[begin page 292]
CHAPTER 45
The “flush times” held bravely on. Something over two years before, Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer, had borrowed forty
dollars and set out
from San Francisco to try their fortunes in the new city of Virginia. They found the
Territorial Enterprise, a
poverty-stricken weekly journal, gasping for breath and likely to die. They bought
it, type, fixtures, good-will and all, for a
thousand dollarsⒺ, on long time. The editorial
sanctum, news-room, press-roomⒶ, publication office, bed-chamber, parlor, and kitchen were all compressed into one
apartment and it was a small one, too. The
editors and printers slept on the floor, a Chinaman did their cooking, and the “imposing-stone”
was the general dinner
tableⒺ. But now things were changed. The paper was a
great daily, printed by steamⒺ; there were five
editors and twenty-three compositorsⒺ; the subscription price was sixteen dollars a
year; the advertising rates were exorbitant, and the columns crowded. The paper was
clearing from six to ten thousand dollars a month,
and the “Enterprise Building” was finished and ready for occupation—a stately
fire-proofⒶ brickⒺ. Every day from five all the way up to eleven columns of
“live” advertisements were left out or crowded into spasmodic and irregular “supplements.”
The “Gould & Curry” company were erecting a
monster hundred-stamp mill at a cost that ultimately fell little short of a million
dollarsⒺ. Gould & Curry stock paid heavy dividendsⒺ—a rare thing, and an experience confined to the dozen or fifteen claims located on
the “main
lead,” the “Comstock.” The Superintendent of the Gould & CurryⒺ lived, rent-freeⒶ, in a fine house built and furnished by the company. He drove a fine pair of horses
which were a present from the company, and
his salary was twelve thousand dollars a year. The SuperintendentⒶ of another of the great mines traveled in grand state, had a salary of twenty-eight
thousand dollars a [begin page 293] year, and in a lawsuitⒶ in after days claimed that he was to have had one per centⒶ on the gross yield of the bullion likewiseⒺ.
Money was wonderfully plenty. The trouble was, not how to get it,—but how to spend
it,
how to lavish it, get rid of it, squander it. And so it was a happy thing that just
at this juncture the news came over the wires that
a great
U. S.Ⓐ Sanitary Commission had been formed and money was wanted for the relief of the wounded
sailors and soldiers of the Union
languishing in the easternⒶ hospitals. Right on the heels of it came word that San Francisco had responded superbly
before the telegram was half a day old.
Virginia rose as one man! A Sanitary Committee was hurriedly organized, and its chairman
mounted a vacant cart in C street and tried to
make the clamorous multitude understand that the rest of the committee were flying
hither and thither and working with all their might
and main, and that if the town would only wait an hour, an office would be ready,
books opened, and the Commission prepared to receive
contributions. His voice was drowned and his information lost in a ceaseless roar
of cheers, and demands that the money be received now—they swore they would not wait. The chairman pleaded and argued, but, deaf to all
entreaty, men plowed
their way through the throng and rained checks andⒶ gold coinⒶ into the cart and skurried away for more. Hands clutching money, were
thrust aloft out of the jam by men who hoped this eloquent appeal would cleave a road
their strugglings could not open. The very
Chinamen and Indians caught the excitement and dashed their half dollars into the
cart without knowing or caring what it was all about.
Women plunged into the crowd, trimly attired, fought their way to the cart with their
coin, and emerged again, by and by, with their
apparel in a state of hopeless dilapidation. It was the wildest mob Virginia had ever
seen and the most determined and ungovernable;
and when at last it abated its fury and dispersed, it had not a penny in its pocket.
