one which meanders up the Santa Clara Valley, for there are more
schoolhouses scattered along it than there are milestones, and they’re
not the little red schoolhouses of which our grandfathers brag, either.
Every time our motor-car swung around the corner of a prune orchard we
were pretty certain to find a schoolhouse of concrete, usually in the
overworked mission style of architecture, with roses and honeysuckle and
wistaria clambering over the door. The youngster who wants to travel the
royal road to knowledge can commence his journey in one of the concrete
schoolhouses at Gilroy, which is at the southern portal of the valley;
the second stage will take him up to the great high school at San José,
which is so extensive and handsome and completely equipped that it would
make certain famous Eastern colleges feel shamefaced and embarrassed; the
final stage along this intellectual highway is only eighteen miles in
length and ends at Palo Alto, amid whose live-oaks rise the yellow towers
and red-tiled roofs of that great university which Leland Stanford,
statesman and railway builder, founded in memory of the son he lost,
and which he endowed with the whole of his enormous fortune. He gave
the eight thousand acres of his famous stock-farm for the purpose, and
to-day white-gowned “co-eds” wander, book in hand, where the paddocks
once stood, and spike-shod sprinters dash down the track, where the great
mare Sunol used to put close on half a mile a minute behind her spinning
sulky wheels. It is one of the great universities of the world, is Leland
Stanford, Jr., and, with its cloistered quadrangles, its wonderful mosaic
façades, and its semitropical surroundings, certainly one of the most
beautiful. It stands, fittingly enough, at the valley’s northern gateway
and at the end, both literally and metaphorically, of the royal road to
learning; so that the valley-bred youth who passes through its doors with
his sheepskin in his pocket finds himself on the threshold of that great
outside world for which, without leaving his native valley, he has been
admirably prepared.
Speaking of roads, they have built one running the length of the State
and, therefore, of the Santa Clara Valley, which would cause Mr. John
MacAdam, were he still in the land of the living, to lift his hat in
admiration. It is really a restoration of El Camino Real, that historic
highway which the Spanish conquistadores built, close on a century and
a half ago, for the purpose of linking up the one-and-twenty missions
which the indefatigable Padre Serra flung the length of California as
outposts of the church, and which did more to open up the Pacific Coast
to civilisation and colonisation and commerce than any undertaking save
the construction of the Southern Pacific. Were this highway in the East I
am perfectly sure that they would cheapen it by calling it the Shore Road
or the State Pike, but it speaks well for California’s appreciation of
the picturesque and the appropriate that she has decided to cling to the
historic name of El Camino Real—the Royal Road—the King’s Highway.
Although the Santa Clara Valley, properly speaking, ends at Palo Alto,
the ultrafashionable colonies of Burlingame, San Mateo, and Hillsboro
may, for the purposes of this chapter, at least, be considered as within
its compass. These are to the Pacific Coast what Lenox and Tuxedo are
to the Eastern world of fashion: places where the rich dwell in great
country houses set far back in splendid parks, with none but their fellow
millionaires for neighbours and with every convenience for sport close at
hand. Full of colour and animation are the scenes at their ivy-covered
stations when the afternoon trains from San Francisco pull in; for here,
at least, the motor-car has not ousted the horse from his old-time
popularity, and the gravelled driveways are alive with tandem carts and
runabouts and spider phaetons, with smart grooms in whipcord liveries and
leather gaiters standing rigidly at the heads of the horses. Probably
the finest examples of architecture in California are to be seen in the
neighbourhood of Burlingame and San Mateo, the only other communities
which can rival them in this respect being Montecito, near Santa Barbara,
Oak Knoll, outside of Pasadena, and Hollywood, a suburb of Los Angeles.
