1897 - Commerce

Commerce

News of last year's Klondike gold discoveries reaches the United States in January and starts a new gold rush. The ship Excelsior arrives at San Francisco in July with $750,000 in Klondike gold, the Portland arrives at Seattle 3 days later with $800,000 in gold, and by year's end the Klondike field has yielded $22 million worth of gold.

World gold production reaches nearly 11.5 million ounces, up from 5 to 6 million per year between 1860 and 1890 but still little more than half the 22 million that it will reach by 1910.

Russian finance minister Sergei Yulievich Witte, 48, introduces the gold standard.

Japan adopts the gold standard March 29.

South African mining magnate Barney Barnato jumps overboard from a ship bound for England June 14 and drowns at age 45 (see 1889). He engineered a boom in mining stocks 2 years ago but has lost his mind; his Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Ltd. (JCI) will continue for 100 years.

Estate manager Charles Cunningham Boycott dies at Flixton, Suffolk, June 19 at age 65, having contributed his name to the language.

Grand Rapids, Mich.-born Chicago machine operator Agnes Nestor, 16, leads a strike at the Eisendrath Glove factory whose management accedes to the workers' demands after seeing production halted through 10 days of picketing. The owners agree to establish a union shop and stop charging "machine rent," a practice that has required operators to repay the company our of their meager wages for the machines they use. Nestor has been working in factories since age 14, putting in 10 hours per day 6 days per week (see 1902).

U.S. bituminous-coal miners leave the pits July 5, beginning a 12-week walkout. They win an 8-hour day, semimonthly pay, biennial conferences with mine operators, and abolition of company stores that charge premium prices and keep them forever in debt. A posse organized by the sheriff of Pennsylvania's Luzerne County kills 19 unarmed strikers September 10 and wounds 36; originally brought in as strike breakers, the men later form their own union (most are shot in the back; see Virden, 1898; United Mine Workers, 1899).

The Dingley Tariff Act passed by Congress July 24 raises U.S. living costs by increasing duties to an average of 57 percent. It hikes rates on sugar, salt, tin cans, glassware, and tobacco, as well as on iron and steel, steel rails, petroleum, lead, copper, locomotives, matches, whisky, and leather goods, but the influx of gold from the Klondike helps end the 4-year economic recession and begin a decade of prosperity.

Dow Chemical Company is founded by Herbert H. Dow at Midland, Michigan (see 1891; 1922).

E. I. du Pont de Nemours buys the smokeless powder patents and Squankum, New Jersey, powder plant of engineer-powder maker Hudson Maxim, 44, whose brother Hiram invented the first fully automatic machine gun in 1883 (see Du Pont, 1872; 1899).