The Dominicans are also established in the archdiocese of San Francisco, where they have a convent at Benicia on the Sacramento River, besides furnishing pastors to several other parishes. The archbishop himself is a member of the order, which well maintains in California its reputation for learning and strictness of discipline. Several of the Californian Dominicans, including the archbishop, are natives of Spain, but the majority are Irish or Irish-Americans. The Dominican nuns also have a convent and academy at Benicia, which ranks deservedly high among the educational institutions of the State; and a free school in San Francisco, which affords instruction to several hundred children.
The Christian Brothers are, in point of time, the newest of the religious orders in California, having only come to the State some two years ago, at the invitation of Archbishop Allemany. Their system of education is eminently adapted to the requirements of her people, as is shown by the rapid success of their first college, which already numbers more than two hundred and twenty resident students. The marked success which has so far attended the efforts of the brothers gives every reason to believe that they (and it may be added, they alone) can solve the great problem of Catholic education in California, which is, how to provide Catholic common schools for the children of the working-classes. Those classes there, as everywhere else throughout the Union, form the bulk of the Catholic population, and desire to procure for their little ones the advantage of schooling. If possible, they wish to obtain it from Catholic sources; but if this cannot be, they will, there is ground to fear, avail themselves of the educational facilities offered by the State schools, even at the risk of their children's faith. As the number of these children must be reckoned by tens of thousands, the task of providing them with suitable education is no easy one; but the object and spirit of the order instituted by the venerable De La Salle, and the success which has attended its system of parochial schools in Missouri and other States, give good grounds to hope that it will prove equal to the work that lies before it in California, where the circumstances of the country are peculiarly favorable to the growth of Catholic institutions. Nowhere else has anti-Catholic bigotry less power in the government, or is public opinion more favorable to the church; and though the infidel common-school system finds strong support in a numerous class, yet we believe that in no part of the Union can the battle for religious education be fought out under more favorable auspices. The urgent need that exists for Catholic schools at present, may be judged of from the fact that while the different colleges and boarding-schools under the management of the Jesuits, Franciscans, Christian Brothers, and Vincentians, provide education for about a thousand boys, the Catholic common schools throughout the State contain a number scarcely greater, or less than a tenth of their due proportion. Female education is better provided for in this respect. The Presentation and Dominican Sisters, and the Sisters of Charity and Mercy, have about four thousand pupils in their free schools in San Francisco, and there are also several similar establishments in different parts of the State; but even these are inadequate to the wants of the Catholic population, and in California, as in the Eastern States, the problem of how to provide schooling for the children of the poor is the most serious and difficult one that the church has to solve.
California, in proportion to its population, is rich in institutions for the relief of suffering and distress. The male and female orphan asylums in the dioceses of San Francisco, Grass Valley, and Monterey maintain about six hundred of these bereaved little ones. The Sisters of Mercy and Charity have each a general hospital under their charge in San Francisco, where the latter have also a foundling hospital. They have also a hospital in Los Angeles, and the Sisters of Mercy have a Magdalen asylum in San Francisco. Altogether, the number of religious, of both sexes, engaged in works of instruction or charity in California, approaches three hundred, and this in a population of little over half a million.
Reference has already been made to the variety of races that forms so peculiar a feature in the Californian population. It may not be amiss to devote a few words to each separately, especially with regard to their relations with the church.
