Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1899 — Dawson “People.” [ARTICLE]

Dawson “People.”

Life and property are considered safe even in the most doubtful establishments, and it is not uncommon for a man to pass hours in a crowded dance hall with virtually all his possessions, possibly a few hundred dollars, or it may be thousands, carried in the form of gold dust in his trousers pocket. Two main factors are involved in this condition of security or in the feeling that It exists. The first of these is, perhaps, a wholesome dread of the Canadian

mounted police, whose efficiency In the direction of controlling order Is conceded by every one; and the second, the circumstance, that the inhabitants of Dawson and of the adjoining Klondike region, are not, as Is so largely supposed, a mere assortment of rough prospectors, intent upon doing anything for the sake of acquiring gold, but a fair representation of good and indifferent elements borrowed from all professions and stations of life, and not from one country alone, but from nearly all parts of the civilized globe. During my brief stay I stumbled upon “counts,” “sirs,” military and naval officers, scientists, lawyers, newspaper men, promoters and others of broad and liberal standing; and if some of these were undistinguishable in external garb from their brethren in mus-tard-colored mack it aws whoso sole resource was digging for gold, their polished and Intellectual method was evidence enough that civilization was present in good quantity along the upper Yukon.—Popular Science Monthly.