If this was the effect of the bad, what must have been the influence of the good women! Let the same writer tell us: “Soon after their arrival, schools and churches began to spring up; social circles were formed; refinement dawned upon a debauched and reckless community; decorum took the place of obscenity; kind and gentle words were heard to fall from the lips of those who before had been accustomed to taint every phrase with an oath; and smiles displayed themselves upon countenances to which they had long been strangers.”
And then the author pays a tribute to woman which could hardly be surpassed: “Had I received no other benefit from my trip to California than the knowledge I have gained, inadequate as it may be, of woman’s many virtues and perfections, I should account myself well repaid.” In a ship-load of Pioneers which sailed from New York around Cape Horn to San Francisco in 1850 there was just one woman; and yet her influence upon the men was so marked and so salutary that it was often spoken of by the Captain.
The effect of their peculiar situation upon the married women was not good. They were apt to be demoralized by the attentions of their men friends, and they were too few in number to inflict upon improper females that rigid ostracism from society, which, some cynics think, is the strongest safeguard of feminine virtue. Women in California were released from their accustomed restraints, they were much noticed and flattered; and, then, as a San Francisco belle exclaimed, “The gentlemen are so rich and so handsome, and have such superb whiskers!”
In a single issue of the “Sacramento Transcript,” in July, 1850, are the following two items: “A certain madam now in this town buried her husband, and seventy-four hours afterward she married another.” “One of our fair and lovely damsels had a quarrel with her husband. He took the stage for Stockton, and the same day she married another man.”
Even those Pioneers who were fortunate enough to have their wives with them did not always appreciate the blessing. Being absorbed in business they often felt hampered by obligations from which their bachelor rivals were free, or perhaps, they chafed at the wholesome restraint imposed upon a married man in a community of unmarried persons. There was a dangerous tendency among California husbands to permit their friends to look after their wives. On this subject Professor Royce very acutely remarks: “The family grows best in a garden with its kind. When family life does not involve healthy friendship with other families, it is likely to be injured by unhealthy if well-meaning friendships with wanderers.” This is a sentiment which Brown of Calaveras would have echoed.
Men with attractive wives were apt to be uncomfortably situated in California. It is matter of history how The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s protected his young and pretty spouse from dangerous communications: “When I married my wife and brought her down here, knowin’ this yer camp, I sez: ‘No flirtin’, no foolin’, no philanderin’ here, my dear! You’re young and don’t know the ways o’ men. The first man I see you talking with, I shoot.’”
In 1851, there was a man named Crockett whose predicament was something like that of the Bell-Ringer, and still more like that of Brown of Calaveras, for he not only had a very handsome wife, but it was his additional misfortune to keep a tavern on the road between Sacramento and Salmon Falls. It was not unusual for a dozen or more bearded miners to be gazing at Mrs. Crockett or watching for an opportunity to speak with her. This kept Crockett in a continual state of jealous irritation. He was a very small man, and he carried ostentatiously a very large pistol, which he would often draw and exhibit. A guest who stopped at the tavern for breakfast at a time when miners along the road had been more numerous than usual, found Crockett “charging around like a madman, and foaming at the mouth.” However, he received the guest with hospitality, informed him that “he (Crockett) was a devilish good fellow when he was right side up,” and finally set before him an excellent meal. Mrs. Crockett presided at the table, “but in a very nervous manner, as if she were in expectation of being at almost any minute made a target of.”
If life in California during the earlier years was bad for women, it was still worse for children. In San Francisco there was no public school until the autumn of 1851. Before that time there had been several small private schools, and one free school supported by charity, but in 1851 this was given up for want of funds. In the cities and towns outside of San Francisco there was even greater delay in establishing public schools. In 1852 there were many children at Marysville who were receiving no instruction, and others, fourteen years old and even older, were only just learning to read. Horace Greeley visited California in the year 1859, and he wrote, “There ought to be two thousand good common schools in operation this winter, but I fear there will not be six hundred.”[65]
Partly in consequence of this lack of schools, partly on account of the general demoralization and ultra freedom of California society, boys grew up in the streets, and were remarkable for their precocious depravity. Even the climate contributed to this result, for, except in the rainy season, the shelter of a house could easily be dispensed with by night as well as by day. “It was the voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that preternatural hoarseness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature self-assertion can give. It was the face of a small boy, a face that might have been pretty and even refined but that it was darkened by evil knowledge from within, and by dirt and hard experience from without.”[66]
It was no uncommon thing, in San Francisco especially, to see small boys drinking and gambling in public places.