Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 058-3 - July 2004 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2014-03-12 07:52:02 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:02 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:02

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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Differences of Opinion Nevada County and the 1879 California Constitution -~ By Orval Bronson Mis HAS BEEN WRITTEN REGARDING THE circumstances leading to California’s first Constitutional Convention and to the content of the first state constitution. Less publicity has been given to the events which precipitated a call for a second Constitutional Convention in 1878, in which elected delegates attempted to correct perceived systemic deficiencies in the first constitution. Many elements of the new constitution were divisive and provoked strong responses, pro and con. This divisiveness was particularly evident in Nevada County and in the results of the ratification election. Background By the time California was admitted to the Union in September 1850, a legislature, governor and constitution were already in place. Delegates to the first Constitutional Convention, held in Monterey in 1848, cobbled together the framework for a state government in just 40 days, drawing on their home state constitutions for guidance. The resulting document was passed by the legislature in 1849. Although the state’s rapidly and constantly changing _eiature occasioned calls for constitutional revision as early is the mid-1850s, the document served the state reasonably well for the next two decades. Economic depression gripped the nation during the 1870s, starting in the east with banking, business and stock market failures, spreading to California by the mid-1870s. Most residents were disgruntled with the problems of chronic unemployment, increasing numbers of Chinese immigrants and corporate monopolies (particularly the Central Pacific Railroad). Although there was considerable concern that Californians were too desperate and angry to put together an effective new constitution, in 1877 voters approved a measure calling for a new Constitutional Convention, to be held in Sacramento in 1878. Issues Widespread unemployment, occasioned in part by the economic depression of the period, was exacerbated by Chinese immigrants who were willing to work more diligently and for less money than their Caucasian brethren, specifically on the Central Pacific Railroad. The Chinese “problem” became even more pressing when the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and many thousands of Chinese railroad workers, hired by the Big Four (Stane~™ord, Crocker, Huntington and Hopkins) were released into che general population. While strong anti-Chinese feelings were held by most Californians, a significant number were also experiencing a . —_ Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin VOLUME 58 NUMBER 3 JULY 2004 increasing antipathy toward the Central Pacific Railroad and its principals. The railroad had become a two-edged sword for California businessmen: while products, particularly agricultural produce, could be transported more easily and more quickly to a wider variety of destinations, so too did the railroad facilitate business competition from eastern and midwestern businesses. Also at issue were the transportation routes, water rights and land title monopolies being created by the increasingly wealthy and politically potent Big Four. They and their tentacled, monopolistic activities became known as the “Octopus”. Their underhanded dealings and fights with valley ranchers, farmers and settlers, epitomized by the May 11, 1880, Mussel Slough incident, were memorialized in Frank Norris’s 1901 novel The Octopus. Sacramento Valley farmers, additionally, were disgusted with the state’s failure to resolve, or at least ameliorate, problems of clogged rivers and streams and flooded fields caused by the hydraulic mining activities in the Sierra foothills. These issues, principally labor and capitalism run amok, resulted in the 1877 organization of the California Workingmen’s Association in San Francisco. Similar associations were formed throughout the state, from which sprung the California Workingmen’s Party. The putative leader of the Party was Denis Kearney, an Irish-born San Francisco drayman who had become interested in labor issues. Kearney was noted for his passionate and often vitriolic speeches that frequently called for the “hanging of capitalists” and whose mantra was “The Chinese must go.” The constant striving by Kearney and others to rid the state of Chinese was, of course, in direct conflict with the Burlingame Treaty. Signed in Washington in 1868, the treaty provided that both the United States Sand lot orator Denis Kearney. .