Passengers at the Port of San Francisco: 1800s
RMSS Zealandia
Arrive San Francisco
April 20, 1881
RMSS Zealandia
Captain H. Chevalier
From Sydney, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand via Honolulu
April 21, 1881, Sacramento Daily Union, Sacramento, California, U.S.A.
Australasia
The Zealandia, Captain Chevalier, arrived at San Francisco yesterday from Sydney and Auckland, via Honolulu. The news from the colonies is unimportant:
Henry Taylor, lately in the employ of the South Australian Government, and now on his way from England by the Orient, has submitted to the Agent-General a scheme for making Australian resources better known in Great Britain and thus enabling Australia to competes in emigrants with America. He proposes to collect exhibit of produce of the colonies such as wheat, flour, meats, wines and have them on view successively at at the principal towns in the counties, under the charge of a practical man, ready to give nation about the colonies. He estimates the cost, which is to be borne jointly by the colonies, at 1,150 yearly.
The scarcity of water in the norih is causing great inconvenience.
A telegram has been received at Adelaide stating that the India, for Port Pirie, has been wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope. All hands were saved, but the cargo will be a total loss. The vessel was chartered by the Government to bring out railway iron . . .
April 22, 1881, Los Angeles Herald, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
San Francisco, April 21. The steamer Zealandia, which arrived here yesterday, has four boxes of gold bars valued at $98,750, the first consignment from Australia tbat has been received in San Francisco. This Invoice comes to the camptoir dv Compte de Paris. The gold received by the steamer bas been sent to the San Francisco mint for coinage into double eagles. The anomaly of shipping coals to Newcastle is having a repetition in one gold producing section of tbe world shipping its products to another gold producing section.
May 9, 1881, Daily Alta California: The Bank of California shipped $23,000 in United States Gold Coin to Honolulu on Saturday by the steamer Zealandia.
Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America
Jonathan Levy
Until the early nineteenth century, "risk" was a specialized term: it was the commodity exchanged in a marine insurance contract. Freaks of Fortune tells the story of how the modern concept of risk emerged in the United States.
Born on the high seas, risk migrated inland and became essential to the financial management of an inherently uncertain capitalist future. Focusing on the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, Jonathan Levy shows how risk developed through the extraordinary growth of new financial institutions-insurance corporations, savings banks, mortgage-backed securities markets, commodities futures markets, and securities markets-while posing inescapable moral questions. For at the heart of risk's rise was a new vision of freedom. To be a free individual, whether an emancipated slave, a plains farmer, or a Wall Street financier, was to take, assume, and manage one's own personal risk. Yet this often meant offloading that same risk onto a series of new financial institutions, which together have only recently acquired the name "financial services industry." Levy traces the fate of a new vision of personal freedom, as it unfolded in the new economic reality created by the American financial system.
Imperial San Francisco:
Urban Power, Earthly Ruin
(California Studies in Critical Human Geography)
Gray Brechin
First published in 1999, this celebrated history of San Francisco traces the exploitation of both local and distant regions by prominent families—the Hearsts, de Youngs, Spreckelses, and others—who gained power through mining, ranching, water and energy, transportation, real estate, weapons, and the mass media. The story uncovered by Gray Brechin is one of greed and ambition on an epic scale. Brechin arrives at a new way of understanding urban history as he traces the connections between environment, economy, and technology and discovers links that led, ultimately, to the creation of the atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race.
Millionaires and Kings of Enterprise
The Marvellous Careers of Some Americans Whose Pluck, Foresight, and Energy Have Made Themselves Masters in the Fields of Industry and Finance
James Burnley
All About America: Gold Rush and Riches
Paul Robert Walker
Meticulously researched, with specially-commissioned illustration, detailed reconstructions and original artwork from each period, reading lists, and resources for further study, this series is an immersive introduction to the history that shaped America. In 1848, carpenter James Marshall made a chance discovery: a few shiny flakes-of gold in a riverbed he was digging. Within a year 800,000 gold-seekers from all over the world were on their way to California, and the Gold Rush was on.
The Big Spenders
The Epic Story of the Rich Rich, the Grandees of America and the Magnificoes, and How They Spent Their Fortunes
Lucius Beebe
The Big Spenders was Lucius Beebe's last and many think his best book. In it he describes the consumption of the Gilded Age. Beebe enjoys it all immensely, and so do his readers, whether it is James Gordon Bennett buying a Monte Carlo restaurant because he was refused a seat by the window, or Spencer Penrose leaving a bedside memo reminding himself not to spend more than $1 million the next day.
The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
Charles R. Morris
Acclaimed author Charles R. Morris vividly brings the men and their times to life. The ruthlessly competitive Carnegie, the imperial Rockefeller, and the provocateur Gould were obsessed with progress, experiment, and speed. They were balanced by Morgan, the gentleman businessman, who fought, instead, for a global trust in American business. Through their antagonism and their verve, they built an industrial behemoth — and a country of middle-class consumers. The Tycoons tells the story of how these four determined men wrenched the economy into the modern age, inventing a nation of full economic participation not imagined a few decades earlier.