CALIFORNIA. 



73 



The act making it a felony to incite riots, 

 passed two years previously, was repealed by 

 a large majority. A bill was proposed by mem- 

 bers belonging to the Labor party for unseat- 

 ing and punishing members of legislative bodies 

 who violate pledges given to political conven- 

 tions. A projected law, emanating from the 

 same quarter, proposed that newspaper writers 

 should be obliged to print their signatures at 

 the foot of editorial articles. Another pro- 

 posed to deduct $500 from the assessed valua- 

 tion of each tax-payer's property, and others to 

 exempt homesteads of less than $5,000 or $3,000 

 value from forced sales for taxes. A more 

 complete mechanics' lien law than the existing 

 one was enacted. A bill giving laborers em- 

 ployed about thrashing-machines a lien on the 

 grain thrashed was defeated. A bill was passed 

 authorizing railroad corporations deriving their 

 charters from other States to do business on 

 an equal footing with California companies. 

 Another bill compels companies to keep their 

 lines in operation. The Board of Railroad 

 Commissioners demanded by the Constitution 

 was created, consisting of three commissioners, 

 with $4,000 salary each, and traveling expenses 

 paid by the State. The McClure charter for 

 San Francisco was bitterly opposed in the As- 

 sembly by most of the members from that city, 

 but was carried through by a united Republican 

 vote. The act authorizing San Francisco to 

 provide public water- works was repealed. A 

 new insolvency law was enacted. The princi- 

 pal anti-Chinese bills were one prohibiting cor- 

 porations to employ Chinamen, one authoriz- 

 ing the authorities of municipalities to remove 

 Chinese residents beyond the city limits, one 

 forbidding the award of licenses to Chinamen, 

 and one forbidding them to fish in the waters 

 of the State. A bill was introduced disquali- 

 fying Chinamen from testifying in the courts, 

 but this was defeated in the Senate. In these 

 bills the phrase by which the Chinese are des- 

 ignated, in order to conform technically to the 

 constitutional inhibition of special and class 

 legislation, is "aliens incapable of becoming 

 electors." 



The validity of the law prohibiting the em- 

 ployment of Chinese by corporations was tested 

 in a case brought in the United States Circuit 

 Court. Tiburcio Parrott, under arrest for vio- 

 lating this law, was brought before Judges 

 Hoffman and Sawyer on habeas corpus. It was 

 argued that the law was in contravention of 

 the treaties of the United States Government 

 with China, and of the Civil-Rights Bill and 

 the Fourteenth Amendment. Attorney-Gen- 

 eral Hart, for the people, argued that the law 

 was not directed against the Chinese, but 

 against corporations, and that the Legislature 

 possesses the power to amend or modify the 

 charters of corporations of its own creation. 

 The Court held that the right of the State to 

 control corporations did not extend so far, and 

 that the law affected the Chinese and deprived 

 them of personal liberties accorded by the 



United States Constitution and guaranteed by 

 the treaty with China. The Burlingarne treaty 

 also invalidated the law against the use of the 

 State fisheries by Chinamen. 



The engineering aspects of the debris ques- 

 tion were treated of in detail in the report of 

 the State Engineer, W. H. Hall, made to the 

 Governor, January 10th. Mr. Hall recommend- 

 ed a system of public works of a scope and on 

 a scale to comprehend the drainage of the bot- 

 tom-lands, the reclamation of waste and swamp- 

 lands, the irrigation of dry lands, the improve- 

 ment and preservation of navigable channels, 

 and the protection of the valleys, river-beds, 

 and harbors from mining debris and other de- 

 tritus. He criticises the methods of irrigation 

 heretofore in practice in the upper valleys as 

 wasteful ; and the irregular, fragmentary man- 

 ner in which levees have been constructed in 

 the lower valleys, under the policy of granting 

 the swamp lands to any one accomplishing their 

 reclamation, he declares to be often wrongful 

 and mischievous in its consequences, since the 

 improvement of the drainage in the upper por- 

 tion of a river-valley may cause the submersion 

 of marginal lands farther down. The Sacra- 

 mento Valley is the portion of the State which 

 especially stands in need of drainage-works at 

 the present time. The main drains of the val- 

 ley are the Sacramento River and its tributary, 

 the Feather. During the era of hydraulic min- 

 ing the whole character of these rivers has 

 been altered through the accumulation of sedi- 

 ment, filling up the pools and forming bars. 

 The unmethodical and imperfect construction 

 of levees has hastened the process, reducing the 

 scouring capacity of the streams by allowing a 

 portion of the water to be diverted into sec- 

 ondary channels through breaches and crevass- 

 es, and facilitating the formation of bars by 

 producing irregularity of flow. The rise of the 

 low-water level in a river indicates the extent 

 of the average deposit of sediment in its shoal 

 parts. The plane of low water has risen since 

 1862 from five to five and a half feet in the 

 Sacramento River at Sacramento, three to four 

 feet at its confluence with the Feather, thirteen 

 to fifteen feet at the junction of the Feather 

 and the Yuba, and five to six feet in the Feather 

 at Oroville. The accumulation of drift in the 

 Sacramento River opposite Sacramento, and in 

 other deep parts, has been much greater. The 

 channel has been filled up as much as 15*2 feet 

 on the average at Sacramento since 1854, and 

 in some places the bed has been raised twenty- 

 five feet. Owing to the filling up of the deep 

 channels and pools the flood-level has been 

 raised much higher than the low-water level, 

 so that the riparian lands, which were formerly 

 safe from inundation except in the years of ex- 

 traordinary floods, and then were not injured, 

 are now threatened with an annual overflow 

 and their fertile soil with obliteration by de- 

 posits of sand, gravel, and slickens, and are 

 rendered only partially secure by building the 

 levees higher and higher each year. 



