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Reviews
THE INFAMOUS KING OF THE COMSTOCK: WILLIAM SHARON AND THE GILDED AGE IN THE WEST
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by Michael J. Makley
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University of Nevada Press, Reno, 2006. Illustrations,
photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 305 pages.
$34.95 cloth. |
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| William Sharon was not a very nice man. Having made a fortune consolidating and manipulating the legendary silver mines of Nevada's Comstock Lode, Sharon wielded his wealth and power with an unvarnished ruthlessness that earned him many enemies, few admirers. Yet, from a free market, "greed is good" perspective, Sharon's merciless brand of entrepreneurial capitalism also created jobs and economic wealth and played an important part in the settlement of Nevada and the wider development of the American West. Given Sharon's importance and influence on California and Nevada from the 1860s to his death in 1885, it is a bit surprising that it has taken so long for a full-scale biography to appear. Others made rich and powerful by the Comstock — William Stewart and William Ralston, to name but two — have long since found their Boswells, as have the mines themselves and the rambunctious Virginia City. With this biography, Michael Makley goes a long way toward remedying this historical slighting of yet another William made famous — or infamous — by the chance geological accumulation of silver-bearing ores on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada. |
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Makley's work relies heavily on published secondary sources to put flesh on the bones of Sharon's life, though he does use some primary resources from the Bancroft Library at Berkeley and contemporary newspaper accounts. Poring through the voluminous historical material on the history of the Comstock, San Francisco, California, and the like, Makley has turned up many valuable nuggets of information about Sharon. What emerges is a detailed story of one of the West's earliest big mining capitalists, a man who succeeded in building a sizable empire by tying together mine, mill, timber, and water operations, mostly with financial backing from one of the West's first great financial institutions — the Bank of California. Sharon, Makley argues, was a "visionary capitalist" among Comstock miners, a man who "created a vertical monopoly to control activities from the collecting of raw materials through the shipping of the final product" (p. 2). In this light, Makley concludes that Sharon can justly be compared to such better known captains of industry as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, whose corporate empires later "employed strategies anticipated by Sharon" (p. 3). |
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Unfortunately, Makley does not do much to sustain or prove this argument in the body of the book. Had he been able to do so, the book would certainly have been of greater value to academic historians. Makley, however, tends to favor narrative over analysis. Throughout the book, brief attempts to place Sharon's story in broader historical perspective and to engage the current historical literature generally remain undeveloped. For example, Makley starts his seventh chapter on "The Ophir Debacle" with the observation that American economic development had long depended on government aid and thus was rarely an example of the laissez-faire individualism men like Sharon supposedly characterized (p. 103). True enough. Yet, the chapter actually says almost nothing about the federal government's role in the development of the Comstock. These brief nods toward the broader historical context often feel like later additions to the book, leaving them poorly integrated into the overall narrative. Indeed, contrary to Makley's assertion, Rockefeller and Carnegie arguably created a type of corporate capitalism that was a significant departure from Sharon's largely traditional, if hypertrophied, approach to business. If his evidence indicates otherwise, then he fails to make the case here. |
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Nonetheless, Makley has some good stories to tell. The book provides a detailed picture of how an emigrant from Smithfield, Ohio, with few means but considerable daring and energy was able to consolidate control over a good portion of one of the richest silver strikes in American history. Makley is equally thorough in his telling of the crisis that almost scuttled William Ralston's seemingly invulnerable Bank of California in 1875. Sharon's role in salvaging the bank, and thus avoiding widespread economic calamity, was typical of the man — Sharon managed to enrich his own bank account while doing an indisputable public service. Makley's penchant for storytelling over analysis also serves well in the later chapters of the book, which are mostly devoted to Sharon's somewhat bizarre attempts to avoid sharing his wealth with a former mistress claiming to be his legal wife. |
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Academic historians, though, will find the lack of analysis of such topics as Sharon's term as a U.S. senator more than a little frustrating. Why would a man so obviously bent on power make so little use of a Senate seat for his own ends, actually deigning to vote in less than one percent of all roll calls? Makley does not really tell us. |
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Still, this book will be useful to academics specializing in the histories of the Comstock, Nevada and California, western business, and, of course, Sharon himself. Likewise, a popular audience will enjoy Makley's tales of power, corruption, and scandal. Historians interested in the broader history of the American West, though, will probably be frustrated by the book's narrow focus and lack of analytical depth. |
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| Timothy J. LeCain
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| Montana State University, Bozeman |
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