ing at the foot of Mount Parnassus to contain it and a fund for its support, be devoted to public use. And thus the story of the Sutro tunnel, which has rendered all these benefactions possible, besides its intrinsic interest as describing the work of a representative Californian, is so intimately connected with the history of California and its development as to become an integral part of it. Nor has there been anything in the life of Sutro as a man of affairs, as a liberal and intelligent entertainer of distinguished guests who have visited California, as a man interested in science and art and learning of every kind, or in the conduct of his multifarious labors and many-sided businesses, that can be called narrow or contracted. He presents the case of one of the comparatively few Californians who have accumulated immense wealth—with a strict regard to business principles indeed but in such a way that he has nothing to blush for-that is using it in a manner for which the people of the state ought to be and doubtless will be duly grateful.

CHAPTER IX.

IRWIN.

A

T the election of September 1, 1875, there was another complete change in the political complexion of the state. The Dolly Varden or Independent party had nominated John Bidwell for governor and Romualdo Pacheco for lieutenantgovernor; the Republicans Timothy G. Phelps and Joseph M. Cavis, and the Democrats William Irwin and James A. Johnson. A fourth party, called the Temperance Reform, nominated William E. Lovett and W. D. Hobson; but their vote was so small as not to be worth counting. The various platforms were in general a re-threshing of old straw, with nothing very new or striking and nothing very serious or earnest about any of them. It is hardly likely anybody cared much about what they contained; but, whether so or not, it had become plain that the majority of the community, or rather perhaps that part of the floating vote which made the preponderance on one side or the other, did not want any more Dolly Vardenism, even less than out-and-out Republicanism. On the contrary, it preferred making another trial of Democracy. Irwin was elected by a vote of sixty-one thousand five hundred and nine over thirty-one thousand three hundred and twenty-two for Phelps and twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-two for Bidwell. For lieutenantgovernor Johnson ran about three thousand less than Irwin and Pacheco nearly four thousand more than Bidwell. At the same election, three Democratic congressmen were chosen-William A. Piper, John K. Luttrell and P. D. Wigginton, and one Republican-Horace F. Page.'

William Irwin, the new governor, was a native of Butler county, Ohio. He was born in 1827, graduated at Marietta college in the same state in 1848, and then went south to Port Gibson in 'Senate Journal, 1875-6, 17; Davis' Political Conventions, 355, 356.

Mississippi and taught school there until the autumn of 1851. In the spring of 1852, he sailed from New York for California in the ship Pioneer. Upon arriving at San Francisco, he again took ship for Oregon, but returned to San Francisco in 1853 and went into the lumber business at Market street wharf. In the autumn of 1854, he removed to Siskiyou county and for a few years engaged in merchandising. Later he turned his attention to politics and purchased the Yreka Union newspaper, which he owned and edited until he became governor. In 1860 he was elected from Siskiyou county to the assembly, and re-elected in 1861. At the legislative sessions of 1869-70 and 1871–2, he served as state senator and again in that of 1873-4, at which session he was chosen president pro tempore. On February 27, 1875, when Booth resigned and Pacheco became governor, Irwin became lieutenant-governor and took Pacheco's place as resident director of the state prison at San Quentin. He was large, strong and presentable in person. Though not brilliant, nor much of a speaker, he was dignified in deportment, a fair writer, a strict party man and an active politician. When he reached the gubernatorial chair, therefore, he had had considerable tuition in public affairs and a long legislative experience. He was inducted into office on December 9, 1875, and on that day read before the legislature, assembled in joint convention, his inaugural address.'

After a few introductory remarks, he called attention to the inequality of taxation throughout the state, and attributed it to recent decisions of the supreme court holding that the state board of equalization could not change or equalize assessments made by county assessors. He therefore recommended an amendment of the constitution committing the mode of assessing property and collecting taxes to legislative discretion. While in favor of enlarging the power of the legislature in that respect, however, he considered the restriction of it in reference to the creation of debts as highly beneficial; and, contrasting the healthy condition of the state finances produced chiefly by that inhibition with the substantially bankrupt condition of many of the counties, he thought the constitutional prohibition should have extended to counties and cities and, in the absence of such 1 1 Senate Journal, 1875-6, 24; Davis' Political Conventions, 600.

constitutional provision, recommended that the legislature should refuse authority to them to create debts beyond a fixed, small percentage of their assessment rolls. In the same connection, he congratulated the state on the constitutional clause preventing it from loaning its credit or becoming a stockholder in corporations, and deplored the fact that it had not been extended to counties and cities. He next adverted to the railroad question. Referring apparently to the great national roads of the western country of his early life, he said it had once been considered a part of the duty of the government to provide wagon roads, and he could not see why it was not equally its duty now to provide railroads, which were the highways of the present as wagon roads had been of the past. But until so provided, he considered that railroad corporations ought to be held to be agents of the government and charged with the performance of their duty to the public in preference to what they owed to private stockholders; and he suggested the erection of a railroad commission, which would of course have no legislative power but could and should correct abuses, by compelling obedience to the laws in that behalf passed or to be passed.'

water.

He regarded irrigation as a necessity in many portions of the state and thought it could be best secured by dividing those portions into separate districts, each having the same source of supply; by providing for the appropriation by the districts of such waters as might be required or, if already appropriated, for the purchase or condemnation of them, and by declaring each separate part of a district entitled to its pro rata share of the Each district should be required to bear the expense of its own irrigation; but there might be questions as to the distribution of the burdens in the districts, and as to them the legislature should determine. He next spoke of the state prison and thought it should be made more nearly self-supporting. For the two years ending June 30, 1875, the earnings of the prisoners were nearly forty-nine per cent of the current expenses, and with proper management the percentage could be much increased; but it was as yet uncertain whether more could be made by granite-cutting at the unfinished prison at Folsom or by the shops 'Senate Journal, 1875-6, 20-26.

at San Quentin; and one or the other should be encouraged according to what might be learned on further experience. At the same time, he thought a portion, not exceeding ten per cent, of the earnings of each prisoner should be set aside as a fund, to be paid him at the end of his term or sooner if by good conduct he should merit being so rewarded. He then turned to those worse than state prison felons, the unconvicted embezzlers of public moneys and violators of public trust, and declared that "the impunity, or at least apparent impunity, with which public officers have appropriated to their own use the public funds by a gross and almost open violation of the trusts committed to them has apparently impressed on the lower grade and even average public mind the conviction that to rob the government is legitimate, and that not to do so, when one has the opportunity, argues the lack of enterprise and business talent-not the possession of a quality for which he is entitled to public respect. That a sentiment of this kind does exist to an alarming extent, in certain strata of society, no close observer of social phenomena can doubt. No more can any one capable of the simplest form of reasoning, of following causes to their immediate effects, doubt that such a sentiment, if permitted to grow and spread and perpetuate itself, must result in the utter demoralization and ruin of society. Society, therefore, is bound in self-protection, in self-preservation, to check the growth of this sentiment and to crush it out utterly. How can this be done? I answer, only by pursuing and hunting down with tireless energy and punishing with remorseless vigor the guilty violator of a public trust. Sympathy may plead for the overtaken, prostrate and crushed criminal; but the great interests of society, when supported by the demands of justice, may not be ignored nor imperiled out of deference to a mawkish sentimentalism, which is shocked at all punishment, however just, of individuals.”1

He believed it to be as much the duty of the state to advocate or see to the education of its children as it was its duty to see that they were all properly fed and clothed. But he claimed that the state should not force into the schools studies that were obnoxious on account of religious teachings to any portion of 1 Senate Journal, 1875-6, 26–31.