USA > California > California; an intimate history > Part 22
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Ruef was a little ferret-faced, black-eyed French Jew, of abilities so striking that he could have become one of the most respected and useful citizens in the history of San Francisco had he not deliberately chosen the "crook- ed" rôle. Sentimentalists cannot argue in Ruef's case that "he never had a chance." He was of well-to-do parents, he finished his education at the University of California, graduated into the law, and had a lucrative practice from the beginning. But although his worst personal indulgence was "candy," he was one of the most
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innately vicious men this country has spawned, and one of the most destructive incubated by poor San Francisco.
The stiff-necked attitude of the Employers' Organiza- tion, which denied labor's right to unionize, gave Ruef his opportunity. He skilfully engineered his friend Schmitz, an imposing, bluff, and hearty person, and a real man of the people, having been a fiddler in a local opera com- pany, into the mayor's chair with little or no difficulty. The class line was as sharply drawn as the earthquake fault, and the proletariat and his sympathizers outnum- bered the others and voted with entire independence of party lines. They wanted a labor-union man; to his bias otherwise they were indifferent. This fine figurehead at the prow, Ruef began to build up his machine.
The board of supervisors during the first two years of the Schmitz incumbency continued to be the decent men natural to Mr. Phelan's administration; for even Ruef, with his brilliant if distorted talents for organiza- tion, could not upset the work of an honest mayor as quickly as he had hoped. But he went on fomenting class-hatred to his own advantage and that of Schmitz, and simultaneously they grew rich by grafting on vice, forcing that class of establishments euphemistically known in San Francisco as "French restaurants " to pay an enor- mous tribute, under threat of revocation of license.
When in the elections of 1905 Schmitz was found to have lost strength with the Labor-union party, always prone to fickleness and suspicion, and to have polled a heavy vote in capitalistic districts, citizens shrugged their shoulders and "guessed" that the stories of the Ruef- Schmitz machine, holding up corporations and rich men for large sums before granting franchises, were true.
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The Evening Bulletin, true to its traditions, and edited by Fremont Older, of the genuine militant brand, had been thundering for some time against the police board and the administrative boards of the machine, which were making no visible use of the money raised by taxation for specific purposes. The police board could be bought by any violator of the law who came to it with the price in his hand. But the result of the elections fur- nished Mr. Older with new and forked lightning; the heavy vote polled for Schmitz was in the wrong quarter, and the board of supervisors were Ruef's tools, chosen from the dregs of the working-class, men with no inherited ideals to give them moral stamina, and utterly unable to resist temptation in the form of the large sum that would fall to each after Ruef and Schmitz, having "gouged" some impatient corporation, had divided the lion's share. Then once more the citizens of San Francisco "sat up," awake to the new perils that threatened their battered city.
But although the Ruef-Schmitz machine looked as formidable as an invading horde of locusts in Kansas, and grew more arrogant every day, more contemptuous of public opinion, it had its weak spots. Ruef in January, 1906, made the irretrievable blunder of putting an honest man in office. Apprehending that Schmitz was losing his hold on the Labor-union party, he permitted William A. Langdon, superintendent of schools, and possessing a large following in labor circles, to be elected district attorney. When he made the discovery that Mr. Langdon was quite honest and nobody's creature, his amazement and wrath would have been ludicrous if they had not been pathetic.
No sooner had Mr. Langdon taken the oath of office
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than he began a series of raids on the various gambling institutions which paid a heavy tribute to the machine but flourished nevertheless.
Of course, San Francisco has always been a gambling city. It is in the marrow and brain-cells of her people, whether their blood ancestors were "Forty-niners" or not, and as there is no evil out of which good may not come, it is the source of their superb powers of bluff, their unquenchable optimism, and their indomitability under the most harrowing afflictions. When, after the earthquake and fire of 1906, the world was startled to learn that the people of San Francisco were planning to rebuild before the ashes were cold, David Belasco said to a reporter, "The Californians are bully gamblers!"
