THE KEARNEY AGITATION, IN CALIFORNIA. 435 



her bay is spoken of as " the bay," and she is not merely the great- 

 est city, but " the city." 



And, though the European element is largely represented in San 

 Francisco, it is, I am inclined to think, more thoroughly Americanized 

 than in the Eastern cities. The reason I take to be, not merely that it 

 is drawn from the more active and intelligent of the immigration that 

 sets upon the Atlantic shore, and has generally only reached California 

 after a longer or shorter sojourn in more Eastern States, but also that 

 the American population having been drawn from all sections of the 

 country, and from the early days the whole immigration having been 

 rather of individuals than of colonies or families, the admixture has 

 been more thorough, and, except as to the Chinese, that polarization 

 which divides a mixed population into distinct communities has not 

 so readily taken place. 



Contrary, too, to the reputation which she seems to have got, San 

 Francisco is really an orderly city. Although the police force has 

 been doubled within the past two years, it still bears a smaller propor- 

 tion to population than in other large American cities. Chinamen go 

 about the streets with far more security than I imagine they will go 

 about any Eastern city when they become proportionately as numerous ; 

 and, after all said of hoodlumism, there is little obtrusive rowdyism 

 and few street fights a fact which may in part result from the once 

 universal practice of carrying arms. 



Nor has communism or socialism (understanding by these terms 

 the desire for fundamental social changes) made, up to this time, much 

 progress in California, for the presence of the Chinese has largely en- 

 grossed the attention of the laboring classes, offering what has seemed 

 to them a sufficient explanation of the fall of wages and difficulty of 

 finding employment. Only the more thoughtful have heeded the fact 

 that in other parts of the world where there are no Chinamen the con- 

 dition of the laboring classes is even worse than in California. With 

 the masses the obvious evils of Chinese competition have excluded all 

 thought of anything else. And in this anti-Chinese feeling there is, 

 of course, nothing that can properly be deemed socialistic or commu- 

 nistic. On the contrary, socialists and communists are more tolerant 

 of the Chinese than any other class of those who feel or are threatened 

 by their competition. For not only is there, at the bottom of what is 

 called socialism and communism, the great idea of the equality and 

 brotherhood of men, but they who look to changes in the fundamental 

 institutions of society as the only means for improving the condition 

 of the masses necessarily regard Chinese immigration as a minor evil, 

 if in a proper social state it could be any evil at all. Nor is there in 

 this anti-Chinese feeling anything essentially foreign. Those who talk 

 about opposition to the Chinese being anti- American shut their eyes 

 to a great many facts if they mean anything more than that it ought 

 to be anti-American. 