To use its own phraseology, it came there
“flush” and went away “busted.”Ⓔ
After that, the Commission got itself into systematic working order, and for weeks
the
contributions flowed into its treasury in a generous stream. Individuals and all sorts
of organizations levied upon themselves a
regular weekly tax for the SanitaryⒶ fund, graduated according to their means, and there was not another grand [begin page 294] universal outburst till
the famous “Sanitary Flour Sack” came our way. Its history is peculiar and
interesting. A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of Reuel Gridley, was living
at the little City of Austin, in the Reese river
country, at this time, and was the Democratic candidate for mayor. He and the Republican
candidate made an agreement that the defeated
man should be publicly presented with a fifty-pound sack of flour by the successful
one, and should carry it home on his shoulder.
Gridley was defeatedⒺ. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it
and carried it a mile or two, from Lower Austin to his home in Upper Austin, attended
by a band of music and the whole population.
Arrived there, he said he did not need the flour, and asked what the people thought
he had better do with it. A voice said:
“Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund.”
[begin page 295] The suggestion was greeted with
a round of applause, and Gridley mounted a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer.
The bids went higher and higher, as the
sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at last the sack was knocked down
to a mill man at two hundred and fifty dollars,
and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour delivered, and he
said:
“Nowhere—sell it again.”
Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the spirit of the
thing. So
Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired till the sun went down; and when the
crowd dispersed he had sold the sack to three
hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand dollars in goldⒺ. And still
the flour sack was in his possession.
The news came to Virginia, and a telegram went back:
“Fetch along your flour sack!”
Thirty-six hours afterward Gridley arrived, and an afternoon mass meeting was held
in the Opera
House, and the auction began. But the sack had come sooner than it was expected; the
people were not thoroughly aroused, and the sale
dragged. At nightfall only five thousand dollars had been securedⒺ, and there was a
crestfallen feeling in the community. However, there was no disposition to let the
matter rest here and acknowledge vanquishment at the
hands of the village of Austin. Till late in the night the principal citizens were
at work arranging the morrow’s campaign, and
when they went to bed they had no fears for the result. At eleven the next morning a procession of
open carriagesⒺ, attended by clamorous bands of music and adorned with a moving display
of flags, filed along C street and was soon in danger of blockade by a huzzaing multitude
of citizens. In the first carriage sat
Gridley, with the flour sack in prominent view, the latter splendid with bright paint
and gilt lettering; also in the same carriage sat
the mayor and the recorder. The other carriages contained the Common Council, the
editors and reporters, and other people of imposing
consequence. The crowd pressed to the corner of C and Taylor streets, expecting the
sale to begin there, but they were disappointed,
and also unspeakably surprised; for the cavalcade moved on as if Virginia had ceased
to be of importance, and took its way over the
“divide,” toward the small town of Gold Hill. Telegrams had gone ahead to Gold Hill,
Silver City and Dayton, and those
communities were at fever heat and rife for the
[begin page 296]
[begin page 297] conflict. It was a very hot day, and wonderfully dusty. At the end of a
short half hour we descended into Gold Hill with drums beating and colors flying,
and enveloped in imposing clouds of dust. The whole
population—men, women and children, Chinamen and Indians, were massed in the main
street, all the flags in town were at the mast
head, and the blare of the bands was drowned in cheers. Gridley stood up and asked
who would make the first bid for the National
Sanitary Flour Sack. Gen. W. said:
“The Yellow Jacket silver mining company offers a thousand dollars, coinⒺ!”
