Gold

by Stewart Edward White

  CHAPTER XLIV

  PLUTOCRATS!

  We felt very elated--and rather small. Talbot had alone and without, soto speak, moving from his tracks, made a fortune, while we, after goingthrough many hardships, adventures, and hard work, had returned almostpenniless. One of our first tasks was to convince Talbot of theinjustice to himself in giving us shares based on a proportionate moneyinvestment. We made him see, after a while, that his own genius countedfor something in the matter. He then agreed, but reluctantly, to reduceour shares to a twentieth each, and included me in this, despite ourprevious agreement. If we had adhered to that, my proportion would havebeen nearer a fortieth.

  This having been decided--after considerable argument--we settled downto wait for the completion of the Ward Block. Once the rents from thatstructure should begin to come in, it was agreed we should take outready money enough to return East. The remainder, less Talbot'sexpenses, would of course have to go back into releasing all the otherinterests. The formal opening had been arranged for the first ofJanuary.

  In the meantime we loafed magnificently, and lived on my money. Now thatour futures were all assured, Yank and Johnny condescended to temporaryloans. Occasionally we could help Talbot in some of the details of hisvaried businesses, but most of the time we idled. I do think we deserveda rest.

  Our favourite occupation was that of reviewing our property. To this endwe took long tramps over the hills, hunting painstakingly for obscurecorner stakes or monuments that marked some one of our numerous lots. Onthem we would gaze solemnly, although in no manner did they differ fromall the other sage-brush hill country about them. In a week we knewaccurately every piece of property belonging to Our Interests, and wehad listed every other more intangible equity or asset. One of Johnny'sfavourite feats was to march Yank and me up to a bar, face us, andinterrogate us according to an invariable formula. We must havepresented a comical sight--I with my great bulk and round, fresh facealongside the solemn, lank, and leathery Yank; both of us drawn up atattention, and solemn as prairie dogs.

  "How much is one twentieth of two thousand thousand?" inquired Johnny.

  "One hundred thousand," Yank and I chorused.

  "Is that a plutocrat?" demanded Johnny cryptically.

  "It is!" we cried.

  Our sense of our own financial importance being thus refreshed, weadvanced in rigid military formation to the bar and took our drinks. Twomillion dollars was the amount we had chosen as representing the valueof Our Interests. In deciding upon this figure we considered ourselvesvery moderate in refusing to add probable future increment. It mightalso be added that we equally neglected to deduct present liabilities.Nobody ever guessed what this mysterious performance of ours meant, butevery one came to expect it and to be amused by it. In a mild way we andour fool monkeyshines came to be a well-known institution.

  Having nothing else to do, we entered heartily into the life andpleasures of the place, and we met many of the leading citizens. Some ofthem have since become historical personages. Talbot was hand in glovewith most of them, and in and out of dozens of their schemes. There wasDavid Broderick, a secretive, dignified, square-cut, bulldog sort of aman, just making his beginning in a career that was to go far. Iremember he was then principally engaged in manufacturing gold coins andslugs and buying real estate.[A] His great political rival, Dr. Gwin theSoutherner, I also met; and Talbot H. Green, then and for some timelater, one of the most liked and respected of men, but whose privatescandal followed him from the East and ruined him; and Sam Brannan, ofcourse, the ex-elder of the Mormons; and Jim Reckett, the gambler; andW. T. Coleman, later known as Old Vigilante, and a hundred others. Thesewere strong, forceful men, and their company was always interesting.They had ideas on all current topics, and they did not hesitate toexpress those ideas. We thus learned something of the community in whichwe had been living so long.

  We heard of the political difficulties attendant on the jumble ofmilitary and unauthorized civil rule; of the convention at Monterey inSeptember, with its bitterly contested boundary disputes; of the greatand mooted question as to whether California should be "slave" or"free"; of the doubt and uncertainty as to the status of California-madelaw pending some action by the Federal Congress; of how the FederalCongress, with masterly inactivity and probably some slight skittishnessas to mingling in the slavery argument, had adjourned without doinganything at all! So California had to take her choice of remaining undermilitary governorship or going ahead and taking a chance on having heracts ratified later. She chose the latter course. San Jose was selectedas the capital. Nobody wanted to serve in the new legislature; menhadn't time. There was the greatest difficulty in getting assemblymen.The result was that, with few exceptions, the first legislature offifty-two members was composed of cheap professional politicians fromthe South, and useless citizens from elsewhere. This body was then insession. It was invariably referred to as "The Legislature of theThousand Drinks." I heard discussed numberless schemes for its controlfor this or that purpose; many of them, it seemed to me, ratherunscrupulous.

