1859 - Commerce

Commerce

New regulations issued by the Austro-Hungarian regime establish full freedom of trade for Vienna, whose inner ramparts were torn down 2 years ago. The city's drinking-water supply has been improved by tapping springs, shipping on the Danube has been regulated, and the city's economy will grow in the next few years, as will its population.

French schoolteacher Julie Daubié, 35, wins first prize in a contest given by the Académie Impérial and the Lyons Chamber of Commerce on how to improve women's salaries. Daubié's winning paper, "The Impoverished Woman by an Impoverished One," examines the reasons for women's inability to support themselves, explores every field of work open to women, shows the inequality of salaries paid to men and women doing the same work, discusses the apprenticeships available only to young men, and denounces with acerbic wit the exploitive practices, injustices, and lack of humanity that she has found among employers. The paper will not be published until 1866.

The Society for Promoting Employment of Women is founded by Jessie Boucherett and Adelaide Proctor to expand opportunities for British women in areas from bookkeeping to shoemaking.

Last year's gold strike in the Colorado Rockies of Kansas Territory brings 100,000 prospectors determined to reach "Pike's Peak or bust."

The Comstock Lode discovered June 11 on Mt. Davidson in Washoe, Nevada, is a vast deposit of silver and gold that will yield $145 million worth of ore in the next 11 years. Prospectors Peter O'Reilly and Patrick McLaughlin have found pay dirt on property claimed by Canadian-born prospector Henry (Tompkins Paige) Comstock, 39, who has been in the area for 3 years, but a sticky blue mud impedes mining operations until it is assayed and turns out to be three-fourths silver, one-fourth gold, and worth $4,700 per ton of ore (see 1872). Comstock sells his claim for almost nothing, but others make fortunes, including Missouri-born prospector George Hearst, 39, who has had little luck in California. He pays $450 for a half-interest in a mine believed by its owner, Alvah Gould, to be worthless and a few hundred dollars more for a one-sixth interest in the Ophir mine, which will prove to be the richest in the Comstock Lode, and in the Gould and Curry mine, which will be the second richest. George Hearst becomes a millionaire overnight, joins with a partner to buy the Ontario mine in Utah Territory and will go on to acquire other partners and other mining properties, including the Homestake mine in Dakota Territory, the Anaconda copper mine in Montana Territory, and additional properties in Chile, Peru, and Mexico (see communications [William Randolph Hearst], 1887).

Prussian-born mining engineer Adolph (Heinrich Joseph) Sutro, 29, sets up a small mill at East Dayton, Nevada, for reducing ores by an improved process of amalgamation. But the 110° F. temperatures of the Comstock Lode's 1,500-foot-deep shafts make it hard for miners to work, many die from the heat and foul air, and Sutro sees the need for a tunnel that would permit fresh air to be pumped into the mines and water to be drained from them. Sutro arrived at San Francisco from New York in November 1851 aboard the S.S. California and has engaged in small trade; he will propose his tunnel in April of next year, scoffers will dismiss the idea as unfeasible, but Sutro will find financial backing and persevere (see Sutro Tunnel 1878).

Boston lawyer Rufus Choate dies at Halifax, Nova Scotia, July 13 at age 59 while en route to Europe.

Equitable Life Assurance Society is founded at New York by Catskill, New York-born entrepreneur Henry B. (Baldwin) Hyde, 25, who hangs a 30-foot sign across the front of a building where he has rented a one-room office with borrowed desks and chairs. Formerly a cashier for Mutual Life Insurance, Hyde has been sacked for proposing the establishment of a company that will insure lives for more than $10,000, and 2 days later he has rented space above his former employer's offices, whose sign is completely dwarfed by the new Equitable sign. By January of next year Hyde will have raised the $100,000 deposit required by the state comptroller for life insurance companies; by the end of next year he will have 229 agents, all of whom he has personally selected and trained (see 1862).

R. G. Dun Company is founded at New York by Robert Graham Dun, 33, who purchases the financial rating service B. Douglass and Company (see 1854) and begins publishing the Mercantile Agency's Reference Book (see Bradstreet, 1855; Dun and Bradstreet, 1933).