A tempest of applause followed. A telegram carried the news to Virginia, and fifteen
minutes
afterward that city’s population was massed in the streets devouring the tidings—for
it was part of the programme that
the bulletin boards should do a good work that day. Every few minutes a new dispatch
was bulletined from Gold Hill, and still the
excitement grew. Telegrams began to return to us from Virginia beseeching Gridley
to bring back the flour sack; but such was not the
plan of the campaign. At the end of an hour Gold Hill’s small population had paid a figure
for the flour sack that awoke all the enthusiasm of Virginia when the grand total
was displayedⒺ upon the bulletin boards. Then the Gridley cavalcade moved on, a giant refreshed
with new lager beer and plenty of itⒺ—for the people brought it to the carriages
without waiting to measure it—and within three hours more the expedition had carried Silver
City and Dayton by storm and was on its way back covered with glory. Every move had
been telegraphed and bulletined, and as the
procession entered Virginia and filed down C street at half past eight in the evening
the town was abroad in the thoroughfares, torches
were glaring, flags flying, bands playing, cheer on cheer cleaving the air, and the
city ready to surrender at discretion. The auction
began, every bid was greeted with bursts of applause, and at the end of two hours
and a half a population of fifteen thousand souls had
paid in coin for a fifty-pound sack of flour a sum equal to forty thousand dollars
in greenbacksⒺ! It was at a rate in the neighborhood of three dollars for each man, woman and child
of the population. The grand
total would have been twice as large, but the streets were very narrow, and hundreds
who wanted to bid could not get within a block of
the stand, and could not make themselves heard. These grew tired of waiting and many
of them went home [begin page 298] long before the auction was over. This was the greatest day Virginia ever saw, perhaps.
Gridley sold the sack in Carson CityⒶ
Ⓔ
and several California towns; also in San
FranciscoⒺ. Then he took it east and sold it in one
or two Atlantic citiesⒺ, I think. I am not sure of that, but I know that he finally carried it to St. Louis, where a monster Sanitary Fair was being held,
and after selling it there
for a large sum and helping on the enthusiasm by displaying the portly silver bricks
which Nevada’s donation had produced, he
had the flour baked up into small cakes and retailed them at high pricesⒺ.
It was estimated that when the flour sack’s mission
was ended it had been sold for a grand total of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars
in greenbacksⒺ! This is probably the only instance on record where common family flour brought three
thousand dollars a pound in the
public market.
It is due to Mr. Gridley’s memory to mention that the
expenses of his SanitaryⒶ flour sack expedition of fifteen thousand miles, going and returning, were paid in
large part, if not entirely, out of his own
pocket. The time he gave to it was not less than three months. Mr. Gridley was a soldier
in the Mexican war and a pioneer Californian.
He died at Stockton, California, in December, 1870Ⓔ, greatly regretted.
Explanatory Notes CHAPTER 45
Ⓔ over two years before,
Mr. Goodman and another journeyman printer . . . bought it . . . for a thousand dollars]
The weekly
Territorial Enterprise had been established in December 1858 by William L. Jernegan and Alfred James in
Genoa,
Utah Territory.
The struggling paper moved to Carson City in November 1859. By November 1860,
Colonel Jonathan Williams, who had purchased James’s interest in August 1859, was
the sole proprietor and had relocated the
paper to fast-growing Virginia City. Williams soon acquired a new partner, I. B. Wollard,
whose interest was in turn bought in March
1861 by Goodman and McCarthy, who had recently arrived from San Francisco. Goodman
later recalled that since he and McCarthy were
penniless, the paper was “to be paid for out of its earnings.” (The actual price is
not known; in 1906 Clemens
contradicted his statement here, claiming that it was
[begin page 658] only $214.) Goodman and McCarthy
“turned the old weekly into a daily, and made enough in a single month to pay the
whole purchase price” (Goodman to
Alfred B. Nye, 17 Nov 1905, Alfred B. Nye Papers,
CU-BANC). “Virginia City legend
has it that Goodman and McCarthy every Saturday night divided the take in equal halves
and each one carried his share home in a fire
bucket filled with golden eagles” (
Beebe, 32;
Lingenfelter and Gash, 253–54;
AD, 9 Jan 1906,
CU-MARK, in
MTA
,
1:274).
Ⓔ
The editorial
sanctum . . . compressed into one apartment . . . general dinner table] The first
Virginia City
office of the Enterprise was on A Street near Sutton Avenue. Dan De Quille
described the premises as
a one-story frame with a shed addition on the north side.
