86 Transactions of the 



He paid his debt by denouncing his generous entertainers in a public 

 speech as galloping to bankruptcy from their extravagance, and as hav- 

 ing only selfish ends in view in their lavish hospitality. He is a type 

 merely of his class, and we have been privileged to receive and worthily 

 entertain many nobler men. We have now as our guest a Californian 

 by association, one of the energetic founders of our State, illustrious for 

 brilliant achievements in the field, one of the great Generals of the 

 world, whose fame the future will never allow to die. To such, and to 

 the great statesmen of our country of any party tempted to visit us by 

 the completed road, our welcome may well be warm and appreciative. 

 But the fault of our unusual and overflowing generosity is that it is to 

 too great an extent undiscriminating. and is one of the evidences of a 

 luxurious extravagance that new business competitions must correct, or 

 we shall justify the prognostications of some of our guests and reach 

 the bankruptcy they predicted. This extravagance, of which the illus- 

 trations given are mere casual evidences, leads us as individuals and 

 communities to live up to or beyond our means, so that no fund is pre- 

 pared for the future and wealth does not accumulate. A single bad 

 year, causing a complete failure of his crops, is apt to plunge a farmer 

 into distress, if not absolute bankruptcy. Under the influence of the 

 prevailing habits the farmer is not satisfied with a living and slowly 

 coming wealth, with a small farm; he must add field to field and culti- 

 vate a great space, often bej^ond his capital, and where failure is disas- 

 trous. Under their influence all classes rush into speculation and deal 

 in articles and business of the most opposite character. A dry goods 

 dealer speculates in wheat, a farmer in mines, a miner in fast horses. 

 Each to his trade, moderately prosecuted, would gain a livelihood thai 

 would be considered prosperous in other States. Here he fails in all 

 because he expands beyond his means and experience, deprives business 

 of his legitimate exertions, and depresses the State by his failures. 



Another cause for the slow growth of this State is the anomalous con- 

 dition of its labor market. While wages are nominally higher here 

 than anywhere else perhaps in the world, and it would seem that 

 laborers, skilled and unskilled, would pour in here in vast numbers and 

 set in motion every wheel of industry and develop every latent resource, 

 in fact the influx of laboring men is very limited and the encouragement 

 offered for their presence is very slight. It is not because we have not 

 vast fields yet unshorn, fair as the sun looks upon; not because there 

 are not a hundred branches of manufacturing and mechanical industry 

 that need to be established or extended; not because remunerative mines 

 for moderate expectations are not to be found. The State needs labor; 

 is able to reward it; why does it not come hither? It is in a measure 

 because the wages of labor here are only nominally higher than else- 

 where. In reality they are lower. While the artisan or laborer is 

 employed he obtains a high price for his labor. But if the weeks and 

 months of idleness are counted, he gains less than his brother in the 

 East. The rate of payment for the time employed is jealously insisted 

 on, while the loss by want of occupation is overlooked. As many 

 enterprises that would give steady employment to thousands fail or are 

 not commenced under the present system, the artisan may ask himself 

 if there is not some radical error in the dealings of labor and capital 

 within his power to correct. To repair or build a ship in San Francisco 

 costs at least twenty-five per cent more than in New York, while the 

 cost of living on this coast is now cheaper. Is it strange that our ship- 

 wrights are unemployed, when all the commerce of the Pacific might be 



