But though they were so fond of each other’s company, they did not seem to possess that cohesiveness and mutual confidence necessary for the successful prosecution of a joint undertaking. Many kinds of diggings could only be worked to advantage by companies of fifteen or twenty men, but Frenchmen were never seen attempting such a combination. Occasionally half-a-dozen or so worked together, but even then the chances were that they squabbled among themselves, and broke up before they had got their claim into working order, and so lost their labor from their inability to keep united in one plan of operation. In this respect the Americans had a very great advantage, for, though strongly imbued with the spirit of individual independence, they are certainly of all people in the world the most prompt to organize and combine to carry out a common object. They are trained to it from their youth in their innumerable, and to a foreigner unintelligible, caucus-meetings, committees, conventions, and so forth, by means of which they bring about the election of every officer in the State, from the President down to the policeman; while the fact of every man belonging to a fire company, a militia company, or something of that sort, while it increases their idea of individual importance, and impresses upon them the force of combined action, accustoms them also to the duty of choosing their own leaders, and to the necessity of afterwards recognizing them as such by implicit obedience. Certain it is that, though the companies of American miners were frequently composed of what seemed to be most incongruous materials--rough, uneducated men, and men of refinement and education--yet they worked together as harmoniously in carrying out difficult mining and engineering operations, under the directions of their “captain,” as if they had been a gang of day-laborers who had no right to interfere as to the way in which the work should be conducted. The captain was one of their number, chosen for his supposed ability to carry out the work; but if they were not satisfied with his performances, it was a very simple matter to call a meeting, at which the business of deposing, or accepting the resignation of the incompetent officer, and appointing a successor, was put through with all the order and formality which accompanies the election of a president of any public body. Those who would not submit to the decision of the majority might sell out, but the prosecution of a work undertaken was never abandoned or in any way retarded by the discordance of opinion on the part of the different members of the company.