Therefore, when Mr. Langdon made it manifest that he purposed to put an end to the industrial manifestation of the race spirit, there was not only a terrific howl from his victims, but the well-regulated citizens themselves were amazed. Mr. Langdon, however, paid as little at- tention to one as to the other. He brought down the heavy hand of the law on the Emeryville Race-track (the most sordid and wholly abominable in the West), and upon the slot-machine, that lucrative partner of the saloon and the cigar-stand. In the ordinary course of events he would be crippled for funds; legal investiga- tion and prosecution were necessary, and the coffers of the city were in the robber stronghold. But Ruef had discovered some time since that there was another dark cloud on his horizon and that in the middle of it was a star. And while the star directed a cold and hostile gleam on Mr. Ruef, it was the bright hope of the district attorney.
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Rudolph Spreckels it was who proved to be the nemesis of Ruef. This very remarkable young man had left his father's roof when a boy of nineteen, taking the part of a brother whom he believed to be a victim of parental injustice. Then he proceeded to make his own fortune; and, having that special group of brain-cells which con- stitute the talent for making money, he was, in the course of a few years, one of the richest men in the community. Until 1903 business and the enjoyment of life in a quiet way occupied him fully, but by Abraham Ruef-unwit- ting savior of his city !- his eyes were opened to the needs and perils of San Francisco.
Ruef, with the serene confidence of the congenitally corrupt that every man has his price, approached the young financier with a particularly abominable plan for enriching himself at the expense of the city, and Mr. Spreckels suddenly woke up. His enlightenment was com- pleted by Mr. Phelan and Fremont Older. He applied himself to a thorough study of existing civic conditions, and was horrified to discover that for viciousness and general rottenness San Francisco could vie proudly with the worst cities of ancient or modern history.
He was emphatically the man for the hour. He was young, rich, energetic, honorable, implacable, ruthless, and tenacious. Mr. Phelan could help him with advice and money, but he had made too many enemies among the grafters of all classes during his five years as mayor to be an effective leader. Mr. Spreckels was greeted as a sort of knight of the Holy Grail; for in the beginning, when his sole intention was to crush the Ruef-Schmitz machine and imprison its chiefs and tools, he was acclaimed by even that capitalistic class that later accused him of
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every contemptible motive and trait revealed in the course of human history.
Ruef also made his investigations and discovered that Mr. Spreckels had built his fortune honestly, and was, therefore, unbribable. This, of course, was before 1906, and when the anachronistic Mr. Langdon grasped the reins carelessly tossed him by the idol of the Labor party, it became immediately apparent that if the machine would not furnish the money for the investigations and reforms Mr. Spreckels would. Moreover, Mr. Phelan, Mr. Older, and Mr. Spreckels had secured the services of Attorney Francis J. Heney, and induced President Roose- velt to give them the services of Detective Burns, then employed by the United States.
Then came the earthquake and fire of April, 1906. The reader may remember that old melodrama, "The Silver King," and the escaping convict who, watching the train on which he had escaped blazing from end to end with its imprisoned victims-he being almost the only survivor-falls on his knees and thanks God. Pic- ture Mr. Ruef as he watched San Francisco burning. The crippled millionaires, including Mr. Phelan and Mr. Spreckels, would be occupied with their own affairs for years to come. He and Schmitz were free. So profound a student of human nature was Mr. Ruef.
An hour or two after the earthquake, when it became apparent that a large part of San Francisco would burn, the pipes of the water system being broken and thirty fires having started simultaneously, Mr. Downey Har- vey, a grandson of the "War Governor," John G. Dow- ney, and himself a citizen of wealth and influence, went down to Mayor Schmitz's office and suggested that im-
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mediate measures be taken for the protection of the city and the relief of the homeless-who were already fleeing to the Presidio and the hills beyond the city. Every- body on that terrible day was either at a pitch above the normal or hopelessly demoralized. Schmitz, being a musician, had a temperament; consequently he was in the upper register. Morally supported by the "Committee of Fifty" that he called together at Mr. Harvey's sug- gestion, he proved himself as admirable an administra- tive officer as if life had groomed him to be a symbol of all the civic virtues. In truth, he was a weak man of good intentions, but putty in the hands of a man like Ruef.
