 Chapter 19. Mines and Miners. Society and population in the new state, which had so vigorously thrust itself into the Union, were far from homogeneous. After excluding the native Californian and Indian elements, the citizenship was divided, both by geography and occupation, into three distinct types. First of these was the mining population, isolated for the most part from the rest of the state with its own peculiar manner of life, its problems, and its unique institutions. Next came the tumultuous, hurrying life of San Francisco, full of corruption, generous impulses, and every other contradictory thing. Lastly, there was a long stretch of coast and valley land, as yet thinly populated and given over chiefly to cattle-raising, which lay between Monterey and San Diego. Here a type of society developed which was neither that of the mines nor of San Francisco. It can best be studied, after the others have been described, in the local annals of Los Angeles from 1850 to 1860. Roughly speaking, the mining regions of California during the first three years of the Gold Rush embraced the mountainous portions of the territory lying between the San Joaquin River in the south and the Klamath and Trinity Rivers in the north. This area was later somewhat enlarged by the opening of mines in the Kern River District, but as late as 1852 Governor Bigler in his annual message classified as mining counties only those of Tuolumne, Calaveras, Sacramento, Yuba, and Butte. In this mountainous region, which until 1848 had been uninhabited except by Indians, a population of many thousands sprang up as if by magic. Quiet riverbars watched the development of cities overnight, and many a lonely canyon visited some morning by a handful of prospectors, the first white men to traverse its course since the mountains themselves were made, by sundown had become the center of an excited, roaring camp. Here, along the American, the Feather, the Yuba, the Stanislaw, and a hundred kindred streams, a new chapter was written in American history. Life was lived for a few brief years without the restraints of civilization. Democracy, as literal as the world is ever known, flourished on every hand. Romance came down and walked openly among men, leaving behind a record of heroic accomplishment that can never be blotted from American tradition. To supply the manifold needs of this suddenly arisen mining population, the rest of California found full outlet for its energies for several years. Monterey and other seaport towns, after the first rush to the mines, when shops were closed and labor became almost unobtainable, experienced a phenomenal revival in business. Merchants became wealthy supplying miners' demands for every kind of goods. Real estate underwent an unheard of boom. The miserable village of Yerba Buena suddenly developed into the populous, crowded city of San Francisco, with life and activity everywhere. Even Southern California, far removed from the mining fields as it was, felt the stimulus of the gold excitement. At the entrance to the gold regions, two cities, springing out of nothing, profited from the mining train more than any others, with a possible exception to San Francisco. These were Stockton and Sacramento. The latter, laid out on a portion of Sutter's Grant, had as many as four houses in April 1849. By November its population fell but little short of ten thousand. At that time, according to a contemporary writer, each store in town was daily taking in from one thousand to three thousand dollars from its sale of mining supplies and provisions. Grinking and gambling saloons paid a monthly rental of a thousand dollars. Wages were so high that carpenters receiving twelve dollars a day went on strike for better pay. In the more remote interior, where lay the actual mining fields, other cities rivaling Sacramento and Stockton, came into being. Many of these, such as Marysville, Placerville, Auburn and Grass Valley, still survive. But relatively speaking, their glory has long since departed, and the position of supremacy they once occupied has been preempted by the less romantic cities of Seacoast and Plain. In many cases, too, these thriving communities of the gold rush now live in tradition and memory alone. The following analysis of the election returns of 1852 casts an interesting light upon the distribution of population in the mining day. San Francisco, as might be supposed, headed the list with eight thousand odd votes. Sacramento City, not just Sacramento, if you please, came next with five thousand. Nevada boasted seventeen hundred, Stockton fifteen hundred, Marysville nearly an equal number. Placerville, hang town, thirteen hundred, Columbia twelve hundred, Sonora something over a thousand, Downeyville with seven hundred and forty-six to its credit outnumbered San Jose by a hundred and thirty-one. Shasta City and Santa Clara were almost equal. Oak alumna Hill cast four hundred and fifty-nine votes, while Oakland had only three hundred. Los Angeles straggled far to the rear of Murphy's, whose total was five hundred and nineteen. San Diego came at the tail of the list with a hundred and sixty-seven. Two more, and she might have claimed half the voting strength of the flourishing city of Volcano, Mistress of Sutter Creek. Glory camp had its name, perpetuating the memory of some unusual incident, or given in the broad spirit of humor that came with the ox-trains across the Sierra, where it found a more congenial soil than it had ever known before. Poker Flat, as was fitting, was not very far from Gomorrah. Hell out for Noon City was offset by Alpha and Omega. Groundhog Glory was almost as prittly named as Mug Fuzzle Flat or Slumgoyan. Port wine, brandy, and delirium treatments perhaps had a certain logical connection. UBET and Poverty Flat were bona fide names and not the products of Bret Hart's imagination. Hangtown, long since selected to be known as Placerville, and the respectable citizens of Red Dog, with commendable civic pride, changed its name to Brooklyn, and imposed a fine on anyone who ventured to use the former name. Mining itself in California was at first of the most primitive kind. Pick, shovel, crowbar, tin pan, and running water were the only requisites. Soon it was found that gold could be dug out of the crevices and rocks, so a long-bladed knife was added to the list. The cradle or rocker also came into use in very early times. This was a wooden box or a hollowed log closed at one end and mounted on rockers six or eight feet long, like those of an old-fashioned cradle. A second box with a perforated sheet iron bottom, making sort of a sieve or hopper, was fitted into the closed end of the cradle, leaving sufficient space beneath for the gravel and water to escape. The rocking was done by means of a stout pole fixed about the middle of the machine. This operation left the coarse rocks in the hopper and deposited the finer materials on the bed of the cradle. Here and there were a number of cleats or riffles which served to catch the gold as it was slowly washed along. The following account by one of the 49ers of the methods employed by himself and his companions will perhaps give a clearer idea of some of the more homemade types of these machines. Quote, Our machine was the half of a hollow log resting on two cross-logs, a crooked man's Anita stick lashed around for a handle and a sloping screen of split sticks at one end. The dirt had to be carried about a hundred feet. From a canvas sailor bag, two poles and a cross sticks, I made a hand barrel. In the forenoon we would dig and carry to the rocker by the river about ten or twelve barrel loads and in the afternoon wash it out. One would keep the rocker rocking and another lay the gravel on the screen and a third one of us throw water on the gravel with a tin pan fastened on a forked stick. Our machine was so imperfect we saved no gold finer than bird-shot. I am sure we lost one half." The rocker, which was a great improvement over the pan, about 1850 began in its turn to give place to another machine. This was the tom, or long tom as it was often called. The tom consisted of a wooden trough some twenty feet long and eight inches high. Near one end the wooden floor was displaced by a sheet iron riddle, perhaps six feet long, containing holes about the size of a large walnut. Beneath this riddle was a second trough, some ten feet long and six inches high, called the riffle-box. Earth was shoveled into the head of the tom and carried by a stream of water to the riddle, where it was kept constantly stirred. This caused all but the coarsest material to pass through to the riffle-box beneath. Here the gold, mixed with heavy black sand and gravel, was caught by cleats nailed across the bottom while the lighter earth was washed away. A later improvement, which largely displaced both the rocker and the long tom, was the sluice. This was merely an open trough for flume twelve or fourteen feet long and from a foot to three feet wide. One end was somewhat narrower than the other so that several sluices might be joined together, making a continuous line sometimes a hundred feet in length. Each box was supplied with riffles of various patterns, but all easily removable, and as the earth was forced along by a current of water the gold fell to the bottom and was caught by these riffles. In most cases it was customary to operate the sluices several days at a time before cleaning up. Then the water was turned off, the riffles taken out, and the gold carefully swept from the sluice boxes into a pan at the lower end. The first miners also learned that much gold lay hidden in pockets and crevices of the bedrock over which ran mountain streams. Where these streams were small the miners easily turned them aside and dug out the virgin gold thus exposed with a butcher knife. But where the diversion of a large stream was undertaken the task became one of great labor and uncertain outcome. Dams had to be built, races or flumes constructed to carry the water, and sometimes tunnels driven into which the river could be directed. In seasons of low water these measures