USA > California > Contra Costa County > History of Contra Costa County, California, including its geography, geology, topography, climatography and description; together with a record of the Mexican grants also, incidents of pioneer life; and biographical sketches of early and prominent settlers and representative men > Part 17
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"The elements of society have been changed. Twenty-one years ago the Spanish population was the elemental rule-all others were only the exception. There were the Alvarados, the Castros, the Martinez, the Sepul- vedas, the Estudillos, the Moragas, the Briones, the Sunols, the Sotos, the Peraltas, the Altemeranos, the Amadors, the Mirandas, the Berryessas, the Pachecos, the Bacas, the Higueras, the Alvisos, the Naviagas-all these proud, grand old families, each family under the benignant rule of their kind old Patriarch. It was most delightful to be among them at their homes-those rich, extravagant, hospitable, confiding, simple-minded, old- fashioned people. There was no shoddyism discovered there ; all their sur- roundings were old-fashioned, neat and comfortable. Just think of that
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sumptuous dinner of Spanish cookery, and those luxurious feather beds, after the fatiguing hard day's ride on horseback ! The young men of each household, although sometimes reckless and wild like other boys, were polite, sprightly and handsome. The young women were beautiful and graceful, with manners most charming. We never shall forget those social fandangos. Now the Spanish noun fandango is often used by stupid Americanos as an expression of contempt. But this comprehensive Spanish word has the same purport as the two English words " social party." And their beautiful dances are the very poetry of motion, and they are tastefully adopted by the most genteel American society. There was another seem- ingly more barbarous amusement, which had been imported three hundred and fifty years agone from the Moorish customs of old Granada and Seville. I refer to the renowned Spanish bull-fights. The first time I ever had the pleasure of witnessing that national amusement was in the month of Octo- ber, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-two. It was on the hilarious occasion of a wedding at the residence of Don Vicente Martinez, in old Pinole. Let me say once and for all that no one should be offended if I am kindly and respectfully personal, in order to illustrate these pleas- ant reminiscences of the olden time. I say that merry wedding and that bull-fight were at the residence of Don Vicente Martinez, and the cabal- leros who took part in the fight were Don Wm. M. Smith, Don Pedro Higuera, and Don Samuel J. Tennent. These were all gay young gentlemen then. Everybody was there-everybody from all the country fifty miles around was there; and everybody danced and dined and wined to his heart's content. But speaking of the bull-fight, I observed that nobody got hurt, and the secret of this I found out afterwards. They had nicely and smoothly sawed off the sharp tips of the animal's horns, and when he made his tremendous lunges at any one of these wary caballeros, the sagacious horse would jump entirely across the line of danger, while the great weight and momentum of the infuriated beast would always drive him away for- ward headlong at a tangent of about sixty degrees away from his object of attack. If, however, there happened to be sometimes an awkward strike, it was as harmless as a merely good solid punch in the ribs. Nobody was killed, nobody was hurt. We had read in romances about the bloody bull- fights in Spain, and of course we Yankees there were very much disap- pointed.
" I have said the Spanish ranchero was extravagant in his mode of liv- ing. Well, why not ? He could well afford to be extravagant, for he was rich-very rich. There were those dozen solid silver candlesticks ; there were those solid silver salvers, three feet long; there were those quaint old Mexican table sets of solid silver. The ladies of the household are provided with sumptuous and most costly apparel. He had gold in abundance, the proceeds from the ready sale of his thousands of beef cattle. And what
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could he do with all this gold ? He said : 'Let us have sport with it.' And so he and his neighboring rancheros had their regular gambling set-to every Sunday evening after church. His wide domain of square leagues more than equaled any German principality. That earthquake-proof adobe cottage, that vineyard, that bubbling spring of purest water, that sparkling living brook, that cool shade of waving willows, the soft breezes of a peculiar climate, that quiet seclusion from the striving world, were his beautiful garden of paradise. Conscious of his independence and wealth, of his thousands for him and for his for all coming time, he never dreamt of a reverse of fortune.