In the main structure were the cases of the compositors, the table at which all the
writing, local and editorial, was done, and the
old Washington hand-press on which the papers were worked off.
The shed addition was used as a kitchen (an
old Chinaman called “Joe” doing the cooking) and eating-room, and ranged on the sides
were sleeping bunks, one above
another in ship-shape. Here all hands ate at a long table, and here nearly all slept.
(William
Wright 1893a)
When Clemens joined the newspaper in September 1862, the office had been relocated
to North C Street over a clothing store (“The Pioneer Journal Dead,” Virginia City
Evening
Chronicle, 16 Jan 93, 2).
Ⓔ The paper was
. . . printed by steam] The
Enterprise’s new steam press—the first in
Nevada—was brought in sections by ox-drawn wagon from San Francisco.
The press began
production the night of 31 July 1863 with editors and compositors alike taking part
in a riotous celebration. The next
morning’s edition was several hours late and typographically chaotic, but sported
“an entirely new and improved
shape” of “increased and ponderous dimensions . . . nearly double” in size (“The
Enterprise,” Virginia City
Evening Bulletin, 1 Aug 63, 3;
Beebe, 87;
Angel, 292).
Ⓔ there were five editors and
twenty-three compositors] According to a correspondent for the Sacramento
Bee, in January 1864 the
Enterprise employed “nine compositors on the paper with a foreman,
two or
three in the job room, and one pressman,” in addition to “four editors, viz: J.T.
Goodman, Mr.
Charles A.V.
Putnam, ‘Dan de Quille,’ and ‘Mark Twain’ ” (
Curtis, 1). Putnam had joined the staff in May 1863. Clemens’s fifth editor may have been
George F. Dawson, an
Englishman, who worked as an assistant editor in 1864 (
Putnam, 3;
L1
, 304 n. 2).
Ⓔ the “Enterprise
Building” was . . . fire-proof brick] The
Enterprise moved to its third and final
Virginia City location, a three-story brick building on South C Street, in August
1863 (
L1
, 243;
William Wright 1893a).
Ⓔ
[begin page 658] The “Gould & Curry” company were erecting a monster hundred-stamp mill at a cost
. . . of a million dollars] The imposing Gould and Curry mill was located about two
miles northeast of Virginia
City. As first constructed it had forty stamps for crushing ore; these were later
increased to eighty.
Its main structure, built in the form of a Greek cross, featured an ornamental pool
graced by an elaborate fountain.
While the mill was under construction, it was regarded as “the model mill of the country,
and . . . the greatest
piece of work of the sort in the world” (“Notes of Nevada Travel,” Marysville [Calif.]
Appeal, 28 June 62, 3). According to Eliot Lord, however, the mill—which had cost nearly
$900,000 by
the end of 1863—proved to be “the most conspicuous monument of inexperience and extravagance
ever erected in a mining
district,” for it “was not yet fairly completed when its entire machinery for ore
reduction was discarded” as
unsatisfactory. In 1864 the mill was rebuilt, “almost from the foundation,” at a cost
of over $560,000 (
Lord, 124–25;
Grant H. Smith, 85;
“Mill Reduction and Works of the Gould & Curry Company,” Sacramento
Union, 14 Nov 62, 4,
reprinting the Virginia City
Union).
Ⓔ Gould & Curry stock paid
heavy dividends] The Gould and Curry Silver Mining Company paid its first monthly
dividend, $24 a foot, in December
1862; in January 1863 the dividend rose to $100 per foot, and by June it had increased
to $150.
The first full year of dividends totaled $1,464,400 ($1,220 per foot), a sum representing
about 40
percent of the company’s gross receipts. For an investor who purchased stock in December
1862, at $2,600 per foot, this
represented an annual return of nearly 47 percent (
Mining and Scientific Press: “Mining Stock
Report,” 6 [20 Dec 62]: 5, and 6 [29 Dec 62]: 5; “Stock Remarks,” 6 [2 Feb
63]: 5; “The Mining Share Market,” 6 [29 June 63: 4]; “Cost and Result of Silver
Mining,” Virginia City
Union, 14 Jan 64, 1).