Mr. Phelan, during the first day or two, was busy in actual rescue work and in carrying dynamite in his car for the purpose of blowing up buildings-a vain attempt to prevent the spread of the fire. But he was elected chairman of the Citizens' Finance Committee, and to him as great a compliment was paid as to Mr. Coleman in 1878. Congress voted a million and a half dollars for the relief of San Francisco, but hesitated to send it via Ruef- Schmitz. When, however, President Roosevelt was in- formed that Mr. Phelan had been made chairman of the Citizens' Finance Committee, he sent him the money per- sonally. The President also issued a proclamation direct- ing the people of the United States to send their contri- butions to Mr. Phelan, chairman of the Citizens' Finance Committee; and the corporation growing out of this committee received all the supplies and approximately $10,000,000 in money.
Mr. Phelan as well as Mr. Spreckels and Mr. Har- vey, and all the other men on the committee, neglected
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their private affairs for months, and the refugees were housed on the hillsides either in tents or cottages, fed, clothed, and generally taken care of. Ruef accepted the temporary domination of the committee with apparent philosophy, and himself opened an office just beyond the burned district, obviously adjusting matters for his legal clients. In reality he was looting right and left, preying upon the women of commerce, the bootblacks, the news- boys, the small shopkeepers, upon every class, in fact, to which his tentacles had reached during the years of his autocracy.
But Mr. Spreckels did not forget him nor his ultimate object for a moment. Heney, when he promised his ser- vices, was still engaged in exposing the Oregon land frauds, but he was free in June. Then he came to town, and with him Detective Burns. This was only two months after the disaster; but although Ruef was surprised, he was not particularly apprehensive; he did not believe that they could make any headway in the existing conditions.
In October sufficient evidence of extortion in the mat- ter of the French restaurants had been accumulated to warrant District-Attorney Langdon announcing that a general investigation would begin at once. He appointed Mr. Heney assistant district attorney.
This was six months after the earthquake. Men never alluded to it any more. The women still talked nothing but earthquake and fire; but the men talked only in- surance and rebuilding. They went about dressed in khaki and top-boots, exhilarated by the tremendous call upon their energies, and with all the old pioneer spirit reincarnated and intensified by the consciousness that they were about to build a great city, not merely using
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its site while "making their pile" to dissipate at a gambling-table or carry elsewhere. And this time they wanted a decent city. Schmitz, resting on his labors, had gone to Europe, and they had no intention of re- electing him.
Ruef was thoroughly frightened. But he was ever a man of resource; he suddenly played one of the boldest coups in the history of any city. Mr. Langdon was off campaigning for the governorship; T. H. Gallagher, president of the board of supervisors, was acting-mayor, and, of course, a creature of [the Chief. He was ordered to remove Langdon from the district-attorneyship on the ground of neglect of duty and appoint Abraham Ruef. The city held its breath and then emitted a roar of indigna- tion; it was quite patent that San Francisco was not as selfishly absorbed as Mr. Ruef had believed. The impu- dence of this plot to dictate the personnel of the proposed grand jury may be the better understood when it is re- membered that the city had just been informed officially of Mr. Ruef's iniquities and that he would be subjected to prosecution. But this attempt to balk justice was summarily defeated; Judge Seawell, of the Superior Court, held that as the district attorney represented the people as a whole, the mayor had no jurisdiction over him.
After this events proceeded rapidly. On November roth Judge Thomas F. Graham appointed a grand jury to investigate the condition of the city. It was known as the Oliver grand jury, Mr. B. F. Oliver having been elected foreman. The other members were: Maurice Block, C. G. Burnett, Jeremiah Deasy, Dewey Coffin, Frank A. Dwyer, E. J. Gallagher, James E. Gordon, Alfred Greenebaum, Morris A. Levingston, Rudolph
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Mohr, W. P. Redington, Ansel C. Robinson, Christian P. Rode, Mendle Rothenberg, F. G. Sanborn, Charles Sonntag, Herman H. Young, Wallace G. Wise.
