The Klondike Nugget’s printing press arrived soon after the Yukon Midnight Sun’s. The Nugget’s first four-page issue announced its noble mission: “The outside world is anxious for authentic information concerning the Klondike gold district. The miners and other residents of this region are equally desirous of learning what is going on outside, as well as of home occurrences. Hence the publication of the Klondike Nugget. We have no higher ambition than to satisfy our readers.”
Both papers then rose to the challenge of supplying readers with every whiff of scandalous behavior, every rumor of a new strike, every detail of gruesome murders and thefts, and each overheated notice of a newly arrived entertainer that their skimpy reportorial staffs could accumulate or invent. Lugubrious accounts of lives lost upriver as stampeders continued to pour over the passes were interspersed with poetry, jokes, and classified ads for cooks, waitresses, and dogs.
Vicious rivalry between the two papers erupted. Allen regarded the Yukon Midnight Sun as Canadian government propaganda, particularly since Swinehart promised to publish a “Guide to Dawson and the Yukon Mining District” that would include government regulations for mines and lumber and tables of weights for gold dust. Swinehart regarded the Nugget as a scurrilous rag, since Allen was soon whipping up resentment against the royalty regime among the miners in his avowed mission to “protect their interests.”
The Klondike Nugget, Dawson’s first newspaper, announced that it had “no higher ambition than to satisfy our readers.”
In this remote frontier, both newspapermen embraced the outspoken, combative journalistic standards of late-nineteenth-century New York City. Buccaneering proprietors there, like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, fought ruthless circulation wars characterized by sensationalist headlines, messianic campaigns, and a careless attitude to facts. Allen and Swinehart were eager disciples of the yellow journalism barons, although they were handicapped by Dawson’s lack of a telegraph link with the outside world. They depended on dogsled teams to deliver slow doses of Outside news. But Allen, at least, was not going to let this cramp his style. “We’re going to hit at some of the dirty deals which miners have been getting at the hands of the government,” he explained with Hearst-like bluster to a recently recruited editorial team. “Dig up everything that you can that looks rotten . . . Be sure you’ve got your dope straight. Then shoot your wad for all its worth.” Journalism Hearst style could be over the top, but Allen’s copy was also bold and entertaining.
The no-holds-barred competition between the rival publications suited businesspeople like Belinda Mulrooney fine. Both newspapers recorded comings and goings at the waterfront, so she could find out which Klondike Kings were taking their new wealth out of town and which newcomers sounded like possible clients for her various enterprises. “Ellis Lewis, half owner of No. 23 on Eldorado . . . left yesterday on the Bella, for California,” read an item in the Yukon Midnight Sun of June 27. “It is hinted that he carried out about fifty thousand.” At the same time, the Klondike Nugget carried in its personal column the following news: “Among the passengers on the steamer Columbian were Messrs. W. H. Miller, David W. Jones, Wm. Neville and Jacob Edholm. The two first named brought with them a large shipment of liquors amounting to in all 3000 gallons. They have secured a cabin on First Avenue, and for the present leave their goods in storage.” And two weeks later, the Nugget noted that “Otis Beverstock, an Ohio man who represents considerable Ohio capital, is in the city and looking up profitable investments.”
Newly founded businesses rushed to tout their services. There were advertisements for laundries, doctors, restaurants, real estate brokers, hotels (“The Dominion Hotel: Finest Brands of Wines, Liquors and Cigars”) and stores selling “Klondike Hats” and “Gent’s Pumps.” Some advertisements are harder to parse today. “Marie Riedeselle, Leading Professional Masseuse, From 121 West 111th Street, New York City,” frequently appeared, selling “Massage Treatments and Baths, Scurvy prevented and cured by new method. Low vitality restored.” The Klondike Nugget was particularly good at the kind of sensationalist human interest stories that fueled bar talk. A young man from Seattle called Billy Byrne had spent the winter in a camp upriver after falling through the ice and contracting frostbite in both legs. Gangrene set in, but luckily there was a physician in a cabin only twenty-five miles away. Billy’s condition had required the doctor to amputate both legs below the knees—without, of course, the aid of any anesthetic or disinfectant. Somehow Billy had survived this horrendous ordeal, and had now been bought to Dawson to be loaded, legless and broke, onto the next steamer to St. Michael. “Young Byrne Recovers,” boasted the Nugget.