Ⓔ The Superintendent of the Gould
& Curry] The superintendent of the mine from its incorporation in 1860 was Charles
Lyman Strong (1826–83), a
self-educated mining engineer.
He had arrived in California about 1850 as an agent for Wells and
Company, and spent the next ten years in a variety of commercial pursuits. Encouraged
by the Gould and Curry’s owners to give
free rein to his ideas, Strong was largely responsible for the construction of the
company’s extravagant mill. In 1864 the
strain of his responsibilities caused him to resign his position in order to travel.
Ⓔ The Superintendent
. . . was to have had one per cent . . . of the bullion likewise] Mark Twain refers
to Walter W.
Palmer, super-intendent of the Ophir Silver Mining Company, who was employed during
1863 for a monthly salary of $2,500.
On 1 January 1864 his salary was changed to $1,000, plus 2 percent “on the dividends
to be thereafter declared by the Company, in lieu of the old contract salary” (
SLC
1864n).
[begin page 660] Apparently some misunderstanding about the exact terms of this agreement led to a
dispute.
In May 1864 the company asked Palmer to resign (for unstated reasons), and he complied.
On 19 August the company filed suit for the
recovery of $8,456, which Palmer claimed was rightfully his. It was almost certainly
Clemens who reported this case for the San
Francisco
Morning Call (
SLC 1864n,
1864s).
Ⓔ U. S. Sanitary
Commission . . . the wildest mob . . . came there “flush” and went away
“busted.”] The United States Sanitary Commission was officially established in June
1861 by an order of the
secretary of war, but it owed its existence to a coalition of relief associations
formed by women in the Northern states.
During its first year its revenues were very limited, but in the fall of 1862—under
the energetic
leadership of its president, the Reverend Henry W. Bellows (1814–82)—it began to receive
substantial contributions from
across the nation and around the world. The clamorous mob described here gathered
in front of the International Hotel on C Street
during Clemens’s first month on the
Enterprise—on 26 October 1862—at a meeting organized
by the Central Committee of the Storey County Patriotic Fund Association. This meeting
represented Virginia City’s effort to
contribute its share to the $20,000 total that Storey County had pledged to raise.
Nearly $3,000 was collected on the
spot, which was added to $16,000 in silver bullion already donated. (The meeting was
reported in the
Enterprise, possibly by Clemens, on 28 October.) The president, or chairman, of the Central
Committee was Almarin B. Paul
(1823–1909) of Gold Hill (formerly of St. Louis), a prominent banker and mill operator
reputed to be one of the wealthiest men
in Nevada. Paul had pioneered the Washoe wet process for crushing ore, and established
the Pioneer Mill, probably the first mill on
the Comstock (see the note at 235.14–15;
Stillé, 63–69,
197–204, 539–42; Sacramento
Union: “Relief in Nevada Territory,” 30 Oct 62, 2,
reprinting the Virginia City
Territorial Enterprise of 28 October; “Those Silver Brick,” 4 Nov
62, 3;
L1
, 278 n. 6).
Ⓔ the famous
“Sanitary Flour Sack” came our way . . . Reuel Gridley . . . was defeated] A year
and
a half passed before the Sanitary Flour Sack excitement began in April 1864.
