THE KEARNEY AGITATION IN CALIFORNIA. 451 



York and flaunted their spoils in all men's eyes. The man who now 

 talks about wading through blood and hanging people to lamp-posts 

 is but the vender of a nostrum who dresses as a wild Indian to attract 

 attention ; but when blind fear and unreasoning resentment sway 

 the Government, and give to whoever can arouse them the prizes 

 of place and power, the day when blood will flow and cities burn may 

 not be so far off. There has never yet been any clanger of mob vio- 

 lence in San Francisco; and yet, watching what has been going on there, 

 it has seemed to me that I could see how jealousy and fear and hatred 

 and revenge might mount through a series of actions and reactions to 

 the point where reason is utterly trodden under foot ; that I can under- 

 stand better than before how faction piled the streets of Jerusalem 

 with corpses, while Titus thundered at her gates ; how the colors of 

 circus-charioteers divided Constantinople into two hostile camps ; how 

 the reappearance of French liberty ushered in Red Terror and White 

 Terror. It is true that we have the public school and the daily paper ; 

 that any child can tell you the distance of the sun, and how this sys- 

 tem once rolled a mass of incandescent vapor. But, " scratch a Rus- 

 sian and you have a Tartar." Look at your civilized man when fired 

 by that strange magnetic impulse which passion arouses in crowds, and 

 you may read in his eyes the blind fury of the Malay running amuck. 

 You will understand how handkerchiefs hemmed with the sewing- 

 machine might be dipped in blood, and hearts carried on pikes through 

 streets lit with gas ! 



Aristocracies, hierarchies, established orders, hereditary castes, and 

 strong religious beliefs that have become conservative, they are like 

 the trees and the fences that check the violence of the blast that over 

 a dead level rushes in headlong fury like the ballast in a ship that 

 resists the sudden lurch. But these we have cast off or are casting: off. 

 Government with us grows in weight and importance ; but this is not 

 a conservative force when its increasing powers and emoluments are to 

 be grasped by whoever can best organize corruption or rouse passion. 

 We have great and increasing accumulations of wealth ; capital is be- 

 coming organized in greater and greater masses, and the railroad com- 

 pany dwarfs the State. But these are not forces of stability. Perhaps 

 these great combinations are forced into politics in self-defense. But, 

 however they get there, their effect is but to demoralize and corrupt 

 to reward and to bring to political leadership the unscrupulous. And 

 these great corporations themselves are but the prize and prey of ad- 

 venturers, the fattening-places of unscrupulous rings. 



Given universal suffrage ; a vague, blind, bitter feeling of discon- 

 tent on the one side and of insecurity on the other ; unscrupulous poli- 

 ticians who may ride into power by exciting hopes and fears ; class 

 jealousies and class antipathies ; great moneyed interests working 

 through all parties with utter selfishness ; a general disgust with po- 

 litical methods and feeling of practical political impotence, producing 