  These big men of the city talked of other things besides politics. Fromthem I heard of the state of commercial affairs, with its system ofconsignments and auctions, its rumours of fleet clipper ships, itscorners of the market, its gluttings with unforeseen cargoes ofunexpected vessels, and all the other complex and delicate adjustmentsand changes that made business so fascinating and so uncertain. Allthese men were filled with a great optimism and an abiding enthusiasmfor the future. They talked of plank roads, of sewers, of schools,churches, hospitals, pavements, fills, the razing of hills, wharves,public buildings, water systems; and they talked of them so soberly andin such concrete terms of accomplishment that the imagination wastricked into accepting them as solid facts. Often I have gone forth fromlistening to one of these earnest discussions to look about me on thatwind-swept, sandblown, flimsy, dirty, sprawling camp they called a city,with its half dozen "magnificent" brick buildings that any New Englandvillage could duplicate, and have laughed wildly until the tears came,over the absurdity of it. I was young. I did not know that a city is notbricks but men, is not fact but the vitality of a living ideal.

  There were, of course, many other men than those I have named, and ofvaried temperaments and beliefs. Some of them were heard of later in thehistory of the state. Terry, James King of William, Stephen J. Field,General Richardson were some of those whose names I remember. They were,in general, frank and open in manner, ready to offer or take a joke, andon terms of good-natured comradeship with each other; and yet somehow Ialways felt behind it all a watchful reservation. This was indefinable,but it indubitably existed. The effect on me was an instinct that thesemen would remain good-natured, laughing, joking, intimate, just as longas nothing happened to make them otherwise. They were a pack, hunting infull cry the same quarry; but were one of them to fall out, the restwould sweep on without a backward glance. As an individual human beingno one of them was in reality important to any other. They pursued thesame aims, by much the same methods, and they could sometimes make useof each other to the advantage of both. In the meantime, since they asthe prominent men of a mixed community must possess qualities in common,they found each other mutually agreeable. Many called themselvesfriends; but I much doubt if the friendship that would render aid at asacrifice was very common. Every man played his own game.

  In the town outside we made many other acquaintances, of all classes ofsociety. In 1849 no social stigma, or very little, attached to any openassociation. Gamblers were respectable citizens, provided they ranstraight games. The fair and frail sisterhood was well represented. Itwas nothing against a man, either in the public eye or actually, to beseen talking, walking, or riding with one of these ladies; for every oneknew them. There were now a good many decent women in town, livingmainly with their husbands and children very quietly among the sandhillson the edges of the town. One saw little of them unless he took thetrouble to search them out. We did so, and thus struck up acquaintancewith a half
dozen very pleasant households, where occasionally my NewEngland heart was gladdened by a genuine homebaked New England pie.These people had children and religious beliefs; and for the one and theother they had organized churches and schools, both of which were wellattended. Furthermore, such institutions were contributed to by many ofthe business men who never entered their doors. This respectable lifewas stronger than is generally known. It was quiet and in thebackground, and under the deep shadow cast by the glaring light ofdowntown, but it was growing in solidity and strength.

  Among the others we came across the preacher we had seen holding forthon the wharf. He was engaged, with the assistance of two men of theMethodist persuasion, in building a church. The three had themselves cutand hewed the timbers. Mr. Taylor, for that was his name, explained tome that, having no money, that seemed the the only way to get a church.He showed us his own place, a little shack not unlike the others, butenclosed, and planted with red geraniums, nasturtiums and other brightthings.

  "As far as I know," he told us with pride, "that is the first garden inSan Francisco."

  In the backyard he had enclosed three chickens--two hens and a cock.

  "I paid eighteen dollars for them," said he.

  We looked at each other in startled astonishment. The sum appeared atrifle extravagant considering the just-acknowledged impecuniosity ofthe church. He caught the glance.

  "Boys," he said quaintly, "San Francisco is a very lonesome place forthe godly. The hosts of sin are very strong, and the faithful are veryfew. Mortal flesh is weak; and mortal spirit is prone to blackdiscouragement. When I bought those chickens I bought eighteen dollars'worth of hope. Somehow Sunday morning seems more like the Sabbath withthem clicking around sleepy and lazy and full of sun."

  We liked him so much that we turned to at odd times and helped him withhis carpenter work. While thus engaged he confided to us his intentionto preach against the gambling the next Sunday in the Plaza. We stoppedhammering to consider this.

  "I shouldn't, if I were you," said I. "The gamblers own the Plaza; theyare respected by the bulk of the community; and they won't stand anynonsense. They none of them think anything of shooting a man in theirplaces. I don't think they will stand for it. I am afraid you will beroughly handled."

  "More likely shot," put in Johnny bluntly.