Clemens had last seen
Reuel Colt Gridley (1829–70) in 1846 or 1847, when Gridley left their Hannibal, Missouri,
school to join a company of infantry
bound for the Mexican War. Barton S. Bowen, a steamboat captain with whom Clemens
had served as a pilot, claimed in 1865 that he had
once tried to “teach young Gridley” to be a pilot, “but found him so much given to
larking, that he
couldn’t learn” (“River News,” Cincinnati
Commercial, 13 Feb 65, 4). In 1852
Gridley emigrated to California, and about ten years later relocated to Nevada, where,
late in 1863, he started the grocery firm of
Gridley, Hobart, and Jacobs at Austin, in the Reese
[begin page 661] River area of central Nevada. (Reese River was the
center of a mining “excitement” in 1862–63.) Gridley was not himself a mayoral candidate
in the 19 April 1864
election that resulted in the Sanitary Flour Sack auction; he placed a bet on the
Democratic candidate, David E. Buel, against the
Republican candidate, Charles Holbrook. Gridley—who, as Clemens wrote his family on
17 May 1864, was “Union to the
backbone, but a Copperhead in sympathies”—lost his bet to a Republican supporter,
Dr. H. S. Herrick, the Lander County
assessor and superintendent of schools. Mark Twain intentionally simplified the story
of Gridley’s bet: he described it
correctly not only in his 1864 letter, but also in a December 1870 letter to the New
York
Tribune announcing
Gridley’s death (
L1
, 282;
AD, 16 Mar 1906,
CU-MARK, in
MTA
, 2:216–17;
Elizabeth H. Smith, 11–13;
Angel, 268–70, 461, 464;
SLC
1870o).
Ⓔ he . . .
had taken in eight thousand dollars in gold] The amount realized by the auction of
Gridley’s flour sack in Austin,
together with additional donations and subscriptions, totaled $5,300 (“Sanitary Fund
Meetings Yesterday!”
Virginia City
Union, 17 May 64, 3; “The Austin Flour Sack,” Gold Hill
News, 17 May 64, 2;
L1
, 282).
Ⓔ The news came to
Virginia . . . Gridley arrived . . . only five thousand dollars had been secured]
Three weeks
elapsed before Gridley arrived in Virginia City with the flour sack.
On Sunday, 15 May, he
auctioned it during a fund-raising meeting in Maguire’s Opera House for the disappointing
sum of $570; by the end of the
afternoon, however, the combined proceeds from the meeting totaled more than $3,700
in cash, mining stock, and silver bullion
(“The Sanitary Meeting Sunday Afternoon,” Virginia City
Union, 17 May 64, 3;
L1
, 285 n. 9).
Ⓔ the next morning a
procession of open carriages] The Sanitary Flour Sack procession of Monday, 16 May,
was the subject of two reports, probably
written by Clemens, in the
Enterprise of 17 and 18 May (extant as reprinted in the San Francisco
Evening Bulletin of 19 and 20 May).
In the first of these, the procession was
dubbed the “Army of the Lord,” by which name it became known; Almarin Paul credited
Mark Twain with this expression in a
newspaper letter dated 21 May (
Paul, 1;
SLC 1864d–e). On 17 May Clemens also wrote an enthusiastic account of the event to his mother
and sister, which was
printed in an unidentified St. Louis newspaper. It was probably Pamela, his sister,
who was involved in organizing a St. Louis fair to
be held in May and June, who arranged for the letter’s publication (
L1
, 281–87, 528–29).
Ⓔ Gen. W. said
. . . The Yellow Jacket . . . offers a thousand dollars, coin] The bidder—at
$500—for the Yellow Jacket mine was its newly elected president and superintendent,
John B. Winters, known
[begin page 662] as “General Winters” because he was an officer in the Nevada militia.
The Yellow Jacket, one of the first and richest of the Comstock mines, was located
near Gold Hill on a southern extension of the
lode (see the notes at 556.26–28 and 556.27;
SLC 1864d;
Grant H. Smith, 90–91, 93, 292–93;
RI
1972
, 587, misidentifies “Gen. W.” as Charles H. S. Williams).
Ⓔ Gold Hill’s
. . . grand total was displayed] The contributions from Gold Hill totaled $6,588.
Since this total was the
first to exceed Austin’s, Gridley “mounted the rostrum and threw up a sponge according
to promise” (
SLC 1864d–e).
