A leading restaurant, which had a seating capacity of thirty-two, employed three cooks, one of whom received $100 a week, and the others $1 an hour. The waitresses got $100 a month. The restaurant occupied a tent twenty by forty feet, which rented for $900 a month. Carpenters were drawing $15 a day, and common labourers $10. Skilled woodworkers got $17 a day, and journeymen tailors $1.50 an hour. The ordinary charge for a sack suit was $125. Barbers made from $15 to $40 a day, each receiving sixty-five per cent. of the receipts of his chair. Four barber shops were in operation, and their prices were $1 a shave, $1.50 for a hair cut, and $2.50 for a bath. During that winter newspapers brought in over the trail sold for $2 apiece. A weekly newspaper was started, known as the Yukon _Midnight Sun_, which cost $15 a year, and a little later the Klondike _Nugget_ was issued weekly at 50 cents a copy. Banks were soon established and did a big business in buying gold dust and putting their notes into circulation. The first eight days after it opened its doors, the Canadian Bank of Commerce bought one and one half million dollars’ worth of gold dust. Some years ago the old building in which that bank had its offices was burned, and one of the clerks asked permission to work over the ground as a gold claim. He wanted to recover the waste from the assay offices and also the dust that had fallen on the floor from time to time in the purchase of gold. His request was granted and his idea proved worth thousands of dollars. CHAPTER XXXVII A DREDGE KING OF THE KLONDIKE Since I have come to western Canada I have acquired a contempt for Aladdin. At every step here I am meeting common, everyday men who are enslaving genii a million times mightier than those of the Arabian Nights. They rub their magic lamps and mechanical wonders spring up almost in a night. They give an order and change the course of a river. They lift a hand and valleys are turned upside down. Of all these conquerors of Nature in the Klondike none has come up to Joseph W. Boyle, the famous dredge king, who was once the most striking figure in this land of gold. Joe Boyle started at the bottom and won great wealth and a dominant position. In manner and thought he was as plain as a pipe stem. A giant of a man, over six feet in his stockings, he was straight and well formed. He had a big head, a broad, high forehead, and eyes like blue steel. Yet he was a good companion and hail-fellow-well-met with those he liked. He was a friend to his employees and addressed them by their first names. They referred to him always as “Joe Boyle” or “J. W. B.,” but they understood that he was the boss and that everything must be done just as he said.