ABSTRACT
There were two ways to make a fortune in California: digging for gold, or selling goods to the miners. California was an incredible sellers’ market, as nearly everyone who arrived in San Francisco quickly discovered. Frenchman Albert Bernard de Russailh was astounded to find ordinary items selling for outrageous prices, and decided to open a “store” of his own in the city by the bay. An unusual encounter with a potential customer suggested that even he had under-estimated the potential for making money in California. As he summed up, in a sentence that could become the motto of the gold rush, “in California nothing is given away; everything is sold.”
