Chapter III: Society in California

Having looked into the financial condition of California, let us now briefly consider the moral and religious state of its society, We know that we are undertaking an ungrateful and painful task--that we shall awaken the animosity of those who have an interest in enticing settlers to this golden region--that we shall provoke contradiction, and probably excite controversy; but we beseech Heaven to pardon us for speaking the truth, and challenge our antagonists to disprove our statements.

We cannot, indeed, pretend to disclose all the terrible iniquity of that society in the compass of a single chapter--the theme is too extensive, the facts too revolting. It requires space to unfold the scroll which records such damning facts--it needs time for the mind to become sufficiently reconciled to the hideous details, to be able to listen to them without impatience or disgust. We can, at present, do no more than open the way for a fuller exposition of the subject in subsequent chapters. Suffice it to say that we know of no country in which there is so much corruption, villainy, outlawry, intemperance, licentiousness, and every variety of crime, folly and meanness. Words fail us to express the shameful depravity and unexampled turpitude of California society.

How much of this is attributable to the metal which attracts the population, we leave others to determine. One thing, however, is certain; mining districts do not generally enjoy a very enviable reputation in any part of the world. Gold, especially, is thought to be so easily accessible, and the return of the miner’s labor is so immediately visible, that it has ever attracted the most unthrifty and dissolute. Men who could not be induced to work at any thing else, will spend days and weeks delving for the precious bane, hoping against hope, and laboring with an eager energy which nothing else can excite, and almost any thing else would more surely reward. Hence, the immediate neighborhood of a gold-mine is too liable to be a sink for all the idleness and depravity of the surrounding country. How these evils are multiplied by the absence of individual proprietorship in the land, and by the remoteness of a mining district from the beneficial restraints of public opinion, any one who gives a moment’s consideration to the subject will perceive.

The exclusive devotion of labor to this one pursuit is another cause of increased laxity of morals. In the Atlantic States, gold-mining is only a branch of industry, and not a very important one, compared with the other pursuits of the population; but in California it is the chief and almost the only occupation of the inhabitants of the mining districts; so that while, in the former place, the general virtue of the people keeps in check the particular vices of the miner, in the latter, the good intentions of the few are overruled and stifled by the vices of the many.

We must not, however, commit the mistake of supposing that all the depravity of California is attributable to the nature of its industrial pursuits. This is but one of the elements which assist in producing the deplorable state of affairs under consideration. There are others which spring from the character of the people, and the circumstances which have brought them together.

It must be borne in mind that all the adventurers to this country have come for the express purpose of making money, and that to this end every other consideration is sacrificed. They have come to “put money in their purses,” and as a large majority of them are of a class who are rarely troubled by any qualms of conscience, they are determined to do it at all hazards. Mammon is their god, and they will worship him.

If it be deemed desirable to make further inquiries into this state of things, it is only necessary to philosophize a little upon the physical structure of society. A single glance at it will suffice to convince the most superficial observer that its ingredients cannot be compounded into a harmonious, perfect and complete whole. Will a panther from America, a bear from Europe, a tiger from Asia, and a lion from Africa, organize in peace and good feeling around the body of a fresh slain deer? If not, will the Americans, English, French, Germans, Chinese, Indians, Negroes, and half-breeds, greet each other cordially over a gold mine? These are problems which those who have leisure may solve as their reason dictates. In the present case, it is more my province to relate the condition of things, than to account for their existence; yet, in preparing statements upon a variety of intricate subjects, owing sometimes to the difficulty of making one’s self understood, it is both consistent and proper that, now and then, a few remarks in the way of explanation should be given.

Another very important cause of this wild excitement, degeneracy, dissipation, and deplorable condition of affairs, may be found in the disproportion of the sexes--in the scarcity of women. At present, there is only about one woman to every ten or twelve men, and the result is what might be expected. The women are persecuted by the insulting attentions of the men, and too often fall victims to the arts of their seducers. Nowhere is the sanctity of the domestic hearth so ruthlessly violated as in California. For proof of this, we need look no further than the records of the courts of San Francisco, which show that, in the course of a single week, no less than ten divorces had been granted, while, during the same time, only two marriages had been solemnized!