The two newspapers did more than sell subscriptions and ads. There was a subtle sense of self-congratulation about them: they reminded readers that anybody who had made it to Dawson was a gutsy survivor. The implication of all those disasters and deaths on trail and creek was that if you were left standing, you were a pretty fine fellow—and Dawson was full of fine fellows. Just as Hearst’s mass circulation dailies catered to the tastes of blue-collar workers in burgeoning American cities, the Nugget deliberately cultivated Dawson’s collective sense of itself. Allen understood that even the crustiest old prospector admired local heroes like Father Judge. By now, an average of seven sufferers from scurvy and dysentery were turning up at the Catholic hospital each day, and the Nugget, regretting that “the kindly Father has had a great deal to contend with,” extended to him “the hand of sympathy and encouragement.” It also backed the Jesuit priest’s quiet crusade to remain in Dawson despite the Oblates’ challenge: “The city of Dawson will be unanimous in lamenting the departure of Father Judge, if such should be deemed the wisest course. Alaska is really his own territory, but in Dawson’s need and owing to the numerical weakness of the Canadian contingent, he came forward and has done noble work indeed.”
At the same time, Allen recognized that most of this year’s crop of stampeders wanted reassurance that they had landed in more than a rough frontier town. “A gasoline launch is among Dawson’s latest acquisitions,” read an item in the Nugget’s “Local Brevities” column on July 2. “We shall soon be as metropolitan as Victoria or Seattle.” But Allen also liked to remind readers of the magic that had lured them north: “There is no color like the glitter of virgin gold, no music like the tinkle of nuggets falling upon a gold scale, no place where eye and ear alike can be so thoroughly satisfied as in the Klondike diggings.”
Both the Midnight Sun and the Nugget threw themselves into campaigns for local improvements. They agreed on the easy targets, such as the need for better sanitation and more law enforcement. But the Sun’s style was more restrained. Earlier in the summer, two prospectors working the McClintock River near Marsh Lake were shot—one fatally—by Tlingit. The wounded man managed to reach a Mountie detachment and report the murder: four Tlingit men were arrested and charged. The men were found guilty and three were sentenced to be hanged. The fourth was a boy. The Sun favored commutation of the sentence on the grounds that the murderers were “alien to the ways of civilized society.” In contrast, the Nugget played shamelessly to the worst and most ignorant prejudices of its readers:The Treacherous Instincts of the Aborigines
Will Get Their Necks Stretched With Hemp
Probably in Dawson—Villainous Savages
In the Toils.
The campaign that galvanized the whole town this summer centered on the enforcement of Canadian laws in the Yukon. Dawson was still run like a colony of Ottawa: the Yukon Executive Council was appointed by the federal government, yet Dawsonites had no voice in the capital. Both papers lobbied for representative government and reform of the mining regulations. Both papers protested the 10 percent royalty levied on all gold mined in the Yukon. “The excessive burden of the royalty tax has been a lodestone [presumably he meant ‘millstone’] on the mining industry,” thundered the Yukon Midnight Sun’s Swinehart. “The small extent of mining ground sufficiently rich to meet this tax is
only found on the richest claims of Eldorado.”
Four Tlingit involved in the murder of a prospector faced the full force of racist rage.
But Swinehart did make allowances for governmental shortcomings. The Yukon Midnight Sun acknowledged the remoteness of the region and the fact that most miners were non-Canadian and bent on making their fortunes and getting out. The Nugget showed no such forbearance. Allen penned furious editorials, denouncing the federal authority as the ruthless exploiter of the miner, on whom the whole economy of the region depended. On the creeks and in Dawson’s bars, his fellow Americans had complained loudly to him that they couldn’t get a fair deal from the Canadian gold commissioner, Thomas Fawcett. So Allen decided to make Fawcett the issue on which his newspaper would emerge as the people’s champion. Before the first edition of his Klondike Nugget had even been printed, its editor had decided to go to war on the hapless, overworked Fawcett and provoke a clean-up of the gold commissioner’s office. As the Nugget’s campaign heated up, Gene Allen noted with satisfaction that the paper “began to ride on the crest of a tide of popularity.” Sales increased, and one night a bunch of roughnecks in the Monte Carlo saloon lifted the diminutive editor on their shoulders and toasted his health amid lusty cheers.