It will be observed that five members of the Oliver grand jury were of the same race as Ruef; in fact, prac- tically every denomination was represented. Many of these men had close affiliations in the social and business world with "eminent citizens" they were forced later on to indict; but never did an investigating body do its work more thoroughly and impersonally.
Like Mr. Spreckels, they met with encouragement at first, their original and avowed purpose being to "get" Ruef, Schmitz, and the supervisors, without whose consent no franchise could be obtained.
It had been common talk for at least two years that every man and corporation with capital to invest or some new industry to launch was "held up" by the board of supervisors before they could proceed. Capital of every sort was grafted upon the moment it sought new outlets, and rich men in condoling with one another had ceased to comment upon the miseries of San Francisco in general. Therefore, the Oliver grand jury, as well as Mr. Heney and Detective Burns, thought that it would be an easy matter to obtain affidavits from these dis- tinguished victims which would go far toward convicting the malefactors. At that time they had not a thought of prosecuting the "higher-ups." But, to their amaze- ment, the rich men, individually and collectively, swore that they never had been approached, never had paid a cent of graft money. In the terminology of the hour, they refused to "come through." It looked as if the grand jury could not gather evidence enough to con-
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vict the machine of anything but the tribute levied on vice.
Then it was that Mr. Heney and Mr. Burns and his de- tectives changed their tactics. They offered immunity to the supervisors if they would give the information nec- essary to convict not the bribed, but the bribers. They agreed, and the grand jury was enabled to find indict- ments not only against Ruef and Schmitz, but against Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railroads, and his manager, Thornwall Mullaly; the finance committee of the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company; the agent of the Parkside Realty Company; the Home Tele- phone; the Pacific Telephone, and the Prize-fight Trust.
It is only possible here to give a brief account of the two principal trials. To quote from the Denman report:
The supervisors' testimony gave the grand jury the facts as to the passing of the ordinances, the payment of the money by Gallagher to various supervisors, and the payment of the money from Ruef to Gallagher. The chain of evidence, however, stopped at Gallagher's testimony that Ruef paid him the money in all but the Pacific Coast Telephone briberies, and no further evidence was discovered against the mayor in connection with the French restaurant extortions. The question then arose as to the advisability of treating with Ruef to secure the evidence as to the method by which the moneys came from the quasi-public corporations ... it became apparent that without this man's testimony the many bribe-givers whose enrichment by the large profits of such undertakings made them equally if not more dangerous to society, would not only escape the penalty which was their due, but that even their names would not be discovered and written in the "detinue book" of the city's suspicious characters. Besides, without Ruef's assistance, the conviction of Schmitz, with the resultant change in the mayoralty, the police, and other municipal boards, seemed impossible. The district attorney had his choice in this dilemma. He could leave the mayor and his administrative boards in power, discover nothing regarding the profit-takers from briberies, and content himself with a mere change in the supervisors and a long term of imprisonment for Ruef, or he could reasonably ex-
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pect the conviction of the mayor, the cleaning up of the city govern- ment, the obtaining of a complete revelation of the grafters "high up" as well as the "low down," and the possible conviction of some of them. The district attorney chose the latter alternative and bar- gained with Ruef. ... A written contract was finally signed whereby Ruef agreed to tell fully and unreservedly all he knew of the briberies and to plead guilty to certain of the French restaurant extortion cases, and the district attorney agreed to use the power of his office to pro- cure him immunity as to the other charges.
Complete immunity never was promised.
Schmitz was tried and found guilty on Ruef's testi- mony, and convicted on June 13, 1907. He was subse- quently released on a technicality. Although Ruef had pleaded guilty to accepting bribes during his own trial, he also escaped the penalty under the decision which freed Schmitz.
Sixteen supervisors had confessed to receiving bribe- money from their president, Gallagher, who, of course, con- fessed that he got it from the Chief. Ruef was again in- dicted and made desperate efforts to escape prosecution, including a change of venue. All devices failing, he ran away. His friends, the sheriff, the coroner, and the po- lice force failed to find him, but an elisor named by the court unearthed him. It was then that he bargained with the district attorney.