were reasonably successful and the arduous and unproductive labor of the preceding months would find its reward many times over when the gold deposited year after year for untold centuries by one of the Sierra streams was dug out of the cracks and potholes for a half mile of newly exposed river channel. Even at best, however, the outcome of this type of mining was on the lap of the gods. A dozen men toiling day after day without a cent of reward from early spring until late in the fall to prepare for the diversion of a stream might some night see the work completed and a fortune awaiting them the next day when the river should be turned from its old channel. Before morning, if the fates were unkind and they often were, a sudden storm would sweep away dams, ditches, and hopes alike and render the months of toil barren of reward. Most of the first placer mining in California was done on the bars of sand and gravel in which the mountain streams abounded. Scores of such bars, bidwells on the feather, the lower bar on the mock alumna, park's bar above Marysville, to mention only a few at random, enjoyed brief notoriety and proved incredibly rich. It was soon found, however, that the sides of the canyons yield as good returns as the bars and afterwards that the very hills themselves, entirely apart from the water-courses, were full of the precious stuff. Hence there arose a division among the mines in 1849 and 1850 between the wet diggings, so those are the riverbeds and bars, and the dry diggings of the gulches and flats, where water could be had only in limited quantities, if at all. Among the most famous of the dry diggings were those surrounding Placerville, from which one writer says three hundred men in three months took out a daily average of from three ounces to five pounds a man. Others scarcely less famous were opened up near the sites of Auburn and Georgetown. Dutch Flat, Dry Town, and Moke alumna hill were only a few of the innumerable camps of similar kind. In 1852 the discovery of the famous Blue Lead, a deposit of very rich gravel, apparently marking the course of an old riverbed, greatly increased the practice of drift mining, which sought to reach the primitive granite underlying such pre-atomite rivers as they were called that day. Hort's Mining, practiced for generations in Mexico before the California Rush, began to be introduced in the Grass Valley region about 1850, and the old Mexican Arrastra or grinding mill became a familiar object in other sections shortly afterward. The system did not attain great significance, however, until 1855. Hydraulic mining, another great advance over the old Placer methods, was practiced at least as early as 1852 at American Hill in Nevada County. It soon came to supersede all other forms where conditions favored. But the land so treated was ruined eternally for every other purpose. No idea of the destruction wrought by the hydraulic process can be gained until one sees with his own eyes the bolder, strewn desolation left behind. The yield of the mines after 1848 continued to be phenomenal. What the annual total amounted to there is no accurate means of determining. Hittle, probably the most reliable authority, gives the following figures for the amount exported through the San Francisco Customs House in 1849, $4,921,250, increasing yearly until 1853 at $57,331,034. The California State Mining Bureau in 1912 published the following estimate of production, 1848, $245,301, increasing yearly to 1852 at $81,294,700 and then in 1853 decreasing to $67,613,487. After 1853 there was a slow decline in production, but the total yield of the first decade was probably little short of half a billion dollars. The incredibly rich strikes which characterized the late months of 1848 were equaled or surpassed in succeeding years. But because of the larger number of gold hunters after the rush of 1849, good fortune from that time on was far from universal. And in truth, while dazzling success came to a few and fair returns to many, probation and hard work waited on all. For the life of the 49er, glosset and painted as one may was not particularly pleasant, except that small number who found delight in its very hardships. Tents which seldom kept out either rain or cold, and crude log cabins made up the typical miners abode. Floors were generally of earth. Window glass was rare and not infrequently empty fruit jars were made to serve as a substitute. Furniture was of the simplest kind and commonly the owner's handiwork, boxes and barrels serving as the material upon which he exercised his ingenuity. Clothing, especially in the early years, was of every description. But the typical miners' garb consisted of flannel shirt, heavy trousers stuffed into thick leather boots, soft flannel hat, and generally a belt containing knife or pistol. Shaving was a lost art. Food was generally abundant and of surprising variety. The staples were sugar, bacon, beans, coffee, ham, mackerel, potatoes, onions, salt, and flour. Beef and butter were sometimes on hand. Wild games such as pigeons, quail, fish, venison, and bear meat could easily be obtained by the miner himself or purchased from professional hunters, many of whom made more at their occupation than the miner did at his. Can goods and liquors were very plentiful. Bread was baked in the indispensable Dutch oven which, with coffee pot and frying pan, completed the ordinary kitchen equipment. Where gold was the chief stock in trade and men reckoned values and ounces instead of dollars, prices necessarily attained unheard of levels. The old standards of value simply did not apply. A few instances will sufficiently illustrate this point. On the Stanislaus River in 1848, flour sold for a dollar and a half a pound. A like amount of brown sugar brought three dollars. Onions were a dollar a pound and candles fifty cents each. Two barrels of liquor netted the fortunate owner seven thousand dollars in six days time. A firm on the Middle Yuba in 1851 had the following account against one of the Pegsville miners, whose taste, both for liquids and canned seafoods, was perhaps more marked than that of most of his contemporaries. One can of lobsters, three fifty, one bottle of brandy, three dollars, three drinks, seventy five cents, one box sardines, four dollars, ten drinks, two fifty, seven drinks, one seventy five, one bottle whisky, three dollars, one pair of boots, eighteen dollars, five drinks, one twenty five, two bottles whisky, six dollars, five drinks, one twenty five, a half pound of onions, seventy five cents, three bottles whisky, nine dollars, one drink, twenty five cents, nine drinks, two twenty five, two drinks, fifty cents, three bottles of porter, six dollars, six drinks, one fifty, seven drinks, one seventy five, one box sardines, four dollars, one box lobsters, four dollars, two pair of blankets, twenty eight dollars. Early travel to the mines was largely on horseback or by river steamer. Every sort of craft was pressed into the service on the Sacramento and San Joaquin, and the parts of many small vessels were brought around the horn on the decks of steamers to be reassembled at San Francisco. In 1849 the fare between Sacramento and the bay was twenty five or thirty dollars. Meals cost two dollars each, state rooms were ten dollars, and freight paid forty or fifty dollars a ton. At such prices one of the Sacramento boats, the senator, is reported to have cleared sixty thousand dollars monthly for her owners, but the decrease of traffic and increased competition afterwards brought on a rate war, which at one time reduced the cabin fare to a dollar. Travel in the mountains was at first on foot or by horseback. Goods were carried by pack train or on the owner's back, but later with the building of roads instead of trails, the stagecoach, so inseparably connected in the public mind with the mining days, and the heavy freighter came into use. Hotels, so-called, existed in every mining community of any size. They lacked, naturally, in refinement, but made up for this deficiency in rates. Hinton R. Helper, better known as the author of Impending Crisis, who spent a weary and unprofitable sojourn of three years in various parts of California during the gold excitement, thus describes the public house of Sonora. Quote, The best hotel in the place is a one-story structure built of unhewn saplings covered with canvas and floored with dirt. It consists of one undivided room in which the tables, berths, and benches are all arranged. Here we sleep, eat, and drink. Four or five tiers of berths or bunks, one directly above another, are built against the walls of the cabin by means of upright posts and crosspieces fastened with thongs of rawhide. The bedding is composed of a small straw mattress about two feet wide, an uncased pillow stuffed with the same material and a single blanket. When we creep into one of these nests, it is optional with us whether we unboot or uncode ourselves, but it would be looked upon as an act of ill-breeding to go to bed with one's hat on. Even at such hotels, however, the meals were generally bountiful and the fare varied, furnishing a welcome change from their own home cooking to the miners of the surrounding country when they came to town to celebrate or purchase supplies. Gold mining, even in 49, was full of the monotony of hard work, and those engaged in it naturally sought whatever diversion they could find. The field of amusement, however, was rather limited, though much of it made up in intensity what it lacked in variety. The most common and prosaic relaxation was the hour of talk and storytelling after supper, with pipes lit and campfire throwing a bit of enchantment over the little circle of tired men. Where there was music, the songs most frequently sung were those old favorites of pre-Civil War days, Ben Bolt, Highland Mary, The Last Rose of Summer, Life on the Ocean Wave, or even Coronation and Old Hundred. Other songs of a more temporary character also had wide popularity. One of these, Joe Bowers from Pike, was universally sung from Shasta to the Stanislaw. It had an interminable number