The East and, for that matter, all of the rest of America owe
California a debt of gratitude for her development of a native domestic
architecture. The first true homes for folk of real culture but moderate
incomes were produced on the Pacific Coast. In the type of house that
abounds to-day in California comfort, tradition, and art have been
skilfully and interestingly combined. Based on the old missions, which
in their turn drew inspiration from the ideals of the Spaniard and the
Moor, modern Californian architecture has nevertheless made servants, not
masters, of those traditions. Though drawing from the romantic background
of the conquistadores and the _padres_ the sturdy spirit, the simple
lines, and the practical details of the old frontier buildings, the
main virtue of these Californian homes is that they possess a definite
relation to the soil and climate and the habits of the people. But,
though back of each design lurks the motive of the Spanish missions,
there is no monotony, no sameness; but, on the contrary, a remarkable
variety of design. Each possesses the characteristic features of the
Californian home: the low, wide-spreading roof lines, the solid walls,
generally of concrete or plaster, the frank use of structural beams,
the luxurious spaces of veranda and balcony, the tiled terraces and
pottery roofs, the cool, inviting patios, and the quiet loveliness of
the interiors. It is true, of course, that many house-builders have been
unable to resist the temptation of Colonial, Norman, Dutch, and Tudor,
but, as their culture increases, Californians are fast realising that an
architecture designed for inhospitable climates is utterly incongruous in
California’s semitropical surroundings.
It rained one of the days that I spent in San José, and my genial host
was so apologetic about it that I actually felt sorry for him. Though
rain is seldom unwelcome in a horticultural country, the residents
don’t like to have it come down in bucketfuls when visitors whom they
are anxious to impress with the perfection of their climate are around.
They are as proud of their climate in the Santa Clara Valley as a boy
is of “his first long pants,” and to back up their boasts the residents
carry in their pockets the blue slips of the Government Weather Bureau’s
monthly reports to show the stranger. I’m not fond of figures, unless
they happen to be on cheques drawn in my favour, but I was impressed by
the fact, nevertheless, that in 1913 the valley had only fifty-eight
cloudy days, sixty-four which were overcast, and two hundred and
thirty-four in which there was not a cloud to dim the turquoise of the
sky. Carrying my investigations a little further, I found that during the
greater part of February, which is the coldest month of the year, the
mercury remained above 55, only four times dropping as low as 33, while
there were only four days in August when the thermometer needle crept up
to 79, and once in the same month it fell as low as 42, thus giving a
solar-plexus blow to the idea stubbornly held by most Easterners that in
summer California is an anteroom to Hades.
To this unvarying geniality of the climate and to the careless,
happy-go-lucky, pleasure-loving strain handed down from the Spanish and
Argonaut pioneers are due the invincible gaiety and the passionate love
for the out-of-doors which are among the most likeable characteristics
of the Californians. One of the first things that strikes an Eastern
visitor is the fact that the Californians can always find time for
amusement, and they enter into those amusements with the enthusiasm and
the whole-souled gaiety of children. On the Pacific Coast recreation is
considered quite as important as business—and business does not suffer,
either. There is about these Californian merrymakings an abandon, a
joyousness, a childlike freedom from restraint which is in striking
contrast to the restrained, self-conscious pleasures of the older, colder
East. To the colourful _fiestas_ of the Spanish and Mexican eras may be
traced the out-of-door festivities which play so large a part in the life
of the people on the Pacific Coast, such as the midwinter Tournament of
Roses at Pasadena, the Portola Festival with which the San Franciscans
celebrate the discovery of San Francisco Bay, the Feast of the Blossoms
held each spring in the Santa Clara Valley, the Battle of Flowers which,
until very recently, was a feature of life at Santa Barbara, but which,
for some unexplainable reason, has been abandoned, the Rose Festival at
Portland, the Potlatch at Seattle. Under much the same category are the
classic plays given in the wonderful Greek Theatre at the University
of California, the sylvan masks produced by the colony of authors and
artists at Carmel-by-the-Sea, and the Bohemian Club’s celebrated Grove
Play.