" But a change came o'er the spirit of his dream. The unscrupulous Yankee finds his resting-place. A couple of thousands in gold coin are temptingly exhibited ; the wine circulates freely, with the oft-repeated ' bueno salud;' conversation becomes interesting and animated, the patri- arch and his household are charmed with their new-found acquaintance, and artful and polished visitor. A loan of this couple of thousands is most graciously proffered by this most liberal stranger ; a little more wine is taken for the stomach's sake, with another ' bueno salud' all round ; the proffered loan is as graciously accepted, more to oblige the accomplished guest than for any possible need or use for the ready cash ; a promissory note written in English and already prepared beforehand, and made payable one day after date, and to bear interest at the rate of seven per cent. per month, to be compounded monthly, together with the usual accompanying death pledge upon that principality of square leagues, are mirthfully exe- cuted by the confiding, simple-minded, illiterate Spaniard, as if it were a passing jest ! So much droll ceremony with reference to that mere trifle of money is light comedy to him, in the amusing programme of the day's en- tertainment .- Time passes. Many months, and several years pass away. Where does that elegant gentleman keep himself ? Why does he not come and get his money ? Surely he is a most indulgent creditor ! The illiterate Spaniard has no conception of the cumulative effect of interest compounded ! Month after month pass away, and that insignificant financial comedy is scarcely remembered. Nearly four years have rolled away, and just now a polite notice is received, as coming from the Court, with reference to that forgotten subject. Of course, there is nothing to be said by way of objec- tion. It is all right. Why then should he trouble himself with giving any heed to it ! That little affair of a couple of thousand dollars can be re- funded any day. 'Why does not the gentleman come and pay us another visit ?' 'Of course, that little matter of money is ready for him any day.' ' He promised to come and see us again.' Time passes. Nine years have gone round, and that paltry item of interest has regularly and steadily com- pounded one hundred and eight times, and that principal and interest have steadily rolled up to the immense amount of two hundred and fifty thousand
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dollars, a full quarter of a million ! Then comes the auction sale. And there the prowling agent of the relentless creditor bids in those thirty-six square miles of land, without competition, for only one-half the enormous debt. And only now, that happily dreaming Spanish family are startled and awakened as by an earthquake shock ! The business is complicated, and needs the deft handling of financial ability. Redemption is impossible. And now, a judicial final process is the closing act of the drama, and that splendid fortune of real estate comes under the dominion of the stranger. The patriarch and his numerous household are exiled from their home for- ever, while indigence and wretched want attend them as they scatter and wander away. This, surely, is a most shocking change to them-a solemn, grievous change. The places that knew them well know them no more.
" Thus, the once material element of California society has been eradi- cated, to be replaced by other nationalities of people. Let other men debate the question whether such a change has been for the better !' Let the casuist · render judgment whether such change has been effectuated by the divine rule of right ! Let the candid soul and heart respond to the question whether it has been done by the square of honesty and honor.
" Perhaps we need search no further than the legislation of any State that has ever lived and fallen within the limit of the historic ages of the world in order to learn and well understand the peculiar characteristics of the prevailing contemporary manners of that community of men. Legisla- tive enactments and established legal customs are the sure and certain types of the moral temper of any people. We need to travel backward no further along the path of time than several hundred years, to find many illustra- tions of this truth. The rigorous and cruel English laws against the smallest deviations from the rules of an established church had their ori- gin in the blind zeal and cruel bigotry of the whole people of the English nation. Sumptuary laws regulating what we shall eat, and what we shall drink, and in what manner and style withal we shall be clothed, and what manner of music we shall hear, have always originated from a popular cen- soriousness of temper, which was only represented in the particular legisla- tive department. And the course, and character, and subject matter of any system of legislation bespeak the wants, and wishes, and prejudices, and conditions, and misfortunes, and selfish propensities, and tastes of the rul- ing majority, and the consequent legislative department of the State. When the ruling majority is composed of the wealthy and independent classes, legislation is then directed favorably to the side of the Shylocks, and other affluent creditors in the community. But the reverse of this obtains when wealth has not the directing of the legislative enactments.
