USA > California > California and the Californians and The Alps of King-Kern divide > Part 1
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.
F 866 176
44001161489
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
8
1
DAVID STARR JORDAN
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
AND THE ALPS OF KING-KERN DIVIDE
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN President of Leland Stanford Junior University
13665
NEW EDITION
San Francisco The Whitaker-Ray Company Incorporated 1903 JAN 1905
Copyright, 1898 by Houghton, Mifflin & Company
Reprinted by permission of Mr. Walter H. Page Editor of the Atlantic Monthly
Copyright, 1903 by The Whitaker & Ray Company
L
76
PREFATORY NOTE.
This essay was first published in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1898. It is here reprinted by the kind permission of the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and of the editor, Mr. Walter H. Page.
1
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
BY DAVID STARR JORDAN PRESIDENT OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY
The Californian loves his state because his state loves him, and he returns her love with a fierce affec- tion that men of other regions are slow to under- stand. Hence he is impatient of outside criticism. Those who do not love California cannot understand her, and, to his mind, their shafts, however aimed, fly wide of the mark. Thus, to say that California is commercially asleep, that her industries are gambling ventures, that her local politics is in the hands of- professional pickpockets, that her small towns are the shabbiest in Christendom, that her saloons control more constituents than her churches, that she is the slave of corporations, that she knows no such ' thing as public opinion, that she has not yet learned to distinguish enterprise from highway robbery, nor reform from blackmail,-all these things and many more the Californian may admit in discussion, or may say for himself, but he does not find them accept- able from others. They may be more or less true, in certain times and places, but the conditions which
-
1 - 3/05
6 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
have permitted them will likewise mend them. It is said in the Alps that "not all the vulgar people who come to Chamouny can ever make Chamouny vulgar." For similar reasons, not all the sordid people who drift overland can ever vulgarize Cali- fornia. Her fascination endures, whatever the acci- dents of population.
The charm of California has, in the main, three sources-scenery, climate, and freedom of life.
To know the glory of California scenery, one must live close to it through the changing years. From Siskiyou to San Diego, from Mendocino to Mariposa, from Tahoe to the Farallones, lake, crag, or chasm, forest, mountain, valley, or island, river, bay, or jutting headland, every one bears the stamp of its own peculiar beauty, a singular blending of richness, wildness, and warmth. Coastwise every- where sea and mountains meet, and the surf of the cold Japanese current breaks in turbulent beauty against tall " rincones" and jagged reefs of rock. Slumbering amid the hills of the Coast Range,
"A misty camp of mountains pitched tumultuously,"
lie golden valleys dotted with wide-limbed oaks, or smothered under over-weighted fruit trees. Here, , too, crumble to ruins the old Franciscan missions, each in its own fair valley, passing monuments of California's first page of written history.
Inland rises the great Sierra, with spreading
3 charms of Calif.
1230/ 199.
"A misty camp of mountains pitched tumultuously "
9
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
ridge and foothill, like some huge, sprawling centi- pede, its granite back unbroken for a thousand miles. Frost-torn peaks, of every height and bearing, pierce the blue wastes above. Their slopes are dark with forests of noble pines and giant sequoias, the mighti- est of trees, in whose silent aisles one may wander all day long and see no sign of man. Dropped here and there rest purple lakes which mark the craters of dead volcanoes, or which swell the polished basins where vanished glaciers did their last work. Through moun- tain meadows run swift brooks, over-peopled with trout, while from the crags leap full-throated streams, to be half blown away in mist before they touch the valley floor. Far down the fragrant cañons sing the green and troubled rivers, twisting their way lower and lower to the common plains. Even the hopeless stretches of alkali and sand, sinks of lost streams, in the southeastern counties, are redeemed by the de- lectable mountains that on all sides shut them in. Everywhere the landscape seems to swim in crystal- line ether, while over all broods the warm California sun. Here, if anywhere, life is worth living, full and rich and free.