Banks were not far behind newspapers. Almost two years after Carmack’s gold strike, the two American trading companies, the Alaska Commercial Company and the North American Transportation and Trading Company, were still the major repositories for prospectors’ gold before it was shipped south for processing. However, among the first display ads that appeared in Dawson’s papers were several for Outside banks, eager to catch the attention of Klondike Kings once they arrived back in the United States. First National Bank of Seattle announced, “Gold Dust Bought at Assay Value. If dust or drafts are sent us, proceeds credited to account or remitted to any part of the world.” The Scandinavian American Bank of Seattle gave the same undertaking, adding a further lure: “Railway and Steamship Tickets to all points East and Europe. Alaska tickets sold via fast and commodious steamers.” But these two American banks were barred from operating within Dawson because only British and Canadian banks were entitled to function on Canadian soil. Moreover, American banks were state regulated, which meant they were hamstrung when it came to reaching across boundaries to new frontiers.
Canadian banks were already well on their way to being the banking industry we know today: robust, careful, national in scope, and quietly ambitious. Regulated by the national government rather than individual provinces, within the fifteen years leading up to the Yukon Gold Rush eleven chartered banks had opened dozens of branches throughout western Canada. These banks had proved far sturdier in surviving the depression of the early 1890s than their American counterparts, and had allowed capital from central Canada to flow west and finance railways and other commercial enterprises in newly settled areas. Canadian bankers knew how to handle frontier towns. Despite his starched collar and waxed mustache, a Western Canadian bank manager was a forceful and adaptable character who routinely carried a revolver. Now the more ambitious banks looked at business opportunities in the Yukon and found them irresistible. Over $2.5 million of dust and nuggets were said to have been extracted from the permafrost in 1897, and the output this year was rumored to be four times that much. Ten million dollars’ worth of gold was a stunning sum in a year when Canada’s federal budget was little over $50 million. Just as Dawson had acquired two newspapers this year, so it would now acquire two banks. Rivalry between the banks was politer than the competition between newspapers, but just as cutthroat.
The first bank on the scene was the least prepared for Dawson conditions. Staff from the London-based, Canadian-chartered Bank of British North America raced north in the spring of 1898, with flamboyant manager David Doig swathed in furs and blankets and riding on a sled behind a dog team. He proudly set up for business on May 19 in a tent on Second Avenue, with an advertised capital of $202,000. A couple of days later, he moved operations to the ground floor of the Victoria Hotel on Front Street, between Princess and Harper, but was promptly forced to cease business for a week when he found himself ankle deep in filthy Yukon water. Doig, a shrewd Scot, had already got the measure of Dawson’s leading citizens. As the spring flood rose, he marched off to the north end of town to see his new friend, Father Judge. He persuaded the priest to store the bank’s books, furniture, and paperwork on the second floor of St. Mary’s Hospital until he had found some better premises. Next, Doig negotiated with Big Alex McDonald, who shared his love of Scottish ballads, for a building lot on the corner of Second Avenue and Queen Street. The gray-flannel-suited Scotsman and the scruffy, slouching Nova Scotian agreed that Big Alex would build a decent cabin on the lot for the bank. In the meantime, Doig and his team reverted to operating out of a mosquito-filled tent.
Like the good bank manager he was, Doig’s first concern was for the safe accommodation of the six tons of supplies his team had brought in, including a large box that contained $1 million in unsigned bank drafts.
He stopped worrying after he poked his head into the warehouse of the North American Transportation and Trading Company and saw open shelves laden with tins, sacks, and bottles of gold dust.
The Toronto-based Canadian Bank of Commerce arrived in Dawson three weeks after the Bank of British North America. Its manager, H. T. Wills, had planned its northern expedition carefully and traveled at a more stately pace, smug in the knowledge that the Commerce’s Dawson branch would be a much bigger deal than its rival’s. The Canadian Bank of Commerce had been appointed by Ottawa as the federal government’s agent in Dawson and the Yukon Territory. This meant that it would receive commissions for collecting gold royalties and paying wages to police and government officials, and would work hand in hand with the North-West Mounted Police. The last point was reassuring for the bank’s Toronto managers, who were concerned about bank robberies in a wide-open town like Dawson. They didn’t realize that a bank robber would have a tough time making his getaway from a community forty bleak miles from the nearest refuge.
