USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 21
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These sentiments and resolutions were uttered in 1877, but they have a striking family likeness to the soap-box utterances of 1914. The interval is thirty-seven years. Even yet the working-class has not learned that its agi- tators seek to benefit no one but themselves. If ever a leader arises among them both selfless and capable they will be a mighty force to reckon with, but so far their leaders have proved themselves to be merely the more sharp and cunning men of their class, gifted with the plausible tongue, some talent for organizing, and a com- manding talent for extracting money and living at ease.
Even Dennis Kearney, poseur as he was and ignorant of history, soon discovered that he must bestir himself and do something besides vituperate if he would hold his position as leader of a large body of men that were beginning to think. Each of these men had a vote. The W. P. C. must make itself felt in the composition and then upon the performances of the next legislature.
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He invented the phrase "The Chinese must go," and it became the shibboleth of the working-man's party, although the Chinese were but one of its grievances. On October 16th one leading newspaper of San Francisco published a long manifesto from Kearney demanding the expulsion of the Chinese. It was written in his charac- teristic style-that is to say, the style of his sort. Not one of these agitators since time began has displayed the slightest originality.
Congress [said he] has often been manipulated by thieves, specula- tors, land-grabbers, bloated bond-holders, railroad magnates, and shoddy aristocrats [sic!]; a golden lobby dictating its proceedings. Our own legislature is little better. The rich rule them by bribes. The rich rule the country by fraud and cunning, and we say that fraud and cunning shall not rule us. The reign of bloated knaves is over. The people are about to take their affairs into their own hands, and they will not be stopped either by "citizen" vigilantes, state militia, or United States troops.
It has long been the wise policy of the United States and England to let agitators "talk their heads off," and the press is always willing to give them space if they are sufficiently spectacular. News is news. For the mo- ment the sand-lotters confined their explosions to the sand-lots, the police winked, the papers gave them head- lines, the citizens began to feel bored, and Mr. Coleman was not the man to sound the alarm-bell unless life and property were menaced. In consequence the W. P. C. came to the conclusion that they had intimidated the enemy and were now strong enough to take possession of the city. But some had a lively remembrance of those fifteen hundred hickory sticks, and in conference it was re- solved to "go slow" at first; so they merely stoned China- men when no policeman was on the beat, burned laundries
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in the night, and continued to inveigh against the rich.
But memories are short and blood becomes hotter and hotter when inflamed with talk and potations. There was a moderate faction that advocated a constitutional convention and subsequent legislation to remedy all evils; but there were many more (augmented by the hoodlums) who finally worked themselves up to a point where only an immediate demonstration against the rich would lower their temperature. It was on October 28th that this faction was persuaded by Kearney to give the "blood- suckers" an object-lesson of their power to take posses- sion of San Francisco whenever they chose. Some three thousand marched up to Nob Hill, shouting that the Chinese must go, and the rich as well. They also gave to the winds their ultimate determination to demolish the big houses recently built by the railroad magnates-Crock- er, Stanford, and Hopkins-as well as those of Haggin, Tevis, Colton, and others who had indulged in the heinous and un-American crime of making money.
When the mob reached the "spite fence" that Mr. Charles Crocker had built about an unpurchasable bit of land in the rear of his "palatial residence," Dennis Kearney mounted a wagon and shouted to the world at large that he had thoroughly organized his party and that he and his men would march upon these Nob Hill mag- nates and plunder the city just as soon as they felt like it. He would give the Central Pacific Railroad just three months to discharge its Chinamen (who, by the way, had been largely instrumental in building the road, the white man objecting to separation from his family, and preferring jobs involving less hardship), and that if
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Stanford did not attend personally to this detail he must take the consequences. He denounced and threatened Crocker in similar terms, and then, in the good old fash- ion, proceeded to call every capitalist by name and de- nounce him as a thief, a murderer, a bloated aristocrat, etc.
