ic skills which was a very smart thing to do. Because men didn’t want to cook. And there were all those men with dirty shirts and hungry bellies waiting for somebody to come and take care of them.”Part of the reason they could charge so much for their talents was the fact that women were rare in the early Gold Rush days.JoAnn Levy, author “They Saw the Elephant” “A fellow who got married charged $5.00 for people to come to his wedding so they could see his bride. And one woman said that men came from miles around just to see her because women were a rarity very early on in the camp. And she said even in her best days she had never been considered handsome. So people were riding up just to take a look at her.” J.S. Holliday, author of “The World Rushed In”: “Every time anybody saw a woman, they wrote it down. So you might think there are a lot of women. Well there weren’t a lot of women. The reason they are all mentioned is because 600 guys saw one woman and 600 guys talked about seeing a woman.” JoAnn Levy, author “They Saw the Elephant” “I’m always a little taken aback by the idea of dismissing women in the Gold Rush because there weren’t very many of them. When you take anything else that is rare, you give it value.” Women weren’t the only ones to realize the entrepreneurial opportunities of California. People from all walks of life quickly understood that there was just as much money to be made serving the miners as there was digging for gold. A steamboat operator could earn 40,000 dollars in a single month—a chicken farmer could sell each precious egg for fifty cents.King of the wheeling, dealing entrepenuers was Sam Brannan. The man who pulled the trigger on the Gold Rush was expanding his sphere of influence—and earning unheard of profits. While miners talked of gold, Brannan shrewdly bought up carpet tacksR...