of verses, four of which will probably be sufficient to illustrate the general character of the masterpiece. My name it is Joe Bowers, I have a brother Ike. I come from Old Missouri, came all the way from Pike. I'll tell you why I left our and why I come to Rome and leave my poor old mammy so far away from home. I used to court a gal there, her name was Sally Black. I asked her if she'd marry me, she said it was a whap. She says to me, Joe Bowers, before we hitch for life, you ought to have a little home to keep your little wife. Oh Sally, dear as Sally, oh Sally, for your sake. I'll go to California and I'll try to raise a stake. Says she to me, Joe Bowers, you are the man to win. Here's a kiss to bind a bargain, and she threw a dozen in. At length I went to mine and put in my biggest licks, went down upon the boulders just like a thousand bricks. I worked both late and early in rain and sun and snow. I was working for my Sally, it was all the same to Joe. The last verse recorded how poor Joe received word of Sally's fickleness. She had jilted him for a red-headed butcher and become the mother of a red-headed baby. Extemporaneous compositions that had rich local flavor were also produced in moments of deep inspiration. This chorus, for example, was in a special favorite with the miners of Selby Flat. To be properly appreciated it should be heard shouted over and over again as a midnight serenade by a hundred lusty miners, each one beating his own accompaniment on a tin washpan with a stick. It ran thus. On Selby Flat we live in style, we'll stay right here till we make our pile. We're sure to do it after a while, then good-bye to California. The more exciting diversions were drinking, gambling, and dancing. So much has been written of the part these played in the life of a mining community that little additional can be said. Of course the picture has been overdrawn for not every miner lost his pile at poker and ferro, or drank himself into a drunken stupor every night. Many a forney diner, indeed, was as strict an abstainer as the straightest sect of prohibitionists could desire, and also kept himself free from the vice of gambling, except as his profession itself was one great game of chance. Yet the common notion, so thoroughly standardized in modern motion picture scenes, that every mining town was merely a collection of saloons and gambling houses, adjoined by more saloons and gambling houses, has behind it an element of truth. The moderate use of liquor was looked upon in 1850, even by the sedate society of the states, in much the same light that coffee drinking is regarded in our own generation. A population of young men, from which the accepted restraints of public opinion were largely absent, working long hours at the hardest kind of physical labor, craving excitement to break the monotony and loneliness and despair which many of them experienced, or else seeking an outlet for excess of animal spirits, would scarcely set for themselves more rigid standards in the new environment than they were accustomed to in the old. And so the miners of California drank almost as unthinkingly as they ate or slept. But among the better element, constituting probably 90% of the population, actual drunkenness found little place, except perhaps on those rare occasions when the mob spirit or some kindred influence swept whole communities into one grand spree. In nearly all the mines, Sunday morning was observed as washday, or perhaps given over to baking the weak supply of bread, while Sunday afternoon was spent at such amusements as the town afforded. Gambling was the universal pastime. The miner had his choice of roulette, monte, ferrule, poker, twenty-one, all fours, lansquenet, and as many other games of chance as were known to the world of that day. Whatever the miner's selection, however, the professional gambler with all the tricks of his trade was pretty sure to take from him in the long run the gold he had managed to accumulate. Even where the professional element was absent, gambling between the miners themselves for surprisingly large stakes was often indulged in. One of the most interesting diaries of the time yet published has this description of a poker game at Coyoteville on the south fork of the Yuba. There were four partners and one of the richest claims on the hill, and they got to gambling together. They started in playing $5 ante and passing the buck. Then they raised it to $25 ante each, and Jack Breedlove, one of the partners, cleaned out the rest of them, winning $22,000. Not satisfied with this, they staked their interest in the claim, valuing a fourth at $10,000, and when the game quit, Zeke Rubier, another of the partners, won back $8,000 and held to his fourth interest. The other two went broke, and Breedlove ended by owning three-fourths of the claim and winning $14,000, so that altogether he was $34,000 ahead. He offered his old partner's work in the mine at an ounce a day, which they refused, packed their blankets, and started out in search of new diggings. The establishment of a government and the preservation of a fair degree of law and order were naturally among the most serious problems faced by the mining communities. Neither federal nor state officials were strong enough to meet the situation, and indeed, for several years, the regularly constituted authorities made no attempt to deal with it. Each mining camp, accordingly, almost literally did that which seemed right in its own eyes, without let or hindrance from the outside. Under such conditions, political institutions were necessarily very simple, and government was designed to meet only the most fundamental needs of the society which gave it origin. These needs were chiefly the protection of life and property and the creation of some clear-cut, non-technical rules by which the business of mining might be carried on. Such regulations, though lacking the sanction of formal law, had behind them the stronger authority of custom and public opinion. Violations were generally punished with startling directness and vigor, but only after conviction according to established rules. In all of this, there was no great miracle of political evolution. It was due entirely to a certain Anglo-Saxon aptitude for self-government, mixed with a large amount of common sense. Nearly all authorities agree that the mining communities were remarkably free from crime during the summer and fall of 1848. But the migration of the next year, Rada decided change. Dessertors, desperados, professional gamblers, undesirables from the states, men who deliberately shed their moral standards as they left civilization behind, criminals and outlaws from Mexico and other Hispanic American countries, the riff-raff of Europe and Asia. All these helped make up the later mining population, and in the chaotic social conditions around them, found free play for all their vicious tendencies. Drunkenness and gambling were responsible for much of the crime committed. Moreover, the very abundance of gold and the universal practice of carrying it on one's person or leaving it in scarcely concealed hiding places tempted to theft. Many men, not naturally lawbreakers, were driven to desperation by misfortune or hardship. Others, though not necessarily professional criminals, belonged to a discontented, restless class which moved continually from camp to camp, looking for a fortune without work, and naturally they drifted into crime. Society was reckless, drunken as common, and everyone went armed with knife or pistol. Murder was therefore the commonest of crimes, and wherever self-defense could be pleaded was seldom punished. Theft was practiced in various forms, especially in the rifling of sluice boxes or the robbing of tents. Claim-jumping was frequently attempted, usually with disastrous results to one or the other party. Disputes over water rights sometimes led to pitched battles and numerous deaths. But among all the violators of the law, the highwayman was most distinguished in the days of 49. No mining camp or stagecoach but had its experience, frequently ending in tragedy with this enemy to society. Much romance has been written about him, most of which is sentimental rot, for the average highwayman of that day was like his successor of today. He was brutal, callous, and anything but sportsmanlike. He took his victims unaware and often shot them down in cold blood for the pure delight of murder. Sometimes he worked alone, but more often in company with a few debased villains like himself. Occasionally these criminals were brought together by some conspicuously able leader into a highly organized, effective company whose depredations terrorized the whole mining area. The most notorious of these gangs was that led by Joaquin Murrieta. The operations of Murrieta and his cutthroat followers extended at one time or another almost from Siskiyou to San Diego. Other bands, like that led by Real Foot Williams in the neighborhood of Downyville, confined their attentions to a more restricted district. Suspected criminals, at least in the more settled communities, were nearly always given what, under the circumstances, must be regarded as a fair trial. The most extreme form of lynch law, however, sometimes prevailed in newly established camps, especially in those cases where Chinaman or other foreigners were involved. But generally speaking, even here the offender was tried by judge and jury and punished according to established custom. Hanging was a recognized punishment for serious offenses such as murder and robbery. Once the criminal had been declared guilty, justice knew no delays and was commonly meted out within a few hours. Nor is there any record of a plea of emotional insanity having saved a murderer's neck in the primitive days of 49. Minor offenses were punished with whipping and exile or sometimes even by death. Yet in spite of the salutary effects of these self-constituted courts and conditions would have been intolerable without them even though they had their defects, lawlessness each year became an ever more serious problem in the mines, as indeed