Cracking the case of the Egg War

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During the California Gold Rush, an obscure conflict called the Egg War reduced a natural treasure to a mere shell of its former self.

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From 1848 to 1855, 300,000 hopefuls flooded the Golden State hoping to strike it rich, turning San Francisco into the world’s fastest growing city. Farmers couldn’t keep up, food prices skyrocketed and chicken eggs were especially scarce, fetching a dollar each, or $30 a piece in today’s money.

But west of where the Golden Gate Bridge now stands were the Farallon Islands, a set of rugged granite outcrops that were home to the largest seabird colony in the U.S. Each year, hundreds of thousands of birds covered their jagged cliffs with nests.

Enter the eggers. When entrepreneurial pharmacist Doc Robinson and his brother-in-law made $3,000 from selling seabird eggs — even after losing half their haul on the rough sail back to San Francisco — it set off a mad scramble. Guano-slicked rocks, sheer drops, and flocks of angry birds weren’t enough to deter rival gangs.

Especially prized were the eggs of the murre, a black and white seabird. Pear-shaped and grey or turquoise with speckles, they were twice the size of chicken eggs. The only problem was, stale ones had a fishy after-taste, so eggers started each season by smashing all murre eggs on the islands, ensuring only fresh specimens would be collected.

And there were plenty to go around. About 14 million were sold over the years.

With lots of money at stake, conflict was inevitable. In 1851, six men set up on the islands, claimed ownership, and started the Pacific Egg Company, with exclusive rights to the nests. Rivals contested the bogus claim — and the federal government expropriated the land for a lighthouse — but fights, stabbings, and shootouts were common each egging season, from May to July.

In 1863, a full-blown riot led to several deaths and injuries, forcing the feds to act. They awarded a monopoly to the Pacific Egg Company — mostly to keep the peace — but turmoil continued, especially when the company began turning seals into oil, a process that covered the area with stench and smoke that obscured the lighthouse signal.

By 1881, the government was fed up and forcibly evicted the company from the islands.

By then, the poultry industry was better established and the new availability of chickens cut the price of murre eggs to just five cents a dozen. After 30 years, the Egg War was over. But decades of exploitation had reduced the seabird population from 400,000 to just 60,000.

Today, the islands have a vibrant seabird sanctuary, but the murre population is still struggling to recover. More than 120 years after the Egg War, there are still only a quarter of the murres there were before the Gold Rush. So the legacy of greed lives on.

And that’s largely because, by its very nature, greed affects not only the perpetrators, but those they victimize to enrich themselves. In simplest terms, greed is the intense and selfish desire for something, whether it’s money, control, or even a certain reputation.

It’s entirely self-serving and almost always involves using people , or taking what somebody else has or wants. That’s one of the reasons scripture condemns it so thoroughly.

Jesus said, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. Your life isn’t about what you have.” (Luke 12:15) “So don’t store up treasures on earth… You can’t serve both God and money. Whoever wants to be great and be first must be a servant of all. For even [I] didn’t come to be served, but to serve, and to give [my] life for others.’” (Matt. 6:19, 24; Mark 10:43-45)

Essentially, the Bible teaches that greed is modern-day idolatry — the worship of things — and offers an alternative.

“Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘I’ll never abandon you.’” (Heb. 13:5) And that’s the crux. Greed is so serious, spiritually, because it betrays a lack of gratitude for God’s many blessings, or a lack of trust that He’ll provide whatever we need.

But, in society at large, the Egg War rages on. Corporate greed results in gouging, near-monopolies, and price fixing. Greed masquerades as the cost of quality, even when we don’t get what we pay for. And — along with cut-throat ambition — is either tolerated or celebrated as just another necessary evil for the maintenance of a robust economy that supposedly benefits us all.

In reality, greed widens and preserves the gulf between rich and poor, sometimes leads to war, and always results in the exploitation of weaker countries and the environment.

Even on a personal level, greed generates unhealthy competition based on endless comparison with others, often results in overwork and neglect of family, and leads to the ruthless treatment of not only rivals but anyone who gets in our way.

Worse yet, greed is never satisfied. The more we get, the more we want. And the more we want, the more unhappy we are.

But as the Californian conflict illustrates, greed is usually the author of its own undoing, leaving a legacy of real pain and loss. So avoid it. The consequences are far worse than ending up with a little egg on your face.

Share your thoughts with Rick Gamble at info@followers.ca A former TV reporter and journalism prof, he pastors an independent, nondenominational church in Brantford called Followers of Christ (bit.ly/3fs3NCd) .