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have transpired in this and other states within the last six months, have demonstrated that some well-organized and thoroughly drilled military force is absolutely necessary to aid in suppressing riots, enforcing the laws and maintaining the public peace."1

Irwin had also much to say about the various insane asylums, and particularly of the great cost and small capacity of the Napa in comparison with the Stockton institution. He said that the capacity at Napa was only six hundred and the cost about a million and a half of dollars, or about twenty-five hundred dollars for each patient exclusive of furniture; while at Stockton, built much earlier and when labor and materials were much dearer, the capacity was over a thousand and the cost only about six hundred thousand dollars. Other state institutions also received attention, generally favorable. He stated that the transportation commissions, appointed in 1876, to regulate the freights and fares of railroads had accomplished nothing important for the reason that the railroad companies had refused to submit to the law, with the result that litigation had paralyzed action. But he insisted that the power of the state to control corporations and regulate their charges had been decided by the supreme court of the United States, in the so-called "Granger cases,” and could no longer be combated, and that the only question left to be determined was how to exercise the power judiciously. As to the West-side irrigation project, passed at the previous session, which contemplated a canal as well for transportation as irrigation leading along the western edge of the San Joaquin valley from Tulare county to tide-water in Contra Costa county, he explained that it was impracticable in its original shape and could not be carried through except with many amendments. He said that the state printing, formerly done by an officer called the state printer, had for the preceding two years been done, under a law passed in 1872, by the new state printing office under the management of a superintendent of state printing, and that as a result the cost of public printing for the last two years was only fifty-four and a half per cent of what it had been for the two years preceding. He also thought there should be legislation to Assembly Journal, 1877-8, 12, 21, 44-46.

protect depositors in savings banks and stockholders in mines; but, at the same time, he recommended that all transfers of mining stocks should be taxed, on the somewhat singular ground that most of them were for purposes of mere speculation, productive of more terrible and wide-spread evil than even gambling, and that they ought therefore to be made a source of revenue to the state.1

But the most important subject adverted to by Irwin in his message was the fact, that at the election held on September 5, 1877, a majority of the electors of the state had voted for the calling of a convention to revise and change the constitution, and that it was the duty of the legislature to provide for such convention. There was, as a matter of fact, some doubt about whether there had been a majority of such votes; the returns of a number of the counties on the subject were very defective; and even so late as February 11, 1878, more than two months after the transmission of the message, it was impossible to tell the exact state of the vote of Humboldt and San Diego counties. There therefore had to be an estimation of the total vote of those counties, counting which it was reported that the total number of ballots cast at the election had been one hundred and forty-six thousand one hundred and ninety-nine; those for the convention seventy-three thousand four hundred and sixty; those expressly against it forty-four thousand two hundred and fourteen; those silent on the subject, and therefore not for it, twenty-eight thousand five hundred and twenty-five-thus leaving an expressed affirmative majority for it of three hundred and sixty. On the strength of this report, which though vague and unsatisfactory was not contested, an act for the convention was introduced into the assembly; and after considerable controversy it was finally passed and approved by Irwin on April 1, 1878, the last day of the session."

On the second day of the session, the special committee, appointed by the last senate to investigate the Chinese question, presented its report. It was very voluminous. As was expected, and in fact perfectly well understood beforehand, it was violently Assembly Journal, 1877-8, 25, 26, 36-42.

Assembly Journal, 1877-8, 42-44, 340, 829; Stats. 1877-8, 759.

anti-Chinese in character and suited so well the popular prejudices on the subject that twenty thousand copies were ordered printed. Matters had advanced so far that nobody, and particularly nobody that held or ever expected to hold office, dared say a word in favor of the Chinese; but on the contrary nearly everybody, and the Republicans as well as the Democrats, seized every opportunity to make public profession on the anti-Chinese side. The special committee were not only liberally paid for their services, but were tendered thanks for the able manner in which they had performed them. And almost immediately after the presentation of their report, besides numerous resolutions of various language and character but all directed against Mongolians and intended to keep them out or drive them off, a bill was introduced, and hurried through so rapidly as to receive Irwin's approval on December 21, 1877, providing for the ascertainment of the will of the people on the question of Chinese immigration, by vote at the next state election.'