Not long since, an English gentleman, of whom myself and others had purchased some real estate in this city, came to me, requesting that, inasmuch as his wife had left him the day before, we would not let her have any money on his account. After finishing his business instructions, he gave us the following history. Listen to it. Said he: “Four years ago, myself and wife, and six other men with their wives, came together in one vessel to this country. Shortly after our arrival, family feuds and jealousies became rife in the domestic circle of one of the parties. The man and his wife separated. Soon their example was followed by another couple, and another, and so on, until all the marriage ties of our company were broken, except those that happily existed between myself and wife. Left alone thus, and having been true to each other so long, and through so many opposing circumstances, I cherished the hope that we might remain together, and be true to the end. But, alas! my fond thoughts and anticipations have proved a sickly dream. My hopes have been blasted, my happiness wrecked, and my children disgraced and deserted. My wife, whom I loved and held dearer than all else on earth, the partner of my life, has been basely seduced. The last link that bound the remnant of our seven families together has been severed, and the consequence is, we are a disbanded and disreputable people. Cursed be the day and the incentive that started me to this damnable country!” These were his own words, almost verbatim; and he uttered them as if partly speaking to himself, and partly addressing me.

The total disregard of the marriage tie by the majority of the men of California puts the husband, who is foolish enough to take his wife with him to that county, in a painful and embarrassing position. Should the wife be pretty, she is the more liable to the persecution of attentions which will shock her if she be virtuous, and flatter her into sin if she is not. She is surrounded at once by hosts of men, who spare neither money, time, nor art to win her affections from her husband. What wonder if they often succeed?

Female virtue or chastity, in the conventional sense of the word, is known to every one, who is familiar with the internal history of society, to be a very complex idea. There are women who are chaste only for want of the opportunity to be otherwise. There are others who are kept chaste by the force of public opinion, the dread of exposure, and the general fear of consequences; while a third class preserve their persons untainted by an innate purity of soul, which shrinks instinctively from all indelicacy, and feels contaminated by an unclean thought, and degraded by a lustful look. It is not our business to inquire into the relative proportion of women embraced in these three classes. It is enough to know that they exist, to appreciate the effect which the society of California will exert upon them.

As for the first class, it is not necessary to speak of them. They fulfil their shameful destiny every where, and California only ripens their depravity a little earlier. It is the second class who suffer chiefly from the peculiar moral atmosphere of the land of gold. In the Atlantic States, hedged in by a healthy public opinion, guarded by jealous laws, flattered into chastity by the respectful attentions which that virtue ever commands, they might retain to their dying day that physical purity which satisfies the great majority of husbands. In California, however, these restraints are all removed. Public opinion arrays itself on the side of vice; the laws are powerless to punish the sins of impurity; and all the attentions the women receive are based upon the hope of their ultimate fall. How are such women to resist? Cut loose at once from all those restraints which kept them in the right way, will they not dart off into the devious paths of error and of sin? It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and the man who would keep faithful to himself a wife of this type in California, must have wealth enough to gratify her most extravagant whims, time to devote exclusively to watching her, eyes keener than those of Argus, and cunning sharper than that of Vidocq.

The third class--of whom, I regret to say, I have met with but few in the Eureka State--have also peculiar trials to undergo. Society in that country is a reproduction, on a large scale, of the morals of the courts of Charles II of England and Louis XV of France. Vice only is esteemed and lauded, virtue is treated as an idle dream, an insulting pretence of superiority, or a stupid folly beneath the notice of men of sense. People do not believe in it--they scorn it, they insult it; they consider it a mere avaricious attempt to dispose of venal charms above their market value, so that the chaste woman has not only to suffer the persecution of insulting proposals, but the doubt of that virtue which repels her pursuers, and the sneers and scandal of a depraved and debased community.

Many women, of conceded respectability in California, seem to have come out there for the exclusive purpose of selling their charms to the highest bidder. Others, of more honest hearts, have fallen victims to the peculiar seductions of the place, but I must be allowed to pay a tribute to the sex, even in this its degenerate condition. Paradoxical as the statement may sound, it is rigorously true that these very women have improved the morals of the community. Any one who, like myself, has had the opportunity of seeing California before and after the advent of these women, must have been struck with the decided improvement in society since their arrival. They have undoubtedly banished much barbarism, softened many hard hearts, and given a gentleness to the men which they did not possess before. What, then, might we not expect from an influx of the chaste wives and tender mothers that bless our other sea-board?