No account of Californian festivals is in any way complete without at
least a brief description of the last named, which is characterised
by a beauty of production and a dignity of treatment that make it in
many respects an American Bayreuth. For forty years the Bohemian Club
of San Francisco has gone into the California redwoods each summer for
a fortnight’s outing. This famous club, founded in 1872 by a coterie
of actors, newspaper men, and artists, now has a membership of upward
of thirteen hundred, representing all that is best in the art, music,
literature, drama, and science of the West. No one may become a member
who has not achieved a distinction of sorts in one of these fields, the
anticommercial spirit which animates the club being aptly expressed by
the quotation at the top of its note-paper: “Weaving spiders come not
here.” The Bohemian Grove, which consists of about three hundred acres
of forest and contains some of the finest redwood giants in California,
stands on the banks of the Russian River, ninety miles to the north of
San Francisco. The stately redwoods stand in a gentle ravine whose
floor and slopes in the rainless midsummer are bright with the canvas
of the club encampment, which resembles a sort of sylvan Durbar; for
the camps, many of which are elaborately arranged and furnished, are
made of canvas in the gayest colours—scarlet and white, green and white,
blue and yellow—with flags and banners and gorgeous Oriental lanterns
everywhere. Here, during the first two weeks in every August, congregate
close on a thousand men who have done things—authors of “best sellers,”
builders of bridges and dams and lighthouses and aqueducts, painters
whose pictures hang on the line at the Paris Salon or on the walls of
the Luxembourg, composers of famous operas, writers of plays which have
made a hit on Broadway, presidents of transcontinental railway systems,
celebrated singers, men who have penetrated to the remotest corners of
the earth—wearing the dress of the woods, calling each other “Bill” or
“Jim” or “Harry” as the case may be, and becoming, for the time being,
boys once more. A steep side of the ravine forms the “back-drop” of the
forest stage, the spectators—no woman has ever taken part in the play
or witnessed an original performance—sitting on redwood logs under the
stars. The Grove Play is an evolution from a simpler programme, which was
originally known as “High Jinks.” It is now a serious composition, with
music, largely symbolical in character, created entirely by members of
the club, in which many artists of international fame have taken part,
always in the amateur spirit.
But to return to our Valley of the Santa Clara. In the Panhandle of
Texas a ranch usually means anywhere from five thousand acres upward
of uncultivated land; in the Santa Clara a ranch means anywhere from
five acres upward of the most highly cultivated soil in the world. East
of the Sierra Nevada, where scientific fertilisation and intensive
cultivation are still wearing short dresses, five acres are scarcely
worth considering, but five acres in California, properly planted and
cared for, ofttimes supports a family in something akin to luxury. I had
pointed out to me in the Santa Clara Valley at least a score of small
holdings which yield their owners annually in the neighbourhood of five
hundred dollars an acre. All of these hardy pioneers have telephones and
electric lights and electric power for pumping and daily newspaper and
mail deliveries. When they have any business in town, instead of going
down to the corral and roping a bronco, they either stroll through the
orchard and hail an electric car or they crank up the family automobile.
While I was in the Santa Clara Valley I asked a number of those questions
to which every prospective home seeker wants to know the answers. I
found that improved land, planted to prune, apricot, or peach trees old
enough to bear, can be had all the way from four hundred to seven hundred
dollars an acre, according to its location. At a conservative estimate
this land, so I was told by a banker whose business it is to lend
money on it (and you can trust a banker for never being oversanguine),
can be depended upon to yield an income of from one hundred to three
hundred dollars an acre, it being by no means an unusual thing for a
well-managed ranch to pay for itself in two or three years. I found
that a ten-acre orchard—which is quite large enough for one man to
handle—could be had for five thousand dollars, the purchaser paying,
say, two thousand dollars down and carrying the balance on a mortgage
at seven per cent, which is the legal rate of interest in California.
The local building and loan associations would lend him two thousand
dollars to build with, which he could repay, at the rate of twenty-four
dollars a month, in ten years. Two thousand dollars, I might add, will
build an extremely attractive and comfortable six-room bungalow, for the
two chief sources of expense to the Eastern home builder—cellars and
furnaces—are not necessary in California. Such a place, provided its
owner has horse sense, is not afraid of work, and knows good advice when
he hears it, should yield from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a
year, in addition to which the whole family can find ready employment,
at excellent wages, in the orchards or packing-houses during the fruit
season. For this work a man receives from two dollars to two dollars and
a half a day and can count on fairly steady employment through at least
eight months of the year, while many women and girls, whose deft fingers
make them particularly valuable in the work of wrapping and packing
the finer grades of fruit, can earn as high as twenty dollars a week
during the busy season. This work, I might add, attracts an altogether
exceptional class of people, for university and high-school students and
the wives and daughters of small ranchers eagerly avail themselves of
this opportunity to add to their incomes, the fruit orchards, during the
picking season, looking less like a hive of workers than like a gigantic
picnic among the shaded orchard rows, in which the whole countryside is
taking part.
