During my first year in government employ the depreciation in legal-tender notes in which we were paid was very embarrassing.  One hundred dollars in notes would bring but thirty-five or forty dollars in gold, and we could get nothing we wanted except with gold.

My second year in San Francisco I lived in Howard Street near First and was bookkeeper for a stock-broker.  I became familiar with the fascinating financial game that followed the development of the Comstock lode, discovered in 1859.  It was 1861 before production was large.  Then began the silver age, a new era that completely transformed California and made San Francisco a great center of financial power.  Within twenty years $340,000,000 poured into her banks.  The world’s silver output increased from forty millions a year to sixty millions.  In September of 1862 the stock board was organized.  At first a share in a company represented a running foot on the lode’s length.  In 1871, Mr. Cornelius O’Connor bought ten shares of Consolidated Virginia at eight dollars a share.  When it had been divided into one thousand shares and he was offered $680 a share, he had the sagacity to sell, realizing a profit of $679,920 on his investment of $80.  At the time he sold, a share represented one-fourteenth of an inch.  In six years the bonanza yielded $104,000,000, of which $73,000,000 was paid in dividends.

The effect of such unparalleled riches was wide-spread.  It made Nevada a state and gave great impetus to the growth of San Francisco.  It had a marked influence on society and modified the character of the city itself.  Fifteen years of abnormal excitement, with gains and losses incredible in amount, unsettled the stability of trade and orderly business and proved a demoralizing influence.  Speculation became a habit.  It was gambling adjusted to all conditions, with equal opportunity for millionaire or chambermaid, and few resisted altogether.  Few felt shame, but some were secretive.

A few words are due Adolph Sutro, who dealt in cigars in his early manhood, but went to Nevada in 1859 and by 1861 owned a quartz-mill.  In 1866 he became impressed with the idea that the volume of water continually flowing into the deeper mines of the Comstock lode would eventually demand an outlet on the floor of Carson Valley, four miles away.  He secured the legislation and surprised both friends and enemies by raising the money to begin construction of the famous Sutro Tunnel.  He began the work in 1859, and in some way carried it through, spending five million dollars.  The mine-owners did not want to use his tunnel, but they had to.  He finally sold out at a good price and put the most of a large fortune in San Francisco real estate.  At one time he owned one-tenth of the area of the city.  He forested the bald hills of the San Miguel Rancho, an immense improvement, changing the whole sky-line back of Golden Gate Park.  He built the fine Sutro Baths, planted the beautiful gardens on the heights above the Cliff House, established a car line that meant to the ocean for a nickel, amassed a library of twenty thousand volumes, and incidentally made a good mayor.  He was a public benefactor and should be held in grateful memory.