There was, of course, an understanding between the police and the leaders of this mob, for, although the guardians of the city were out in force, they did not break up the march nor interfere with the speeches. When Kearney and his cabinet had talked themselves hoarse the crowd marched back to South of Market Street, merely emitting an occasional "The Chinese must go."
After two or three more of these demonstrations, how- ever, the city authorities, realizing that the citizens were becoming alarmed, determined to make a display of re- sentment and force. Kearney, while vociferating on Barbary Coast, was arrested and jailed. As it was ex- pected that an attempt would be made to rescue him, the militia was called out. Chinatown, which was uncom- fortably close to the jail, appealed to the mayor for protection and barricaded its flimsy houses. Nothing happened, however, as is always the case when the au- thorities show energy and decision; and during the next three or four days several of Kearney's disciples were arrested while imitating his thunder.
This was as salutary for the city as for the W. P. C. It proved that the agitators were cowards and could be relied upon to make no war-like move unless inflamed by the eloquence of Mr. Kearney at first hand. Naturally, he could not harangue them from the inside of the jail, and they let him stay there. He and his disciples finally
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broke down, wept, protested that they had meant no harm, promised to call no more mass-meetings and lead no more mobs, and, in fact, to do nothing to excite further riot. So they were forgiven and told to go home and behave themselves. When Kearney emerged his own dray was waiting. He was crowned with roses, heaved on to it, and dragged to his headquarters by his still en- thusiastic supporters.
Kearney had given a promise very difficult for him to keep. Much as he disliked jail and its discomforts, he loved the limelight more. So he stumped the state, pre- tending to talk the politics of the new party, but in reality trying to organize a vast "army." The farmer and the country laborer, however, sent him so promptly about his business that he returned a trifle wiser to San Francisco, and, as he had lost his influence with the superior men of the W. P. C., made desperate attempts to regain it. Ap- pear on the first page of the newspapers and be discussed at the breakfast-table he must, if life were to be the prismatic orgie of his paranoiac dreams.
His influence with the superior men of the W. P. C. was gone beyond recall, but San Francisco could be relied upon to furnish a respectable following of hoodlums, vaga- bonds, criminals, and the hopelessly ignorant of the labor- ing-class; and again he led processions, this time to the City Hall to demand work, and harangued them in the sand-lots; he even had a new set of words and phrases to express his contempt of those upon whom fortune had deigned to smile. No notice was taken until he began to counsel lynching, burning the docks, and dropping bombs from balloons into the Chinese quarter.
Then the Committee of Safety reorganized. The au-
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thorities, however, were now on their mettle and prompt- ly rearrested Kearney and the worst of the soap-box offenders. Once more these wept, promised, and were discharged. The legislature passed the "Gag law," how- ever, an amendment to the penal code, by whose pro- vision such men as Kearney could be sent to prison for felony if they continued to incite riots. It also provided for a larger police force. Kearney, who was well aware that he had been discharged twice because there was no law to cover his offense, and send him to San Quentin, was now thoroughly disconcerted, and transferred his attentions to the elections and the proposed constitu- tional convention.
The working-man's party was now very strong-the W. P. C. of San Francisco was reinforced by "the Granger party" of the state. In November, 1878, it elected a senator to the new legislature, and in March, at the regu- lar city elections, it elected another senator and an assemblyman. In Sacramento and Oakland it elected its own candidates for mayor and certain other official positions. In a convention held in January it had adopted resolutions to sever all connection with the Republican and Democratic parties. A new party was in the field, and it began to look formidable. "The Chinese must go" was its war-cry.
The best and wisest thing it did was to expel Kearney from the office of president (May 6, 1878), alleging that he was corrupt and using the organization to advance his own selfish ends. This resulted in a split, with Kearney at the head of the faction that admired his oratory. Moreover, he was a wiry little Irish fighter, and there is ever a magic in the oft-reiterated name. Kearney's
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picture, with the familiar sweater, collarless, had been published in many an Eastern newspaper. He was still a great man.
The W. P. C., however split, was a distinct menace, and an attempt was made to fuse the Republican and Demo- cratic parties to fight the common enemy. This proved to be impossible before 1880. An act for calling a con- vention to change the constitution was due to the strength of the new party. It passed the legislature April 1, 1878, and was signed by Governor Irwin.