it was throughout the entire state. Delano wrote in his Life on the Plains that robbery and murder were a daily occurrence in 1851 and that organized bands of thieves existed both in the towns and mountains. The writer of the Shirley Letters, as delightful literature it may be remarked as ever came out of the mining regions, found that social life had deteriorated so seriously by 1852 that within the short space of three weeks her own little community of rich bar had witnessed murders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths, a mob, whippings, a hanging, an attempted suicide, and a fatal duel. The truth is that all California, the mining regions as well as every other section, was compelled to fight out the old battle between law and disorder which every frontier society has had to face. The rapid increase of population, the many attractions held out to the lawless element of every land, the weakness of the regular government institutions, and the large size of the state over which these institutions were supposed to spread all made the problem in California one of peculiar difficulty. Yet all things considered, life and property were probably as secure in the mining regions during these uncertain years as anywhere else in the state. Certainly lawlessness was not the exclusive prerogative of the gold seeker, rivals in the cities and cattle sections broke down as monopoly. For dealing with questions of boundaries, rival claims, and such matters, each mining cap established its own customs. Ordinarily there were definite local regulations covering these points, which were written into a sort of code. These were enforced by a committee of the miners acting through a president and secretary, while disputes were decided by a jury. The following articles enacted by the miners of Jackass Gulch on October 16, 1852, will serve to show the nature of these local regulations, which for several years constituted the only mining law that the mountain regions knew. It may be remarked parenthetically that Jackass Gulch, five miles north of Sonora, was one of the richest camps in California, and for several years enjoyed great notoriety. Here many a lucky miner struck a bonanza that yielded him a fortune in a few hours. The regulations read thus. Article 1. Each and every person shall be entitled to one claim by virtue of occupation, the same not to exceed one hundred feet square. Article 2. To hold any claim or claims by virtue of purchase, the same must be in good faith and under a bona fide bill of sale, certified to as to the genuineness of the signature and the consideration given by two disinterested persons. Article 3. Any question arising under Article 2 shall be decided on application of either party by a jury of five members. Article 4. Any claim located on any Gulch may be held by putting up notices with the names of the parties thereon, and renewing the same every ten days till water can be had. Footnote. In most cases, a pick or shovel left in the workings was sufficient to hold a claim. Article 5. Any claim upon which there is sufficiency of water to be worked in the usual manner, if not worked for the space of five days, shall be forfeited, unless provided the party interested is prevented from working by sickness or other good and sufficient cause. Article 6. These rules and by-laws shall extend over jackass and soldier gulches and their tributaries. Charles Gibson, President, Jazz Kornoff, Secretary. One of the most fertile causes of trouble in the mining regions was the question of water rights. In many of the dry diggings, water could be obtained only by constructing costly wooden flumes or open ditches. And not infrequently, companies were formed to undertake this work, finding their profit in the sale of water to the various claims. The main ditch or flume upon reaching the diggings was divided into as many smaller streams as it could adequately supply, and these in turn were made to serve two or three long toms apiece. From four to ten percent of the gold secured by the miners went to pay these water charges so that the profits of the ditch companies were generally very large. The companies supplying Timbuktu, for example, paid annual dividends of 40 percent on an investment of $600,000. In this case, the ditch through which the water flowed was 35 miles long. The dependence of the miners upon such companies for the water, without which operations were impossible, the rival claims for stream rights, the question of prior use, and a score of similar issues made water almost as much a source of wrangling and bloodshed as the gold itself. To settle these disputes, the state at last built up a most elaborate ripperary encode which became much more complex when the long, bitter struggle began over the use of streams for irrigation purposes. But in the hectic days of California's youth, the question of water ownership and use was generally settled by force, rather than by legal technicalities. The foreign element in the mines was also the cause of a vast amount of trouble. In the great rush of 1848 and 1849, almost as many vessels came from foreign ports as from the United States. Japan seems to have been practically the only country of importance not represented in the heterogeneous population that crowded into the Sierra. And before many months, racial antagonism began to appear in various forms. As early as January 1849, General Percifor F. Smith, who was then at Panama and route to California to take command of the United States forces, urged that all non-citizens who sought to mine on the public domain should be treated as trespassers. But his efforts failed and the foreign influx still continued. Generally speaking, persons of European birth were not regarded as aliens by the American miners. Footnote. The French miner, however, was not very popular in most Anglo-Saxon camps in footnote. Indeed, if one omits the Indians, the only foreigners against whom real prejudice existed were Mexicans or Hispanic Americans generally and the Chinese. The former were very numerous, coming into California by the thousands overland from Mexico and by sea from every country of Central and South America. The states of Chihuahua and Sonora were especially well represented in this migration, and the fame of the latter still lingers in the name of one of the most important of mining towns. These Hispanic Americans, whether from Chile, Peru, Mexico, or any other country south of the Rio Grande, were skilled miners and trained for generations in a business with which most American immigrants were experimenting for the first time. Many of them were decent and law-abiding enough, but without prejudice it must be admitted that a considerable portion belonged to a class ranked as undesirable even in the countries from which they came. They were inveterate gamblers and utterly reckless when intoxicated. Robbery and murder were common enough with them before they came to California, and the new environment furnished both cause and opportunity for carrying on these crimes on a larger scale. From them came many of the most desperate criminals of the mining days, and as a natural consequence the cruelest and most treacherous deeds were always laid at their door. In addition to the evils for which the Hispanic Americans were actually responsible, the old anti-Spanish prejudice of the Southwest also worked against them in California. Frequently this antipathy was mutual, resulting in a small race war accompanied by much bloodshed. More often, however, race prejudice, stimulated by the helplessness of the victims, led the rougher element of a mining camp, many of whom were quite likely to be foreigners themselves, to seize the claims which Mexicans or Chileans had opened up and drive the latter away from the community without resorting to actual bloodshed, unless the dispossessed owners were foolish enough to resist such high-handed acts of justice. Later on, many mining camps passed laws like that enacted at El Dorado Branch House, that no Asiatic, Mexican, or South American shall hold a claim in our minds. From a political standpoint, this feeling against the Mexican miners and their kindred culminated in the famous foreign miners' tax law of the first California legislature. The chief feature of this statute was a monthly tax of $20 upon each foreigner engaged in mining. This was collected under a system of licenses and forced many foreigners to abandon claims of their own to work for day wages. Others refused to pay the fee, forcibly resisting the officials sent to collect it. Evasions were also common, and scoundrels, masquerading estate officials, often obtained large sums from false collections or through various other forms of graft. Altogether, the tax proved such a failure and troublemaker that it was speedily repealed. Sometime afterward, however, it was revived at a much lower rate. Agitation against the Chinese did not begin until 1851. Since previous to that time, they were not present in the mining camp in sufficient numbers to arouse prejudice. But opposition developed fast enough when the Hong Kong migration sent in on a large scale. Unlike the Mexican, the Chinaman was seldom guilty of bloodshed, unless his victim was a fellow countryman. He was peaceful, inoffensive, and nearly always content to work over claims that his superiors had abandoned. While passionately fond of gambling, he won or lost without resorting to violence. About the most to be said against him was that he kept to himself wore peculiar clothes, worked long hours for relatively small returns, and sometimes robbed a white man's claim or cleaned up a sluice box 24 hours before the disappointed owner got around to do it for himself. For all these faults the Chinaman paid very dearly, and for many others which criminals of other races fastened upon his defenseless person. As a consequence he was lynched singly or in groups when some mining camp lost its head or surrendered its sense of justice to the bayser element. His most common misfortune, however, was to be driven off the claim he had taken up or bought. This was