436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In short, I am unable to see, in the conditions from which this agi- 

 tation sprang, anything really peculiar to California. I can not regard 

 the anti-Chinese sentiment as really peculiar, because it must soon arise 

 in the East should Chinese immigration continue ; and because, in the 

 connection in which we are considering it, its nature and effects do not 

 materially differ from those which elsewhere are aroused by other 

 causes. The main fact which underlies all this agitation is popular 

 discontent ; and, where there is popular discontent, if there is not one 

 Jonah, another will be found. Thus, over and over again, popular 

 discontent has fixed upon the Jews, and among ourselves there is a 

 large class who make the "ignorant foreigner" the same sort of a 

 scapegoat for all political demoralization and corruption. 



There has been in California growing social and political discontent, 

 but the main causes of this do not materially differ from those which 

 elsewhere exist. Some of the factors of discontent may have attained 

 greater development in California than in older sections, but I am in- 

 clined to think this is merely because in the newer States general ten- 

 dencies are quicker seen. For instance, the concentration of the whole 

 railroad system in the hands of one close corporation is remarkable in 

 California, but there is clearly a general tendency to such concentra- 

 tion, which is year by year steadily uniting railroad management all 

 over the country. 



The "grand culture" of machine-worked fields, which calls for 

 large gangs of men at certain seasons, setting them adrift when the 

 crop is gathered, and which is so largely instrumental in filling San 

 Francisco every winter with unemployed men, is certainly the form to 

 which American agriculture generally tends, and is developing in the 

 new Northwest even more rapidly than in California. 



Nor yet am I sure that the characteristics of the press, to which 

 San Franciscans largely attribute this agitation, are not characteristics 

 to which the newspaper press generally tends. Certain it is that the 

 development of the newspaper is in a direction which makes it less and 

 less the exponent of ideas and advocate of principles, and more and 

 more a machine for money-making. 



There is, however, a peculiar local factor which I am persuaded 

 has not been without importance. This is an intangible thing a 

 mere memory. But such intangible things are often most potent. 

 Just as the memory of previous revolutions has disposed the discon- 

 tented Parisian to think of barricades and the march to the Hotel de 

 Ville, so has the memory of the Vigilance Committee accustomed San 

 Franciscans to think of extra-legal associations and methods as the 

 last but sovereign resort. These ideas have been current among a 

 different class from that which mans the Paris barricades. The Vig- 

 ilance Committee of 1856, as most of the other California Vigilance 

 Committees, was organized and led by the mercantile class, and in that 

 class its memories have survived. The wild talk of the " sand-lot " 