" From the foregoing hypothesis we may safely infer that 'the Legislature of a thousand drinks,' in session at the city of San José, must have represented hundreds of unfortunate debtors, and hosts of sporting gentlemen, throughout
·
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all parts of our State. Legislation was pointedly directed to the aid and comfort of all those gentlemen who did not wish to be troubled about the payment of their debts; their debts at home, or those coming from abroad. And consequently we find as monuments of that work of legisla- tion : Ist, the insolvency act by which one can shake off his debts as easily as he can shake the dust off his coat. There is the homestead law; one need only go somewhere and get married, and then declare a homestead on five thousand dollars worth of real estate, and bid defiance to all the frowning creditors forever after, so far as that homestead is concerned. And there, also, is the sole trader's law. The wife is permitted to carry on business in her own name as sole trader-any kind of business with the round capi- tal of another five thousand dollars, given to her by the husband, he acting as the wife's agent all the time in the sole trader business. But no credit- or's process against the husband can reach one dime of the sole trader's capital. Surely that unfortunate debtor is in good luck after all; he has a secure seat in the santuary of upper-tendom, high above the 'rich man's contumely, the proud man's scorn;' and what is the best of all, he is safely perched entirely out of reach of the sheriff's officers.
" And moreover, also, deep-laid behind these singular enactments of that renowned 'Legislature of a thousand drinks,' is that strange clause of our State Constitution : 'All property, both real and personal, of the wife, owned or claimed by her before marriage, and that acquired after- wards, by gift, devise or descent, shall be her separate property.' Now, we Americans, descendants of Englishmen, and educated to the maxims and customs of our ancestors, quite naturally experience an awkwardness under the entanglements of that strange clause, which so binds up the finances of the matrimonial partnership. It was once the ambition of every impe- cunious youth to marry a young lady having wealth in her own right, either in actual possession or expectancy. All her personal goods and chattels, her costly diamonds and jewelry, her valuable carriage equipages, her gold and silver plate, and all her ready cash-all these were ipso facto, and forthwith transferred, by operation of law, to the absolute dominion and control of the newly-married gentleman, as his individual, separate property. Now all this available wealth afforded him the luxuries of life and gave him the respectability and the dignity of the gentleman of for- tune. There were no family jars then. The marriage relation was peace- ful and comfortable and happy, the married gentleman being recognized as the real head of his own household-as he ought to be. It is true these goods and chattels might be made liable for the payment of that gentle- man's individual debts, and hence, in pursuing our line of argument, we may safely infer that the strange, revolutionary clause aforementioned, in our State Constitution, was incorporated there by an outside pressure from the main part of the then California community of insolvent debtors.
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" This new arrangement concerning the finances of the matrimonial partnership must have considerably clouded the real happiness of that time-honored institution, and we would remember this also. The available- ness of all the wife's goods and chattels is rendered unwieldy and perplex- ing. There can be no really private arrangements made for turning the wife's chattel-barter into ready cash for domestic uses. The inquisitorial attorney, and conveyancer, and notary, and witnesses, must all be invited in order to legally effect and perfect the written sale or transfer of the smallest item of her separate personal as well as real property. The mar- ried gentleman has very little to say or do with regard to the business of the family partnership concern. His dignity or importance there is quite equivocal, and only at sufferance, and by acquired habit, he in due time learns to know his place as the obscure and silent partner of the family concern. He is only known, in case of any curious inquiry as ' Mrs. Smith's husband.' He may, however, appreciate the quieting consolation that he may eat, and drink-and be merry if he can-with no harassing creditors to molest him or make him afraid. He feels the abiding and soothing consciousness that he may stupidly partake of those creature com- forts, while the sources of his enjoyments constitute an unfailing fund that is always execution proof.
