CHAPTER VI.

BIGLER (CONTINUED).

THEN it became certain in the legislature of 1855, after

WHEN

repeated ballots, that it would be next to impossible at that session to elect a United States senator, the houses began to turn their attention to the condition of the state and the legislation needed by it. In these matters Bigler and his recommendations as governor again came to the front. One of the first and most important was the subject of state printing, which had afforded magnificent opportunities of fleecing the public and had cost immense sums. The office of state printer, some of the extravagances of which have been already noticed, had been originally created by act of January 8, 1850, the second statute passed at the first session of the legislature; and several persons had occupied it before May 1, 1851, when Eugene Casserly, afterwards United States senator, was elected to it. Governor McDougal, however, imagined that the election, which was by the legislature in accordance with the terms of the statute, was irregular and upon that theory, after the adjournment of the legislature, appointed George K. Fitch; and thereupon the secretary of state, ignoring Casserly, delivered over the laws and journals to Fitch, who had them printed in New York. Casserly, meanwhile, having been excluded, commenced suit; and in December, 1851, the supreme court of the state decided that he was the legal state printer and that Fitch's appointment was void. Casserly thereupon purchased Fitch's books and, putting in his own imprint, delivered them to the secretary of state and was afterwards paid upwards of eighty-five thousand dollars for them.'

In the senate of 1852, the committee on printing made a 'Senate Journal, 1854, 418-425; People vs. Fitch, 1 Cal. 519.

remarkable report on the subject and against the continuance of the system of public printing established by the act of 1850. It said that whenever there had been a chance of filling the office of state printer, nearly every newspaper in the state had put forward a candidate for the profits and what it designated as the "honors" of the office. The result of their rivalry had been too apparent. At each session of the legislature the newspapers had been vying with one another to win the approbation of the greatest number of members and thus secure votes and an award of the printing patronage. Under the circumstances it could not be thought strange, however lamentable the fact, that a large portion of the press had been afraid to proclaim their real sentiments on matters of public interest and had neglected to use such corrective influence on legislation as properly belonged to them. In times, which the committee fondly described as "happily past," water-lot bills and other magnificent schemes of a kindred nature had come up and been decided; and the usually high-toned press appeared to have been awed into silence. The committee proceeded to declare that the state so far had in fact needed but a very small amount of printing-simply the laws and journals of the legislature, together with a little incidental work. The decisions of the supreme court, which were nearly as important to the people as the acts of the legislature and more important than the journals, were still unpublished. Yet this small amount of actual printing had cost the state each year more than the entire expense of carrying on the government of either of the states of Florida, Alabama or Indiana. It had already cost for public printing, during the short time that California had been a state, the extraordinary sum of two hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars and upwards, or over one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year, while all the books in the state library, published by authority of the state, were two volumes of the laws and two of the legislative journals.

The committee went on to remark that it had found upon inquiry that the cost of public printing for the year 1850 in ten of the principal states of the Union, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Mississippi, Indiana and Georgia, taken together, had

11 VOL. IV.

been less than seventy-nine thousand dollars; while it had cost the state of California, for the very limited amount of printing required in that year, the enormous amount above stated. Nothing further needed to be said, it continued, to prove that the most unheard-of extravagance had so far attended the department of printing; that at least one-third of the civil debt had arisen from that source, and that, unless a reform were effected and that soon, it would be difficult to foresee when the state credit could be redeemed. The committee therefore recommended that the office of state printer should be abolished and the public printing thenceforth be let out by contract; and, a bill to that effect being presented, it was passed on April 29, 1852; and on June I of that year a contract to do the work was made with George K. Fitch and Vincent E. Geiger, who on February 3, 1853, assigned to George Kerr & Co. But there appeared to be no help in that direction. Matters still continued in a most unsatisfactory condition; and on May 1, 1854, as recommended by Bigler, a new act was passed, re-creating the office of state printer and providing that it should be filled first by the legislature and afterwards by the people at the state election of 1855 and every two years thereafter. The legislature of 1854, as has been seen, belonged to Broderick; and on May 4 Benjamin B. Redding, one of the strongest and in those days most reputable of his friends, was elected. The expense of the department, however, still continued heavy; and on February 2, 1855, there was an appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars to meet deficiencies in appropriations theretofore made for audited and unaudited accounts of the former and incumbent state printers accruing between January 1, 1854, and February 1, 1855.1