Ⓔ refreshed with new lager beer
and plenty of it] The first
Enterprise report noted that “the boys” twice stopped to
“moisten themselves” along the way.
The reporter for the Gold Hill
News remarked: “ ‘tone’ was given to the procession by the presence of Gov. Twain and
his staff of
bibulous reporters, who came down in a free carriage, ostensibly for the purpose of
taking notes, but in reality in pursuit of free
whiskey” (“The Austin Flour Sack,” 17 May 64, 2). (Clemens earned the title of “Gov.
Twain” when he
delivered a burlesque “Governor’s Message” to Nevada’s Third House, a mock legislative
body, in December
1863: see
MTEnt
, 100–110, 144;
L1
, 272–73 n. 1.)
Ⓔ the expedition had
carried Silver City and Dayton . . . forty thousand dollars in greenbacks] Silver
City donated $1,800, and
Dayton $1,865.
Virginia City pledged $12,945 in gold, or $22,300 in
greenbacks, not “forty thousand.” The combined total earned for the Sanitary Commission
on 16 May, however,
was about $23,200 in gold, or $40,000 in greenbacks (
SLC 1864d–e;
Mitchell, 427). Contemporary newspaper stories, as well as
later secondary accounts, frequently disagree about the totals for the flour-sack
auctions. Since Mark Twain’s source for his
Roughing It account—if any—has not been determined, it is impossible to ascertain whether he
intentionally inflated his figures.
Ⓔ
Gridley sold the sack in
Carson City] No auction was held in Carson City, as Clemens explained to his family
in May 1864:
Carson is considerably larger than either of these three towns
Gold Hill, Dayton, Silver City, but it has a lousy, lazy, worthless, poverty-stricken population, and the universal
opinion was that we couldn’t raise $500 dollars there. So we started home again. (
L1
, 283)
In the Enterprise Clemens provided
another—even more offensive—reason for the procession’s failure to go to Carson:
The money raised at the Sanitary Fancy Dress Ball, recently held in Carson for the
St. Louis Fair, had been diverted
from its legitimate course, and was to be sent to aid a Miscegenation Society somewhere
in the East; and it was feared the proceeds of
the sack might be similarly disposed of. (Citizen, 2)
[begin page 663] He explained to his sister-in-law that he was “not sober” when he wrote the item,
and that he
had not expected it to appear in print. For the resulting controversy, see
L1
, 287–89, 296–99.
Ⓔ and several California
towns; also in San Francisco] Gridley left Virginia City on 17 May for Sacramento,
where the sack was first sold at a picnic
outside the city, and then auctioned again in the evening at a lecture given by Dr.
Bellows (see the note at 293.6–33), earning
$2,150 for the Sanitary Commission.
The next day Gridley proceeded to San Francisco;
journalist J. Ross Browne described his arrival: “It was the memorable event of the
times. Never did Montgomery Street present
a more imposing appearance. The beauty and the fashion of the city were there; and
so was Gridley, decked out in glorious array, the
observed of all observers” (
J. Ross Browne 1866,35). Ten days later the sack of
flour was sold for the last time in the West, after the presentation of a comedy at
the Metropolitan Theatre, bringing in
$2,800. Gridley’s celebrity was augmented by the sale of photographs taken by a San
Francisco photographer; an engraving
of one of these appeared in
Harper’s Weekly in January 1865 with the remark, “No lady’s
album in Nevada or California is considered complete without a photograph of
Gridley and his sack of
flour” (“Mr. Gridley and His Sack of Flour,” 21 Jan 65, 45; the engraving is reproduced
in
L1
, 286). The flour sack reportedly earned in California and Nevada
“the sum of $63,000 in coin, and it owned three blocks of lots in Austin worth $7,000,
and a house and lot in
Dayton” (
Tribute
, 23). Gridley’s efforts were warmly
praised by Dr. Bellows in a letter of 24 May: “The history of your Sanitary Sack of
Flour is undoubtedly more interesting and
peculiar than that of any sack recorded, short of the sack of Troy—and it would take
another Homer to write it”
(“Great Excitement about the Gridley-Sanitary Sack of Flour,” Austin
Reese River Reveille, 7 June
64, 1; “Departures Yesterday,” Virginia City
Union, 18 May 64,3; “The Sanitary Gala
Day,” Sacramento
Union, 19 May 64, 3; San Francisco
Evening Bulletin:
“Travels and Fortunes of the Great Austin Sack of Flour,” 20 May 64,1; “The Austin
Sanitary Sack in Town,”
