GOLD FEVER Part Three. Ken Salter

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СКАЧАТЬ of pants to show to my associates. I’ll give them back to you tomorrow.”

      After Strauss left, Gino came rushing in. “What happened? Tell me. Are we going to work with him?”

      “Whoa. Hold your horses. I’ve got it wrapped up. We sign an exclusive marketing agreement here tomorrow at 4 o’clock. I’ll explain it to you on our way to Attorney Hawthorne’s office. I need him to draft partnership papers. I’d already told Gino my plans for him to open an assay and express office in Sonora which he’d jumped at. “And if all goes well with the signing tomorrow, you could have the exclusive right to sell Strauss’ work pants to miners provisioning in Sonora.”

      Gino was whistling a happy tune when we arrived at Hawthorne’s spartan office. I instructed Hawthorne to drop everything he was working on and get to work on the partnership agreement I laid out to him. I offered him ten percent of the partnership profit if he would agree to handle the partnership’s legal work. He’d need to figure a way to patent the work pants. After carefully examining the workmanship, Hawthorne said, “We can trademark his name and maybe the riveting, but we’re sure to have competitors with knock-offs if these pants catch on as I think they will. They’re stronger and more durable than anything on the market that I’ve seen.”

      “Then time is of essence as you lawyers claim. We have to get into production before competitors get wind of our scheme. Gino, find Strauss and check him into a nice out-of-the-way boarding house with good food and help him sell his cart. We don’t want him blabbing about his new venture all over town. Then use the telegraph to corner the market for all available denim cloth available with suppliers in Sacramento and Stockton. Buy up everything available in town. Get on it pronto,” I said hurrying out the door on my way to Teri Rios who was still running our wine bar on the wharf. As it was late in the afternoon, I helped her and Giselle close for the day.

      Once we had all the gear stowed, I invited Teri to have a glass of wine with me in the forecastle of our ship, which now had wine bins, tables and a small bar for wine tasting, another one of many planned ventures. I laid out for Teri my agreement with Levi Strauss and let her examine the two pairs of denim work pants I removed from a satchel.

      “They’re good quality. Where do I fit in?” Teri queried.

      “I thought once we get into production, you could sell them in your bodega. We’d provide them to you ready to sell. You add your markup to our wholesale price and sell them for us. He’s been able to sell them for $6 a pair and I think we can make them cheaply once we get the cloth. It should bring you a lot of new business. And since your bodega is currently vacant until we can find the right couple to run our concessions here, I would like to rent your store. We would use it to manufacture a supply of work pants until we can find a suitable workshop.”

      “Where will you get tailors to cut the garments and seamstresses to sew them?” Teri asked.

      “Consul Dillon will find them for me. He’s got all those “Ingots” to house and feed until he can find them jobs; there’s bound to be skilled cutters and sewers among them. He maintains a list of skills for all the poor souls he has to find places for. He’ll be thrilled if I can supply work for some of his charges.”

      “You can count on me. I’m glad to have my store occupied until I can open it for business. I’m always afraid another group of squatters will break in and trash the premises. You don’t have to pay me rent given all you’ve done for me. I’m happy to help and I know I can make money selling these work pants. They’re hardy and durable. I can see why miners and artisans would prefer them to the flimsy cotton and canvas ones most suppliers offer.”

      I was pumped up and excited walking home in a dense fog. Our winter and start of spring was strange so far. We’d had less rain than the year before, but more blustery wind and bone-chilling fog that had already claimed two ships off the fog-shrouded coast near Bolinas. The mail steamship “Tennessee” wrecked on the rocks by Bolinas Bay in March with 600 passengers aboard. Fortunately, the ship was close enough to the sandy beach of the bay that all passengers including many women and children were saved along with most of the cargo. The steamship “S.S. Lewis” met a similar fate at the beginning of April when it beached in heavy fog north of Bolinas Bay and all 585 passengers were saved.

      Manon had opened our restaurant for lunch and we wouldn’t do a dinner service until the weekend two days hence. That would give me a short window of time to get all the elements in place to start production on Strauss’ denim work pants. I bounded up the stairs to our apartment over our restaurant two at a time. Manon was bouncing Fanny on her knee and cooing in Jules’ direction while Jules howled his displeasure from his crib. He was about to let go with another round when he spied me and changed his tactic. “Papa, papa,” Jules now hollered as he rattled the slats of his crib with force. Manon looked amused and pointed to the crib. Domestic duty before business at our house was the order of the evening. Monique Boudin took care of our twins along with her son the same age as our twins while Manon ran the lunch service downstairs. Our toddlers knew the routine and how to vie and get our attention. Sometimes they even worked in tandem to ensure we pampered them the way they wanted. I picked up Jules and all of a sudden there was peace and quiet as Jules gurgled his pleasure as I tickled his tummy and tossed him up in the air while his sister egged me on.

      It wasn’t until after dinner and the kids were in bed that I could share my exciting news with Manon. I recapped my meeting with Levi Strauss and showed Manon the two pairs of work pants. “What do you think?” I asked.

      Manon examined the pants carefully. “You say Strauss tried to peddle his cloth to women, yes? Manon has an idea. Of course, the ladies of the night and all the pouffiasses in the dance halls and gambling dens won’t want to wear sturdy work dresses. They wear latest fashions to entice men to their beds and work with clothes off, yes?” I laughed at her characterization of French “working girls.” It was true many worked afternoons and evenings until midnight in the gambling palaces in sexy attire and were paid $16 a day, the equivalent of an ounce of gold, to serve drinks, weigh gold dust, sing, dance or play an instrument, or just sit at a gambling table to be admired. Once their “shift” was over, many did offer themselves for sexual services for a handsome fee. Some even posted their hours and rates on the door to their house or apartment.

      “What’s your idea?” I asked. “Surely, you don’t think working girls—chambermaids, waitresses, laundresses and the like would want to wear dresses in this heavy material, do you?”

      Manon unpinned her mop of dark curly hair that fell half way down her back and shook her ringlets enticingly to say no. “Denim skirts with petticoats would never sell even to shop girls, but denim aprons for working girls would.”

      “Aprons? What do you mean?” I didn’t see where she was going with this.

      “Yes, Big Boy, aprons—long tabliers—that honest working girls can wear over their skirts to signal they are not available for sexual favors.”

      I laughed. “You mean like the women in Paris and London, Les bas-bleus, who wear blue stockings to announce they are educated, literary women? And now you want lowly working girls to wear blue smocks as a protest?”

      “Exactly, every single woman and most married ones cannot walk the streets of San Francisco without getting propositioned for sex. You heard Marie Pantalon and many others tell of being accosted by horny miners, rowdies and worse. All the women we work with have had the same experience. Even I got offers of a house and monthly income when you visited the northern mines if I would be a mistress or marry a wealthy merchant or banker. I agree we will make money marketing these work pants to miners and artisans as they are better than anything currently for sale, but I think long work aprons would also СКАЧАТЬ