From a Sack of Flour to a Silver Brick ©

 

In 1864, Reuel C. Gridley, owner of the Gridley General Merchandise Store in Austin, Nevada, lost an election bet and had to carry a 50-pound sack of flour the length of the town to the tune of the song “John Brown’s Body.”

The famous American writer Mark Twain wrote about this episode in his 1870 book Roughing It:

 

A former schoolmate of mine, by the name of Reuel Gridley, was living in the little city of Austin, in the Reese River country, at this time and was the Democratic candidate for mayor. He and the Republican candidate made an agreement that the successful one should carry it home on his shoulder.

 

Gridley was defeated. The new mayor gave him the sack of flour, and he shouldered it and carried it a mile or two from Lower Austin to his home in Upper Austin, attended by a band of music and the whole population. Arrived there, he said he did not need the flour and asked what the people thought he had better do with it. A voice said: 

 

"Sell it to the highest bidder, for the benefit of the Sanitary fund." 

 

The suggestion was greeted with a round of applause, and Gridley mounted a dry-goods box and assumed the role of auctioneer. The bids went higher and higher, as the sympathies of the pioneers awoke and expanded, till at last the sack was knocked down to a mill man at two hundred and fifty dollars, and his check taken. He was asked where he would have the flour delivered, and he said: "Nowhere--sell it again." 

 

Now the cheers went up royally, and the multitude were fairly in the spirit of the thing. So Gridley stood there and shouted and perspired till the sun went down, and when the crowd dispersed, he had sold the sack to three hundred different people, and had taken in eight thousand dollars in gold. And still the flour sack was in his possession.

 

Gridley afterward traveled from coast to coast, auctioning off the flour sack. The proceeds of the auctions went to the Sanitary Fund, a forerunner to the Red Cross, to help relieve suffering created by the Civil War. The last auction was at the St. Louis Sanitary Fair when the flour was turned into small cakes and sold at one dollar each. By then, Gridley’s sack, which had originally cost $10.00, had raised over $275,000 – over seven million dollars in 2023.

 

The year of traveling around the country took a toll on Gridley's health. When he returned to Austin, he found that the silver mine had closed, and his store was close to bankruptcy. He and his family moved to California. Gridley, his wife, and four children lived in poverty in Stockton two years later. Newspaper editors in California and Nevada reacted by raising $1,400 to buy a house and a small farm for them. Gridley's health continued to decline, and he died in 1870 -- he was 41 years old. In 1876, Stockton Civil War veterans sold thousands of miniature sacks of flour to raise money for a monument to Gridley built a few years later. “The Soldiers Friend Monument” Reuel Colt Gridley" in Stockton's cemetery has this inscription:

 

Erected by

RAWLINS POST No. 23

Grand Army of the Republic

and the Citizens of Stockton

September 19, 1887, in gratitude

for services rendered Union

Soldiers during the War of

the Rebellion in collecting

275,000 dollars for the

Sanitary Commission by

selling and reselling a

sack of flour

 

Gridley’s original store in Austin, Nevada, was restored and is now on the United States National Register of Historic Places. 

 

Below is a little-known story of when Clark Gable auctioned off a "silver brick" to raise money for Radio Free Europe (RFE).

 

Nevada, the “Silver State,” had the highest percentage of signatures on the Freedom Scrolls in 1950, when 70,000 persons signed up for the first  Crusade for Freedom. The nationwide goal for the second Crusade campaign, which officially began on Labor Day, September 3, 1951, was 25,000,000 signatures, with a goal in Nevada of 73,000.

 

On Sunday night, September 30, 1951, C.D.Jackson, Radio Free Europe President, spoke in Reno, Nevada, at a large rally for the Crusade for Freedom and RFE. There were 1,500 persons in the new Reno High School gymnasium.  

 

That evening, during the three-hour entertainment show in Reno, Clark Gable acted as an auctioneer. The item to be auctioned was a "silver brick" with the inscription “Nevada 1951.” It was considered to be part of the cornerstone of the new Radio Free Europe headquarters building in Munich, Germany. It was auctioned off for $800, and film actress Ida Lupino presented the silver brick to the happy auction winner, Charles W. Mapes, Jr. In keeping with the good spirit of the evening, Mapes returned the "silver brick," which was taken the next day to Las Vegas.  

 

After the auction and evening's entertainment, Clark Gable and Ida Lupino launched two balloons and leaflets similar to those launched in Germany by the Free Europe Press. 

 

At the Las Vegas rally for the Crusade for Freedom, the "silver brick" garnered $1,000 at another auction. The winning bidder also returned the brick to the Crusade organizers. The "silver brick" was then transported by the Crusade for Freedom statewide motorcade that would tally up 7,500 miles by the time it was over in November 1951. The Ford truck of the motorcade also carried a replica of the Freedom Bell in Berlin, a Radio Free Europe transmitter tower, and the Iron Curtain.

 

By the middle of October, the "silver brick" had been auctioned off for a total of $2,500, including a winning bid of $21.75 from the Smith Valley Rotary Club in Wellington, Nevada.

 

There is no record of the "silver brick" ever being laid in the cornerstone of Radio Free Europe’s headquarters building in Munich, Germany. Nor is there any record of what happened to the "silver brick" after the Crusade for Freedom campaign ended in Nevada.