But Ruef, after promising to "come through" (in which case he would have been prosecuted for the French restaurant cases alone), fell into a panic as he reflected upon the condign punishment sure to be visited upon him did he betray his powerful associates; he resolved not to "snitch"-to quote once more from the elegant vocabulary of the moment-and attempted to pretend confession while admitting nothing.
But Heney was far more agile of mind than the now
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distracted Ruef. He caught him lying and exposed him. The immunity was canceled, and he was brought to his second trial in the bribery transactions, August 26, 1908. These trials-financed by Rudolph Spreckels-were con- ducted in Carpenter's Hall in Fulton Street, just beyond the burnt district, and before Judge Lawlor.
The chief witness against Ruef was the president of the board of supervisors, T. H. Gallagher. On April 29, 1908, his house in Oakland was wrecked by dynamite, but the witness whose life was sought survived and gave his testimony. The man who placed the bomb testified that he was employed by a henchman of Ruef.
This attempt at murder had been preceded by the kidnapping of Fremont Older, whose thunders in the Bulletin had never ceased. Naturally, statements crept into those inflammatory columns that were not wholly substantiated. One day Mr. Older accidentally printed a libel. He made amends on the following day, but he had given the enemies of the prosecution one of the chances for which they had been lying in wait. The libeled man had Mr. Older indicted in Los Angeles. Mr. Older ignored the summons, knowing well that if he went to Los Angeles he would remain there until the trials were over.
On October 27, 1907, he was lured by a false tele- phone message into a quiet street and forced, by several men, into an automobile, which dashed through and out of the city. The muzzle of a "gun" was pressed against Mr. Older's side; but he was wise enough not to struggle. A south-bound train was boarded at a way-station, and Mr. Older shut up in a drawing-room. One of the kid- nappers was an attorney for the United Railroads, R.
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Porter Ashe, a son of the Dr. Ashe, friend of Terry and other "Law and Order" men of 1856, who so bitterly opposed the Vigilance Committee.
The plot did not succeed. The hue and cry was raised by suspicious friends in San Francisco, and Mr. Older and his kidnappers were traced. The authorities in Santa Barbara were appealed to, and when the train arrived in the morning the party was commanded to appear in court, and Mr. Older was released. The net result of this epi- sode was the "reform" of the spelling of the word "kid- napped," which, as may be imagined, was overworked. It is now spelt-and presumably pronounced-by the California press, kidnaped.
In November, 1908, an attempt was made on the life of Mr. Heney. The San Francisco newspapers, with the exception of the Bulletin and the Call, by this time were indulging in furious attacks on the various members of the prosecution, and upon Heney in particular. The at- tacks were necessarily personal, as they would not have dared to defend Ruef, even had they been so inclined, but no doubt they were actuated by fear that Heney's hector- ing methods would surprise the names of the "higher- ups" from the defiant Ruef, now in his third trial. Their diatribes, assisted by cartoons, were held responsible for the attempted murder of the assistant district attorney; but the general opinion is that the man was a hired assassin. His name was Haas. There was little doubt that at- tempts were being made to "fix" the jury; and, as this man had boasted that he soon would be able to live in luxury, Heney succeeded in getting him off the third jury by exposing the fact that Haas had sojourned in a State's Prison for forgery. He was altogether a miserable
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specimen of humanity. On the 13th of November he slipped up behind Mr. Heney in the crowded court-room and fired a pistol-bullet into his head, just before his right ear. Heney's mouth happened to be open. The ball passed between the skull and jaw and exhausted its strength in the soft lining at the back of the mouth, finally lodging in the bone of the jaw on the opposite side.
There was great excitement in Fulton Street that day. The old-time crowds were there, wrought up to the point of hysteria, and there was much speechmaking and talk of lynching. But it ended in no overt attempt to frus- trate the law, and Haas meanwhile had been rushed to jail in an automobile. When searched, no other weapon was discovered, but that night he was found dead from a derringer wound in his head. Whether the derringer had been concealed in his shoe or whether it had been passed to him in his cell with orders to use it, or whether he was murdered, will probably never be known. He certainly knew too much to be permitted to stand the "third degree."
