446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



stump-speech, and mandamus. But it is anything but agrarian or 

 communistic, for it intrenches vested rights especially in land more 

 thoroughly than before, and interposes barriers to future radicalism 

 by a provision in regard to amendments which it will require almost 

 a revolution to break through. It is anything but a workingman's 

 Constitution : it levies a poll-tax without exemption, disfranchises a 

 considerable part of the floating laboring vote, introduces a property 

 qualification, prevents the opening of public works in emergencies, and 

 in various ways, which workingmen, even in their present stage of 

 enlightenment, may easily see, sacrifices the interests of the laboring 

 classes, as well as the capitalist, to what the land-oAvners regard as their 

 interests, while in other respects its changes, which are in the same di- 

 rection as other late constitutions, are out of the line of true reform. 



But anything like calm discussion of the work of the Convention 

 became impossible. The moneyed classes of San Francisco, taking 

 alarm at the taxation clauses, raised a fund of some hundreds of thou- 

 sands of dollars to defeat the new Constitution, which was placed in 

 the hands of the head lobbyists of the railroad company, and a regular 

 bureau opened, while threats of the discharge of employees and with- 

 drawal of patronage as penalty for voting for it were freely made. If, 

 as believed by many, large special interests were engaged in the sup- 

 port of the new Constitution, they had the intelligence to work quietly. 

 On the surface it seemed as if every tyrannous and corrupt influence 

 was united for its defeat. In the torrent of passion which raged, it is 

 difficult to say whether those who opposed or those who advocated the 

 new Constitution said the most absurd things. On the one side it was 

 denounced as a " communistic " instrument which would bring every 

 calamity, on the other it was advocated as " the Magna Charta of the 

 laboring classes." The real agrarians and communists, if these terms 

 be applied to men who desire fundamental changes, opposed the new 

 Constitution all they could. But the fact that enormous sums were 

 being spent to defeat it, subjected every one who opposed it to the 

 imputation of being the hireling of anti-popular interests. And so, 

 with the solid vote of the farmers, aided largely by the vote of those 

 who lose most by it, the new Constitution was carried. 



In this contest the Workingmen had become, as in the Convention, 

 a sort of tail to the Grangers' kite, and Kearney had to a great extent 

 been forced into the background, while a number of old " war-horses " 

 came to the front. The "Chronicle," which had made a vigorous 

 fight for the new Constitution, saw in this combination an opportunity 

 to make a new party of its own which should fill all the offices under 

 the new instrument, and Kearney was given to understand that he 

 might now retire on his laurels. This he very vigorously declined to do, 

 and war between the late allies commenced, the " Chronicle " printing 

 with little immediate effect long exposures of the man it had so much 

 lauded, and Kearney denouncing the New Constitutionalists as "Hon- 