sometimes done by men of the professional claim jumping class, who could too often though not always count upon anti-Chinese prejudice among the miners to prevent any defense of the unlucky owner. At other times whole camps united to drive the Chinese out of their district. For example, 200 Chinaman on the American River were expelled from their claims by 60 miners from Mormon Bar in the spring of 1852. The same 60 next descended upon 400 celestials who were hard at work farther down the river at Horseshoe Bar. To accomplish the work properly in this particular case it was considered necessary to engage a ban to accompany the expedition. To conclude this chapter, which in limited space has sought to summarize the most crowded and energetic period of California history, one can do no better than to quote the following paragraph from Howard Shin, a recognized authority of the mining days. The typical camp of the golden prime of 49 was flush, lively, reckless, and vigorous. Saloons and gambling houses abounded. Buildings and whole streets grew up like mushrooms almost in a night. Every man carried a buckskin bag of gold dust and it was received as currency at a dollar a pinch. Everyone went armed and felt fully able to protect himself. A stormy life abbed and flowed through the town. In the camp, gathered as one household under no law but that of their own making, were men from the north, south, east, and west, and from nearly every country of Europe, Asia, and South America. They mined, traded, gambled, fought, discussed camp affairs. They paid fifty cents a drink for their whiskey and fifty dollars a barrel for their flour, and thirty dollars a piece for butchering eyes with which to pick gold from the rock crevices. Shin might also have added that thus the miners played their part in one of the most romantic episodes of American history and helped in no mean way to lay the foundation for a very noble state. 20. San Francisco the Boisterous Many cities in the United States boast a more ancient lineage than that of San Francisco, but none can look back to a more vigorous, boisterous, or interesting youth. In 1835, Captain W. A. Richardson laid the foundation for the modern San Francisco by erecting a rude building on the beach known as Yerba Uena. The next year, Jacob P. Lease built a comfortable frame house near the same site. As time went, Lease added a store and made the place something of a trading center for ships taking on wood and water across the bay at Sal Salito. In 1841, however, Lease sold his property to the Hudson's Bay Company, which thereafter, for four or five years, became the chief factor in the commercial life of the little village. With the American occupation, Yerba Uena rapidly began to increase its scant population, and by the spring of 1848 could boast nearly 900 inhabitants. Telegraph, Rincon, and Russian hills marked the town's western boundary, and the narrow plain on which its adobe and frame building stood merged into the waterfront where battery and first streets now touch market. By this time the town had changed its name from Yerba Uena to San Francisco, established a number of newspapers, opened a public school, and become somewhat of a commercial rival to Monterey. The first rush to the mining regions, however, brought this promising growth to a sudden end. For like all other towns of California, the would-be metropolis was virtually deserted by its inhabitants during the first few months of the gold excitement. Stores were closed, labor became almost unobtainable, and real estate depreciated woefully in value. But before the years closed prosperity and population came back with a rush like that of the tide in the Bay of Fundy. Immigrant ships began to dump hundreds of passengers upon the shore. Tons of merchandise were piled in the streets, men were clamoring for places to eat and sleep, and there were eager, hurrying, insistent crowds where all before had been empty streets or unoccupied beach. Never since the days of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp did a city arise so full of activity and life in so short a time. In this sudden growth, naturally enough, beauty and comfort for a long time found little place. The dwellings were chiefly of canvas or rough lumber, affording only the flimsiest of shelter and utterly devoid of attractive qualities. They straggled from waterfront to hillside, for a time paying but little attention to the street lines marked out by official survey, or grouped themselves in a compact, disorderly mass behind the shelter of the sandhills in the area now bounded by first, second, market, and mission streets in what was then known as Happy Valley. In summer the streets were dusty, wind-swept, and rendered almost impassable by the boxes and bales of merchandise whose owners had no other place of storage. In winter, especially that of 1849 and 1850, the dust became a sea of mud in which, incredible as it may seem, animals not infrequently disappeared from sight, and even drunken men were known to have died of suffocation. At the corner of Clay and Kearney streets, so it is said, the mud became so serious that someone posted a warning which read, This street is impassable, not even jackassable. W. T. Sherman also recounts in his memoirs that he was afraid to ride down Montgomery Street after a rain because of the danger of being drowned in the mud and water if his horse should stumble. Almost every race and costume could be met with in the shops or gambling places of the new metropolis, for even as early as 1849 the cosmopolitan character of the city's population had become firmly established. Moore, Chinaman, Conaca, Mele, Mexican, as well as immigrants from all the European countries, touched elbows with Americans from every state in the Union. In the medley of strange dress which resulted from this variety of race, the flannel shirt, soft hat, and high boots of the miner easily predominated. Top hats, frock coats, jewelry, and other marks of a more elegant civilization were also much affected by certain types, and thus it happened that sameness of dress was as foreign to those early days as monotony of life. In San Francisco, as well as in the mining regions, democracy flourished on every hand. Men sloughed off their class distinctions as instinctively as a snake sheds its skin. Work was honorable, and a man standing was not affected by his occupation so long as he remained reasonably honest. The term menial disappeared from speech, and those who had once been accustomed to servants now did their own cooking and mending, carried their own trunks, worked with pickaxe and shovel, or drove mule teams for employers who had not long since been day laborers in the eastern states. The business life of this period can scarcely be described. It both partook of the characteristics of the people and helped in no small way to intensify their predominant traits. Speculation, open-handedness, startling success or equally swift failure, hurry, rush, and disregard of caution were its chief features. Two streams flowing through the city, constantly enriched its economic life, day by day added to its amazing wealth. Every ship-load and overland party of immigrants brought a new demand for food, lodging, drink, and mining equipment to the San Francisco merchants. Of even more importance was the never-failing influx of miners returning from the Sierra with the precious dust upon which the whole business life of the city depended. Whether bound for home with his pile or merely seeking a brief relaxation at the city's flesh-pots, the average miner spent his money generously and without much regard for what he got in return. Small change was seldom requested. Few articles could be had for less than fifty cents. Prices were almost never challenged. Higgling was a lost arc. Commodity prices in the city were normally about the same as at the mines themselves. But when the market became glutted through excessive importations, or when goods could not be shipped to the mountains because of impassable roads, violent fluctuations made the merchants' profits as uncertain as the miner's luck. Flower, which sold on December 1st, 1848, for twenty-seven dollars a barrel, within two weeks had fallen to twelve or fifteen dollars. Beef and pork dropped at times with even greater swiftness. Melasses, which one month cost four dollars a gallon, sold the next for sixty-five cents. More than one cargo was thrown into the bay because prices would not pay for its unloading, and several of the muddiest streets from time to time were rendered passable by dumping into them barrels of unsalable provisions and other commodities not often used as paving material. Wages, immediately after the first rush to the gold fields, reached and maintained high levels. Ordinary labor brought from eight to ten dollars a day, while mechanics and carpenters easily commanded twelve or sixteen. Restaurants and hotels charged what, for that period, were unheard of rates. The cheapest and best eating places in the city were run by Chinese proprietors, who gave ample and well-cooked meals for a dollar each. But American houses, like the Alhambra or Delmonico's, had nothing to offer for less than five. The rooms at the more pretentious hotels, like the Ward, the Gram, or the St. Francis, brought as high as two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and even a bunk in a tent or garret could be disposed of for ten dollars or twenty dollars a week. Rentals and real estate values were correspondingly high. According to Bayard Taylor, the Parker House was leased for a hundred and ten thousand dollars annually. A canvas tent, fifteen by twenty five, occupied by gamblers who called it the El Dorado, brought forty thousand dollars. A small broker's house, known as the Miner's Bank, ridded for seventy five thousand dollars a year. A one-story building, with a twenty foot frontage on the plaza, then known as Portsmouth Square, brought forty thousand dollars, and a cellar, twelve feet square and six feet deep, was offered for a law office at two hundred and fifty dollars a