I love railroads and good writing. I have tens of thousands of dollars worth of railroad books, many first editions, and by authors long dead. One of my most valuable, I suspect, was written by Lucius Beebe and his pal Charlie Clegg. Beebe was one of the all time great writers of the English language. He wrote a book on the railroad that served Virginia City, which hauled silver bullion by the tons, and made its owners rich. I quote a few phrases from his 1949 book, which will show just how much wealth was created by silver.
“In the rich and enduring lexicon of the old American West, the roll-call of its resources and tally of its wonderments, no names are more fragrant with romance and high destinies, than the now ghostly place names and institutional names of the Comstock Lode, the most prodigious bonanza in the history of the world, and one by comparison to which the names of King Solomon and the wealth of the Incas, even the legendary name of El Dorado and Golconda, pale to insignificance.
“And there is the Virginia and Truckee, golden road to yesterday, the railroad which made possible the Big Bonanza, the railroad whose bright fame for decades was outshone only by the names of the mines themselves, and whose wealth was carried down to the mills on the Carson River. Yet only yesterday, their smoke ascended in towering clouds above the summit of Mount Davidson, the implications of their thundering stamps in an eccentric rigadoon of riches, were audible to the ends of the earth. Pause philosopher, by the margins of Carson, and reflect on the dusty destinies of mankind. The rivers of Babylon, where the Israelites sat them down and wept, were no more eloquent of departed mightiness.
“It was once the richest railroad in the world, measured in terms of return on investment and in tangible assets it transported. Its traffic was in fabulous ores, almost to the exclusion of all else. Its passengers and arbiters of its operations, were kings, more powerful in the symbolism of their Prince Albert frock coats, than many anointed heads surmounted by historic crowns. Sing therefore, O Muse of Tractive Effort and Valve Gear, of the Virginia and Truckee, a railroad of such superlatives, that like the Comstock it served, and the San Francisco it enriched, its name will be forever currency in the language of the trans-Mississippi.
“They came by the roaring thousands, on mule back and afoot, a few in Concord coaches over the old grade by Hangtown, Strawberry, and Carson City: The wicked and the willful, the soiled and solvent, the gyps and the gunmen, the splendid strumpets and blowzy madames, the gamblers, the newspaper reporters, kings and clowns. Virginia City sprawled wantonly and alluringly like Semiramis on the walls of Babylon. Throughout the early sixties, its mine whistles screeched, its hoists clattered, its engines rumbled, dynamite boomed underground, gunfire exploded above ground, coaches clattered, and ten thousand stamps in the stamping mills of Six Mile Canyon and along the Carson River, thundered in a wild pavanne of prosperity. To the tune called by Virginia’s mine superintendents, stock booms mushroomed and collapsed on the exchanges and bourses of the world. San Francisco became the glittering jewel of the Pacific, and in far away Fifth Avenue, alarming mansions were rising. Mansions turreted, machicolated, and crenellated; furnished in gilt and mirrors, plush and ormolu, with ballrooms, picture galleries and conservatories. The mines of the Comstock paid for all of them.
“Almost from the very beginning, life on the V&T was positively a spasm of excitement. It was a railroad that was born rich, figuratively, with a silver coal scoop on the deck of its locomotives, and its destiny was inextricably identified with champagne, balls, and millionaires with party dresses, picnics and junketings. Its passengers were to be the great, powerful and desirable folk of the world, all attracted to the inexhaustible Comstock and the fabled wonderments of Virginia City, a veritable Babylon, precariously perched amidst the mineshafts and hoisting works above Six Mile Canyon.” Carson City silver dollars were all made from silver mined a few miles up the canyon in Virginia City.
The V&T’s tracks from Virginia City to Carson City were torn up in 1938, and the rest of the line lasted only a few decades more. There is a mighty effort to restore the line down the canyon to Carson, and steam trains are once again running, with progress on extending the line moving forward. Beebe wrote the book in an effort to preserve the remaining line, but if failed.
Enough of that. The point is that it was silver which made San Francisco and thousands of others rich. Silver will make you rich also, whether the ratio goes back to 16 to 1 or not. It will, of course, but the point is that dollars are a fading measurement. Dollars are ever more being taken in the world as payment for goods and services, with extreme reluctance. While the buck has risen against the pound, and even the euro a bit, the plain fact is that all currencies are but unbacked, paper scrip, like Monopoly money with a fancy imprimatur. Get out of dollars, and convert them into something tangible, of historic worth, and something easily bought, sold, stored, and at the same time being incredibly beautiful. In other words, protect yourself.