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280 A few inconsolables haunted the bars—on draught beer—bewailing their fate; a few optimists continued in the real estate business and posted long lists of property with the caption Soft Snaps. But everybody else got to work.

And the commentary on the actual resources of the country is that it successfully absorbed the evils of this feverish time. All the elements were laid for a twenty-year set-back; but as a matter of fact even the ensuing hard times were short, and only moderately hard. The banks had kept their sanity. Not one failed. And one thing was indubitable: the population of the country had been greatly increased. Just as the gold discoveries of 'Forty-nine, disappointing in their promise of universal fortune, nevertheless were a bait that attracted to California its first flood of immigrants; so this boom, insubstantial in itself, did lure to the country tens of thousands who otherwise would not have come, and busted them, and made it necessary that they get to work. And California rewards work lavishly.