Wills’s arrival in Dawson was far less flashy than Doig’s. A big man weighing over 300 pounds, he was stricken by swollen legs and a sore throat and lay retching at the bottom of a Peterborough canoe as his colleagues paddled toward the waterfront. But once ashore, he installed his team in better premises than those of the Bank of British North America. The Canadian Bank of Commerce opened for business on June 14 in a small, windowless shed sheathed in galvanized iron. The shed had problems—it stank of the dried-fish dog food that had previously been stored there; it became impossibly hot in the midsummer heat; the tiny airless loft under its sloping roof was accessible only by ladder. But it was on dry ground. The five staff members (including a cook and a messenger) all slept in the cramped, sweaty garret, while Wills took himself off to some smarter digs. Inside the shed was a long counter across its width, on which to do business. Outside, nailed to a frame, a brave little canvas sign proclaimed THE CANADIAN BANK OF COMMERCE
CAPITAL PAID UP SIX MILLION DOLLARS
The two banks were rushed by clients as soon as they hung their shingles. People lined up outside to find out how they could get funds forwarded to Dawson, whether there were any letters for them, if they could lodge documents with the bank in escrow, or simply who was inside these shelters. The Commerce staff had put up a mess tent next to their shed, where Tommy, the cook, could prepare their meals. But so great was the crush at the counter on opening day that the tent was abandoned and both Tommy and the messenger were pressed into service as clerical assistants, labeling gold sacks, writing receipts, and ensuring order. Although the official exchange rate was nineteen dollars for one ounce of gold, most clients were so eager to exchange their awkward, heavy little bags for paper currency that they sold their gold for fourteen dollars an ounce. If the depositor was prepared to take a note promising full payment at a later date, the exchange rate was sixteen an ounce. Once a client had gold stored with the
Commerce, the bank would accept as legal tender from him any form of currency, including Confederate notes, bills on the defunct Ezra Meeker Bank, and—on one occasion—a three-dollar check written on a spruce plank.
One early visitor to the Commerce’s Dawson branch was a plump, highly rouged, and gaudily bedecked woman who asked, “Have you got my tights and slippers? I’m Caprice.” With impeccable manners, the teller referred her to Mr. Wills, at the other end of the counter. Mr. Wills looked her up and down, and haughtily informed her that she was in a bank. Caprice gave as good as she got. “Sure,” she replied, “the Bank of Commerce, isn’t it? Joe Brooks told me he’d send them here.” Joe Brooks was a packer on the Skagway Trail, and after a search it was discovered that Caprice’s tights and slippers were stuffed into a sack of bank notes. A week later, a bank employee went to a Sunday concert at which “living pictures” drawn from the Scriptures were presented. The curtain rose on a tableau entitled “Rock of Ages,” which featured Caprice in all her tawdry, tight pink glory, in a fleshy embrace of a huge cross.
The biggest challenge for the two bank managers was to decide which clients in this freewheeling community of adventurers and gamblers were good credit risks, when almost none of them even had documents to verify that they were who they said they were. Doig and Wills took chances that would have given some of their eastern colleagues apoplexy. The line-up for loans snaked round both bank branches as soon as prospectors discovered that they were offering loans at 2 or 3 percent a month. What a steal! These rates were a far better deal than the 10 percent a month charged by private lenders in Dawson, although they were well over the rate charged Outside. (The Canadian Bank Act—not applicable to the Yukon—restricted the rate of interest banks could charge to 7 percent a year.) Doig told his boss in London that he was getting applications for loans of $5,000 to $20,000 every day, “but have not seen my way to entertain them.” He simply didn’t know whom to trust. Nevertheless, within a few days of opening, the Bank of British North America had made over $1,000 in commissions. At the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Wills learned to rely on an extremely shrewd teller who was a Mason and, by some mysterious method that none of the rest of the staff could fathom, was able to gauge a man’s trustworthiness. The Mason’s gut instinct became the credibility test of first resort. By the summer of 1899, Bank of Commerce bills worth $2 million were in circulation in Dawson, and (as the bank proudly recorded in its official history), “the bank incurred no losses through this channel of prolific possibilities.”
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