Chapter 4: San Francisco
"Damn Brannan! Black-hearted businessman! I curse you to hell!"
Liang Yao heard Sven's hysterical roar, they could have made more.
The selling price of pans at the port is 6 US dollars each, shovels are 8 US dollars each, and pickaxes are 7 US dollars 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. .
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, armed with live ammunition, escorted three carriages to the port and boarded the merchant ship leaving San Francisco under the envious eyes of everyone.
There is no doubt that they were the lucky few who managed to find 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 what ghosts say 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 the same generation as us. 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 an outsider, Liang Yao, make the decision.
Deng Yan was like a mirror: "I am a rough man. I have only served as a soldier and caught fish, and I have never dug for gold. What Wen Yu said makes sense. The third brother is a man who has read books and has great knowledge. Listen, Third brother’s.”
Deng Yan didn't care about seniority issues. Things were so expensive in San Francisco, so how to gain a foothold here was the most important issue right now.
"Boss Deng!"
A man wearing a shabby shirt, canvas overalls, 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. Became one of the first Chinese to arrive in California.
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 home temporarily. Liang Yao, Deng Yan and others did not refuse this proposal. Prices in San Francisco were extremely high, and the food and accommodation expenses in the inn were beyond their affordability.
After leaving the port, San Francisco is much deserted, with not many people on the streets. Most people have gone to the mining areas to pan for gold, and there are only a few scattered pedestrians on the street. These people are basically men.
As for women, you can only see some gorgeously dressed women soliciting customers when passing by several brothels. Next to the brothel is the casino, which provides one-stop services specifically 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.
In just a week or two in California, these prostitutes can earn money that prostitutes in the eastern United States will never earn in a lifetime. This unreasonable population structure can easily cause a series of security problems, not to mention that this is a remote gold mining area, and the security situation can be imagined.
After walking past the brothel and casino, Liang Yao passed by a scorched ruin. It was obvious that a fire had just broken out here, and a heat wave hit his face, making people 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 vigorously to let the lighter, gold-free scorched earth float away in the wind. Then they formed a circle and collected the remaining gold. Looking for gold in the scorched earth below.
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, gangsters set fire to houses here. These are just small fires. Last year, there were four or five fires throughout the city of San Francisco. Last month, when foreigners were celebrating the Chinese New Year, there were five or six fires a day in the city. 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 that of the ore soil in the mining area." Liang Yao knew that this was what was called the San Francisco Fire in later generations. Before the US government gained effective control, this chaotic city basically spent its time burning and building, building and burning again.
Gold can make the darkest side of human nature appear vividly here.
"Mr. Liang is from an official family after all, and he can see through the joints at a glance." Cai Mingsheng said with approval.
"Here people eat people!"
Even Deng Yan, who had served in the army and seen blood, felt creepy after seeing this scene, fearing that he would become an unknown scorched corpse here one day.
"It's simply lawless. Doesn't the foreign court care?"
Deng Wenyao said angrily, but Cai Mingsheng didn't know how to answer Deng Yan's question. After all, the foreign court is still very different from the Qing Dynasty.
Cai Mingsheng settled down here with his carpentry 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 introduced, and California was still a lawless place in the United States. Of course, the international prestige of the Qing Dynasty had not plummeted at this time, and he had not yet suffered particularly serious discrimination here.
After a fairly sumptuous meal, Liang Yao took out a one-ounce piece of gold and handed it to Cai Mingsheng.
Cai Mingsheng refused to accept it, and Liang Yao pulled Cai Mingsheng's calloused hands and slapped the gold on Cai Mingsheng's palms.
"If Cai Bo refuses to accept my gold, I will be embarrassed to ask Cai Bo for help if I encounter any difficulties in the future."
Liang Yao had said so much, and Cai Mingsheng was embarrassed to refuse again, so he accepted Liang Yao's gold.
Liang Yao also asked Cai Mingsheng about the recent situation in California.
