“Miners quickly learned to appreciate the search for gold as Mother Nature’s grand lottery scheme. A man could easily dig an entire season, carry and wash hundreds—even thousands—of buckets of gravel, and finish poorer than when he started, while the men working mere feet away on adjacent ground hacked open a “glory hole” and carried off more wealth in a morning than a man could earn in a decade working for wages. That ugly truth stood at odds with the old Puritan notion that honest toil earned a just reward. Gold mining was like gambling, it was gambling, Crouch, Gregory (2018-06-18T23:58:59). The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West (Kindle Locations 585-587). Scribner. Kindle Edition. Crouch, Gregory (2018-06-18T23:58:59). The Bonanza King: John Mackay and the Battle over the Greatest Riches in the American West (Kindle Locations 583-585). Scribner. Kindle Edition. ”