted to underhanded work and always fought in the open.

            He was known as the "silent fighter" and was always a leonic figure in the history of the Comstock. Where it had been Sharon's policy to job the stockholders and rob the public through assessments and stock deals, John Mackay ran a mine as he would his own private business. He gloried in making mines under his management pay dividends and respected the rights of the smallest stockholder.

            After he assumed control of the Bonanza mines he visited the lower levels every day rising at five in the morning to see that every man was at his post. He found the freight charges on the V. & T. R. R., Sharon's road, grossly out of proportion to the service rendered, and called upon the management for a reduction of freight charges. At first they declined to make any change when Mackay quietly stated that if the charges were not reduced by the first of the month he would build a railroad of his own.

            The management of the railroad saw their way at once to make the reduction for they knew that when Mackay said a thing he meant every word of it.