When, after 1849, the rush to the diggings took place, and all men were suffering from "the gold fever" and "silver on the brain," spending their money in wholesale gambling, making fortunes one week and losing them the next, and every man's head seemed to be turned by the helter-skelter excitement, the Catholic Church, in [{806}] her calm majesty, was growing up in the midst of the turmoil, and occupying her position as the city on the mountain, and the light shining before men. The zeal of the archbishop and clergy and faithful Irish knew no limits. Churches sprang up on the conspicuous eminences of the city of San Francisco, and in the principal thoroughfares. And that vast assemblage of men, who had come together from all parts, without religion or God in their hearts, began to see that they were in the presence of the Catholic Church, and that the shadow of the Catholic towers and crosses had fallen upon them. As soon as the Holy See gave to San Francisco an archbishop, the zealous sons of St. Patrick determined to build him a cathedral. The wages of a common hodman were £2, 10s. a day; nevertheless, while the Catholic with one hand worked or scrambled for wealth, with the other he freely gave to that which is always dearest to his heart. The deep foundations of the cathedral were sunk, the walls arose, its massive time-keeping tower crowned the city, its solemn services were inaugurated. It was the result of fabulous sums of money, and of heroic devotedness on the part of pastors and people. Nor was this all. Large and handsome churches have sprung up in various parts of the city, like St. Ignatius's and St. Francis's, and others, such as the French church, St. Patrick's, St. Joseph's, the German church, and a number of smaller chapels. The unbelieving speculator, the "smart" trader, the land-owner, and the miner, on his visit to the city, were all struck with these visible tokens of sincerity and zeal, without stint of generous alms, put forth by the Catholic Church from the very outset. Later, and stimulated by Catholic example, the various sects of Protestantism, Jews, infidels, and pagans, erected in several places their churches, temples, chapels, lecture-halls, and joss-houses. In point of churches, in numbers and construction, the Catholic communion in San Francisco stands far ahead of all others. But it is not in the erection of churches alone that Catholicity has, with the vigor of her perpetual youth, outstripped the sects, all of which, before they attain to half a century, become old and decrepit; for no sooner did the population roll in from the ocean and across the plains, than new wants at once arose—hospitals for the sick from the city, the country, and the mines; homes for the orphans who were left alone in a far-off country, where men die in thousands from accident and violence, as well as from disease and natural causes; and schools for children, who are born more numerously, it is said, in California than in any other country. Here again the Catholic Church was first in devoted charity and anxious zeal for souls.
As to popular schools, before the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were bridged together by the iron rails of Panama, the gentle and devoted Sisters of the Presentation from Ireland, ladies by birth, tradition, and refinement, left their tranquil convents for the storm and troubles of life into the midst of which they were to be thrown in San Francisco. They, in their strict and peaceful inclosure, were to be calm, like the point which even in the whirlwind is always to be still and at rest. There, day by day, they teach one thousand children from infancy up to womanhood, the poor according to their wants, and the rich according their requirements, and all this entirely gratis, looking to God alone to be their "reward exceeding great." Moreover, the only school in the state of California for Indians and negroes is established and taught by them. In the state schools no colored child would be allowed to set his foot. Thousands of children of Catholic, of Protestant, and infidel parents have passed out into the world from under their considerate and enlightened care, and they bless them everywhere evermore. Such disinterested charities, such daily self-denial, such [{807}] gentle and kindly sympathy, are not lost upon the wayward, go-ahead, and hardened Yankee. These are the lives which touch and melt and win him. This, he says, is practical religion. Next, in a state like California, orphanages became an early and a primary want. The Sisters of Charity first supplied them. Then hospitals were needed; and the Sisters of Mercy from Ireland said, "Here are hospitals." They possess the best hospital in the state. They watch the sick with a mother's care; and many a man learns on his bed of pain from their lips lessons which he has never heard in childhood, or has forgotten in manhood. In all these departments of popular instruction, orphanages, and hospitals, the Catholic Church in California leads the way, extending aid and care to all, without distinction of creed or nation. The Catholic convents and establishments stand out conspicuously to all the world on the heights and in the principal thoroughfares of San Francisco. These are all works which we attribute to the zeal of the Irish, and which prove to Americans, and they admit the proof, the faith and charity of the Catholic Church. They are an appeal to their heart and to their reason. And now for the appeal to their sense of honesty and justice. Take the Catholics of California as a body, and they stand before any other body for honesty in