Week 5- Cultural Commentary

In general, modern people have a different feeling about money than people did in the nineteenth century. People were eager to flood California for this so called gold that lay everywhere. Today, no one would be so naive as to believe that gold is so easy to get. People know that things that sound "too good to be true" probably are too good to be true. Most people today are suspicious of a good deal. That's why we comparison shop. One deal may sound great, but it's not good until we can see that it is truly a good deal. Impulse buys aren't that common of an occurrence. You have to think through a purchase until you can go through with buying it. People are also pretty loyal to their families that they won't run away for gold. I can't imagine my dad or any of my friends' dads leaving for money. Of course, this obviously isn't everyone's parents, but still, I don't believe a majority of fathers would leave their family in dire straights so that they could benefit from the gold rush.

In 1849, people fled from every continent in the world to get California's gold. These Argonauts truly thought that they would become rich from this gold. They didn't realize how difficult it would be to find the gold. With poor communication and tabloid newspapers, no one knew that the gold wasn't that easy to get. The newspapers wrote headlines that sold, so they sometimes wrote lies about California to sell. People must have been easily swayed and jumped on board a ship to get rich quick. They would do this regardless of their families as well. Men would leave their wife and children with no way of making money just to get to California.