Cai Mingsheng said that after nearly two years of mining, the gold-producing areas near San Francisco were almost exhausted, and the gold production was decreasing. In 1848 and the first half of 1849, there were lucky gold diggers who dug up gold nuggets or even fist-sized gold every now and then.
By the second half of 1849, such news had almost disappeared. After Christmas, some gold diggers had decided to go to the new mining area in the Sacramento area more than 100 kilometers away to mine.
When talking about California, the first thing that comes to people in later generations 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, which discovered gold earlier, was called San Francisco. This book currently uses San Francisco or San Francisco, Gold Mountain to refer to San Francisco), Los Angeles and other well-known international metropolises, while Sacramento, the capital of California, is not well-known.
When talking about Sacramento, we have to mention a person who is closely related to the gold rush in California.
That was John Sutter, a large farmer. James Marshall, who discovered a lot of gold in the American River and the Nevada Mountains, was a carpenter working in Sutter's sawmill.
Unfortunately, God gave Sutter a chance, but Sutter didn't have the brains of Brannan.
After discovering gold, Sutter was worried that the gold rush would destroy his local industry. Of course, Sutter wanted to make a fortune alone. He tried to block the news and tried to monopolize gold alone, but how could he block such news?
Although Brannan forced Liang Yao to buy materials, Liang Yao hated Brannan very much, but he had to admit that Brannan was indeed a very smart speculator.
Brannan and Sutter, the vision and pattern of the two were not at the same level at all. This also doomed the final outcome of the two.
"Sarter is also my former boss. He has a lot of land in Sacramento. The governor of Mexico granted him a lot of land in the past. The total of these lands is larger than our Xiangshan.
But now those gold diggers think that these lands are unowned land. Those gold diggers also steal things from my former boss every now and then. A few days ago, they stole two cows from my former boss and slaughtered them for food. My former boss's life is getting worse and worse every year."
Cai Mingsheng couldn't help but sigh. He fled all the way north from the silver mine in Peru, and finally it was his former boss who took him in. His Indian wife was also Sarter's employee. Cai Mingsheng still felt a little grateful to Sarter.
When they heard that Sarter alone owned a piece of land larger than Xiangshan, everyone was amazed. Even in Guangdong, there were only a handful of such big landlords. It's just that the big farms in the western United States and the big landlords in China at that time are not the same concept.
Although the United States had a population of 23 million in the mid-19th century (only slightly less than the population of Britain at the same time), more than 90% of the population was concentrated in the eastern coastal areas of the United States. The vast western region was sparsely populated, even if the Indians were counted.
The Louisiana region, which the United States bought from Napoleon for $12 million during the Jefferson period, has been poorly developed and sparsely populated until now, not to mention the California region, which was snatched from Mexico two years ago and is farther away from the eastern region.
Although every gold digger here believes that the land in the west is unowned, Liang Yao still thinks that he should prepare for a rainy day and obtain a piece of land with legal ownership first.
In this way, even if the big financial groups in the eastern United States settle in California soon, he and his compatriots will have a legal place to settle down.
Of course, he also wants to make a fortune before the big financial groups in the east arrive.
When those big financial groups with advanced gold mining machinery and technology and strong capital arrive in California, they, the gold diggers who dig with shovels, will definitely not be able to compete with those big financial groups.
By then, the gold digging legends of individuals and small teams will be swept into the garbage dump of history.
Liang Yao, who has worked in Wall Street for several years, knows what those capitalists look like. Compared with them, Brannan is a kind-hearted man.
In San Francisco controlled by Brannan, the gold diggers can at least have a bite of soup to drink. After all, no matter how powerful Brannan is, he is just an individual and a relatively small interest group. His control is limited, and he also needs the gold diggers to help him dig gold out of the soil.
Therefore, the gold diggers can at least have a bite of soup to drink. When those big financial groups settle in California, the gold diggers probably won't even be able to smell the taste of soup.