My Review of Peter Cozzens' "Deadwood: Gold, Guns and Greed in the American West"

 Gold in Them There Hills

As an enthusiastic fan of the Deadwood HBO series, I was looking forward to Peter Cozzens’ book on the same subject. Except for the book being too long, I was not disappointed. Cozzens’ “Deadwood” has everything. His cast of characters include Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane, Sitting Bull, President Grant, and George Hearst. We witness Indian wars, cattle rustling, horse thieves, stagecoach robberies, gun fights and water wars. As in the HBO series, the two leading protagonists are Seth Bullock and Sol Star who own a hardware store. Bullock would become sheriff and U.S. Marshall and Star would remain a pillar of the community.

 In four short years 1876-1879 Deadwood sparked the imagination of the entire country with the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The town was founded by would be miners illegally squatting on Indian land that was later legalized. The miners largely came from the vast army of the unemployed caused by the long depression of 1873-1879. Following them was a smaller army of “soiled doves,” prostitutes in the vernacular of the day, who populated the Deadwood’s notorious brothels.

 Two facets of Deadwood’s short history bring out the economist in me. First Deadwood represents a case study in spontaneous order where the town was created out of nothing. Of course, quite a bit of disorder went along with the order, but Deadwood worked more or less. Indeed, Deadwood was one of the few places in the U.S. where African Americans, Jews and Chinese got along with the majority white Christian population and were respected to varying degrees.

 Second, with the passage of Grant’s Specie Resumption Act of 1875 the United States was put on a path to the gold standard. One of the problems with the gold standard is that the growth in the money supply is contingent the success of miners in finding gold. Hence, the importance of Deadwood. In part, Deadwood helped put the U.S. back on the gold standard in 1879.

 Cozzens highlights the role George Hearst the mining magnate who struck it rich in nearby Lead City. His Homestake Mine would form the foundation of his wealth and it enabled his son William Randolf to become a press lord and leading politician in the early 20^th Century. He was far from the most scrupulous person, but his mine produced gold through 2002. It truly was the mother lode.

Deadwood’s day in the sun ended with a fire in late 1879 which wiped out the town. However, absent the fire the decline in placer mining made decline inevitable. Capital intensive hard rock mining took the place of the very labor-intensive panning for gold. Cozzens tells a great story of this small mining town that captured the attention of the nation.

 

 

Donald Trump (National Socialist*)

President Donald Trump is nominally a Republican, but in reality, he is putting us on the road to an American version of the national socialism of the 1930’s. Domestically he is attempting to seize the commanding heights of the economy by taking ownership positions in Intel and U.S. Steel and by taking a 15% cut from NVIDIA’s sales to China. ( https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/07/on-road-to-serfdom.html ) Remember that under national socialism businesses remain under private ownership but are under the control of the government. This is a far cry from capitalism. 

 

Further Trump is challenging the independence of the Federal Reserve by demanding the removal of Lisa Cook from the board for allegedly committing mortgage fraud. How did this come about? His minion Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, pulled the mortgage of files of Lisa Cook as well as the files from such Trump adversaries as New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff. Let us be clear, this was no accident and soon the IRS and other federal agencies will get into the act.

 

To enhance his powers domestically Trump has appointed his cronies in the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the regulatory agencies and on the courts. Indeed, one of his private attorneys, Todd Blanche is now a deputy attorney general, and another, Eric Bove, was just confirmed to the Court of Appeals. Perhaps more serious is that he has purged a host of officers in the military and the CIA who might be more loyal to the constitution than to him. A defining feature of national socialism is loyalty to the leader, not to the law.

 

In keeping with his national socialist tendencies Trump is in the process of establishing a 150,000-member national police force in the form of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. These officers could at the stoke of a pen be empowered to engage in broader law enforcement activity and unlike the military they would not be subject to the strictures of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Indeed, Trump seems to be using the military in violation of that act anyway. Meantime many U.S. citizens have been caught up in the roundup of illegal immigrants.

 

Internationally Trump through his tariff policies is attempting to turn the open economy of the United States into more of an autarky where domestic production would be sheltered from international competition. In imposing his tariff regime Trump ignored Congress which has near exclusive power over tariffs and taxation. Trump has now lost twice the courts on his tariffs; and it will soon be up to the Supreme Court to rule on them. Further Trump has imposed punitive tariffs on our allies all while cozying up to dictators Putin and Xi. This all part of the national socialist playbook. It might be stretch, but could there be a Trump, Putin, Xi axis?

 

All the while the moral eunuchs of the Republican Party have either cheered Trump on or silently acquiesced. ( See from 2019:  https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-republican-moral-eunuchs-and.html ) Similarly, fearful of retaliation, the business community has remained silent and bowed to his wishes. Thus, in eight short months Trump has seized control of a good part of the economy and the security apparatus of the state.

 

To be sure this not the first time the U.S. experimented with national socialism in peacetime. In 1933 President Roosevelt used the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to take control of a good part of the economy. Fortunately, the NIRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935 and the RFC withered away. Let us hope the Supreme Court does the same thing to Trump’s tariffs.

 

Later in 1971 President Nixon imposed a system of price, wage, rent and dividend controls on the entire economy. Nixon also used the IRS against his enemies and spied on his political opponents. The Nixon controls expired in early 1973 and he was impeached in 1974. Say what you will about Nixon; he respected the process. I doubt that can be said of Trump. In 2009 President Obama temporarily took control of the banking and automobile industries.

 

To conclude Trump is in the process of creating an American version of national socialism. I am not going to use the polite words of state capitalism or American Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics. Forewarned is forearmed!

 

*- The reference to national socialism is derived from Germany’s Nazi Party. The official name of the Nazi Party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  or NSDAP which in English is the National Socialist German Workers Party. The Italian version of national socialism was called Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF which in English is the National Fascist Party.