  "Well, well, boys, we'll see," said Taylor easily.

  Nor could we move him, in spite of the fact that, as we came to see hisintention was real, we urged very earnestly against it.

  "Well, if you will, you will," Johnny conceded at last, with a sigh."We'll see what we can do to get you a fair show."

  "Now that is just what I don't want you to do," begged the old manearnestly. "I want no vain contention and strife. If the Lord desiresthat I preach to these sinners, He will protect me."

  In the end he extorted from us a reluctant promise not to mingle in theaffair.

  "He's just _looking_ for trouble," muttered Johnny, "and there's nodoubt he'll find it. The gamblers aren't going to stand for a man'scussing 'em outright on their own doorsteps--and I don't know as I blamethem. Gambling isn't such a terrible, black, unforgivable sin as I seeit."

  "That's because you're ahead of the game, Johnny," drawled Yank.

  "Just the same the old fool is wrong," persisted Johnny, "and he's asobstinate as a mule, and he makes me mad clean through. Neverthelesshe's a good old sort, and I'd hate to see him hurt."

  The news spread abroad, and there was much speculation as to what wouldhappen. In general the sentiment was hostile to the preacher. It wasconsidered an unwarrantable interference with freedom for any man toattempt to dictate the conduct of another. Everybody agreed thatreligion was all right; but by religion they meant some vague utteranceof platitudes. On the appointed Sunday a very large crowd gathered inthe Plaza. Nobody knew just what the gamblers intended to do about it.Those competent citizens were as close mouthed as ever. But it wasunderstood that no nonsense was to be permitted, and that this annoyingquestion must be settled at once and fully. As one man expressed it:

  "We'll have these fellows caterwauling all over the place if we don'tshut down on them right sharp off quick."

  Taylor arrived about ten o'clock and proceeded briskly to the porkbarrel that had been rolled out to serve as a pulpit. He faced alowering, hostile mob.

  "Gentlemen," said he, "if some means of communication existed by whichthe United States could this morning know that street preaching was tobe attempted in the streets of San Francisco, the morning papers, badlyinformed as to the temper and disposition of the people of this newcountry, would feel themselves fully justified in predicting riot, ifnot actual bloodshed. Furthermore, I do not doubt that the greaterdailies would hold their forms open to report the tragedy when news ofit should come in. But we of the West know better than that. We knowourselves rough and ready, but we know ourselves also to be lovers offair play. We know that, even though we may not agree with a man, we arewilling to afford him a fair hearing. And as for rioting or bloodshed,we can afford to smile rather than become angry at such widemisconception of our decency and sense of fair dealing."

  Having in this skilful fashion drawn the venom from the fangs of themob, he went directly ahead at his sermon, hammering boldly on his majorthesis. He finished in a respectful silence, closed his Bible with asnap, and strode away through the lane the crowd opened for him.

  Truth to tell, there was much in the sermon. Gambling, althoughconsidered one of the respectable amusements, undoubtedly did a greatdeal of harm. Men dropped their last cents at the tables. I remember oneyoung business man who had sold out his share in his firm for tenthousand dollars in cash and three notes for five thousand each. He hadevery intention of taking this little fortune back to his family in theEast, but he began gambling. First, he lost his ten thousand dollars incash. This took him just two days. After vacillating another day, hestaked one of the notes, at a discount, of course. This he lost. Asecond note followed the first; and everybody confidently expected thatthe third would disappear in the same fashion. But Jim Reckett, who wasa very good sort, took this man aside, and gave him a good talking-to.

  "You confounded fool," said he, "you're barred from my tables. My adviceto you is to go to your old partners, tell them what an ass you've madeof yourself, and ask them to let you have a few thousand on that lastnote. And then you leave on to-day's Panama steamer. And, say, if theywon't do it, you come to me."

  The young fellow took this advice.

  The Panama steamers were crowded to the rail. Indeed, the exodus wasalmost as brisk as the immigration, just at this time of year. Amoderate proportion of those going out had been successful, but thegreat majority were disappointed. They were tired, and discouraged, andhomesick; and their minds were obsessed with the one idea--to get back.We who remained saw them go with considerable envy, and perhaps a gooddeal of inner satisfaction that soon we were to follow. Of the thousandswho were remaining in California, those who had definitely andpermanently cast their lot with the country were lost in the crowd. Therest intended to stay another year, two years, perhaps even three; butthen each expected to go back.

  [Footnote A: Broderick actually manufactured coins with face value of $5and $10 containing but $4 and $8 worth of gold. The inscription on themwas simply that of the date, the location, and the value. They passedeverywhere because they were more convenient than dust, and it wasrealized that only the last holders could lose.]