Legal and Political Development 

 subject. The desire was for greater simplicity and 

 for greater restrictions upon the power of the in- 

 dividual to withdraw land from commerce by com- 

 plicated wills and settlements. Traces of New Eng- 

 land influence may be found in the laws relative 

 to commercial matters, such as the liability of di- 

 rectors in corporations. The South, too, contributed 

 its share. The system of administration of estates 

 of decedents came from Texas. From the South 

 also came what some foreign jurists regard as one 

 of America's most important contributions to legal 

 concepts — the laws providing for an exemption 

 from execution for debt of a portion of the debtor's 

 property, an application on the positive side of 

 the conception which underlies the principle of 

 the abolition of imprisonment for debt. Home- 

 stead and exemption laws are now found in nearly 

 every civilized country in the world. Perhaps, 

 however, the most important statute of the first 

 legislature was that adopting the common law of 

 England rather than the civil law of Spain as the 

 fundamental law of the State. 



Professor Royce in his story of California has 

 pointed out how the development of the mechanical 

 methods of the miners reacted upon social con- 

 ditions, how the evolution from the "pan" through 

 the "rocker" and "cradle," to hydraulic mining 

 and lastly to quartz mining caused a correspond- 

 ing evolution from a disorganized, anti-social in- 

 dividualism into an economic and political organi- 

 zation which might serve as a true basis for a 

 State. The period of the 50's was that during 

 which this process was taking place. Out of the 

 wreck and chaos of unrestrained individualism, 

 something like order had been brought by the be- 

 ginning of the Civil War. California was ceasing 

 to be the land of the gold-seeker. The era of agri- 

 culture had begun. 



The rich soil of California's great plains formed 

 the basis of the State's next era of development, 

 that of the great farms, of railroad building, of 

 commercial expansion. The climate had much to 

 do with the history of this period. The large farm, 

 before the application of irrigation, was an eco- 

 nomic necessity. The uncertainty of the rainfall, 

 the dangers of drought, the necessity for transpor- 

 tation to distant markets, required the farmer to 

 be a financier, a man of affairs. Often he was 

 neither. The element of chance controlled almost 

 as it did in the days of gold; the wheat farmer was 

 the slave of the elements. Nor were the great farms 

 conducive to a satisfactory social development. They 

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