| Summary: | This chapter, “Grounding Capitalism,” by Bathsheba Demuth, examines the Nome gold rush from 1898 to the early years of the twentieth century. It follows the thousands of miners who converged on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, showing how their ideas about capitalism—should it favor individual or corporate enterprise?—intersected with geological context. It argues that the rush initially seemed to favor individual workers, as miners with little equipment could strike it rich by sifting gold from beach sand, but then the rush began to favor corporate capitalism by requiring expensive infrastructure and investments to mine in the hills and creeks. The case shows how people’s ideas set the possibilities, and how geology narrowed them by making corporate capitalism appear natural based on natural context.
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