The air in the Santa Clara Valley is said to be the clearest in the
world, though they tell you exactly the same thing at Colorado Springs,
and in the Grand Cañon of Arizona, and at Las Vegas, N. Mex. The Santa
Clara air is clear enough, however, for all practical purposes. In fact,
its extraordinary clarity sometimes lends itself to extraordinary uses. I
have a friend whose residence is set on a hillside high on the valley’s
eastern rim. One day, idly scanning the distant landscape through his
field-glasses, he noted that the field hands employed on the ranch of a
neighbour on the opposite hillside, twenty odd miles away, knowing that
they could not be observed by their employer, were loafing in the shade
instead of working. My friend called up his neighbour by telephone and
told him that his men were soldiering, whereupon that gentleman rode up
the hillside and gave his astonished employees such a tongue-lashing that
when the six-o’clock whistle blew that night they had blisters on their
hands.
Lack of labour is one of the most serious problems with which the
fruit-growers of California have had to contend, though it is believed
that this will be remedied, in some measure at least, by the flood of
European immigration which will pour through the Panama Canal. Twenty
years ago the labour problem was solved by the Chinaman, who was the most
industrious and dependable labourer California has ever had, but with the
agitation which resulted in closing our doors to the Celestial most of
the Chinese in California entered domestic service and now command such
high wages—fifty dollars a month is the average wage of a Chinese house
boy or cook—that only the well-to-do can afford to employ them. Time
and again I have heard clear-headed Californians of all classes assert
that the admission, under certain restrictions, of a hundred thousand
selected Chinese would prove an unqualified blessing for California. The
relentless war waged by California—or, rather, by the labour element
of California—against the admission of Chinese immigrants was based on
the difference in the standard of living. The yellow man could live in
something very akin to luxury on about a tenth of the ration required for
a white man’s support. In other words, the Chinaman could outstarve the
white man; therefore the Chinaman must go. And there has never been any
one to take his place.
Outside of the Pacific Coast the impression seems to prevail that the
Chinaman’s place has been taken by the Japanese. This is not so. To
begin with, Japanese labour is not cheap labour. The Japanese do not
work for less pay than white men, unless it be temporarily, so as
to obtain the white man’s job. Japanese house cleaners and gardeners
demand and receive a minimum wage of thirty-five cents an hour, and
in California, where most people of modest means are compelled to do
their own housework because of the scarcity of and exorbitant wages
demanded by domestic servants, housewives are thankful to get Japanese
by the day at any price. Their standard of living is as high as that of
other nationalities; much higher, in fact, than that of peoples from
southern Europe. There is no pauperism among them and astonishingly
little crime. They dress well, eat well, spend money lavishly for
entertainment. But the Jap, unlike the Chinaman, “talks back.” He is not
in the least impressed by the American’s claim of racial superiority.
In fact, he considers himself very much better than the white man and,
if the opportunity presents itself, does not hesitate to say so. He is
patronising instead of patronised. He has proved that he is the white
man’s equal in every line of industry and in some his superior. Three
times in succession a Japanese grower has virtually cornered the potato
crop of the Pacific Coast. The Japanese has driven the Greek and the
Portuguese out of the fishing industry, in which they believed that they
were impregnably intrenched. As a result of these things he steps off the
sidewalk for no one. He knows that back of him stands a great empire,
with a powerful fleet and one of the most efficient armies in existence,
and he takes no pains to disguise this knowledge in his relations with
the white man.