business. They nearly all came to the state poor men; some had to borrow money for their journey; but they have worked their way up; and now, though the Jews are the largest capitalists, and the Yankees, from being more numerous, hold absolutely a greater amount of wealth, the Irish and Catholics, as a class, are more uniformly well off. The mean of comfort and sufficiency is probably higher among them than among others. And they have obtained for themselves a high reputation for honesty and honorable conduct in business. It is impossible for a person without experience to form an idea of the amount of cheating and rascality which is often practised in trade and commerce. Robbery and lying, upon however large or mean a scale, when successful, will be called by a great number only "smart conduct." A man is not tabooed and banished the exchange and the market for cheating his creditors, and defrauding the public, as he would be in London or Liverpool. He can live down such public opinion as there is, and many of his friends extend a misplaced pity to him, or think none the worse of him for his behavior. A man may become bankrupt three or four times, and become richer each time; this is not uncommon; and there are certain persons with whom it is taken for granted that they are thus "making their pile." "So and so has just caved in," said a merchant; "and he had $20,000 worth of goods from me last week, and all that's 'run into the ground,' and no two ways about that. He'll be through the courts white-washed in a few weeks." "Well," said the interlocutor, "you won't let him have more goods without ready money?" "Yes, I shall. He'll just come to me for goods to set up again; and he knows I'll let him have them, for he's a 'smart' fellow; he will be better able to pay me then than he ever has been before." In confirmation of our general statement, we may quote the words of Mr. Hittel:
"Insolvencies legally declared and cancelled by the courts are more frequent in San Francisco, in proportion to its population, than in any other part of the world. Our laws provide that any man who declares himself unable to pay his debts, and petitions to be released from them, may obtain a judicial discharge, unless he has been guilty of fraud; and as the fraud must be distinctly proved upon him before the discharge will be denied, the release is almost invariably obtained."
From this testimony of a long resident and man of business in California [{808}] it will be readily understood how closely men's personal character for honesty will be scrutinized by persons who are not anxious to suffer in dealing with them. Now, inquiries have been made in various parts of the country, and it has been ascertained beyond a doubt that the Irish, or American Irish Catholics, are considered the safest class of men to do business with. Whether it be early training, religion, the confessional, or the influence of the priests, so it is; they are trusted by a Yankee more readily than others are. Far be it from us to impeach the honesty, and sense of honor, of all save the Irish and Catholics. These natural virtues shine with the greatest brilliancy in many an unbelieving man of business. We but record a fact which is highly creditable to the Irish, and spreads the good odor of the religion they profess.
We have now to notice the direct action of the archbishop and of the clergy upon the population. The bishop is the "forma gregis facta ex animo," "the city on the hill," "the candle placed high upon the candlestick," giving its light around; and on each prelate bestows what gifts he pleases. With these he illumines the world in the person of his minister.
Go, then, up California street, turn round the cathedral of St. Mary's, and you will enter a miserable, dingy little house. This is the residence of the Archbishop of San Francisco and his clergy, who live with him in community. To the left are a number of little yards, and the back windows of the houses in which the Chinamen are swarming. Broken pots and pans, old doors, and a yellow compost, window-frames, fagots, remnants of used fireworks, sides of pig glazed and varnished, long strings of meat—God only knows what meat—hanging to dry, dog-kennels, dead cats, dirty linen in heaps, and white linen and blue cottons drying on lines or lying on rubbish—such is the view to the left. The odors which exhale from it who shall describe? A spark would probably set the whole of these premises in a conflagration; and one is tempted to think that even a fire would be a blessing. To the right, adjoining the cathedral, is the yard where the Catholic boys come out to play; and in this yard stands a little iron or zinc cottage, containing two rooms. This is where the archbishop lives; one is his bedroom, the other his office, where his secretaries are at work all day. No man is more poorly lodged in the whole city; and no man preaches the spirit of evangelical poverty, a detachment in the midst of this money-worshipping city, like this Dominican Spanish Archbishop of San Francisco. From ten in the morning to one p.m. every day, and for two or three hours every evening, his grace, arrayed in his common white habit, and with his green cord and pectoral cross, receives all who come to consult him, to beg of him, to converse with him, be they who they may—emigrants, servants, merchants, the afflicted, the ruined, the unfortunate. The example of such a life of disinterested zeal, holy simplicity, and poverty has told upon the inhabitants of San Francisco with an irresistible power. It has been one of the Catholic influences exercised by the Church on the population.
