FROM THE GOLD RUSH emerged not only gold. Sifting through its events, we find the glimmering origins of California’s industrial economy, its transportation systems, its premier urban center, and the first signs of organized labor—workers learning to represent themselves and their interests collectively to the rest of society.

Prior to the Gold Rush there was no labor movement, for there was no working class, no capitalist class, and no relationship binding them one to another, in a manner central to the state’s economy. There was, in fact, no state, and comparatively little economy. The land was at the farthest reaches of the American frontier. In such a place before modern social classes had taken root, an ambitious individual could make rapid improvements in his life.