In
this despatch,
Hamilton informs
Merivale that the Lord Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury have authorized the Master
of the Mint to
engage the services of Mr. Bacon as Melter.
1 Newcastle’s
despatch to
Douglas, and
Douglas’s subsequent
reply, confirms that Bacon was employed as a melter at the Government Refinery and Assay
Office in
British Columbia. The office, which had been recently moved from
Victoria to
New Westminster, processed 1600 ounces of gold dust in one month and, according to
Douglas, was
in a state of efficient organization.
2 After two years of employment there, Bacon and his co-workers earned
Douglas’s ire when they requested a salary increase that was deemed
to bear very much the complexion of an attempt upon their part to coerce the Government
into a compliance with their demands.
3 Bacon and his co-workers claimed that they had
been led to expect by the Master of the Mint that [their] salaries would be increased
at an early period
and refused to continue working until the raise was granted.
4 The Assay Office insisted on the entitlement promised them by
Professor Thomas Graham, but, with an understanding that was
simply a verbal one,
Douglas continuously denied their application. In the minutes of
Douglas’s
despatch,
Elliot criticizes the assayers and refiners for their
comparative idleness
and calls for
effective discouragement
of the Assay Office’s strike.
Newcastle’s reply agrees with
Elliot, stating that
to yield to an official strike in such a colony as B.C. would be fatal.
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