In the '70's there sprang up in San Francisco a tremendous excitement over the silver mines on the Comstock Lode. The bonanza was estimated to be worth over fifteen hundred millions of dollars. True, this argent field was across the Sierras, in the State of Nevada. But most of the output found its way to San Francisco. The principal owners lived there, and San Francisco was the depot for Comstock supplies. The Stock Board operated there, and stocks bought for less than one hundred thousand dollars soared up to two hundred million. At the highest notch of prices the manipulators sold out, and the airy fabric of speculation fell with a crash. The banks had been emptied by speculators eager to buy stocks, and were greatly embarrassed. Myriads were swept into poverty, leaving immense fortunes in the hands of a few. Soon after the Comstock collapse the Sand Lot agitation sprang into life. Over one hundred and fifty millions of dollars had been removed from circulation by the Comstock jugglery. The wealth of the outside world was temporarily diverted from the San Francisco markets. A great drought had been on the State during two years and the lean kine had devoured the fat. Harvests were sparse or wholly lacking. Cattle perished beside the dry watercourses. A large body of the outside unemployed had come to swell the tide of the city's drifting, workless ones. The railroad was threatening a reduction of wages to its thousands of men. Riots were on in Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Baltimore, and had sent contagion on the enforced idlers in San Francisco. Feeling long smouldering broke into fire against the Chinese and the railroad, two factors believed by the working-men to be largely instrumental in cheapening wages and robbing men of work. A mob gathered, threatening to rout out the Asiatics. The police could not disperse the rioters. [Illustration CHINESE PHARMACY.] On July 24th there came a third call for the Vigilance Committee to assemble, which many thought an unnecessary and high-handed summons. William T. Coleman was for a third time given charge. The Committee was to proceed upon lines followed in the '50's. But this time they were to co-operate with the authorities rather than to work in opposition. On July 25th, the mob, infuriated by the menace of the Committee and looking on it as a mere support of capitalistic interests, gathered about the Pacific Mail Dock, where immigrant Chinese were landed. The Committee, armed with pick-handles, met the labor mob at the dock and a few men were killed. This ended the uprising. But the issue was soon thrust into politics. The anti-Chinese believers gathered upon the sand lots in the neighborhood of the City Hall and organized the Working-man's Party. It spread throughout the State. Dennis Kearny, an illiterate but rudely eloquent speaker, became the leader, the Wat Tyler of the hour. The movement ended in the adoption by the State of a new Constitution framed along progressive lines.