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Gold Mining in 19th Century

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers to an area that has
had a dramatic discovery of gold deposits. Major gold rushes took place in
the 19th century in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and
the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were several major gold rushes.
The permanent wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of
reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself
was unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large
fortunes, and the merchants and transportation facilities made large profits.
The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and
investment. Historians have written extensively about the migration, trade,
colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes.[1]
Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for
all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become
abundantly wealthy almost instantly, as expressed in the California Dream.
Gold rushes helped spur a huge immigration that often led to permanent
settlement of new regions and define a significant part of the culture of the
Australian and North American frontiers. As well, at a time when the world's
money supply was based on gold, the newly mined gold provided economic
stimulus far beyond the gold fields.
Gold rushes presumably extend back as far as gold mining, to the Roman
Empire, whose gold mining was described by Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the
Elder, and probably further back to Ancient Egypt.

Gold rushes by region[edit]
Australia[edit]

Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over the second half of the 19th
century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were the
New South Wales gold rush and Victorian gold rush in 1851,[2] and the
Western Australian gold rushes of the 1890s. They were highly significant to
their respective colonies' political and economic development as they brought
a large number of immigrants, and promoted massive government spending
on infrastructure to support the new arrivals who came looking for gold. While
some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies
and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming.
Gold rushes happened at or around:

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Ballarat, Victoria
Bathurst, New South Wales
Beechworth, Victoria
Bendigo, Victoria
Canoona, Queensland
Charters Towers, Queensland
Coolgardie, Western Australia
Gympie, Queensland
Halls Creek, Western Australia
Hill End, New South Wales
Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
Queenstown, Tasmania
New Zealand[edit]
In New Zealand the Central Otago Gold Rush from 1861 attracted
prospectors from the California Gold Rush and the Victorian Gold Rush, and
many moved on to the West Coast Gold Rush from 1864.
North America[edit]

The first significant gold rush in the United States was in Cabarrus County,
North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today's Reed's Gold Mine.[3]
Thirty years later, in 1829, the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern
Appalachians occurred. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848
55 in the Sierra Nevada, which captured the popular imagination. The
California gold rush led directly to the settlement of California by Americans
and the rapid entry of that state into the union in 1850. The gold rush in 1849
stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, and led to new rushes in
Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Successive gold rushes
occurred in western North America, moving north and east from California:
Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, and
the Rocky Mountains. Resurrection Creek, near Hope, Alaska was the site of
Alaska's first gold rush more than a century ago, and placer mining continues
today.[4] Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome and the Fortymile
River.

Klondike[edit]


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One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's
Yukon Territory (189699). This gold rush immortalized in the novels of Jack
London, and Charlie Chaplin's film The Gold Rush. Robert William Service
depicted with talent in his poetries the dramatic event of the Gold Rush,
especially in the book The Trail of '98.[5] The main goldfield was along the
south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon River
near what was to become Dawson City in Canada's Yukon Territory but it
also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to
exploration and settlement and promoted the discovery of other gold finds.
South Africa[edit]
In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was important
to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and
tensions between the Boers and British settlers.
South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total
world output in 1896. At the time of the South African rush, gold production
benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the
MacArthur-Forrest process, of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from
low-grade ore.[6]
South America[edit]

Between 1883 and 1906 Tierra del Fuego experienced a gold rush attracting
a large number of Chileans, Argentines and Europeans to the archipelago.
The gold rush begun in 1884 following discovery of gold during the rescue of
the French steamship Arctique near Cape Virgenes.[7]

The mineowners' association, the South African Chamber of Mines,
was formed in 1889 to represent the industry in dealings with the
government. In the 1990s, the Chamber of Mines includes six major
mining finance houses, with thirty-six gold mines, twenty-two coal
mines, and sixteen diamond, platinum, antimony, asbestos,
manganese, lead, and copper mines. Together they account for 85
percent of South Africa's mineral output. The Chamber of Mines
negotiates labor concerns on behalf of mineowners, administers
training programs for mineworkers, trains mineworkers in rescue
and safety procedures, oversees pension and benefit funds,
coordinates research programs, and refines and processes some
minerals before sale.

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Diamond Mining in 19th Cenury
"Diamond" comes from the Greek "adamao": "I tame" or "I
subdue." The adjective "adamas" was used to describe the
hardest substance known, and eventually became synonymous
with diamond.

Knowledge of diamond starts in India, where it was first mined.
The word most generally used for diamond in Sanskrit is
transliterated as "vajra," "thunderbolt," and "indrayudha,"
"Indra's weapon." Because Indra is the warrior god from Vedic
scriptures, the foundation of Hinduism, the thunderbolt symbol
indicates much about the Indian conception of diamond.

Two events near the end of the 19th century helped change the role
of diamonds for the next century. First, the discovery in the 1870s of
diamond deposits of unprecedented richness in South Africa
changed diamond from a rare gem to one potentially available to
anyone who could afford it. Second, the French crown jewels, sold
in 1887, were consumed by newly wealthy capitalists, particularly in
the United States, where a taste and capacity for opulent
consumption was burgeoning.

Seen under the blaze of gas and electric lighting, diamond's
brilliance showed to greater advantage than colored stones, and so
designs incorporated them in far greater numbers than at any time
in history.

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Before the 1870s diamonds were still rare, and associated with the
aristocracy. In 1871, however, world annual production, derived
primarily from South Africa, exceeded 1 million carats for the first
time. From then on, diamonds would be produced at a prodigious
rate.

Simultaneously, the fall of Napoleon III in 1871 left the Third
Republic of France with a problematic symbol of monarchy: the
crown jewels, largely reset by Empress Eugenie in the style of the
great Louis kings. It was decided to auction the bulk, retaining a few
key objects for the State.

With French buyers such as Boucheron and Bapst in attendance,
Tiffany & Co. of New York bought the major share; 22 lots for
$480,000, a sum greater than the combined purchases of the 9
next-largest buyers.


Modern diamond mining as we know it today began in South Africa
in the late 19th century.
South Africa's diamond mining industry dates back to 1867, when
diamonds were discovered near Kimberley, now in the Northern
Cape. The Kimberley diamond fields, and later discoveries in
Gauteng, the Free State, and along the Atlantic coast, emerged as
major sources of gem-quality diamonds, securing South Africa's
position as the world's leading producer in the mid-twentieth
century. (Rough diamonds were produced in larger quantities in
Australia, Zaire, Botswana, and Russia.) Through 1991 most of
South Africa's diamonds were mined at only five locations, but a

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sixth mine, Venetia--in the Northern Cape--opened in 1992 and was
expected to become a major diamond producer later in the decade.
The De Beers Consolidated Mines Company, founded by Cecil
Rhodes, controlled most diamond mining in South Africa and
influenced international trade through a diamond-producers'
alliance, or cartel--the Central Selling Organisation. The cartel
enabled diamond producers to control the number of gems put on
the market and thereby to maintain high prices for gem-quality
diamonds. The cartel was able to react to marketing efforts outside
its control by temporarily flooding the market, and thereby driving
down the price paid for an outsider's product.

Lives of miners
South Africa's economy -- Africa's largest, was built on the back of cheap
black labour, workers who were harnessed to extract the country's deep
reserves of gold, platinum and diamonds.

During the apartheid era, minority white rulers forced black South Africans to
live in areas far removed from white cities without job opportunities, forcing
them to become migrant workers on the mines living in tough conditions.

Even today, many mine workers live in difficult conditions.