Taken during his active career in San Francisco
I was very much a novice in politics, but Mr. Ralston insisted that I should have full charge of the program and take up my residence in Sacramento pending the session of the Legislature. So among other things I gathered quite an exact idea of how wires used to be manipulated underground.
In the first place, the necessity of a Legislature was not apparent at that time. What had been an able and independent body in the early history of California had degenerated to a mere recording machine for a couple of vote brokers, “Nap” Broughton and “Zeke” Wilson by name. “Nap,” brief for Napoleon, was a happy, enthusiastic chap, always slapping someone on the back with a heartiness not always quite sincere; a good fellow in his way, and a most abandoned corrupter of men, a spendthrift disciple of nearly every sin, with an ever-watchful eye on the money of others, yet himself the veriest sucker that ever lived.
“Zeke” Wilson, on the other hand, was a gray, desiccated, sinister, old spider, who seldom smiled, and when he did everyone in his presence felt depressed. He was the “thinking member” of the duumvirate, and while “Nap” Broughton made nearly all the noise “Zeke” Wilson laid the plans.
The Senate used to be respectable in appearance, an able body and reasonably clean. The one that I was concerned with contained such men as Hager and Saunders of San Francisco, George C. Perkins of Butte, who made then his first appearance in politics; Rumaldo Pacheco, afterward Governor; Pendergast of Napa, Lewis of Tehama, and several others whose names are fairly connected with the history of the State.
The Assembly, on the other hand, was a conglomeration of miscellaneous riff-raff, gathered together God knows how, inexperienced, ignorant, venal and scandalously cheap. Of course there were some honorable exceptions. I am only speaking of the general rule. It was in the Assembly, not the Senate, that the “business” of the session was done. That is, if Messrs. Broughton and Wilson wanted to kill a measure, they never worried what the Senate did, but let the obnoxious bill come before the “popular-priced” Assembly, where its shrift was short.
No one in his senses ever came to Sacramento with a bill involving a considerable question of finance without establishing friendly relations with Messrs. Broughton and Wilson at the start. Treaties of alliance were negotiated through Napoleon Broughton. At our first interview $35,000 passed hands. “Nap” merely said in a casual way that I was a gentleman and I accepted the compliment for what it was worth. What became of that money I have no means of knowing, and never inquired. That would have been the height of bad manners. But he never asked me for any more, and everything I wanted slid through the Assembly on greased ways.
We were among the first who made a consistent effort to impress the merits of our measures on law-makers by systematic good-fellowship. I practically chartered a well known restaurant, threw it open to my friends, and the bills were over $400 a day, so generously did they respond to my invitation. Down in San Francisco, Ralston was on the lookout for statesmen, and none of them struck the town without good cause to remember the experience pleasantly.
In a way, it was a striking session—a sort of breaking of new ground. The railroad appeared for the first time as a seeker for favors. It had two leading bills, each providing for a subsidy for railroads southward, one through the San Joaquin Valley and one along the coast line. Neither terminated anywhere in particular; the former somewhere in Kern county, the latter in San Luis Obispo county, near the border line of Santa Barbara. The measures simply authorized the electors of the counties concerned to vote for a subsidy payable to the first railroad that came along. The combined subsidies provided for amounted to only $3,000,000, but they were regarded as the opening wedges for more. Of course everyone knew what that first railroad would be. Strangely enough, in the newspaper and legislative discussions, no one seemed to think that Los Angeles cut any figure as a terminal or feeder. The cry was for a railroad south to the Colorado river. For that the people were willing to pay any kind of subsidy, but not a cent for a couple of local concerns. A bitter newspaper war followed, and charges of corruption were freely made. But the bills passed both houses by large majorities, and were only halted in their triumphant progress by the veto of Governor Haight. Even then, it was a close call. The Assembly enthusiastically passed one of them over his veto, and in the Senate the same action failed by only two votes.
There were so many bills of a shady, not to say rotten, nature introduced during the session that almost all measures were looked on as “jobs.” Our two bills—“Montgomery South” and the effacement of Rincon Hill—took their places with the rest. They were harshly criticized by most of the San Francisco papers as crafty schemes, the true inwardness of which would develop later on. They were likened to the “Second Street Cut” outrage, and a lot of ill-advised public opinion was worked up against both. Nevertheless, they passed the Legislature. How one of them became a law is an interesting story, told in many official records of the State.