As there is from end to end of California scarcely one commonplace mile, so from one end of the year to the other there is hardly a tedious day. Two seasons only has California, but two are enough if each in its way be perfect. Some have called the
10 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
climate "monotonous," but so, no doubt, is good health. In terms of Eastern experience, the seasons may be defined as "late in the spring and early in the fall ";
"Half a year of clouds and flowers, half a year of dust and sky," according to Bret Harte. But with the dust and sky comes the unbroken succession of days of sunshine, the dry invigorating air, and the boundless overflow of vine and orchard. Each season in its turn brings its fill of satisfaction, and winter or summer we regret to look forward to change, because we would not give up what we have for the remembered delights of the season that is past. If one must choose, in all the fragrant California year the best month is June, for then the air is softest, and a touch of summer's gold overlies the green of winter. But October, when the first swift rains
" dash the whole long slope with color,"
and leave the clean-washed atmosphere so absolutely transparent that even distance is no longer blue, has a charm not less alluring.
So far as man is concerned, the one essential fact is that he is never the climate's slave; he is never beleaguered by the powers of the air. Winter and summer alike call him out of doors. In summer he is not languid, for the air is never sultry. In most regions he is seldom hot, for in the shade or after
1
1899. L Boeringen
" Far down the fragrant canyons sing the green and troubled rivers"
e
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS 13
nightfall the dry air is always cool. When it rains, the air may be chilly, in doors or out, but it is never cold enough to make the re- morseless base-burner a welcome alternative. The habit of roasting one's self all winter long is unknown in California. The old Californian seldom built a fire for warmth's sake. When he was cold in the house he went out of doors to get warm. The house was a place for storing food and keeping one's belongings from the wet. To hide in it from the weather would be to lay a false stress on its function.
The climate of California is especially kind to childhood and old age. Men live longer there, and, if unwasted by dissipation, strength of body is better conserved. To children the conditions of life are particularly favorable. ~ California could have no better advertisement at some world's fair than the visible demonstration of this fact. A series of meas- urements of the children of Oakland has recently been taken, in the interest of comparative child study; and should the average of these from different ages be worked into a series of moulds or statues for com- parison with similar models from Eastern cities, the result would surprise. The children of California, other things being equal, are larger, stronger, and better formed than their Eastern cousins of the same age. This advantage of development lasts, unless cigarettes, late hours, or grosser forms of dissipation
14 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
come in to destroy it. A wholesome, sober, out-of- door life in California invariably means a vigorous maturity.
A third clement of charm in California is that of personal freedom. The dominant note in the social development of the state is individualism, with all that it implies of good or evil. Man is man, in Cali- fornia : he exists for his own sake, not as part of a social organism. He is, in a sense, superior to society. In the first place, it is not his society; he came from some other region on his own business. Most likely, he did not intend to stay; but, having summered and wintered in California, he has become a Californian, and now he is not contented anywhere else. Life on the coast has, for him, something of the joyous irre- sponsibility of a picnic. The feeling of children released from school remains with grown people.
"A Western man," says Dr. Amos Griswold Warner, "is an Eastern man who has had some additional experiences." The Californian is a man from somewhere or anywhere in America or Europe, typically from New England, perhaps, who has learned a thing or two he did not know in the East, and perhaps has forgotten some things it would have been as well to remember. The things he has learned relate chiefly to elbow-room, nature at first hand, and " the unearned increment." The thing he is most likely to forget is that escape from public opinion
L
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS 15
is not escape from the consequences of wrong action.
Of elbow-room California offers abundance. In an old civilization men grow like trees in a close-set forest. Individual growth and symmetry give way to the necessity of crowding. There is no room for spreading branches, and the characteristic qualities and fruitage develop only at the top. On the fron- tier men grow as the California live oak, which, in the open field, sends its branches far and wide.