21 May 64, 5; “Sale of the Gridley-Sanitary Sack of Flour at the Metropolitan Theatre,”
30 May 64, 5).
Ⓔ he took it east and sold
it in one or two Atlantic cities] Before sailing for the East, Gridley returned home
to Austin for six months because of family
illness.
After leaving San Francisco for New York on 13 December 1864, he evidently visited
several
eastern cities in the spring of 1865; his exact itinerary, however, has not been determined.
Of Gridley’s tour “on the
Atlantic side,” Browne recalled reading “wonderful newspaper accounts. He was fêted,
and gazed at, and admired,
and hurrahed, and printed in weekly pictorials, and puffed, and joked—was the irrepressible
Gridley” (
J. Ross Browne 1866, 36; “Return of Mr.
[begin page 664] Gridley,”
Austin
Reese River Reveille, 5 June 64, 2; “The Famous Sanitary Flour Sack,” San Francisco
Alta California, 14 Dec 64, 1).
Ⓔ
he finally carried
it to St. Louis . . . small cakes and retailed them at high prices] Gridley took his
flour sack to St. Louis in
the summer of 1865. Since it was illegal in Missouri to auction the same item repeatedly,
“it was suggested that the flour be baked into cakes which could be sold. Gridley
refused, for he felt that the flour came from
the West and that was where it belonged. Thus the tour ended on a sour note” (Elizabeth
W. Smith, 16). Curiously, the idea of
selling the flour as small cakes may have originated with Clemens a year earlier.
In May 1864 an Enterprise
reporter, probably Clemens, listed the amounts already realized by the flour-sack
auctions in Nevada and estimated how much could be
raised in California and the East, computing a total of over $500,000. He continued,
Now supposing that the managers of the St. Louis Fair are smart enough to have this
historical sack of flour
ultimately made into thin wafer cakes—500 to the pound—it strikes us that 25,000 people
would willingly give $5 a
cake for it, if only for the sake of telling their children and friends that they
had eaten a cake made out of flour that had sold for
over $500,000 per sack! (SLC 1864g)
Ⓔ when the flour
sack’s mission was ended . . . a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks]
The final total of
Gridley’s proceeds cannot be determined with any certainty.
Since the estimates of others
range from $40,000 to $275,000, in gold, Mark Twain’s figure is quite plausible (
Tribute
, 24;
Webb 1865b;
Stillé, 238).
Ⓔ the expenses of his
Sanitary flour sack expedition . . . He died at Stockton, California, in December,
1870] Gridley returned home in
mid-July 1865, “completely broken down in health” and “almost bankrupt” (
Tinkham, 66).
He died on 24 November 1870 in Paradise City, California (a
small town in Stanislaus County, not far from Stockton). In his December 1870 letter
to the New York
Tribune
Mark Twain praised Gridley’s “integrity, benevolence, and enterprise” (
SLC
1870o). A commemorative statue, depicting Gridley and the flour sack, was erected in 1887
at his gravesite in the Stockton Rural
Cemetery. The original buckskin-covered flour sack is now in the State Historical
Museum in Reno (“Arrival of the
‘Golden City,’ ” San Francisco
Alta California, 10 July 65, 1;
Tinkham, 64–66, 241–42; Elizabeth W. Smith, 16–18).