" There is another monument of peculiar legislation, the handiwork of that most industrious ' Legislature of a thousand drinks.' Each Board of Supervisors was empowered to license any number of gambling institutions in every county of the State. This piece of legislation was enacted as a special favor to the sporting gentlemen of that day. These sporting gentle- men, scornfully styled gamblers, were a kind of fraternity, and generally and thoroughly infused among the whole population of the State, and they con- stituted a material and powerful element in the political and social common- wealth. Truly that sporting fraternity were a great political power in the land, and their representatives in the legislative body were counted as legion, and also as the law-givers of the highest ability. As might be ex- pected, due care was taken this fraternity should be well represented in each county Board, and consequently, as of course, licenses were freely given out to these institutions in every city and town and hamlet. There was a gambling saloon everywhere; not in by-ways, and in obscure places -why should it be? Why ; surely it had legislative tolerance; it was made respectable by the force of law. The saloon was located on the pub- lic thoroughfares and conspicuous places of the most convenient access. The saloon was a splendid drawing-room parlor, fitted up and decorated in gor- geous glittering style. There were large and finely finished lascivious paintings. There were the enticements of sweetest music; beautiful women were there employed as dealers at the various tables, and were en- throned as the attractive goddesses of chance. And there, within the doors
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of this temple, and heaped in hillocks on the tables all around, were tens of thousands of coined and uncoined gold. This was the sporting gentle- men's paradise.
" We have mentioned the sporting gentlemen as a fraternity. Now there was an aristocratic class par excellence in this same fraternity-that is, professional gentlemen, to be explicit we will say gamblers by profession. It was as legitimate and high-toned nineteen years ago as the profession of M. D., and higher-toned than that even. Why, Professor Whitney, or Professor Silkman, or the high-toned Professor Aggassiz, would scarcely rank with the high-toned professor of cards. Why not ? Why, that aris- tocratic class of the fraternity, aforesaid, had been recognized by the ' Legislature of a thousand drinks,' as a high school of the fine arts. No person of ordinary caution would dare question their supremacy. They occupied all the cushioned seats in all the synagogues, whether social, theo- logical or political. They were irrepressible; they were respectable, and their respectability was legal. They were formidable, and they must be conciliated, socially and politically, and otherwise.
" Your professor of cards was a ' handsome man'-so said the ladies, and he fought for the ladies. And many a poor fellow bit the dust because of his obtrusive interference with your aristocratic professor of cards, among the ladies. Well, your professor of cards was of dashing appearance. Why, just observe those patent leather, high-heeled boots, that costly diamond breast-pin. Observe those dainty fingers of his, all sparkling with three thousand dollars worth of diamond rings ; and there is that incomparable Beau Brummel waistcoat, and so forth, and so on. He was cordial, and bland, and fascinating. He was the brilliant synosure of the social circle, and he was also really popular withal. And why not ? That countenance of his gave advertisement of intellectual power, calm, reserved power ; smooth and unruffled by the slightest tinge of sentiment. There was no mercy there. There was keen sense, wanting sensibility. And he surely crushed the senseless worm that crawled at evening in his pathway."
Thus does Mr. Allen give a few of his early recollections in the first dawn of the foreign occupation of California. Happily, many of the things touched upon have been changed for the better. Unhappily, many of his remarks are too true; still, they all are of interest and will be read with pleasure.
SERICULTURE .- Among the many enterprises established in the counties of California, and in which Contra Costa takes a high rank, none give greater promise in the future than the production of silk. Throughout the United States it has become a recognized industry, and its success is beyond a peradventure in our own State. Its introduction into America is not of yesterday. Upwards of a hundred years ago its culture was extensively
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carried on, with greater or less success, for it is fully acknowledged that in 1759 the then colony of Georgia exported ten thousand pounds of raw silk, which sold in the European market at from fifty to seventy cents per pound higher than a similar product from any other country. In 1771 the culture was commenced in Pennsylvania and New Jersey ; and in 1810 the value of raw silk and sewing silk produced in three counties in Connec- ticut amounted to twenty-eight thousand five hundred and three dollars.