month. Any room, twenty by sixty feet, wrote Sherman, would rent for a thousand dollars a month. Even though the cost of labor was high and lumber brought from Oregon or from the Graham Mills at Santa Cruz, sold for five hundred dollars a thousand, when such rentals could be obtained for buildings of every description, the price of vacant property naturally mounted with skyrocket speed. Lots which only a few years earlier had gone begging at twelve dollars each, now sold for as many thousand. Men, bankrupt and unfortunate mercantile ventures, suddenly found themselves rich through the possession of real estate previously considered worthless. More than one citizen, who had rushed off to the mines in 1848 and failed to make his fortune, came back to San Francisco to find his property so risen in value during his absence as to make him a wealthy man. Some of the shrewder Argonauts of 1849 thus found their true El Dorado in San Francisco real estate, which afforded early investors much sure and easier profits than the gold mines of the Sierra. In most cases, at least up to 1853, when a decline in values began, almost the only cloud on the investor's horizon was the validity of the title. To go into the innumerable disputes over land claims which troubled early San Francisco would crowd all other material from this volume. Yet, though it cannot be written here, the story of San Francisco's real estate transactions has in it much beside technical details relating to land titles and lawsuits. A large part of the story, especially after 1850, would deal with official corruption and public indifference, a combination that has injured many another American municipality. And in the case of San Francisco, cost her most of her patrimony and threw her early land titles into unfortunate confusion. The subject is interesting, also, because it gave rise to some very clever attempted land frauds. One of these was the so-called Lamontour Grant, a claim brought forward in 1853 by Jose Lamontour of Mexico before the California Land Commission to 600,000 acres of land in California. Included in the claim were a number of islands and some four-square leagues in the heart of San Francisco. The grants were signed by Governor Miquel Torrena, to whom Lamontour had furnished aid in the early 40s and seemed, on their face, to be unmistakably genuine. So far, at least, as the San Francisco claims were concerned, they were upheld by the Land Commission. But after months of litigation, during which Lamontour collected over $300,000 from property holders for quiet title, the United States District Court adjudged them fraudulent and ordered Lamontour's arrest. The latter, after giving bond for $30,000, forfeited his bond and fled to Mexico. Another spurious claim to three-square leagues in the San Francisco limits was also brought forward about the time of the Lamontour excitement and served still further to cloud the titles of property holders and cause a semi-panic. This was known as the Santillan Grant, so-called from the name of a priest, Jose Santillan, who produced a grant to the property in question, purporting to have been signed by Governor Pio Pico in 1846. The claim was sold by Santillan and, after passing into the hands of a company known as the Philadelphia Association, was approved by the Land Commission. Subsequent court proceedings, however, as in the case of the Lamontour scheme, invalidated the claim and declared the grant a forgery. Though the Lamontour and Santillan claims were repudiated, the mere fact that frauds could be attempted on so large a scale and come so near of success showed, plainly enough, the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the land titles of early San Francisco. Even an act of the state legislature in 1851, recognizing the city's right to certain beach and waterlots and confirming previous sales of such property, failed to clear away the difficulties. Court decisions for a long time were too conflicting to furnish any basis of adjustment. Squatters disputed the rights of legitimate owners, and for many years rival claimants settled the respective merits of their claims by resort to force, as often as by appeal to law. In addition to these private disputes over land titles, there was much juggling of the city's property by corrupt officials. All sorts of fraudulent practices were resorted to by which the municipality's valuable real estate, inherited from the old Spanish days or ceded to it by the government, was transferred to private individuals, many of whom thus became rich and infamous at the same time. So, through the first decade of San Francisco's history as an American municipality, along with all its splendid virility and optimism, ran the scandal of a city robbed of its heritage by conniving officials and unprincipled citizens. Whatever its government might be doing, however, year after year the city continued its surprising growth and added to its wealth by leaps and bounds. Misfortunes, however, were not lacking to test the real metal of the new community. Chief of these were the six great fires which, one after another, swept over the city in eighteen months, beginning with December 1849. The total loss entailed by these fires, most of which were thought to be of incendiary origin, was close to twenty-five million dollars, none of which was covered by insurance. But with the spirit of courage and determination that showed itself again to the admiration of the world after the great disaster of 1906, the citizens each time rebuilt their devastated city, making it more substantial and desirable after every catastrophe. The last of the six great fires started June 22, 1851, on the north side of Pacific near Powell, and destroyed, holy or in part, some sixteen blocks, causing a loss of over three million dollars. This and the previous conflagrations changed completely the San Francisco of tents and flimsy structures which had sprung up in the first months of 1849. Docks, wharves, sewers, sidewalks, paved streets, commodious and fireproof business houses, attractive and substantial homes took the place of the rude buildings and primitive structures of an earlier day. Business still continued to rely upon the mines for much of its prosperity, but a more widely diversified interest in shipping, lumber, agriculture and other lines of productive activity promised a broader and more secure foundation for the city's future. Gold dust ceased to be the chief circulating medium, but gave place to ten and twenty dollar gold pieces privately coined and to the fifty dollar slugs issued by the assay office in San Francisco. A motley list of silver coins drawn from almost every country under the sun served for small change and readily passed from hand to hand with only a rough attempt to fix approximate values. The smallest coin in use was a bit, or Spanish real, supposed to be equal to twelve and a half cents in American money. But as a matter of fact, nearly every small silver coin, whatever its face value, was classed as a bit and so accepted, for the San Franciscan still refused to think in terms of nickels and cents. The year 1853 was marked by a feverish business activity and inflation of real estate values such as even the boom of 1849 had scarcely known. But in the midst of this hectic prosperity were signs of coming trouble. The mining industry, though still producing many millions annually, was not able to support the thousands of persons who had made it their livelihood in previous years. Consequently, men were coming back from the mountains in large numbers and seeking employment in other lines or turning to other occupations, especially to agriculture, for a livelihood. This transition could not be accomplished without a considerable strain upon the machinery of business. Merchants found their sales curtailed and ready money far more difficult to obtain. Goods had to be sold in the interior largely on credit and gold continued to flow out of the state to meet bills already contracted with eastern merchants. The season of 1854 was unusually dry, bringing ruin not only to many ranchers, but also seriously reducing mining operations through lack of water. This and other difficulties led to nearly 300 business failures in one year. In addition, there occurred the very serious defalcation of Henry Meigs, ex-counselman, public benefactor, and leading citizen of San Francisco, whose unpaid debts and fraudulent treasury warrants cost his creditors fully eight hundred thousand dollars. In spite of these adverse factors, however, San Francisco experienced no actual crisis until the sudden collapse of several leading banking houses at the beginning of 1855. The crash happened shortly after the middle of February when the firm of Page Bacon & Company, probably the leading banking institution of California, became insolvent through the embarrassment of its parent company in St. Louis. This precipitated a run on the great banking and express house of Adams & Company, whose branch offices were in every mining center of California, and forced that institution to close its doors. At the time of this failure, Adams & Company owed nearly two million dollars to depositors, and as there was then no national bankrupt law, the assets still on hand were successfully manipulated by means of receivers, attachments, and other legal devices to the great benefit of a few favored creditors and the complete disappointment of the rest. Litigation over the spoils lasted for seven years, but most of the depositors gained little or nothing from the proceedings. The law's failure to remedy the situation or punish those responsible for the disappearance of more than two hundred thousand dollars of the company's assets aroused public opinion to the danger point, and served as one of the contributing motives for the creation of the Vigilance Committee in 1856. The financial panic did not confine itself to the two firms already mentioned. Three other leading houses, including those of Wells Fargo and Robinson & Company, closed their doors on the same day that Adams & Company announced its failure. A