1850 American Gold Baron

"Damn Brannan! Black-hearted businessman! I curse you to hell!"

Liang Yao heard Sven's hysterical filial piety, they could have made more.

The selling price of pans at the port is $6 each, shovels are $8 each, and pickaxes are $7 each. According to this price, after paying off all debts, Sven will still have a lot of money left and become a small rich man.

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The pilot Zhang Bingliang, who had treated them coldly along the way, came to Liang Yao and exchanged a few words with him after they landed. He just saw that Liang Yao had obtained some gold and asked Liang Yao for advice on how to make money.

A fully loaded convoy arrived at the port triumphantly. A dozen gold diggers with live ammunition escorted three carriages to the port under the envious eyes of everyone, and boarded the merchant ship leaving San Francisco.

There is no doubt that they are one of the few lucky people who successfully panned for gold and brought it out of San Francisco alive.

"As long as we work together, we can be rich like them and return home in fine clothes."

Liang Yao drew a pie for the Deng family.

"Third brother, you understand the words of Mr. Gui and are knowledgeable. We brothers will listen to you and my second uncle."

Deng Wenyu moved his fiery gaze away from the motorcade and directed his fiery gaze at Liang Yao.

"How can we mess up the seniority! Liang Yao is our equal. We should listen to our elders and listen to our second uncle."

Deng Wenyao was dissatisfied. He was six or seven years older than Liang Yao, and why did the Deng family let Liang Yao, an outsider, make the decision?

Deng Yan was like a mirror: "I am a rough man. I have only served as a soldier and caught fish, but I have never mined gold. What Wen Yu said makes sense. The third brother is a man who has read books and has great knowledge. Listen to me."

Third brother’s.”

Deng Yan didn't care about the issue of seniority. Things in San Francisco were so expensive. How to gain a foothold here was the most important issue at the moment.

"Boss Deng!"

A man wearing a shabby shirt, canvas suspenders, and an old windbreaker with a weathered face came forward.

The man's long braid trailing behind his back was incompatible with his attire and seemed a bit inconsistent, at least that's what Liang Yao thought.

"Mingsheng."

Deng Yan was stunned for a while and recognized this man.

Cai Mingsheng and Deng Yan were from the same hometown. In the 23rd year of Daoguang reign (1843), they were kidnapped and sold to Peru as piglets. After many twists and turns, they escaped and settled in California. They became one of the first Chinese to come to California.

one.

Deng Yan introduced several Deng family members and Liang Yao to Cai Mingsheng one by one. When introducing Liang Yao, Cai Mingsheng's attitude seemed somewhat respectful.

When Cai Mingsheng was still in Xiangshan, the Liang family was a prominent local official family. He did not know that changes had occurred in the Liang family and the family was in decline.

Cai Mingsheng invited everyone to stay at his house temporarily. Liang Yao, Deng Yan and others did not refuse this proposal. Prices in San Francisco were extremely high, and they could not afford the food and lodging expenses in the inn.

After leaving the port, San Francisco is much deserted. There are not many people on the streets. Most people have gone to the mining areas to pan for gold. There are only a few scattered pedestrians on the streets, and these people are basically men.

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As for women, you can only see some gorgeously dressed women soliciting customers when passing by several brothels. Next to the brothels is a casino, which provides one-stop services for gold diggers.

Of course, these are all Brannan's properties, and he wants to squeeze every grain of gold out of every gold digger's pocket.

Although California has experienced explosive population growth in the past two years, the influx of people to California are basically young and middle-aged men, and the population structure is extremely unreasonable.

Only five percent of the population is female, and except for a small number of family members, the rest of the female population are all prostitutes.

It only takes a week or two for these prostitutes in California to earn money that prostitutes in the eastern United States cannot earn in a lifetime. This unreasonable population structure can easily cause a series of security problems, not to mention that this is a remote place.

The security situation in gold mining areas can be imagined.

After walking past the brothels and casinos, Liang Yao passed by a charred ruin. It was obvious that a fire had just broken out here. A wave of heat hit his face, making him feel extremely stuffy.

The gold diggers put the black scorched earth into a bucket, poured the scorched earth on a large canvas, and raised the canvas with force to allow the lighter scorched earth that did not contain gold to float away in the wind. Then they formed a circle and gathered the remaining gold.

Looking for gold in the scorched earth below.

And a few steps away from them was a charred corpse still smoking.

"Gold! Gold! I found gold!"

Soon, someone in the crowd picked up a gold nugget the size of a soybean and shouted excitedly. The gold diggers around him all cast unfriendly glances at him.

"The most important thing in the gold rush area is to keep a low profile. It's hard to say whether this person will survive tonight." Cai Mingsheng said, shaking his head with some regret.

"Is there a fire here?"

Deng Yan looked at the scorched earth and desolate city of San Francisco and asked in confusion.

"Every day here, gangsters set fire to people's houses. These are just small fires. Last year, there were four or five fires throughout San Francisco. Last month, when foreigners were celebrating the Chinese New Year, five or six fires broke out in the city a day.

Fires are not unusual either.”

Cai Mingsheng said calmly that he had been accustomed to this phenomenon for a long time.

"The gold content of these scorched earth is higher than the gold content of the mineral soil in the mining area." Liang Yao knew that this was the so-called San Francisco Fire in later generations. Before the U.S. government took effective control of this disorderly and chaotic city, it basically burned down the buildings.

Then the fever passed.

Gold can bring out the darkest side of human nature.

