Farming or Mining

Surely we tillers of the earth got more wealth out of it than did those who searched among the hills, or in the beds of the streams. There was a steady sale for everything we raised, owing to the hundreds upon hundreds of miners who came through our settlement, and we saw the time before snow came when we were enabled to sell all the corn we had raised for fifteen cents a pound, while potatoes could be disposed of readily at from forty to fifty cents a pound.

Talk about digging for gold! We who had founded Fountain City were digging it out of the earth by the basketful! Even the lucky ones

who made what was called a strike were not averaging for their day's labor half so much as we who depended on the honest labor of our hands.