The personnel of this constitutional convention was far more remarkable and significant than that of the one which created a state in 1849. On June 19th the election for delegates resulted in 78 non-partisans, including 32 delegates at large; 51 working-men, including 31 dele- gates from San Francisco; II Republicans; 10 Demo- crats; and two independents. There were lawyers, farmers, mechanics, merchants, doctors, miners, jour- nalists, school-teachers, music-teachers, restaurant-keep- ers, and a cook.
The W. P. C. wing was partly communistic, partly anarchistic. The conservative wing of the convention was said to possess more men of brains, experience, and ripe judgment than any assemblage in the history of the state. The thinking people were alive to the danger to their republican institutions, which, however faulty, were far better than any yet devised by man. They were out- numbered, but if driven to extremities they meant to make the new constitution so radical that the people would not elect it. It is not for a moment to be denied that the corporations were represented among these men, but it must be remembered that they believed it to be a
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death-struggle, and the "classes" no more could be ex- pected to lay down their arms and surrender than the "masses."
There is no question that however passion may have blinded the men of the laboring-class and whipped them on to make absurd demands upon the impregnable for- tress of modern civilization, they were justified in their fears for the future of their class on the Pacific coast if no restraint were put upon Oriental immigration. The Chinese underbid the white man in the shops, fac- tories, railroad-yards, hotels, fruit-ranches, private houses; they lived on rice, sent their wages to China, were highly efficient; and they were well liked by employers not only on account of their skill and industry, but because they were polite, even-tempered, and sober. Formidable rivals, indeed, and, although the employer, particularly the asparagus-raiser and the housewife, will always regret them, it is plain justice that in a white man's country the white man should have no rival but himself.
James Bryce, in The American Commonwealth, has stated very succinctly the grievances presented by the W. P. C. at the convention, as well as their achievement.
THE GRIEVANCES
The general corruption of politicians and bad conduct of state, county, and city government.
Taxation, alleged to press too heavily on the poorer class.
The tyranny of corporations, especially railroads.
The Chinese.
THE RESULTS
I. It (the convention) restricts and limits in every possible way the powers of the state legislature, leaving it little authority except to carry out by statute the provisions of the constitution. It makes lob- bying (i. e., the attempt to corrupt a legislator) and the corrupt action of the legislator felony.
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2. It forbids the state legislature or local authorities to incur debts beyond a certain limit, taxes uncultivated land equally with the culti- vated, makes sums due on mortgage taxable in the district where the mortgaged property lies, authorizes an income tax, and directs a highly inquisitorial scrutiny of everybody's property for the pur- poses of taxation.
3. It forbids the watering of stock, declares that the state has power to prevent corporations from conducting their business so as to infringe the general well-being of the state; directs that the charges of tele- graph and gas companies and of water-supplying bodies be regulated and limited by law; institutes a railroad commission with power to fix the transportation rates on all railroads, and examine the books and accounts of all transportation companies.
4. It forbids all corporations to employ any Chinese, debars them from the suffrage, forbids their employment on any public works, annuls all contracts for "coolie labor," directs the legislature to pro- vide for the punishment of any company which shall import Chinese, to impose conditions on the residence of Chinese, and to cause their removal if they fail to observe these conditions.
5. It also declares that eight hours shall constitute a legal day's work on all public works.
To-day these provisions of the constitution of 1879 are merely a curiosity. It was elected by the people be- cause many voters were napping (as usual), but the net result for the working-man's party was nil, with the ex- ception of the provision for an eight-hour working-day. When the Chinese were excluded it was by the federal government, and those that remained in the state were always sure of employment; and as a temporary fusion of Democrats and Republicans in 1880 drove the W. P. C. out of existence, and as clever lawyers argued that many of the provisions of the new instrument were un- constitutional, and as, moreover, clever and more clever men went to successive legislatures, the stronger con- tinued as ever to do as they pleased, constitution or no constitution; and, as the strong has done since the be- ginning of time, used their power to the full for the benefit
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of their own class and laughed at the impotent anger of the weak. There is no lesson so persistently taught by history as this, and it would be well for idealists, uto- pians, socialists, communists, single-taxers, labor-union- ists, and all the rest of them to read it, accept it, digest it, and then either make the best of conditions as they are or find a leader, cultivate their brains, let alcohol alone, avoid windy agitators like plague-bearing rats, sink petty differences, and consolidate. And the best they may do will be as naught unless they find a great leader.
