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Heather Cox Richardson’s August 16 Letter from an American gives a brief yet very powerful review of the Alaska Gold Rush which began with discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896, and had major political consequences back home in the U.S. The commentary is very much worth your time.

(To my knowledge only one member of my families of origin followed the allure of any of the Gold Rush’s.

He was born in 1864 at about the time his entire family moved from Quebec to then-St. Anthony (later Minneapolis). He married in ND in 1889. They had three children. His wife died in 1898 in British Columbia where he was prospecting.

Family lore is that “grandfather, Joseph Collette, was a gold prospector. While prospecting in British Columbia my grandmother died of Typhoid fever. Joseph brought the three children. Dad [Ernest J, six, Olivine, four, and Edmund (Pete), two, back to their maternal grandparents, Simon and Philomena Huard. There they were raised and stayed in the Grand Forks [ND] area.” (page 129-130 of Bernard-Collette family history, 2010)

Joseph died in a rooming house in 1923 in what is today St. Anthony Main in Minneapolis and buried in St. Mary’s cemetery in south Minneapolis.

He died at 59, only a few blocks from where he first lived as an infant in 1864… It is not known if he ever saw his kids again. I met two of them, Ernest and Olivine, in their older years.)

COMMENTS (more at end)

from John: As always, both interesting commentary from your side as you tie family history in to some historical national reporting. Good job.

Really enjoyed reading Heather Cox Richardson– I don’t subscribe, so I appreciated the gift article.

She regrettably didn’t include Bryant’s most famous line from the Democratic convention, where he argued against the gold standard by saying in part “… you shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold!”– that’s one of the few quotes I remember from some history class sometime…

from Jeff: Thanks for the link, i get it daily but hadn’t read it.

If you want a weighty history i suggest The Republic for Which it Stands, by Richard White( one our finest living American historians) it covers the critical period 1865-1896 in the USA, when capitalism amd corporatism was brought transcendent, when Reconstruction and its promise where upended by politics and the Lost Cause was born. As Richardson knows the onset of McKinley was a triumph for the moneyed class.

His “The Middle Ground” about the great lakes and indian and settler history in the 16th to the early 19th century.

descriptions of both books:

The Middle Ground: This book seeks to step outside the simple stories of Indian/white relations–stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural persistence. It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes that the French called the “Pays d’en haut”. Here the older worlds of the Algonquins and various Europeans overlapped, and their mixture created new systems of meaning and of exchange. Finally, the book tells of the breakdown of accommodation and common meanings and the recreation of the Indians as alien and exotic. The process of accommodation described in this book takes place in a middle ground, a place in between cultures and peoples, and in between empires and non-state villages. On the middle ground people try to persuade others who are different than themselves by appealing to what they perceive to be the values and practices of those others. From the creative misunderstandings that result, there arise shared meanings and new practices.

The Republic for Which It Stands

from SAK:

Thanks Mr Bernard, Ms Cox Richardson is a fount of knowledge – historical & political!

I am sure you have come across that French expression: “PLUS ÇA CHANGE” in the original they used to add “PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE” but now it’s understood. The more it changes the more it’s the same!

Well what happened in that corrupt & gilded age, the age of the robber barons is different & yet the same nowadays. Different in that the robbers are now actually in power & not other corrupt business men – it’s usually men. So the robber barons can actually harness the power of the executive & legislative – & sadly even the judiciary! – to their own ends & those of their family, friends & cronies.

Another difference, although gold is still in favour, is that instead of a gold rush, it’s a tech rush these days & them there data centers are full of golden AI. Still it might end just as badly of not worse . . .

I can imagine than in a short while the corrupt & powerful will fall & the AI diggers will compete all the way to the bottom, unfortunately I think they might drag much of the economy with them.

I can still remember Humphrey Bogart’s facial expressions in the film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – John Houston’s insistence on authenticity also drove Bogart mad!

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

I quote:

‘”Treasure” is about a trio of men (Humphrey Bogart, Tim Holt, and Walter Huston, the director’s father) who trek into a forbidding, hot wilderness to look for gold. As soon as gold is struck, each of the three men begins to eyeball each other suspiciously, instantly paranoid of being double-crossed. There will be multiple opportunities for each of the men to dispose of another and take a larger share of gold. It’s a tale of the corrupting power of greed, and the monstrousness lurking within all of us.’

Laws are supposed to help control these monsters within, & government is supposed to apply & strengthen these laws – not deregulate & unleash the monsters.

response from Dick: Above the picture, is a sentence that begins “I can imagine…” I have often had in mind a strange coalition comprised of the greediest rich and the most beleaguered peasants. The rich convince the poor who they should despise, and that they should respect the rich who are better than they.

In my mind, I envision a scenario when the rich achieve their perfect world, where the poor spend all their pennies, and give all their allegiance to the rich. Of course, the end of this road is pretty dismal. The ones who have least end up having nothing, which is not to the advantage of the filthy rich, who no longer have anything to plunder from the peasants, and all they have left are their colleagues, similarly dismal souls who, like the guys in the picture, suddenly have it all, but actually have nothing.

Just a thought….

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