THE KEARNEY AGITATION IN CALIFORNIA. 445 



to light, there was a mass of corruption never to be developed, for 

 justice in San Francisco, as in some other places, seems stricken with 

 palsy in presence of rich criminals and powerful rings. 



The only remedy which the new party offered for this state of 

 things was the usual remedy, " Elect honest men to office, we naming 

 the honest men ; " but in the beginning Kearney proposed the addition- 

 al safeguard of hanging officials who broke their pledges. And, at the 

 first election in which the new party engaged to fill a vacancy in the 

 legislative representation of the strong Republican county of Alameda, 

 where the railroad interest is very powerful, and the population con- 

 sist largely of San Francisco business men the workingmen's candi- 

 date, a railroad employee named Bones, went around with a halter 

 about his neck in token of his acceptance of this condition. lie was 

 elected, took his seat, and immediately began voting just as he had 

 promised not to. There was enough discussion of how he should be 

 hung to make him ask the protection of the Senate, but there was no 

 hanging. This ended faith in that guarantee, but not in pledges, the 

 municipal officials subsequently elected by the workingmen in San 

 Francisco being pledged to draw only half salaries a pledge which 

 after election they one and all ignored as easily as before election they 

 had taken it. 



But, before the feelings which had been aroused by the events of 

 which I speak could spend themselves in a general election of officers, 

 there came, in June, 1878, the election for delegates to a Constitutional 

 Convention. This whole subject of the new Constitution of California 

 is extremely interesting and suggestive, but I can only allude to some 

 main features. The large corporate interests took advantage of the 

 situation, by starting a movement for a " Non-Partisan " ticket, on 

 which, of course, they got a good representation. If they did not also 

 engineer the Workingmen's nominations, they could hardly have done 

 better, as these consisted generally of men utterly ignorant and inex- 

 perienced. The " Non-Partisans " carried the State at large, the Work- 

 ingmen San Francisco and some other centers where they had organi- 

 zations. The Convention itself was vaguely divided into three groups : 

 first, the lawyers, who largely represented corporation interests ; sec- 

 ond, the " Grangers," who represented the ideas and prejudices of the 

 farmers and landholders ; third, the Workingmen, bent on making 

 capital for the new party, and desirous of doing something for the 

 laboring classes, without the slightest idea of how to do it. But there 

 was nothing in the Convention like agrarianism or socialism, or radical 

 reform of any kind. The lawyers looked out pretty well for their spe- 

 cial interests ; the Workingmen, satisfied with some clauses about the 

 Chinese, etc. (not worth the paper on which they were written), readily 

 fell in with the Grangers, imagining that, in piling taxation upon capi- 

 tal and all its shadows, they were helping the poor by taxing the rich. 

 The resulting instrument is a sort of mixture of constitution, code, 



