ATD 81-96
Page 81
Feast of St. Barbara. External link
Page 82
Skinner
A person who drives mules.
Cripple Creek
Cripple Creek was the location of a miner's strike in 1894. It was a significant labor event and it was the first time that a state Militia was called out in support of the miners. Wikipedia entry
Page 87
Rev. Moss Gatlin's rhetorical question "How can anyone set off a bomb that will take innocent lives?" and its wisecrack response, "Long fuse" seems a calculated echo of Kubrick's 'Full Metal Jacket.' ("How can you shoot women and children?" "Easy -- don't lead 'em so much.")
Mason-Dixon line
We learn that the Traverse family had been "an old ridegerunning caln from southern Pennsylvania, close to the Mason-Dixon. The Civil War, which ate up a good part of Wbb's boyhood, split the family as well, so that shortly before it was over, he found himself in the back of a agon heading west..."
I searched through all of M&D and didn't find any Traverses who had met
the exporers, but it's obvious that there were there and that the Traverse
family are victim's of the Line's bad Feng Shui. So interesting, then to
see the link between the Line, Colarado Anarchism, and the Labor movemnet
in California.
Page 89
Repeal of the Silver Act of 1893
Prior to 1893, both Silver and Gold were used as a metallic standard for currency in the United States. The Sherman Act authorized the treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver per month. This inflated the price of silver, causing eastern investors to start hoarding gold as a hedge. The unrest this caused in the Colorado mines resulted in the repeal of the Act. When this happened, the mining of silver began to rapidly decline, causing further destabilization in the silver mining industry.
