434- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



such as this, I can, however, do little more than correct some misap- 

 prehensions and put the main facts in such relations that their bear- 

 inc may be seen. Much that would conduce to complete intelligibility 

 must, from the limit of space, be omitted. 



What seems to be the general idea of these events is well suggested 

 by one of Nast's cartoons a hideous figure, girt with revolver and 

 sword, broadly badged as "communist," brandishing in one hand the 

 torch of anarchy, and in the other exhibiting a scroll on which is in- 

 scribed : " Mob Law. The New Constitution of California. Kearney- 

 ism. Other people's homes, savings, land, property, lives, capital, and 

 honest labor, all common stock in the universal cooperative brother- 

 hood." In the distance a group of workmen stand idle and cowering, 

 while underneath is the device, " Constant Vigilance (Committee) is 

 the price of liberty in San Francisco." 



While such ideas are but exaggerated reflections of the utterances 

 of San Francisco papers, they are wide of the truth. There has not 

 been in San Francisco any outbreak of " foreign communism," nor yet 

 has there been in the workingman's movement, or in its results, any- 

 thing socialistic or agrarian. This movement has in reality been in- 

 spired by ordinary political aims, and what has been going on in Cali- 

 fornia derives its real interest from its relation to general facts and its 

 illustration of general tendencies. 



While there has been much in these events to recall to the cool 

 observer the saying of Carlyle, " There are twenty-eight millions of 

 people in Great Britain, mostly fools," it is yet a mistake to regard 

 California as a community widely differing from more Eastern States. 

 I am, in fact, inclined rather to look upon California as a typical 

 American State, and San Francisco as a typical American city. It 

 would be difficult to name any State that in resources, climate, and in- 

 dustries comes nearer to representing the whole Union, while, as all the 

 other States have contributed to her population in something like 

 relative proportions, general American characteristics remain, as local 

 peculiarities are in the attrition worn off. There is, of course, a greater 

 mobility of society than in older communities, and this may give rise 

 to a certain excitability and fickleness. But, everywhere, the mobility 

 of population increases with the relative growth of cities and the in- 

 crease of facilities of movement. And, in fact, the newness and plas- 

 ticity of society in such a State as California permits general tenden- 

 cies to show themselves more quickly than in older sections, just as 

 in the younger and more flexible parts of the tree the direction of the 

 wind is most easily seen. 



Though yet comparatively a small city, San Francisco is in char- 

 acter more metropolitan than any other American city except New 

 York, and is, to the territory and population of which she is the com- 

 mercial, industrial, financial, and political center, even more of a center 

 than is New York. San Francisco has no rival. For long distances 



