Yellow Fever

Seventeen men sat in a big room arguing. In their hands lay the conduct of all the people living in an area equal to the British Isles and almost as large as Italy. Nine of the 17 voted one way, then one switched, and the vote stood reversed. Then one vote switched again and again the say-so of nine individuals laid a prohibition upon a whole population.

But this was no quarrelsome oligarchy in session. It was simply the distinguished Senate of the State of Nevada, representing 77,-407 people at Carson City. The majority of nine that finally prevailed, defeated a bill, passed by the Assembly, to rip the state wide open again for gamblers able to pay license fees of $1,000 per table. The same assembly and senate were caught napping--or so they said--in the small hours before adjournment, by a slick lobby of lawyers and hotelmen, who got a committee to change "six months" to "three months" in that phrase of the Nevada divorce statute which prescribes how long divorce-hunters must reside in Nevada. Irate legislators who snored through the reading of the new bill, which both houses passed within ten minutes, swore they thought they were only voting to add insanity to the grounds for a Reno divorce.

The snoozing legislators had doubtless been dreaming about what all the West and Southwest has eaten, drunk and slept the past fortnight--GOLD. The rush and scrabble for some of the $78,000 lode struck lately at Weepah, down near the slanting California lino (TIME, March 21), continued last week to swell and assume bright color. Blizzards and gales that swept Weepah tenters down the canon, did not cool the yellow metal fever. Nearby Tonopah, base camp for the skirmishers, buzzed with brokers, show girls, sour-doughs, eager tourists. Buying and selling of mine shares was fast and furious, all in cash. Claims changed hands. The biggest price: $50,000.

The gold mania spread north to Walla Walla, Wash. A butcher found six nuggets in two chickens' crops. . . . It spread south to Arizona. Miners at Dripping Springs started a rush by declaring they had found lode worth $100,000 per ton. (Oldtimers scented a stock-selling game.) It spread west to California.

A gust of wind blew out the storm doors and plate glass front of the Goldfield Hotel at Tonopah. Nobody cared. There was a fresh "strike" at Barrel Springs, five miles from Weepah. The rushers swerved thence, eddied back, chattered, milled around, boasted, dreamed. . . .