"After all, Mr. Liang comes from a family of officials, and his joints are obvious." Cai Mingsheng said with approval.

"People eat people here!"

Even though Deng Yan had been a soldier and had seen blood, he had a creepy feeling after seeing this scene, fearing that he would become an unknown charred corpse here that day.

"It's so lawless. Doesn't the foreign court care about it?"

Deng Wenyao said angrily, but Cai Mingsheng didn't know how to answer Deng Yan's question. After all, the foreign courts were very different from the Qing Dynasty.

Cai Mingsheng settled down here relying on his carpenter skills, married an Indian woman, and had a pair of children. His life was neither good nor bad.

At this time, the Chinese Exclusion Act had not yet been enacted, and California was still a lawless place in the United States. Of course, the Qing Dynasty's international prestige had not plummeted at this time, and he had not yet suffered particularly serious discrimination here.

After finishing a fairly sumptuous meal, Liang Yao took out a one-ounce piece of gold and handed it to Cai Mingsheng.

Cai Mingsheng refused, so Liang Yao took Cai Mingsheng's calloused hands and patted the gold into Cai Mingsheng's palms.

"If Uncle Cai refuses to accept the gold from this junior, I will be embarrassed to ask Uncle Cai for help if I encounter any difficulties in the future."

Liang Yao talked about this, and Cai Mingsheng was too embarrassed to refuse anymore, so he accepted Liang Yao's gold.

Liang Yao asked Cai Mingsheng about the recent situation in California.

I learned from Cai Mingsheng that after nearly two years of mining, the gold-producing area near San Francisco was almost exhausted, and the gold output was getting less and less. In 1848 and the first half of 1849, there were lucky gold rushes every now and then.

Customers dug up nuggets of gold, and even fist-sized gold.

By the second half of 1849, such news had almost disappeared. After Christmas, some gold prospectors had already made up their minds to mine in new mining areas in the Sacramento area, more than 100 kilometers away.

When mentioning California, the first thing that future generations think of is San Francisco (that is, San Francisco. After gold was discovered in Melbourne, Australia, in 1851, Chinese immigrants called it New Gold Mountain. San Francisco, where gold was discovered earlier, called it San Francisco. This book

Currently, we use San Francisco or San Francisco to call San Francisco), Los Angeles and other familiar international metropolises, but Sacramento, the capital of California, is not very well-known.

When you mention Sacramento, you have to mention a person, who is closely related to the California Gold Rush.

That was John Sutter, a large planter. James Marshall, who discovered large amounts of gold in the American River and the Sierra Nevada, was a carpenter who worked in Sutter's sawmill.

It is a pity that God gave Sartre a chance, but Sartre did not have the mind like Brannan.

After discovering gold, Sartre was worried that the gold rush would destroy his local industry. Of course, Sartre wanted to make a fortune alone. He tried to block the news and monopolize gold by himself. But such news could not be his.

Can it be blocked?

Although Brannan forced Liang Yao to buy supplies and Liang Yao was very disgusted with Brannan, he had to admit that Brannan was indeed a very smart speculator.

Brannan and Sartre's vision and structure are not at the same level at all. This also destined the ending of the last two people.

"Sart is also my former boss. He owns a lot of land in Sacramento. The governor of Mexico previously granted him a lot of land. The land combined is larger than our Xiangshan City.

It’s just that those gold diggers now think that these lands are ownerless lands. Those gold diggers also steal my former employer’s things from time to time. A few days ago, they even stole two cows from my former employer and slaughtered them to eat. My former employer

My life is getting worse every year."

Cai Mingsheng couldn't help but sigh with emotion. When he fled north from the silver mines in Peru, his former boss finally took him in. His Indian wife was also an employee of Sartre. Cai Mingsheng still has deep feelings for Sartre.

A bit of gratitude.

Everyone was surprised to hear that Sartre alone owned land larger than Xiangshan. Even in Guangdong, there were only a handful of such large landowners. However, the large farms in the western United States were not the same as the large landowners in China at this time.

a concept.

Although the United States had a population of 23 million in the mid-19th century (the population was only slightly less than the British population at the same time), more than 90% of the population was concentrated in the eastern seaboard of the United States. And the vast western region

The population is sparse, even if you include the Indians, the land is vast and sparsely populated.

The Louisiana area purchased from Napoleon for $12 million during Jefferson's time is still very poorly developed and sparsely populated, let alone California, which was snatched from Mexico just two years ago and is further away from the eastern region.

area.

Although every gold digger here thinks that the land in the west is unclaimed land, Liang Yao still feels that he should take precautions and obtain a piece of land with legal ownership first.

In this case, even if the big conglomerates from the eastern United States move to California in the near future, he and his compatriots will have a legal place to settle down.

Of course, he also had to make a fortune before those big eastern conglomerates arrived.

When those large consortiums with advanced gold mining machinery, equipment and technology, and strong financial resources arrive in California, they, the gold diggers who dig with shovels, will definitely not be able to compete with those large consortiums.

By then, the gold mining legends of individuals and small teams will be swept into the trash heap of history.

Liang Yao, who had worked on Wall Street for several years, knew very well what those capitalists looked like. Compared with them, Brannan was considered a philanthropic person.

In San Francisco under Brannan's control, the gold diggers can at least have something to drink. After all, no matter how powerful Brannan is, he is only an individual and a relatively small interest group with limited control. He also needs the gold diggers.

Help him dig the gold out of the soil.

Therefore, the gold diggers can at least have a drink of soup. When the big conglomerates settle in California, the gold diggers may not even be able to smell the soup.