Gold Mining and the Lessons of Failure
by Andrew Meblin copyright January 30, 2024
As a social science teacher in a California public high school, I engaged my students in activities that demonstrated the superiority of monetary incentives as inducement to action. And it opened the door to learn lessons about hard work, failure, and innovation.
Picture of cute puppy inserted for click-bait
Since the California Gold Rush was the subject of Cultural Geography Unit 9.4 an ersatz activity of ‘gold mining’ seemed to be perfect. First I had the shop teacher and her students fabricate a hybrid device for mining gold, specifically, separating gold from other stones and soil. In the true spirit of the 49ers (not the football team, the folks who came to California for the gold, in 1849) Ms. O’s woodshop class produced a 12’ long wooden trough, on curved feet of diminishing height, and a screen over an opening at the low end of the trough. Along the bottom of the trough were placed six or seven strips of wooden trim that stretched across the width, from wall to wall.
Secondly, I visited a friend who had the equipment to melt lead and cast bullets. I imposed on him to cast not beautifully formed bullets, but misshapen hunks of lead, in a variety of weights, in random shapes, with rough surfaces. Despite the significant difference in weight of lead and gold, the heftiness of the lead combined with the fact that there was no way in hell I was capable of obtaining actual gold nuggets for this simulation. No! So Hercules and I applied numerous coats of gold paint to the ‘nuggets’ we had made.
From the South Yuba River I obtained five large buckets of sand, gravel, and rocks, and brought those to school. Having a pick-up truck was helpful. Prior to beginning the activity, I had hidden five or six faux-gold nuggets in each bucket. A garden hose and a location out doors that was close to a drain were all we needed. Students used conveniently placed handles and hauled the rocker box/long Tom through the hallways, to our location out in front of the school. Five students lugged the five-gallon buckets to where we had set up, complaining bitterly, just like the 49ers, I imagine.
The process involved the introduction of a shovel full of gravel and soil into the tall end of the box, which was then assaulted with a flow of water from the hose. The diminishing depth of the curved bases gave the box a slope. With the water pressure and the slope, gravel and sand flowed toward the screen at the end of the box, slowing down a bit to go over the strips of wooden trim on the bottom. Gold would naturally settle out of the water as the force carrying the gravels lessened at each ‘riffle.’
As the first shovelful was deposited under the water flow, the students gathered on either side and at the ends to watch the process. Some were naturally interested, others too polite to poo-poo my project, and yet there were a few who grumbled and complained and wandered if allowed to.
Once the participants began to see golden colored hunks, the rush was on. Students grabbed for the nuggets, and the malcontents morphed into the most manic of the miners. Kids were grabbing, pushing, arguing, and conniving in attempts to obtain gold.
Then I had to reveal that the gold wasn’t. While the let down lay heavily once it was revealed that those were really not half-ounces of gold, the students all acknowledged the change in emotion and action once they briefly believed there was gold in the gravel through which they sorted. Once the remote possibility of becoming wealthy came a bit closer, they all worked harder to achieve said wealth.
After the simulation was over, the bad news absorbed, and the site cleaned up a bit, we returned to class. There I explained to them how the lure of getting rich brought out the worst and best in humans, and it drew entrepreneurs and thieves, and the influx of money and people to the region raised prices and made basic necessities scarce, and contributed to the demise of California’s indigenous people, that had begun when Spanish missionaries first arrived sixty years earlier.
But most of all, I told my students, the vast majority of gold miners failed to accumulate a fortune in gold. Many men returned home with this failure hanging over their heads, and then returned to their previous line of work, or struck out on a new venture. The fact that so many had failed and then thrived again reduced the onus of failure on Americans not even a hundred years since the country’s founding. This acceptance of failure is what led to thousands of other business schemes, inventions, and methods of production that in most cases helped make life better for Americans and citizens of the world.
Many American innovators participated in the Gold Rush, some unsuccessfully, but seeing other ways to gain wealth by providing services, they did so, creating numerous American businesses in the wake. If you dare walk down the streets of The City today, write down the names of all the streets, and then go home and google the people after whom the streets are named. Sure there are a few bastards in there, but some beneficent people as well.
It hasn’t been ALL good, but most of it has. So as the San Francisco 49ers play in the Superbowl in Las Vegas, think about the origin of the name, and the resulting change in attitude about failure, and think about how far the country has come since 1848*.
While not a Golden Retriever, Holly was good at retrieving, if it was a tennis ball. No, there is not a lot of gold in this the Little Truckee River.
*Gold was discovered in 1848. Word just didn’t get out until later. Sadly, most of the easy gold was already collected by then. Ya snooze, ya lose, bro!