On taking possession of his see, when San Francisco was yet forming and building itself up, the first thing Dr. Alemany looked around for was an edifying and zealous body of clergy. There were, indeed, already before him some few who are laboring in the vineyard to this day, but there was also there the refuse of Europe, men of scandalous life, and men affecting to be priests who were impostors. Whereupon he went over to Ireland, and entering into relations with the College of All Hallows, which had supplied so many devoted priests to other parts, he began to draw from that splendid seminary apostles for California: of whom, we believe, the first was the present bishop at [{809}] Marysville, Dr. O'Connell, so distinguished for his gentleness, learning, piety, and zeal for the salvation of the Indian as well as of the white man. May that college long continue to send forth its heroic bands of laborers, who may be recognized everywhere as they are in California, as a virtuous and exemplary clergy! But the archbishop, with the eye of a general, perceived that in order to make a deep impression upon the masses which were forming themselves with incredible activity in San Francisco and the country, it was necessary, in addition to the secular clergy, which were stationed in pickets through the city and country, to form a strong body of indefatigable men, who should act upon the population with all the accumulated power of a compact square. He therefore called into the field the Jesuit fathers. They came down in little numbers from Oregon and the Rocky Mountains, from the Eastern states, and from Piedmont. He assigned to them the old mission of Santa Clara, about forty miles from San Francisco, in order that they should at once open a college for the better classes; and also a site in San Francisco, among the sand-hills, in order to form a day college for the inhabitants of the city; and a church in which they should bring into play all those industries of devotion, retreats, sermons, lectures, novenas, and sodalities, which constitute so considerable an element of their influence in Rome, and upon the various populations in the midst of which they establish themselves.
We have already shown that the Church was foremost in the formation of hospitals, orphanages, and schools for the poor. She is also first in reputation for the excellence and solidity of her higher education. The College of Santa Clara has a public name all down the western coast, in Mexico and Peru, as being, the most efficient house of education on the Pacific. But in order to appreciate the value of this work, it is necessary to understand something of the infidelity, immorality, and vice against which it acts as a barrier. Precocity in vice in California exceeds anything we know in England; and the domestic inner life of the family, except among the Irish, who still maintain its sanctity in a wonderful degree, and a certain small minority of others, has probably less existence than in the Eastern states. In the state system, boys and girls attend the same schools up to seventeen and eighteen. We have heard of a college in which boys and girls were educated together and live under the same roof; and we have been told of even girls' boarding-schools having been broken up on account of vice and disease. But rather than speak ourselves, we prefer to quote the published evidence of a Californian as to the moral state of society:
"In no part of the world is the individual more free from restraint. Men, and women, and children are permitted to do nearly as they please. High wages, migratory habits, and bachelor life are not favorable to the maintenance of stiff social rules among men, and the tone of society among women must partake to a considerable extent of that among men, especially in a country where women are in a small minority, and are therefore much courted. Public opinion, which as a guardian of public morals is more powerful than the forms of law, loses much of its power in a community where the inhabitants are not permanent residents. A large portion of the men in California live either in cabins or in hotels, remote from women relatives, and therefore uninfluenced by the powers of a home. It is not uncommon for married women to go to parties and balls in company with young bachelor friends. The girls commence going into "society" about fifteen, and then receive company alone, and go out alone with young men to dances and other places of amusement. In this there is a great error: too much liberty is allowed to girls in the states on the Atlantic slope, and still greater [{810}] liberty is given here, where, as they ripen earlier, they should be more guarded." [Footnote 146]
[Footnote 146: "Resources of California," p, 364. ]