Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/240

966 it may be later now, for they have shoved it on up several times since I have noticed. The society does some good. When a man gets sick and caves in it raises money to send him out. Now and then it gives a ball, and there are plans on foot to have more pleasure of that sort next winter and after that. But we need a hotel or some other big building before much of that can be done.

In fact, we need a great many things besides gold. We have no coin. Gold dust and nuggets pass current by weight at about fifteen dollars and fifty cents to the ounce. It is pretty rough reckoning, as, for instance, when a man brings in a nugget mixed with quartz. Then we take it altogether, gravel and gold, for pure gold, and make it up on the goods. Carpenters, blacksmiths—all the trades—are wanted, and men who can work at them can make much more than the average miner. They can't make what a lucky miner can, but if they are enterprising they can make a good stake. Wages are fifteen dollars a day, and a man who works for himself can earn much more than that. I have gone into the logging business with a mill at Dawson. The spruce trees are thirty inches through, and, after rafting them down from Ogilvie and Forty Mile, you get $130 a thousand foot for them sawed into boards. Then there is butchering for the man who