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Authors: Peter Fitzsimons
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a scratching of the brows of the two German intellectuals who had penned The Communist Manifesto : Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Their views of the economic world had simply not encompassed this.
As Engels put it in a letter to Marx, the discovery of gold was a case ‘not provided for in the Manifesto : creation of large new markets out of nothing’.
This would require some more analysis. Who knew what effect such a discovery would have on the war between the economic classes? One thing was certain: the world was indeed turning upside down now that the working class was suddenly becoming rich, and many a rich man who had previously become wealthy on the back of that working-class labour now denied him was going broke!
And all of it at a time when the oppressed classes across the world were getting themselves organised to demand the rights so long denied them. Who knew just what changes these two powerful forces – arising at the same time in history and both attacking the established order – would work on the world, even in its most remote parts?
CHAPTER ONE
FROM GOLDEN FLEECE TO GOLD ITSELF . . .
Potent as was the wonderful lamp of Aladdin, and magnificent as were its successes, the power of gold has equalled in its marvellous effects all that the warm orient fancy has pictured for us in the Arabian Nights. Gold has done even more than ever mere magician achieved. It certainly has operated magically in Australia, and in no part of the country has it created greater marvels than in Ballarat . . .
W. B. Withers in History of Ballarat
Gold rush!
In Australia, the good tidings of what is happening in California breaks on 23 December 1848, when, under the banner headline NEW GOLD MINE, The Sydney Morning Herald announces:
We have received, per Euphemia, dates from California to the 20th of June . . . The only item of interest is the news from the gold diggers – other matters receive no attention. The whole country is in a state of turmoil, and everybody is flying to the gold region to reap a fortune. All the seaport towns are deserted. Out of a population of nearly one thousand, San Francisco only contains about fifty or sixty souls, and these would leave were it possible. The news of the gold discoveries has spread with lightning speed, and the minister, merchant, artisan, mechanic, farmer, labourer, and loafer, have all gone to seek their fortune. Farms and crops are deserted, and all branches of business are at a stand . . .
It is fascinating news, with one particular complication: where exactly is California? Most Australians have never heard of it. Quickly enough, consultation with the atlas reveals it is a region on the west coast of the United States of America, on the other side of the Pacific from the east coast of Australia. This is a tad problematic as no regular shipping lines run between the two coasts, but such is the clamour to cross over that within a bare few months there is many a ship seen splitting the heads of Sydney’s Port Jackson and sailing into the swell directly north-east, laden with thousands of men eager to try their luck on these new diggings.
As a matter of fact, in time there are so many men leaving, even whole families, that it threatens the very stability of the colony. For without all those men, who will run the farms, the foundries and factories, the stores and silos, not to mention repair the roads and shepherd the sheep? Who will do the work necessary to make the colony grow and become strong in this oft-hostile continent? With just 200,000 people in the entire country, it simply cannot sustain the continued leaching of able-bodied men to foreign goldfields. There seems to be only one answer: Australia must find its own gold.
In the meantime, they would just have to put up with the heavy exodus of men.
11 November 1850, Melbourne, news is received at ‘The Chalet’
If there is a little bit of Europe in Melbourne at this time, it
As Engels put it in a letter to Marx, the discovery of gold was a case ‘not provided for in the Manifesto : creation of large new markets out of nothing’.
This would require some more analysis. Who knew what effect such a discovery would have on the war between the economic classes? One thing was certain: the world was indeed turning upside down now that the working class was suddenly becoming rich, and many a rich man who had previously become wealthy on the back of that working-class labour now denied him was going broke!
And all of it at a time when the oppressed classes across the world were getting themselves organised to demand the rights so long denied them. Who knew just what changes these two powerful forces – arising at the same time in history and both attacking the established order – would work on the world, even in its most remote parts?
CHAPTER ONE
FROM GOLDEN FLEECE TO GOLD ITSELF . . .
Potent as was the wonderful lamp of Aladdin, and magnificent as were its successes, the power of gold has equalled in its marvellous effects all that the warm orient fancy has pictured for us in the Arabian Nights. Gold has done even more than ever mere magician achieved. It certainly has operated magically in Australia, and in no part of the country has it created greater marvels than in Ballarat . . .
W. B. Withers in History of Ballarat
Gold rush!
In Australia, the good tidings of what is happening in California breaks on 23 December 1848, when, under the banner headline NEW GOLD MINE, The Sydney Morning Herald announces:
We have received, per Euphemia, dates from California to the 20th of June . . . The only item of interest is the news from the gold diggers – other matters receive no attention. The whole country is in a state of turmoil, and everybody is flying to the gold region to reap a fortune. All the seaport towns are deserted. Out of a population of nearly one thousand, San Francisco only contains about fifty or sixty souls, and these would leave were it possible. The news of the gold discoveries has spread with lightning speed, and the minister, merchant, artisan, mechanic, farmer, labourer, and loafer, have all gone to seek their fortune. Farms and crops are deserted, and all branches of business are at a stand . . .
It is fascinating news, with one particular complication: where exactly is California? Most Australians have never heard of it. Quickly enough, consultation with the atlas reveals it is a region on the west coast of the United States of America, on the other side of the Pacific from the east coast of Australia. This is a tad problematic as no regular shipping lines run between the two coasts, but such is the clamour to cross over that within a bare few months there is many a ship seen splitting the heads of Sydney’s Port Jackson and sailing into the swell directly north-east, laden with thousands of men eager to try their luck on these new diggings.
As a matter of fact, in time there are so many men leaving, even whole families, that it threatens the very stability of the colony. For without all those men, who will run the farms, the foundries and factories, the stores and silos, not to mention repair the roads and shepherd the sheep? Who will do the work necessary to make the colony grow and become strong in this oft-hostile continent? With just 200,000 people in the entire country, it simply cannot sustain the continued leaching of able-bodied men to foreign goldfields. There seems to be only one answer: Australia must find its own gold.
In the meantime, they would just have to put up with the heavy exodus of men.
11 November 1850, Melbourne, news is received at ‘The Chalet’
If there is a little bit of Europe in Melbourne at this time, it
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