Shelley... MOTHER LODE…The Story of California’s Gold Rush by Louis J. Stellman written 1934. Sixteen to One "One may understand the California Gold Rush better when one realizes that it made gold free in apparently unlimited quantities and practically without restrictios to all the world's peoples. For thousands of years gold mines had been slave camps, conscript hells where men worked under the lash day and night, until death relieved them of their sufferings. Brazilian rulers discovered that it was cheaper to have the mines worked by men who fed themselves, needed no supervision, and paid heavy taxes than by the serf who had previously performed these labors. And it is interesting to note that Brazil in 1688 established the ration of 16 to 1 between silver and gold for which William Jennings Bryan worked a lifetime unsuccessfully. Also that Brazil, then a Portuguese colony, demonetized silver and established a gold standard which England was to copy and which was to influence the monetary destinies of the world." Jackie in California [email protected]