Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets

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Title: The Life of Herbert Hoover, the Engineer - Chapter 4: A California Apprenticeship (PH 6-12)(1983) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Pamphlets Catalog #: PH 6-12 Author: George H. Nash Published: 1983 # of Pages: 5 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

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Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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rte ee Ci California Apprenticeship 45 North Star, Empire, and other famous mines—was particularly rich.?! It was a logical place for a young geologist seeking experience (and cash) to hunt for a job.? For a short time Hoover stayed at Nevada City’s National Hotel.?3 At first he sought a white-collar staff position commensurate with his college education.?4 His efforts failed, and Hoover learned, as he later put it, “the bitter despair that comes to men from ceaseless hunting for a job only to be turned away time after time.”?5 Too many men, too few jobs.?® Moreover, the practical mining men of the Grass Valley district were skeptical about the value of a person with a college diploma.?7 He would have to lower his sights. Finally opportunity smiled wanly through the shadows. Hoover obtained a job pushing an ore car on the night shift in the lower levels of the Reward mine in Grass Valley.?8 After his experienced mate loaded a cart, Hoover shoved it along the damp, dark tunnel to the vertical mine shaft, there to be lifted to the surface. It was grimy, monotonous labor: ten hours a night, seven days a week, for a daily wage of two dollars, he later recollected.2? A man could not start any lower on the ladder. After a few weeks, Hoover obtained employment at another well-known mine, the Mayflower, in the Nevada City district.3° Nevada County in those days was a center for immigrants from the mining county of Cornwall, England.3! Among these “Cousin Jacks,” as they were called, Hoover mingled and worked, and from them he learned the rudiments of mining. Cornish “hard-rock men” like Ed Gassaway (his partner at the Reward) and Tommy Ninnis (his shift foreman at the Mayflower) taught him the differSeen gad” and a “moil,” the use of a drill, and such useful tricks as “how to warm up the bottom of an iron wheel barrow with three stub candles so that it would be more comfortable sleeping during midnight lunch hour.”3? Ninnis later declared that he “learned Bert Hoover everything he knew about mining.” ; Perhaps it was during his sojourn in Nevada County that Hoover heard the tale of a merchant in the village of Michigan Bluffs who gave away an expensive stock of provisions to an injured prospector living alone in a shack in the hills. The incident had occurred during the Gold Rush days of the early 1850s; Hoover made it the subject of a short story that appeared in a Stanford University magazine in January 1896. This literary effort was his first publication; he entitled it “And their Deeds are Remembered After Them.” The philanthropic storekeeper, Hoover revealed, was Leland Stanford.34 Hoover worked in the Grass Valley district for about two months, rooming with his Stanford classmate Kimball in a home on Pioneer Hill in Nevada City.35 From here he tramped regularly through the mud to the mines.*° Around Christmas 1895, or perhaps a little later, Hoover began to grow restless. In his Afemoirs he later recorded that he had saved some money and that the holiday season seemed like a good time to move on.37 Elsewhere he wrote that he had worked in the mines for the experience and that by Feb-