796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



journals of California rapidly deteriorated in quality, as they lost 

 home support, and they either suspended or hecame mere ad- 

 vertising publications. Conditions of literary life in California 

 changed during the decade that witnessed the driving of the last 

 spike of the first railroad across the continent. Most of the writ- 

 ers who had earned reputations went elsewhere, and those who 

 stayed became more and more conscious of the fact that they also 

 should have gone. It is not too much to say that along in the 

 early seventies, Californians, always a reading people, became 

 thoroughly aware of the existence of the publications of the rest 

 of the United States. After the crash that followed, when every 

 local journal felt for the first time the competition that a daily 

 mail implies, a few single-hearted men and women revived the 

 magazine, and an entirely different line of weekly publications 

 was established. The old journals had no models, and practically 

 recognized nothing ouside of " the coast " ; the new journals, far 

 less original, and developing as yet no writers of national reputa- 

 tion, have become better established financially, and depend con- 

 siderably upon a circulation in other parts of the country. The 

 chief characteristic of most of them, however, is an exaggerated 

 dread of being considered " provincial," and one can not gratify 

 them more than by praising the " Parisian style " of their local 

 epigrams and illustrations. 



The first literature of California was purely American in its 

 best features, and accurately reflected the frank egotism and splen- 

 did energy of the young commonwealth, that had as yet felt little 

 or none of the life-struggle in which the rest of the world was 

 engaged. But when the stress came, and the land of ease and 

 plenty, high wages, large profits, and abundant comfort knew 

 hard times, the only book of the era was Progress and Poverty. 

 Luck of Roaring Camps, Big Jack Smalls, and similarly pictur- 

 esque studies born of the mingling of Russian, Spanish, and Amer- 

 ican currents, could no more be written in California. The 

 " Great Bonanza " period came and went ; the new Constitution 

 agitation, Kearney's sand-lotters, McGlashan's anti-Chinese boy- 

 cotters, were chapters in the State's history, but no representative 

 book, except George's Progress and Poverty, came to the surface, 

 though the raw materials of half a dozen novels were contained 

 in this transition era. Instead of crystallizing into permanent 

 literary form, the agitation caused by new economic conditions 

 became chiefly political. 



During the period of revolt and uncertainty, business suffered, 

 speculation increased, and many men withdrew capital from Cali- 

 fornia. The railroad-builders had brought the State into the 

 general order of things, and life on the old scheme had become 

 impossible, though the war, the clinging of Californians to gold 



