John Gomes, born in Oakland, California in 1925, lived there during the school year and worked on family owned mining claims with his father during the summer. In 1942, Gomes went to work on the Crown Mine near Golconda, where his father was already working. He eventually attended the University of Nevada to study metallurgy, and after graduating, he worked briefly for Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation in Peru. Eventually he made his way to McDermmit, Nevada, working for the Cordero Company. Gomes was interviewed by Victoria Ford in 1999. When I first went to work at the Crown Mine [near Golconda] in June of 1942, the miners were making 70 cents an hour in the laborers’ and muckers’ pay, in the bull gang. What I received was five dollars a day. So that’s, I think, 62 1/2 cents an hour. And then in the middle of that summer, as the war was progressing and labor got tougher, then I was raised to 70 cents an hour, which is $5.60 a day, and the miners were raised to 80, which was $6.40 a day. Now, everyody makes that in an hour. [laughter] Or much more. But the miners worked a six-day week. Everybody else—mill crew, the crushers, all of them—worked seven days a week. So I saved a lot of money that summer, because then, if you worked seven days a week, you got paid for eight days, because everything over forty hours was time-and-a-half. |