Another sink, into which much of the money spent in extravagance was drained, was the state marine hospital. In the early days, before counties were settled and organized so as to be able to take care of their sick, there were several state hospitals-one at San Francisco, one at Sacramento and one at Stockton. In the then condition of society, and particularly on account of the absence of families and friends to look after unfortunate individ

1Senate Journal, 1852, 243, 692–694; California Blue Book or State Roster, by E. G. Waite, Sacramento, 1893, 258; Stats. 1854, 142; Stats. 1855, 4.

uals belonging to them, these hospitals were regarded with great favor; and little attention was paid to what they cost. But in 1853 the hospital committee of the senate reported that during the year 1852 five thousand four hundred and eighty patients had been admitted into the three state hospitals and that they had cost the state two hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars or over four hundred and seventy dollars for each patient. Most of this money had been expended, not in curing the sick but in high salaries, high rents and improvident contracts. It had also been found that, as the counties began making provision for their own people, the state hospitals were of little or no benefit except to those in their own neighborhood and that consequently injustice was being done in favor of those localities receiving state aid and against other portions which, in maintaining county hospitals, sustained their own full proportion of public burdens. The substantial result was the abandonment of the state hospitals as such at Sacramento and Stockton, but the retention of that at San Francisco, known as the state marine hospital. In his message of 1855 Bigler called attention to the fact that in 1854 upwards of twenty-six hundred patients had been admitted to it, of whom more than three-fifths were city patients; and he said that, if the institution was to be kept up, large appropriations in addition to those previously provided would have to be made. for its support. Some explanation of what was going on was afforded a couple of months later, when it appeared from the report of a committee appointed to visit the institution-and which visited it to some purpose-that the state was being made to pay one thousand four hundred and seventy dollars per month rent for the building, which had been offered to other parties shortly before for four hundred dollars per month, and that, besides over one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars paid from January 1, 1854, to March 1, 1855, there was a sum of about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars deficiency yet to be paid. The result was the abolishment of the concern.1

The state hospital at Stockton, which had thus been abolished as a hospital, afterwards developed into an asylum for the insane 'Senate Journal, 1853, 434, 492; Senate Journal, 1855, 57, 504-506; Stats. 1855, 47.

of the state, which proved to be much better managed and has always been regarded with more favor. It was originally established as such asylum by an act of May 17, 1853, although a building for the insane had been erected a year before as a part of the hospital. It was much needed for the reason that there were many more causes predisposing to insanity in the California of the early days than in most other places or in California since then. According to a report of Robert K. Reid, resident physician, made on December 31, 1853, and transmitted to the legislature of 1854, there had been fourteen persons sent to the station-house in San Francisco for insanity in 1850; twenty-two in 1851; thirty-four in 1852, and sixty-five in 1853. This, he said, was a frightful increase. There were in the Stockton asylum two hundred and eighty-four patients in different stages of disease, very few of whom were youths and still fewer aged persons. The hallucinations of a number of those, who were not idiotic or violent maniacs, were very significant of the causes in the country predisposing to insanity. One thought himself God; another imagined himself Judas Iscariot and continually prayed for forgiveness; a third considered himself Napoleon, and a fourth was satisfied with being Umpqua, an Indian chief. One thought his legs glass; another his stomach metal. One considered himself a monkey and would not stand erect; while another regarded himself as a monument and would not move from a rigidly upright position. One claimed all California and the Sandwich Islands with a large lien upon Russia; while another supposed he had ninety million pounds in the Bank of England and had only come to California for pleasure and to study character. One said the Rothschilds owed him uncounted wealth, and he kept an account current with that house, charging it four hundred thousand dollars for every day of his detention in the asylum; while another said he owned all the Spanish claims to land in the state and had made arrangements to fence and cultivate them. One claimed to have found the source of all the gold at a place near the summit of the Sierra Nevada; another that he had been robbed of everything by Page, Bacon & Co. and insisted in designating their crime against him as "piracy on the high seas;" and still another, that he had pur