run was also started on the remaining banks of the city, but either through good fortune or wiser management, these were able to meet the demands of their excited depositors. These bank failures also forced many mercantile houses into bankruptcy, so that a general and very acute business depression followed the fat years of prosperity and speculation from 1849 to 1854. The activity and feverish energy which characterized the material development of San Francisco between 1849 and 1855 also showed itself in the social side of people's life. The amusements, or perhaps one should say forms of relaxation, were generally strenuous and most unconventional if judged by modern standards. They were of a nature too that inevitably fostered lawlessness where a community tolerated them too long, and in the end became the source of viciousness and evil of the worst sort. Though even from the beginning harmless pleasures were common enough, and year by year the better class of San Francisco turned with increasing eagerness to amusements of moral worth, patronizing concert, lecture and drama with true liberality, establishing gardens and parks, and seeking in many ways to encourage culture and refinement. Yet the characteristic amusements of those early days were not of the uplifting type. Men found their chief delight in drinking, gambling, and association with loose women. The saloons and gambling houses, which stood open day and night, were indeed the recognized centers of the city's social life. Their furnishings were tawdry and vulgar, but of a kind to appeal to unrefined masculine taste, and provided an enticing contrast to the bare, cheerless rooms in which most of the people lived. Entertainment of various sorts was also supplied by most resorts, such as the Bella Union, the El Dorado, or the Veranda, to serve as an additional attraction to the crowds. To these features were added light, warmth and the opportunity for companionship, and an atmosphere surcharged with excitement. Stronger than all, however, was the appeal of bar and gambling table. As was to be expected, women of an undesirable character began to make their appearance very early in San Francisco society. Many of these were first brought in from Mazatlán, or similar West Coast Latin American cities, and others came from the seaports of Asia. Later the underworld of Paris, London, and New York added to the stream, until the prostitute became a familiar figure on every San Francisco street. Here again, as in the other aspects of social life, the old restraints and conventionalities were cast utterly aside. Men of prominence and eminence standing in the community appeared openly in the company of these daughters of Rahab, without exciting unfavorable comment, or even attracting much attention. Few condemned them because few thought evil of what they did. Old standards were temporarily abandoned. San Francisco had, for the time being, adopted a new code of ethics and behavior. In this society, with its lack of restraint and emphasis upon the individual, the maintenance of one's rights became largely a personal matter with which the commonplace law had little to do. As a matter, of course, nearly every man went armed, choosing knife or revolver according to the individual taste. Disputes were settled on site or made the subject of formal duels. The five hundred odd saloons with which the city was blessed by 1855 did not tend to a condition of quietness and peace, nor did the excitement bred in gambling houses or the influence of immoral women prove of much assistance in this regard. Homicide was too common to excite much comment, and as almost no attempt was made to enforce the law by regularly appointed officials, men almost ceased to take it into consideration. Principles in a quarrel were shot or stabbed to death, and bystanders who failed to get out of the way quickly enough were accidentally killed without society holding anyone responsible. The law could not keep pace with the hurried rush of life so that each man became his own protector and not infrequently another man's judge and executioner as well. Such conditions inevitably gave the vicious elements of society free reign for their activities, and there were enough of these lawless characters and to spare before the city had long outgrown its village state. A criminal community known as Sidneytown in honor of the ex-Australian convicts who founded it had sprung up between Broadway and Pacific near the waterfront to which all manner of evil characters resorted. But this community, bad as it was, did not have a monopoly of the undesirables, for they were too numerous to be confined to any one quarter of the city. Like most criminal classes, that of San Francisco was very cosmopolitan in its makeup. The riff-raff of Europe, Asia, and South America, which followed in the wake of the gold rush, were continually augmented by American rowdies from the eastern cities or scoundrels from the southern and western states. To these was added a steady stream of weak or desperate characters with whom life in California had dealt too hard, failures from the mines, men who had lost fortune and self-respect through gambling or drink, and all the unpleasant byproducts which California interpocula necessarily produced. Another factor in the creation of lawlessness was the lax administration of the municipal government. From the American occupation down to May 1st, 1850, the city was governed for the most part under the primitive Mexican institutions of Alcalde and Ayuntamiento. During much of this period, there was considerable waste of public funds and something akin to chaos in municipal affairs. The status of the government in 1849 was thus described by one of the early Alcalde days. Quote, At this time we are without a dollar in the public treasury and it is to be feared that the city is greatly in debt. You have neither an office for your magistrate nor any other public edifice. You are without a single police officer or watchman and have not the means of confining a prisoner for an hour. Neither have you a place to shelter while living sick and unfortunate strangers who may be cast upon our shores, or to bury them when dead. Public improvements are unknown in San Francisco. In short, you are without a single requisite necessary for the promotion of prosperity, for the production of property, or for the maintenance of order. Quote, The change from Mexican to American institutions brought about by the first city charter affected no permanent improvement in the city's government. Except for an occasional attempt at reform, conditions in fact grew worse instead of better. Elections became a farce. Contractors and officials grew rich at public expense. Criminals caught red-handed were almost never convicted. The whole machinery of law enforcement and the right of the city's inhabitants to be secure in their persons and property were surrendered to the worst elements of the population. Lawyers, politicians, shrewd businessmen, with much to gain from the control of city government, furnished the leadership for this evil domination, and under them were petty grafters, lawless bullies, and criminals of every kind. So long as the city remained under such control it was utterly impossible to bring man to justice in the ordinary courts of law. The statement of a recent author that between 1849 and 1856 one thousand murders were committed with only a single legal conviction will scarcely be challenged by those conversant with the times. Yet it is obvious that a community essentially anglo-saxon will not tolerate such conditions beyond a certain point. The first outburst of public opinion, which amounted to something more than talk, came in July 1849 and resulted in the overthrow of a lawless group known as the Hounds or Regulators, a semi-political organization whose activities bore an indistinguishable resemblance to robbery, especially when applied to inoffensive foreigners. A particularly brutal attack one Sunday afternoon upon the settlement known as Little Chili led the better element of San Francisco to unite for the suppression of the organization. The leaders of the Hounds were accordingly seized, tried by a citizen's court, and driven from the community. The rest of the gang never again attempted to reorganize. It was not until 1851, however, that the first of the actual vigilance committees came into being. Lawlessness had been on the increase for months, expressing itself not only in robbery and murder, but also, or so at least it was suspected, in starting the great fires which swept the city from time to time. Arrests of even the most notorious criminals were seldom made and never accompanied by conviction. At last, with a sound common sense that placed the welfare of society above the sanctity of unenforced law, some 200 of the best citizens affected an organization known as the Committee of Vigilance to rid the city of the criminals and assist in the enforcement of the law. Sam Brannon, former leader of a Mormon contingent that came to California in the ship Brooklyn, was elected president, and Isaac Bluxom Jr., secretary of the organization. A few of the many other influential members were William T. Coleman, James King of William, Selen and Frederick Woodworth, and Colonel J.D. Stevenson of the New York Volunteers. A constitution was adopted on June 9th, and the Vigilance Committee entered upon its difficult and dangerous task. It should be borne in mind that this committee, even though self-constituted, was not a mob, but a carefully organized body of respectable men who openly avowed responsibility for what they did and acted only after careful investigation of each case. Until its work was accomplished, some of the committee constantly remained on duty. The rest could be summoned at any time, day or night, by the tolling of a monumental engine company's bell. Beginning with the execution of John Jenkins, an Australian ex-convict of evil notoriety, who was caught while attempting a daylight robbery, the committee continued its careful, methodical work, making arrests with its own