This convention sat for one hundred and fifty-seven days. Of course much time was consumed in speeches on the Chinese exclusion question. There were excep- tional chances for oratory. It is to be noted that a num- ber of far-sighted and liberal-minded persons attempted to insert a plank giving the suffrage to women. But they were too far ahead of their times, and the motion was de- feated. Altogether it may be inferred that the conven- tion upheld the best traditions of California in the acri- monious liveliness of its atmosphere, the choiceness of its invective, the absurdity of many of its motions, and the dissatisfaction and disgust of everybody concerned. Of course no one got what he wanted except the proletariat, and he suffered from doubts even then.
A number of the eminent men present-W. H. L. Barnes, Eugene Casserly, Samuel M. Wilson, John F. Miller-refused to sign the instrument at all, and it is probable that such men as Judge Hager, Henry Edgerton, J. West Martin, James McM. Shafter, J. J. Winans, wrote their names only because they feared for the fail- ure of the convention and the election of another with an even worse personnel.
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It is not to be supposed that no good laws were passed by this angry and desperate convention. The judiciary department was remodeled, prison regulations were im- proved, convict labor was prohibited, as well as the grant- ing of railroad passes (another dead letter), the Univer- sity of California was recognized as a public trust, to be maintained by the state and kept free of all political and sectarian control and open to both sexes. The eight- hour law was passed, proving the forerunner of a general eight-hour law. But the attempt to "cinch" capital ut- terly failed.
In 1879 California voted against further immigration from China, the vote standing 154,638 to 883. Pressure had already been brought to bear upon Congress, and on March 20th the Exclusion Bill passed. President Hayes refused to sign it, as being in conflict with the Burlingame Treaty, which provided that "Chinese sub- jects in the United States shall enjoy entire liberty of con- science and shall be exempt from all persecution and disability." In 1880 a commission was sent to Pekin to negotiate a new treaty permitting the restriction of im- migration. This treaty was ratified by the Senate in March, 1881. It gave the United States the power to "regulate, limit, or suspend" the immigration of the United States, but not to prohibit it altogether. By tinkering at this treaty, employing the amendment method, the Chinese were virtually excluded, and the conditions of re-entry for those already resident in the United States, who wished to visit China, were so severe and harassing that a large proportion made no attempt to return to California.
As for Dennis Kearney, he was disposed of by being
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made a capitalist in a small way, and so adroitly that no doubt he awakened one morning to find himself no longer famous, but rich. I met him shortly before his death, and asked him how he reconciled his present con- ditions with his former socialistic principles, and he re- plied lightly :
"Oh, you know, somebody has to do the work. What's the use?"
XXII
LAST PHASES
ALL things being relative, San Francisco for some fifteen or twenty years after the housecleaning given it by the Vigilance Committee of 1856 was a peaceful and decent city. But, as ever, its citizens ceased to be alert to any but their personal affairs, particularly during the Com- stock madness; and, logically, the body politic, unpro- tected by renewed vaccination, fell an easy prey to the insidious and venomous microbes of the underworld; and before the city realized that its system was even relaxed, "run down," it had broken out virulently in several places. Nor did the hostile swarms confine their activi- ties to the police, the professional politician, the munici- pal organs generally; eminent citizens were infected- and they are still fumigating themselves.