To tell the truth, the prohibition of land ownership, the segregation of
school children are but pretexts put forward by a jealous and resentful
white population to teach the yellow man his place. The assertion that
Japanese ownership of land is a menace to white domination is the veriest
nonsense, and every Californian knows it. There are ninety-nine million
acres in California and of this area the Japanese own or lease barely
thirty thousand acres, or _twelve hundredths of one per cent_. The
fifty-eight thousand Japanese in California form but two and one half per
cent of the total population. These figures, which are authoritative,
are not very menacing, are they? The bulk of the Japanese reside in
Los Angeles County and in the delta of the Sacramento and San Joaquin
Rivers, where they work gigantic potato fields and truck-gardens and
asparagus beds. Now, Los Angeles, mind you, has never demanded Japanese
exclusion. Protests poured into Sacramento from the white settlers of
the delta country against the passage of the anti-alien land laws. Why,
then, you ask, does the entire Pacific Coast, including British Columbia,
exhibit such intense dislike for the Jap? Because, as I have said, he
has shown that he can beat the white man at his own game; because he is
not in the least meek and humble as befits an alien and “inferior” race;
because he believes in his heart that in an armed conflict Nippon could
whip the United States as thoroughly as she whipped China and Russia;
because, as a result of this belief, he perpetually swaggers about
with his hat cocked on one side and a chip perched invitingly on his
shoulder; because, in short, his very manner is a constant irritation to
the Californians. And until the status of the Japanese upon the Pacific
Coast is definitely and finally established by international treaty this
irritation may be expected to continue and to increase.
* * * * *
I wonder if sometimes, at that sunset hour when the lengthening shadows
of the hills fall athwart the blossoming orchards, there do not
wander through the Santa Clara those whom the eyes of mortals cannot
see—Portola, swart of face under his steel cap, come back to feast his
eyes once more, from the top of yonder hill, on that fertile valley
which he was the first white man to see; Father Serra, mild-mannered
and gentle-voiced, trudging the dusty highroad in his sandals and
woollen robe, pausing to kneel in prayer as the bells boom out the
Angelus from that mission which he founded; Captain Jedediah Smith, the
first of the pathfinders, a strange and romantic figure in his garb of
fringed buckskin, leaning on his long rifle as he looks down on the
homesteads of the thousands who followed by the trail he blazed across
the ranges; Stanford, who linked the oceans with twin lines of steel,
pacing the campus of that great seat of learning which he conceived and
built—guardian spirits, all, of that valley for which they did so much
and which they loved so well.
VIII
THE MODERN ARGONAUTS
“For once you’ve panned the speckled sand and seen the bonny dust,
Its peerless brightness blinds you like a spell;
It’s little else you care about; you go because you must,
And you feel that you could follow it to hell.
You’d follow it in hunger, and you’d follow it in cold;
You’d follow it in solitude and pain;
And when you’re stiff and battened down let some one whisper ‘Gold,’
You’re lief to rise and follow it again.”
VIII
THE MODERN ARGONAUTS
I once knew an Englishman and his wife who were possessed with a mania
for things Egyptian. Some people were unkind enough to say that they
were “dotty” on the subject, but that was an exaggeration. They knew all
there was to know about Egyptian customs from the days of Amenhotep to
those of Abbas Hilmi; they had delved in the sand-smothered ruins across
the river from Luxor; they could converse as fluently in the degraded
patois of the native coffee-houses as in the classic Arabic spoken at the
University of El Azhar. Their chief regret in life was that they had not
been born Egyptians. Their names were—but never mind; it is enough to say
that they had coronets on their visiting cards and owned more fertile
acres in Devonshire than an absentee landlord has any right to possess.
Whenever they came to Cairo, which they did regularly at the beginning
of the cold weather, they could never be induced to take the comfortable
motor-bus which the management of Shepheard’s Hotel thoughtfully provides
for its guests—at ten piastres the trip. Instead, they would wire ahead
to have a couple of camels meet them at the station, and, perched atop
of these ungainly and uncomfortable beasts, would amble down the Sharia
Kamel, which is the Fifth Avenue of Cairo, and dismount with great pomp
and ceremony in front of their hotel to the delectation of the tourists
assembled upon its terrace. I once asked them why they chose this
outlandish mode of conveyance when there were a score or so of perfectly
good taxicabs whose vociferously importunate drivers were only awaiting
a signal to push down their little red flags and set their taximeters
whirring.