THE KEARNEY AGITATION IN CALIFORNIA. 437 



about hanging official thieves and renegade representatives, and the 

 armed organizations of workingmen, which have seemed at the East 

 like the importations of foreign communism, are in large measure but 

 reflections and exaggerations of ideas current in San Francisco count- 

 ing-rooms and bank parlors. And it must be remembered, in esti- 

 mating the influence of this idea, that the Vigilance Committee of 1856 

 was not merely successful in its immediate purposes, but gave birth to 

 a political organization that for many years thereafter managed the 

 local government and disposed of all its large prizes. 



Yet, acting with and running through this, has been, I think, a 

 wider and more generally diffused feeling the disposition toward 

 sharp repressive measures which is aroused among the wealthy classes 

 by symptoms of dissatisfaction and aggression among the poor. That 

 this feeling has of late years been growing throughout the Union many 

 indications show. 



Be all this as it may, the impulse that began these California agi- 

 tations came from the East. For the genesis of Kearney ism, or rather 

 for the shock that set in motion forces that social and political discon- 

 tent had been generating, we must look to Pittsburgh and to the great 

 railroad strikes of 1877. 



In California, where a similar strike was about beginning for the 

 railroad company had given notice of a like reduction of wages these 

 strikes excited an interest that became intense when the telegraph 

 told of the burning and fighting in Pittsburgh. The railroad magnates, 

 becoming alarmed, rescinded their notice, but in the mean time a meet- 

 ing to express sympathy with the Eastern strikers had been called for 

 the sand-lot in front of the new City Hall. This meeting was called 

 in response to a request of Eastern labor papers, but happened to fall 

 amid the excitement caused by the Pittsburgh riot. The over-zealous 

 authorities, catching, perhaps, the alarm that had induced the railroad 

 managers to rescind their reduction, arrested men who were carrying 

 placards advertising the meeting. In the excitement, wild reports 

 flew through the city that an incendiary meeting was to be held, and 

 an attempt made to burn the Pacific Mail Docks and Chinese quarter. 

 The meeting was held, for the authorities soon saw that there was no 

 reason for preventing it. There was no talk of lawlessness or allusion 

 to the Chinese on the part of the promoters of the meeting or their 

 speakers, but the excitement showed itself by the raising, on the out- 

 skirts of the immense crowd, of the cry, " To Chinatown ! " a move- 

 ment promptly stopped by the police ; and in remoter districts some 

 Chinese wash-houses were raided by gangs of bpys. The papers sen- 

 sational to the last degree made the most of this the next morning, 

 and, in the excitement that the Eastern news had created, a meeting, 

 held in the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce, organized a Commit- 

 tee of Public Safety, with the President of the Vigilance Committee 

 of 1856 at its head, the hint being probably given by a telegram that 