With plenty of elbow-room the Californian works out his own inborn character. If he is greedy, malicious, intemperate, by nature, his bad qualities rise to the second degree in California, and sometimes to the third. The whole responsibility rests on him- self. Society has no part of it, and he does not pre- tend to be what he is not, out of deference to society. "Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue," but in California no such homage is demanded or accepted. In like manner, the virtues become intensi- fied in freedom. Nowhere in the world can one find men and women more hospitable, more refined, more charming, than in the homes of prosperous Califor- nia. And these homes, whether in the pine forests of the Sierras, in the orange groves of the south, in the peach orchards of the Coast range, or on the great stock ranches, are the delight of all visitors who enter their open doors. To be sure, the bewild- ering hospitality of the great financiers and greater
16 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
gamblers of the sixties and seventies is a thing of the past. We shall never again see such prodigal enter- tainment as that which Ralston, bankrupt, cynical, and magnificent, once dispensed in Belmont Cañon. Nor do we find, nowadays, such lavish outgiving of fruit and wine, or such rushing of tally-hos, as once preceded the auction sale of town lots in paper cities. These gorgeous "spreads " were not hospitality, and disappeared when the traveler had learned his lesson. Their avowed purpose was "the sale of worthless land to old duffers from the East." But real hospital- ity is characteristic of all parts of California where men and women have an income beyond the needs of the day.
To a very unusual degree the Californian forms his own opinions on matters of politics, religion, and human life, and these views he expresses without re- serve. His own head he "carries under his own hat," and whether this be silk or a sombrero is a matter of his own choosing. The dictates of church and party have no binding force on him. The Californian does not confine his views to abstractions. He has his own opinions of individual men and women. If need be, he will analyze the character, motives, and actions of his neighbor in a way which will horrify the tray- eler who has grown up in the shade of a libel law.
The typical Californian has largely outgrown provincialism. He has seen much of the world, and
gerneer
" Purple lakes which mark the craters of dead volcanoes "
.
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS 19
he knows the varied worth of varied lands. He travels more widely than the man of any other state, and he has the education which travel gives. As a rule, the well-to-do Californian knows Europe better than the average Eastern man of equal financial re- sources, and the chances are that his range of experi- ence includes a part of Asia as well. A knowledge of his own country is a matter of course. He has no sympathy with "the essential provinciality of the mind which knows the Eastern seaboard, and has some measure of acquaintance with countries and cities, and with men from Ireland to Italy, but which is densely ignorant of our own vast domain, and thinks that all which lies beyond Philadelphia belongs to the West." Not that provincialism is unknown in Cali- fornia, or that its occasional exhibition is any less absurd or offensive here than elsewhere. For exam- ple, one may note a tendency to set up local standards for literary work done in California. Another, more harmful idea would insist that methods outworn in the schools elsewhere are good because they are Cali- fornian. This is the usual provincialism of ignor- ance, and it is found the world over. Especially is it characteristic of centers of population. When men come into contact with men instead of with the forces of nature, they mistake their own conventionalities for the facts of existence. It is not what life is, but what " the singular mess we agree to call life " is, that
20 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
interests them. In this fashion they lose their real understanding of affairs, become the toys of their local environment, and are marked as provincials or tenderfeet when they stray away from home.
California is emphatically one of "earth's male lands," to accept Browning's classification. The first Saxon settlers were men, and in their rude civilization women had no part. For years women in California were objects of curiosity or of chivalry, disturbing rather than cementing influences in society. Even yet California is essentially a man's state. It is common to say that public opinion does not exist there; but such a statement is not wholly correct. It does exist, but it is an out-of-door public opinion,-a man's view of men. There is, for example, a strong public opin- ion against hypocrisy, in California, as more than one clerical renegade has found, to his discomfiture. The pretense to virtue is the one vice that is not forgiven. If a man be not a liar, few questions are asked, least of all the delicate one as to the " name he went by in the states." What we commonly call public opin- ion-the cut and dried decision on social and civic questions-is made up in the house. It is essentially feminine in its origin, the opinion of the home circle as to how men should behave. In California there is little which corresponds to the social atmos- phere pervading the snug white-painted, green- blinded New England villages, and this little exists
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS 21
chiefly in communities of people transported in block, -traditions, conventionalities, prejudices, and all. There is, in general, no merit attached to conformity, and one may take a wide range of rope without necessarily arousing distrust. Speaking broadly, in California the virtues of life spring from within, and are not prescribed from without. The young man who is decent only because he thinks that some one is looking, would do well to stay away. The stern law of individual responsibility turns the fool over to the fool-killer without a preliminary trial. No finer type of man can be found in the world than the sober Cali- fornian; and yet no coast is strewn with wrecks more pitiful.