There can be little or no doubt that the mainspring of the anti-Chinese movement was the riotous sand-lots agitation; but the sand-lots agitators had other subjects of complaint besides the Chinese. They had merely adopted the anti-Chinese shibboleth, which had been more or less used ever since the days of Governor Bigler. They were also opposed to capital or rather to anybody's having more money than they had, and wished, as they expressed it, to compel wealth to disgorge. One of their most effective cries in this direction was against the holders of large tracts of land, or what they called land monopoly. Creed Haymond of Sacramento, who had placed himself at the head of the anti-Chinese movement in the legislature and had been chairman of the special committee on Chinese immigration, attempted, in much the same manner, to place himself at the head of the anti-land-monopoly movement. For this purpose, as early as the third day of the session, he introduced into the senate a resolution to the effect that no man should be allowed to dispose by will of more than one thousand acres of land, and, that, if he had more at the time of his death, the excess should pass to the state. Whatever may have been Haymond's intenSenate Journal, 1877-8, 6, 27, 28, 33, 68, 431; Stats. 1877-8, 3.

tion with his resolution, it was immediately seized upon, worried by amendments and altered into the harmless declaration "that the policy of permitting the state lands to be monopolized in the hands of the few, at the expense of the many, is subversive of the rights of the people and ruinous to the best interests of the state." On the other hand George H. Rogers of San Francisco renewed the fight of the previous session against the wholesale disposition of public lands under the timber and desert land acts and demanded that no government land should be disposed of except to actual settlers and in limited quantities. A resolution to that effect was adopted; and not long afterwards in the assembly, as if in support of the general proposition, it was stated that one individual, evidently referring to James B. Haggin, had not only acquired in Kern county, under the so-called desert land act, one hundred and eighty-seven thousand acres; but it was also alleged that the assessor of that county had fixed the valuation of such lands below those of similar character in the immediate neighborhood, held by settlers in small quantities. An investigation being ordered, it appeared from the testimony that the assessment was lower; but there was nothing shown to prove it incorrect; and the matter dropped. Several other measures, that might also be more or less attributed to the influence of the sand-lots, were attempted to be put through at this session but for the time failed-only, however, to be adopted afterwards. One was a bill for a labor bureau, and another a resolution to tax uncultivated land as high as cultivated land of the same grade."

But notwithstanding the overshadowing influence exercised over some of the legislators by the sand-lots, there were several very excellent acts passed by the legislature of 1877-8. One of these limited street-railroad fares in cities of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants to not more than five cents for trips of any distance in one direction. Another, introduced by the same author and usually known as the "McCoppin one-twelfth act," provided that no greater amounts or liabilities against the SanSenate Journal, 1877-8, 12.

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2 Senate Journal, 1877–8, 73; Stats. 1877–8, 1065.

Senate Journal, 1877-8, 285; Assembly Journal, 1877-8, 113, 241, 290,

291, 529.

Francisco treasury should be authorized, allowed, contracted for, paid or made payable, in any one month, than one-twelfth of the total amount allowed by law to be expended within the fiscal year, of which such month was a part, except an unexpended surplus of a previous month-making contracts and authorizations in violation of the act void and subjecting violations to severe punishment. Another was an act to regulate the quality and reduce the price of gas to not exceeding three dollars per thousand feet. Another act, calculated to suppress a crying and disgraceful evil which had become very prevalent, was designed to prohibit "piece clubs" and prevent extortion upon candidates for office. Another was an act to establish and maintain free public libraries and reading rooms, under which and supplementary acts, every city and nearly every town in the state has been provided with a very full supply of books and periodicals. Another was an act to create the "Hastings college of the law," a department of the university of California, founded upon a donation of one hundred thousand dollars made for the purpose by S. C. Hastings, first chief justice of the supreme court of the state. And still another—and one of the best-was an amendment to the statute of limitations, contained in the code of civil procedure, to the effect that to establish a valid adverse possession of land, it should be necessary for the claimant to prove payment by himself, his predecessor or grantor of all state, county and municipal taxes levied and assessed upon such land. It was by means of this excellent provision that a very effectual stop was put to the too-frequent frauds practiced by irresponsible persons in squatting upon the lands of others and afterwards claiming them by prescription.

An act, approved March 29, 1878, on an exceedingly important subject and which led to great expense and much conflict, and whose results may perhaps be considered even yet not altogether determined, created the office of state engineer and was intended to provide a system of irrigation, promote rapid drainage and improve the navigation of the Sacramento and San

1 Stats. 1877-8, 18, 111.

2 Stats. 1877-8, 167, 236, 329, 533.

3 Amendments to Codes, 1877-8, 99.

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