CALIFORNIA SAVED. ALIFORNIA saved the the Republic? Republic once, and was Before The discovery of gold in the placers at Coloma turned us away from Mexico, which is political death. that discovery, and especially after the conquering heroes of Buena Vista and Chapultepec had marched through and spied out the land, there was a current of adventure and speculation steadily setting toward her fabulous riches of silver; but the fame of California turned it aside, let us hope, forever. American men and American money would have grouped themselves gradually about the richest mines, and, becoming compactly knit together in strong towns, would have revolted, as the Lone Star Republic did, and brought province after province knocking at our doors. The Roman Empire girdled nearly all the known world with victories, but when its armies went down to Egypt, there was opened a fountain of corruption and contention which overthrew the empire. In the day when we add Mexico, it becomes our Egypt. To many this may seem a shadowy and altogether insubstantial peril which was thus averted. But there was a very positive and tangible element of salvation which California digged, and washed, and pounded out, in the shape of $191,300,000 in gold, produced during the years of the war, to say nothing of the million or more which the people contributed, out of their prodigal generosity, to the Sanitary Fund. There never was any adequate official acknowledgment of this mighty succor given by California to the struggling nation. But Congress understood it well, when, in the midst of an unparalleled civil war, there came a sudden dread and a peril, lest some losel rebel should fall foul of the monthly argosy, heavy with oro Americano, off the coast of Mazatlan, and when in all haste it voted millions, though in the darkest days of a frightfully expensive war, to set the overland railroad a-digging. General Grant understood it well, when he congratulated the people in his message that they were gotten now in a position to reach across quickly, and finger their "strong-box" in the day when they needed money. But our principal concern is with the second question : How did the Republic save California? And, first, it is necessary to state at considerable length the condition of affairs present and impending, from which the coast was thus rescued. Not many months after the completion of the overland railroad everybody was asking his neighbor, "What ails California ?" In many of the mountain mining towns, which once resounded with the blast of the powder, the clank of the quartz-mill, and the merry click of the pistol, the doors were shut in the streets, and the sound of the grinding was low. The silver mills were dry, the gold ran thin in the sluices, in many places the harvests were shortened, and the "blanket men" were abroad in the land in ominous numbers. Real estate fell from the very top-round of the ladder of an unprecedented inflation. down to the fourth or fifth step. Mortgages on real estate in San Francisco mounted up to the alarming figure of $30,000,000, a sum nearly equal to all the deposits then in the savings-banks of California. The enormous cash rent which small farmers were paying for wheat-fields, with money borrowed at an exorbitant interest,-thereby often spending in one year's rent nearly the whole actual value of the farm,—was sinking them deeper than luckless Digger ever floundered in the wintry adobe of Salsapeutos. Sü, the venerable and godlike, says: "Every good and bad deed will in the end receive its merited recompense; fly high or run far, still will it be difficult to escape." Wherein had California sinned, that its sin had found it out so swiftly and so surely? We must, to use a mining phrase, go down to the bed-rock, and patiently scrape together all the elements of the false position. The vast mineral wealth of California had a deplorable effect on great masses of the early population, in a twofold manner. First, it infected men with that restless fever which clung to them through life, even until they made their last little entry of real estate, and “took up a claim," seven feet by three. Second, many miners were attracted by the admirable adaptation to viniculture of the soil in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and gradually beat their picks into pruning-hooks, and their long-handled shovels into plows. This was fortunate, so far, and illustrates the remark of Humboldt, that the influence of mines on the progressive cultivation of the soil is more durable than the mines themselves. The placer gold was soon exhausted, and then the land became more valuable for agricultural purposes; but, unfortunately, the government refused to sell it or give any title for it, still holding it for "mineral land." Fifteen or twenty years thus spent by the farmer, in the hope of some time getting a title to his little homestead, had a most disastrous effect, both on himself and his children. His family grew up unstable and uncertain. His manly arm was unnerved by insecurity. For the sake of a few paltry and delusive particles of glittering dust which yet lingered in the creek-bed or in the boulders among his clambering vines, any lawless rover might tear up all his terraces, uproot all his carefully-cultured vines and trees, for whose fruit he had toiled and waited, and leave him utterly without redress. Thousands of families grew up in this manner, making only a miserable shift until they might be certain of their possessions, and then abandoned them in despair at last,—all the best years of their lives wasted, their energies gone, and idleness and shiftlessness woven into the very life-web of their characters. At last the government was induced to set about the survey and sale of these equivocal and fatal lands, but not until irreparable mischief had been done. The amount of "poor white trash" (I beg pardon of the reader for using this mean phrase, for no other is so expressive) which this state of things, together with other causes, produced, and turned loose upon California, especially the southern portion, it is deplorable to contemplate. Such a course wrought such an effect in the fruit-growing foothills, and a different cause produced a like effect in the great valleys. To liken great things to small, the condition of California resembled that iniquitous old monopoly, the Roman Empire, as it was in the third and fourth centuries, when the homeless and landless hordes of savages began to surge against its borders, and strain their bloodshot eyes across its walls toward the riotous opulence within. A man in the Tulare valley owns $1,000,000 worth of land for his herds to roam upon, yet he comes up to Sacramento, stands up in his place in the Legislature, and fights like a brigand against a projected railroad, be cause, forsooth, it would pierce his principality, and induce settlement; while the farmers, for lack of that railroad, pay half the value of their wheat for transportation. Another in Kern valley owns 230,000 acres, yet sixty families go home to Texas, because they can find no useful land. Another near Santa Barbara claims 247,000 acres, and the citizens of that town hold an indignation meeting, because this one man is throttling their life like an anaconda, and no farmers can settle near them. And even mutton is not cheap. 66 Coyotes" is getting to be the cant name for the poor in Southern California. There is no place for them on top of the land, and they must dig underneath. Travel anywhere in that section, and you shall find them. Between the great hills, all softened with a lilac, chiaroscuro film of haze, brightly evergreen on the north side with chamizal, but on the south side nibbled bare and dusty by the swarming sheep, you shall anywhere find one of these families, in an abandoned shepherd's-hut or a wretched cabin of logs. A spring of water is hard by; under the vast overshadowing live-oak hangs a half-eaten carcass of venison (fortunately, the atmosphere is very pure); and in the cabin there is a can of wild honey. They are a lank and sallow couple, with the Pike-county twang, and seven white-haired daughters. Come farther north, and journey over the great plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys. In the midst of an almost boundless expanse of wheat, there stands a mean, unpainted, unfenced shanty. For days and days the whistle of the steam-thresher can be heard, here today, there to-morrow, but all the while on the ranch of him who lives in that shanty. The grimy gang of laborers follow it through the season, for it is their principal "job" of the year. When the summer is over, and the harvest |