police, holding trials under an established procedure, placarding the city with warnings for the criminal classes to leave, and watching incoming ships prevent the landing of desperate characters, until, for a time at least, San Francisco could boast a law-abiding population. In this first purification of the body politic, ninety-one persons were taken into custody. Of these, quote, the committee hanged four, whipped one, deported fourteen under direct supervision, ordered fourteen more to leave California at their own expense, delivered fifteen to the authorities for legal trial, and discharged forty-one, end quote. The good accomplished by the first vigilance committee could be made permanent, however, only by continued interest in the city's welfare on the part of its better citizens. This, unfortunately, was not forthcoming. For like too many reform movements, that of 1851 was merely a spasmodic outburst of indignation, instead of a sustained effort at civic improvement. So, almost as soon as conditions became indurable, the good people of San Francisco turned again to their own affairs, and the city's control slipped back into the hands of evil men. Lawlessness once more became the order of the day. The criminal class, augmented by the hard times of 1854 and 55, began a reign of robbery and murder such as a community had not known even in the worst days of 1851. More than ever, the law was made a mockery by corrupt or inefficient officials and dishonest lawyers, and thoughtful men, disparate of finding in it any relief from the conditions with which they found themselves surrounded. The vicious circle was rendered complete by a union of wealth and respectability, in the person of certain business and financial leaders who needed to control municipal elections in the city's treasury, with a rowdy element. Altogether, therefore, the state of San Francisco in 1856 was worse than in 1851, and drastic measures were again required to bring about a restoration of law and order. Public opinion was quickened to this new task by the death of James King of William. This man's character, like his name, had about it a certain individuality that set him apart from his companions, and near the close of his career, especially made him a sort of gadfly in San Francisco to arouse the city from its moral apathy. John Randolph of Roanoke occupied a place no more unique in the Senate of the United States than James King of William held in the San Francisco of the middle fifties. King began his California career in the Sierra. Afterwards he came to San Francisco, where he established a private bank, and later entered the employ of Adams and Company. The failure of this house thrust him into the editorial profession, and October 8th, 1855, he issued the first number of the Daily Evening Bulletin. Almost immediately this paper set the city by the ears, with a directness which must have delighted the heart of a society still very much in the pioneer stage. King attacked those whom he considered guilty of corrupting the city's morals, or of defrauding the people through political power. He dealt in personalities rather than in general charges, and published the names of offenders with a boldness that made the victims of graft and crooked politics rejoice and take heart. Palmer, Cook and Company, whom he called the Uriah heaps of San Francisco bankers, and many other epithets no less complementary, furnished King his first target. But his taste were Catholic, and evil doers great and small soon took their places in the bulletin's gallery of rogues besides the arch-enemies to all good society, Palmer, Cook and Company. King's attacks did not, of course, immediately dethrone vice, but he gradually taught the people where the sources of corruption lay, and steadily developed a strong undercurrent of public opinion against the prevailing abuses. The shooting of William Richardson, a United States marshal by a notorious gambler named Charles Cora, who escaped the consequences of his act through a split jury, nearly precipitated a mob uprising in the early part of 1856. Cora was known to have killed at least six men besides Richardson. But it was not until the following May that the cold-blooded murder of James King himself by a detestable politician named Casey brought back the old vigilante days of 1851 and restored to the city its self-respect. King was shot about five o'clock on the evening of May 14th as he was walking homeward from the office of the bulletin. Casey immediately gave himself up to his friends at the police station where he thought he would be secure. But the tolling of the old monumental fire bell brought together so great a crowd that the assassin's confederates thought it best to move him to the county jail for safekeeping. Here, protected by a large force of armed deputies and a considerable body of militia, he was temporarily safe. But the city was aroused at too high a pitch to quiet down. Matters, indeed, had come to such a pass that as Dempster, one of the advocates of a new vigilance committee, truly said in his appeal to a better class of citizens, quote, we must either have vigilance with order or a mob with anarchy, unquote. Members of the committee of 1851, led by one of its active members, W. T. Coleman, served as a nucleus for the new organization. The old Know Nothing Hall at 105 and a half Sacramento Street was used as temporary headquarters, and notices in the newspapers announced the reassembling of the committee. Before nightfall a thorough, swiftly working organization had been perfected. Hundreds of persons had been enrolled, sworn to an oath of secrecy, and given a number by which they were henceforth to be designated instead of by name. Arms were later provided and sufficient number to equip some 2,000 men. The volunteers were organized into regular military companies, each with its own officers, but the actual direction of affairs rested with a central executive committee of 33 members. The purpose of the organization can best be expressed in the committee's language, quote. We do bind ourselves, read their declaration, to perform every just and lawful act for the maintenance of law and order, and to sustain the laws when faithfully and properly administered, but we are determined that no thief, burglar, assassin, ballot-stuffer, or other disturber of the peace shall escape punishment, either by quibbles of the law, the carelessness or the corruption of the police, or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice, end quote. To sum up in a single sentence one of the most dramatic periods of all San Francisco's stirring career, one may simply say that the vigilantes of 1856 succeeded in carrying out the foregoing resolution. Upon the day of James King's funeral, after a fair though non-technical trial, they hanged Casey and Cora from the windows of the headquarters building, and later executed two other rascals of similar kidney. Their chief work, however, lay in clearing the city of undesirables, both prominent and obscure, by means of warnings and depotations, and in putting the fear of God into the hearts of the lawless characters who remained. The process of regeneration was not accepted in the spirit of meekness by the victims, nor wholly unopposed by the regularly constituted authorities. A counter-movement, headed by so-called law and ordermen, sought and secured the aid of Governor J. Neely Johnson and the state militia against the vigilantes, and even the President of the United States was requested to use federal troops to put down the insurrection. W. T. Sherman, of later Civil War fame, was then engaged in banking in San Francisco, and for a time led the anti-vigilante party. Associated with him were General Volney Howard, Judge Terry of the State Supreme Court, who afterwards nearly forfeited his own neck by stabbing a member of the committee named Hopkins, and a number of other citizens equally well known. Twice at least Civil War seemed inevitable between the state authorities, backed by the law and order party, and the vigilant supporters, but fortunately this catastrophe was averted. The city, however, for some months was like an armed camp. The vigilantes had fully 9,000 members, all of whom were regularly drilled and organized into infantry, cavalry, and artillery units. The committee's permanent headquarters on Sandsome Street, in expectation of a siege, had been turned into a well-defended fort known as Fort Gunnybags, from the sacks of earth with which it was protected. Some 30 cannon, ranging from 6 to 32 pounders, were in the hands of the organization, besides large stores of ammunition and thousands of muskets. Under such circumstances, suppression of the movement, whether by state or federal troops, would have been a very bloody and costly business, and luckily it was not attempted. By a singular coincidence the committee of 1856 hanged the exact number of criminals that the committee of 1851 had hanged. Quote, but the committee did not stop there, says Mary Floyd Williams. It laid its hands upon an incriminating ballot box that was still stuffed with forged ballots. It obtained confessions from the word healers who had done the bidding of the powerful and efficient bosses, and then it announced its intention of cleansing the city from the plague of political corruption. It sent into exile over a score of the most valuable members of the machine. End quote. Fortunately, as soon as the work in hand was done, the leaders of the committee disbanded its followers, even though the organization was then at the height of its power, and thus saved the movement from becoming the tool of men eager to use it for selfish or partisan ends. Those who created it had shouldered a grave responsibility and taken a great risk. Only the utter demoralization of government and social conditions could have justified such a step. But for many years thereafter the salutary influence of the committee's work was felt in the city's political and social life, and few today will deny that San Francisco profited from this overriding of law to save law. End of Chapter 20