Heney was ill from the shock, although his only per- manent disability was deafness in one ear. The prose- cution of the Ruef case was continued by Matt I. Sulli- van and Hiram Johnson, one of the ablest lawyers in San Francisco, and in full sympathy with the prosecution.
Probably Ruef himself was not more astonished, when he actually was convicted and sentenced to fourteen years in the penitentiary, than San Francisco, so long accustomed to the miscarriage of "justice," particularly when the prosecuted was a rich man. But Ruef, at least, is out of the way.
The next sensational trial was that of Patrick Cal-
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houn, a gentleman of variegated record, handsome ap- pearance, and fascinating personality, who had honored San Francisco with his citizenship for several years and was now president of the United Railroads. There is no space to devote to this trial, which was spun out over many weary months. He wanted an overhead trolley system, and obtained the franchise from the Ruef- Schmitz machine. His best friends never denied in private conversation that he had paid over at least two hundred thousand dollars, although he denied the charges in toto when, after indictment by the grand jury, he was brought before the bar. Witnesses disappeared, the jury- men were bribed, and copies of the reports of the govern- ment's detectives were stolen. It was impossible to con- vict him legally.
The bringing of Calhoun to trial was the signal for a disruption of society rivaling that caused by the Civil War. So many of the men whose families composed society were in danger of a similar indictment that they naturally herded together; and Mr. Calhoun being a social ornament, the wives were as vehement in his sup- port as their husbands. Mrs. Spreckels, who enjoyed a brilliant position at Burlingame, the concentrated es- sence of California society, suddenly found herself an out- sider. So did Mrs. Heney, who was a member of one of the old Southern families. Mr. Phelan also was ostra- cised; and the few people of wealth and fashion that stood by the prosecutors were for a time in a similar plight. One wife of a suspected millionaire and personal friend of Calhoun went so far as to demand the politics of her guests as they crossed her threshold. And among all there was a bitterness unspeakable.
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But although Calhoun could not be convicted, nor the few others that were brought to trial, the prosecution at least accomplished a moral fumigation. The first evi- dence of this was the election to the mayoralty, after the deposition of Schmitz, of Dr. Edward Robeson Taylor. The second was the triumphant personal campaign for governor of Hiram Johnson. The whole state had fol- lowed the trials, condemned the grafters, and made up its mind to elect the best men to office. Of course, that high pitch of enthusiasm does not last; and as Dr. Taylor refused to build up a machine of decent men, the next mayor was an objectional person named P. H. McCarthy. He disgusted the Labor party, however, and they helped to elect Mr. Rolph, the present mayor, with whom all parties are as satisfied as they ever are with any one.
The most interesting event which followed the graft prosecutions and their direct results was the passing of the Woman's Suffrage Bill in 1911. Conservative peo- ple and the liquor trust fought the campaign success- fully in San Francisco; but the women, who had taken motors and visited practically every farmer and hamlet in the state, won with the country vote. What changes they will make in the moral conditions of the state re- main to be seen, but there is no question that the cam- paign and its encouraging result have awakened the minds of the California women and developed them intellectu- ally. They read better books, take an interest in public questions, quite ignored before, are making constant at- tempts to improve the condition of the poor women and children; and at the San Francisco Center of the Civic League some great or pressing question of the day is discussed by the best authorities obtainable. Its weekly
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meetings are patronized by hundreds of women, and all men invited have long since found it quite worth their while to attend.
