| Abstrakt: |
The term “Comstock capitalism” describes new commercial, legal, and scientific conditions emergent in the silver mining industry of the early 1860s in western Nevada. On the Comstock, the first joint-stock mining companies in the American West were incorporated, and stockholders, “the speculative interest,” underwrote exceptional investments in large labor forces, powerful machines, cutting-edge engineering, and, most importantly, incessant litigation. In high-stakes court cases over mining rights, men of science, as expert witnesses, played central roles in the takeover of silver mining by big, well-financed companies. The development of Comstock capitalism essentially rested on the consolidation of scientific theory. Where once there had been numerous silver veins, geologists found a new object of nature—an immense single deposit called the Comstock Lode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