There are some advantages in the absence of a compelling force of public opinion. One of them is found in the strong self-reliance of men and women who have made and enforced their own moral stand- ards. With very many men life in California brings a decided strengthening of the moral fibre. They must reconsider, justify, and fight for their standards of action; and by so doing they become masters of themselves. With men of weak nature the result is not so encouraging. The disadvantage is shown in lax business methods, official carelessness and cor- ruption, the widespread corrosion of vulgar vices, and the general lack of pride in their work shown by artisans and craftsmen.
22 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
In short, California is a man's land, with male standards of action,-a land where one must give and take, stand and fall, as a man. With the growth of woman's realm of homes and houses, this will slowly change. It is changing now, year by year, for good and ill; and soon California will have a public opinion. Her sons will learn to fear "the rod behind the looking-glass," and to shun evil not only because it is vile, but because it is improper.
Contact with the facts of nature has taught the Californian something of importance. To have elbow-room is to touch nature at more angles; and whenever she is touched she is an insistent teacher. Whatever is to be done, the typical Californian knows how to do it, and how to do it well. He is equal to every occasion. He can cinch his own saddle, harness his own team, bud his own grapevines, cook his own breakfast, paint his own house; and because he can- not go to the market for every little service, perforce he serves himself. In dealing with college students in California, one is impressed by their boundless ingenuity. If anything needs doing, some student can do it for you. Is it to sketch a waterfall, to en- grave a portrait, to write a sonnet, to mend a saddle, to sing a song, to build an engine, or to "bust a broncho," there is some one at hand who can do it, and do it artistically. Varied ingenuity California demands of her pioneers. Their native originality has
Doeringert
--
.
1899.
" Half a year of clouds and flowers "
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS 25
been intensified by circumstances, until it has become a matter of tradition and habit. The processes of natural selection have favored the survival of the ingenious, and the quality of adequacy has become hereditary.
The possibility of the 'unearned increment is a great factor in the social evolution of California. Its influence has been widespread, persistent, and, in most regards, baneful. The Anglo-Saxon first came to California for gold to be had for the picking up. The hope of securing something for nothing, money) or health without earning it, has been the motive for a large share of the subsequent immigration. From those who have grown rich through undeserved pros- perity, and from those who have grown poor in the quest of it, California has suffered sorely. Even now, far and wide, people think of California as a region where wealth is not dependent on thrift, where one can somehow "strike it rich" without that tedious attention to details and expenses which wears out life in effete regions such as Europe and the Eastern States. In this feeling there is just enough of truth to keep the notion alive, but never enough to save from disaster those who make it a working hypothe- sis. The hope of great or sudden wealth has been the mainspring of enterprise in California, but it has also been the excuse for shiftlessness and recklessness, the cause of social disintegration and moral decay.
26 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
The "Argonauts of '49" were a strong, self-reliant, generous body of men. They came for gold, and gold in abundance. Most of them found it, and some of them retained it. Following them came a miscel- laneous array of parasites and plunderers; gamblers, dive-keepers and saloon-keepers, who fed fat on the spoils of the Argonauts. Every Roaring Camp had its Jack Hamlin as well as its Flynn of Virginia, and the wild, strong, generous, reckless aggregate cared little for thrift, and wasted more than they earned.