California, cleaned up as thoroughly as may be, is flourishing and happy, secure in the fact that with her enormous grain-supply and orchards and vineyards and cattle-ranges, her thousand healing springs, she never can go bankrupt, no matter how hard the times, and that her perennial beauties will bring many hundreds of thousands of dollars into the state annually: the tourist never deserts California, and her winter cities in the south are always crowded by the people of the Eastern states that dread the cold of their own winters, and by those from the mountain states of the North- west, who long for sea-air and low altitudes. No matter what happens in the world beyond the Rocky Mountains or the Pacific Ocean, her orange-groves bear their yellow fruit, her skies are bluer than Italy's, her people are idle and luxurious and happy in the warm abundant south, or bustling, energetic, and keenly alive in San Francisco- which is no more California than Paris is France. She is the permanent resort of cranks, and faddists, and extrem- ists, and professional agitators and loafers, but they are in the minority despite their noise. As a whole the state is one of the most dependable, patriotic, and honorable in the Union, and has produced great personalities, eminent and good men, and brilliant and gifted minds out of all proportion to her age. May the fools and extremists never wreck her!
PRUNE-ORCHARD
WHEAT-FIELD
Herewith a list of men and women identified with Califor- nia's artistic life :
POETS-Ina Donna Coolbrith, Joaquin Miller, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Edwin Markham, Edward Robe- son Taylor, Luis Robertson, Agnes Tobin, and George Stirling.
WRITERS OF FICTION-Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, William C. Morrow, Frank Norris, Jack London, Stewart Edward White, Herman Whittaker, Richard Tully, Hermann Scheffauer, Charles F. Lummis, John Vance Cheney, James Hopper, Emma Francis Dawson, Elizabeth Dejeans, Elinor Gates, Gelett Burgess, Mary Austin, John Fleming Wilson, Charles Field, Miriam Michaelson, Geraldine Bonner, Cora Miranda Older, Kate Taylor Craig, Lloyd Osborne, Esther and Lucia Chamberlain, Kathleen Norris, Wallace Irwin, Chester Bailey Fernald, and my humble self.
Horace Annesley Vachell spent several years near San Luis Obespo and wrote a number of California romances and a well-known book on California sports. Marie Van Saanen- Algi, author of Anne of Tréboul, is a great-granddaughter of Josiah Belden, of San José, one of the most notable of the pioneers.
PAINTERS - William Keith, Charles Rollo Peters, Alex- ander Harrison, Frank McComas, Jules Tavernier, Theodore Wores, Albert Bierstadt, Matilda Lotz, Clara McChesney, Julian Rix, and Frederick Yates.
ACTORS OF BOTH SEXES-Nance O'Neil, Mary Anderson, Blanche Bates, Katherine Grey, David Warfield, and Holbrook Blinn.
Lotta erected a drinking-fountain in Market Street as a token of her devotion to the city of San Francisco.
PRIME DONNE-Sibyl Sanderson, Emma Nevada, Maude Fay.
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DANCERS-Isadora Duncan, Maude Allen.
One architect of genius we have produced, Willis Polk; one sculptor, Douglas Tilden; one composer, Edgar Kelley; and one stage-manager, David Belasco.
Newspaper writers that have made a reputation outside of California are: Ambrose Bierce, Arthur McEwen, E. W. Townsend, George Hamlin Fitch, Wallace Irwin, Will Irwin, and Ashton Stevens, dramatic critic.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Mark Twain, and Henry George are casually identified with San Francisco.
The historians and geologists have been mentioned in the preface; but the names of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University of California; David Starr Jordan, long presi- dent of Stanford University; Professor Holden; Professor Morse Stevens, so closely associated with California's intel- lectual life, cannot be omitted even in a brief history of the state; nor that of Luther Burbank. Chief among those that have given liberally from their private fortunes to enrich Cali- fornia artistically and educationally are: Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins (via Edward F. Searles), Mrs. Hearst, W. R. Hearst (whose beautiful Greek Theater at Berkeley would create the perfect illusion were it not for the anachronism of the donor's name, cut deep and painted green, above the stage), Dr. H. H. Toland, Adolf Sutro, William H. Crocker, Claus Spreckels, Raphael Weill, Truxtun Beale, Rudolph Spreckels, and James D. Phelan.
To all that I may have forgotten I make humble apologies. Since California embarked upon her dædal sea she has turned out artists (using the word generically) at such a rate that it is simpler to write a history of the state than to keep track of any but those that have won a national reputation, or those that one happens to number among one's acquaintance. It is easier to recall the benefactors.
G. A.
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