Following the denunciations of the Sand-lotters, which no one attempted to refute in toto, there was a reaction in favor of the upper classes, owing to the intemperate excesses of the W. P. C. and the new constitution they were instrumental in foisting upon California. But in the course of the next fifteen years many besides the pro- letariat were awake and alarmed at the dangers threaten- ing the city. The Wallace grand jury was impaneled in August,, 1891. The exposures of this body, after in- vestigations made under the greatest difficulties, so se-
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curely were the malefactors intrenched, proved a system of wholesale bribery and corruption by corporations, legislators, and supervisors.
For some years San Francisco had been dominated by "bosses," the most notorious and shameless of whom was "Blind" Boss Buckley. (The others are too con- temptible for more than a passing mention.) All of them, and Buckley in particular, were experts in every form of extortion, oppression, and demoralization of their army of human tools. The investigations of the Wallace grand jury startled complacent San Francisco, and Buckley fled to return no more; but there was little improvement in conditions until another sudden awakening of the civic conscience swept Mr. James D. Phelan into the mayor's chair in 1897.
One of the crying needs of San Francisco was a new charter granting enlarged powers to the mayor, for the exercise of which he would be directly responsible. As the case stood he might be an angel of light, but his hands were tied; the legislature passed nearly all laws for San Francisco, and behind that august body of sea-green incorruptibles the "machine" could hide and shift re- sponsibility as it listed.
Mr. Phelan at once appointed a committee of one hun- dred citizens to draft a charter; and, what was more to the point, he put it through. It provided for a respon- sible government, civil-service reform, and home rule, and declared for municipal ownership of those public utili- ties, light, water, transportation, so preyed upon and de- bauched by the municipal council, which had the power to fix the rates.
Mr. Phelan was mayor of San Francisco for five years,
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and, in the estimation of any impartial student of that politics-ridden town, was the ablest and most energetic in her annals. It would be an insult to add that he was honest if he were not a San Franciscan, and the tempta- tion to do so is irresistible, because California officials who are able, energetic, and honest are so rare that they should have at least plaster statues while alive; to be bronzed over or not, as an impartial and discriminating posterity shall advise.
Mr. Phelan stood firmly with the people against the bosses, exposed the fraudulent specifications of the light- ing monopoly, and saved the people three hundred thou- sand dollars a year; defended the city from pillage at the hands of the supervisors, among other amounts, divert- ing two million dollars from reaching their itching palms by "blocking jobs"; raised the standard of the pay of laborers in the city's employ; and gave back to San Francisco in public gifts many times his salary as mayor.
Our rich men of late years have been so culpably negligent of San Francisco's interests, so long as their own have prospered, that too much emphasis cannot be laid upon Mr. Phelan's sleepless and practical concern for his city, quite apart from his munificent donations and his unostentatious help to so many in private life, and his presentation to the city of the best of its statues. His father made the fortune which he inherited and doubled, and if he had chosen to devote all his energies to business, or even if it had been his disposition to loaf, no one would have been surprised or critical. Nor, oddly enough, would he have made one-tenth of the enemies he accumu- lated while striving to clean up San Francisco. If he had been poor and originally obscure he would have been for-
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LAST PHASES
given, for Americans seem to understand and forgive ambition and public efforts in the impecunious; but in new communities, at least, symptoms of civic decency in a rich man are regarded with alarm as a new and mysteri- ous germ which may prostrate the entire order. When the symptoms develop into aggression they are for stamp- ing the traitor out of existence. All sorts of mean mo- tives are ascribed to him, the press sneers and villifies, he falls a victim to the cartoonist, and only his friends and solid money respect him. If he survives and pur- sues his undeviating way this phenomenon is due to two causes only: his staying-powers and the basic common sense of the American people. As Abraham Lincoln once remarked, "You can fool, etc."
During the last two years of Mr. Phelan's incumbency there were serious labor troubles. Capital assumed a hostile attitude to large bodies of working-men striking not only for more pay, but for recognition of the union; and labor in turn becoming still more hostile, the two camps, even after the "Teamsters' Strike" was settled, remained armed and bristling. The result was the rise of Abraham Ruef and his creature, Eugene E. Schmitz.
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