In the period intervening between the last war with Great Britain and the years 1830-1837, the enterprise of silk growing languished ; yet, in 1834 the National and State governments awoke for a time from their lethargy, and Congress appointed Commissioners to collect and distribute among the people general information in regard to the culture and manu- facture of silk. So far as its cultivation was concerned, the matter cul- minated in what was known at the time as the " Morus multicaules specu- lation," and the cultivators lost sight of the object of establishing a legiti- mate industry, and attempted to get rich by speculations in trees ; hence this portion of the business soon became involved in ruin, and much injury was done to the manufacturing industry. Capital, however, as usual, being more cautious and shrewd than labor, finally succeeded in advancing the latter industry to a legitimate position, from which it has gradually risen, until it is now on a safe and permanent basis. The census of the year 1880 shows the gross annual value of American manufactured silk goods to be within a small fraction of forty-one millions of dollars, these being the product of eighteen thousand four hundred and sixty-seven looms and thirty-four thousand four hundred and forty hands, operating upon a capi- tal of twenty-two millions of dollars and involving an annual wages pay- ment of nearly ten millions.
The value of silk goods now manufactured in the United States is in excess of our imports of that class of goods, and so superior is the quality of much of our silk dress goods, that they are now sold in Paris as genuine French manufacture ; and, according to the inexorable logic of facts, much of the superior trimmings, frills and furbelows, with which our wives and daughters now bedeck themselves, and which are sold in the stores of New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco for genuine French make, must be credited to the skilled workmen of New Jersey and Connecticut.
Says Felix Gillet, of Nevada City, Cal., a renowned authority on the cultivation of silk : " Singularly enough, one of the most serious hindrances to the progress of silk culture in the United States during the two or three last decades has been the hostility of the silk manufacturers themselves. They are thus opposed because they fear that, if silk culture should attain to any great importance in this country, its friends would become clamor- ous for a protective duty on the importation of raw silk, and thus reduce the manufacturer's profit by increasing the cost of the raw material. But
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the friends of silk culture have nevertheless pursued the even tenor of their way, quietly but energetically, until they have now laid the foundation of what promises to be, in the course of a few years, a great national industry, and a feeder and helper, instead of a drawback, to an already established silk manufacturing industry."
The production of raw silk in Europe gives employment to millions of people, while the subsequent manufacture of the raw material into thread, ribbons, dress goods, etc., forms one of the most important of home indus- tries. The most favored nations of the Orient have wisely fostered the in- dustry among their people until now it is the chief occupation of vast mul- titudes of them. In France the raising of the silk worm, the forming and care of the cocoon, and the reeling of the silk, is made an important part of the education of children in nearly all the schools, convents and acade- mies. It is a refreshing change in the studies of the young to pass from the class-room to the cocoonery, from books to trees, to feed the worms, watch their growth, and behold the marvelous production of silk in its raw condition. Education, both public as well as private, in California, might do well to introduce this system into their places of instruction and resi- dences, as a means of placing before their pupils a desirable means of earn- ing a livelihood in time to come.
Peculiarly adapted is this employment to women and children ; and, probably, in no State in the Union would it be more beneficial than to our own California. Here there is a large and increasing population of young boys and girls, who all seek some honorable means of earning their bread during minority ; to them such employment would be an inestimable boon, while it is one easily within the grasp of all.
That an impetus has been given to this trade in the United States has been mainly due to the ladies, the lead having been taken by them in Phila- delphia, who, notwithstanding obstructions of considerable magnitude, knew not what discouragement meant. Their's has been a labor of pure philan- thropy, and they have had their reward.
Actuated by the same noble attributes, a few ladies of California asso- ciated themselves under the name of " The California Silk Culture Associa- tion," and have met with most gratifying results. Of their time, labor and money, they have given freely, and they have shown, by honest persever- ance of hand and brain, that there are vast possibilities in this direction in store for California, while they have shown, without a question of doubt, that the soil of our State is especially adapted to the production, in 'endless quantities, of this commodity.
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