But it is not gold alone that in California has dazzled men with visions of sudden wealth. . Orange groves, peach orchards, prune orchards, wheat rais- ing, lumbering, horse-farms, chicken-ranches, bee- ranches, seal-poaching, cod-fishing, salmon-canning, -each of these has held out the same glittering possi- bility. Even the humblest ventures have caught the prevailing tone of speculation. Industry and trade have been followed, not for a living, but for sudden wealth, and often on a scale of personal expenses out of all proportion to the probable results. . In the six- ties, when the gold-fever began to subside, it was found that the despised "cow counties " would bear marvelous crops of wheat. At once wheat-raising was undertaken on a grand scale. Farms of five thousand to fifty thousand acres were established on the old Spanish grants in the valleys of the Coast Range and in the interior.
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS 27
The working out of most of the placer mines and the advent of quartz-crushing with elaborate machin- ery have changed gold-mining from speculation to regular business, to the great advantage of the state. In the same manner the development of irrigation is changing the character of farming in many parts of California. In the early days fruit-raising was of the nature of speculation, but the spread of irrigation has brought it into more wholesome relations. To irri- gate a tract of land is to make its product certain ; but at the same time irrigation demands expenditure of money, and the building of a home necessarily follows. Irrigation thus tends to break up the vast farms into small holdings which become permanent homes.
On land well chosen, carefully planted, and thrift- ily managed, an orchard of prunes or of oranges should reward its possessor with a comfortable living, besides occasionally an unexpected profit thrown in. But too often men have not been content with the usual return, and have planted trees with a view only to the unearned profits. To make an honest living from the sale of oranges or prunes is quite another thing from acquiring sudden wealth. When a man without experience in fruit-raising or in general econ- omy comes to California, buys land on borrowed capital, plants it without discrimination, and spends his profits in advance, there can be but one result.
28 CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS
The laws of economics are inexorable even in Cali- fornia. One of the curses of the state is the "fool fruit-grower," with neither knowledge nor con- science in the management of his business. Thousands of trees have been planted on ground unsuitable for the purpose, and thousands of trees which ought to have done well have died through his neglect. Through his agency frozen oranges are sent to East- ern markets under his neighbor's brands, and most needlessly his varied follies have spoiled the reputa- tion of the best of fruit.
The great body of immigrants to California have been sound and earnest, fit citizens of the young state, but this is rarely true of seekers of the unearned increment. No one is more greedy for money than the man who can never get any. Rumors of golden chances have brought in a steady stream of incompe- tents from all places and all strata of social life. From the common tramp to the inventor of "perpetual motions " in mechanics or in Sociology, is a long step in the moral scale, but both are alike in their eagerness to escape from the " competitive social order " of the East, in which their abilities found no recognition. Whoever has deservedly failed in the older states is sure at least once in his life to think of redeeming his fortunes in California. Once on the Pacific slope the difficulties in the way of his return seem insur- mountable. The dread of the winter's cold alone is
-
" While from the crags leap full throated streams "
CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS 31
in most cases a deterrent factor. Thus San Fran- cisco, by force of circumstances, has become the hop- per into which fall incompetents from all the world, and from which few escape. The city contains about three hundred thousand people. Of these, a vast number, thirty thousand to fifty thousand, it may be, have no real business in San Francisco. They live from hand to mouth, by odd jobs that might be better done by better people; and whatever their success in making a living, they swell the army of discon- tent, and confound all attempts to solve industrial problems. In this rough estimate I do not count San Francisco's own poor, of which there is a moder- ate proportion, but only those who have drifted in from the outside. I would include, however, not only those who are economically impotent, but also those who follow the weak for predatory ends. In this last category I place a certain number of saloon- keepers; a class of so-called lawyers; a long line of soothsayers, clairvoyants, lottery agents, and joint- keepers, besides gamblers, sweaters, promoters of "medical institutes," magnetic, psychical, and magic "healers," and other types of unhanged, but more or less pendable, scoundrels that feed upon the life-blood of the weak and foolish. The other cities of California have had a similar experience. Each has its reputation for hospitality, and each has a con- siderable population which has come in from other
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.