44o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



its editorial management is timorous to a ridiculous degree. The 

 " Chronicle," whose principal proprietor recently lost his life in a 

 tragedy growing out of these occurrences, is best described as a " live 

 paper" of the most vigorous and unscrupulous kind. As though a 

 tacit partnership had been formed, Kearney began to call upon work- 

 ingmen to stop the " Call " and take the " Chronicle," while the 

 " Chronicle " on its part advertised the meetings in the highest style 

 of the art, giving Kearney the greatest prominence and detailing its 

 best reporters to manufacture and dress up his speeches. Thus adver- 

 tised, the meetings began to draw. 



California Street Hill is crowned by the palaces of the railroad 

 nabobs men who a few years ago were selling coal-oil or retailing dry 

 goods, but who now count their wealth by the scores of millions. To 

 complete the block which one of these had selected for his palace, an 

 undertaker's homestead was necessary. The undertaker wanted more 

 than the nabob was willing to give, and the latter cut short the nego- 

 tiation by inclosing the undertaker's house on three sides with an im- 

 mense board fence, probably the highest on the Pacific coast, if not 

 in the world. This veritable coffin, which shuts out view and sun from 

 the undertaker's little home, and which the common law, now abro- 

 gated in California by the code, would not have permitted, is one of 

 the most striking features of the Hill. 



When, with the assistance of the " Chronicle," the meetings had 

 begun to draw crowds, largely composed of unemployed men, who 

 after the harvest begin to collect in San Francisco, and of a class 

 that of late years has become numerous, the professional beggars or 

 strikers, a meeting was called for the top of California Street Hill, 

 where the nabobs were regaled by the cheers of a surging crowd, when 

 it was proposed by one of the speakers a pamphleteer and newspaper 

 writer well known in California for many years, but who neither before 

 nor since took any other part in the agitation to celebrate Thanks- 

 giving by pulling down the big fence, if not removed by that time. 

 This was too much : the railroad magnates were frightened even the 

 " Chronicle " demanded the arrest of the agitators ; a sudden energy 

 was infused into the authorities, and they, with the proposer of the 

 fence-destruction, were arrested on charges of riot. 



That these arrests were ill advised the sequel proves. And it is to 

 be remarked that in all Kearney's wild declamation there has been no 

 direct incitement to violence. He has talked about wading through 

 blood, hanging official thieves, burning the Chinese quarter, and gener- 

 ally " raising Cain," but it has always been with an " if." He has 

 never come any nearer to actually proposing any of these things than 

 Daniel O'Connell did to proposing armed resistance to the English 

 Government. Nor yet is it easy to point to anything which Kearney 

 has said that is really more violent or incendiary than things said 

 before with impunity. It was not Dennis Kearney, but a Republican 