As the original settlers of the country, the Spanish element deserves to be mentioned first, although no longer occupying the chief place in political or numerical importance. The Spanish Californians are mostly descended from a few families, chiefly Europeans, who settled in the country in the palmy days of the missions, and whose posterity have increased in the course of a century to a population of several thousand. The prevalence of a few family names among them is quite as remarkable as in certain districts of Ireland and Scotland, where a single sept name is borne by almost all the inhabitants of a parish or barony; and nearly all the more wealthy families are connected with one another by the ties of blood or marriage. As a general rule, they have less intermixture of Indian blood than the southern Mexicans, though such of the mission Indians as have survived the overthrow of their protectors regard themselves as Spaniards, and are so styled by the rest of the population. Some of these Indians occupy respectable positions in society, and one at least, Señor Dominguez, was a member of the convention which drew up the State constitution of California. The Spanish Californians are generally hospitable and generous, and, though imperfectly acquainted with the refinements of civilization, they display much of the old Spanish politeness in their dealings with each other and with strangers. They retain the Spanish taste for music and dancing, and, we are sorry to say, for bull-fights and games of chance; in Los Angeles and the other southern counties, all the scenes of the life of Leon or Castile may still be witnessed. Cattle-raising forms their chief occupation, and in the management of stock they display a good deal of skill and energy; but their inexperience in the ways of modern life, and their ignorance of American law, have gradually deprived them of the ownership of most of the lands they held at the discovery of the gold "placers." Many of them sold their property at ridiculously low prices, others were deprived of them by the operation of the land tax, which was entirely new to their ideas; while the distaste for settled industry and the improvident habits engendered by their former mode of life unfitted them for competing in other pursuits with the enterprise of the new-comers. The generation which has grown up since the American conquest, however, displays a much greater spirit of enterprise than its fathers have shown, and promises to play a more important part in the country. Politically and socially, the Spanish Californians enjoy a good deal of consideration; some of them usually occupy seats in the State Legislature, and on the judicial bench; the Spanish language is used as well as the English in legal documents, and the acts of the Legislature; and one of the higher State offices is generally filled by a Spaniard.
There is also a considerable Spanish-American population, chiefly Mexicans and Chilenos, in the Pacific States. Most of them are engaged in mining or stock-raising; but a considerable number are engaged in business, in which several of them occupy prominent positions. The Chilenos are generally possessed of at least the rudiments of schooling, and are tolerably well organized for mutual aid; but the Mexicans, owing to the political condition of their country, are much behind them in both these respects. Altogether, the population of California of Spanish origin must number from forty to fifty thousand.
Closely connected with the Spanish population are the Portuguese, who, of late years, have begun to immigrate to California in considerable numbers, and now number several thousands there. The majority of them are engaged in farming or gardening. They are, as a class, sober, industrious, and peaceable. They are settled principally in the counties around the Bay of San Francisco, and very few of them are to be found in the city itself.
The American population, as it is customary in California to style the natives of the other States of the Union, has been drawn in not very unequal proportions from the North and South, and its character partakes of the peculiarities of both sections, with a general spirit of recklessness and profusion that is peculiarly its own. The public opinion of California is much more liberal and tolerant than that of the Eastern States, and it is rarely indeed that Catholics have to complain of any open display of offensive bigotry on the part of any influential portion of their fellow-citizens. On one occasion, about a year ago, a leading evening paper of San Francisco attempted to raise an anti-Catholic cry during the excitement of a political campaign; but the attempt met with such reprobation from all parties, that the proprietors found it expedient to apologize for it in the course of a day or two as best they could. The great foe of the church in California is not Protestantism, but unbelief; and although the latter is in its nature as full of bitterness against her as the former, yet its champions find it necessary to assume liberality, even if they do not feel it, in obedience to public sentiment. Some of the Protestant sects are indeed outspoken in their bigotry, but their power is very trifling, as the entire Protestant church membership does not amount to five per cent of the population, and not one sixth of the whole people comes under the influence of any Protestant denomination whatsoever. The number of converts in California and Oregon is considerable, including several individuals of high political and literary eminence, and there are also many American Catholics, chiefly from Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, scattered through the State.
The Irish are the most numerous of the European nationalities represented in the Californian population, and enjoy a much greater degree of prosperity than their countrymen in any other State of the Union. A much larger proportion of their numbers are engaged in farming than is the case in the Eastern States, and the advantages arising from such an employment of their labor are evident to the dullest eye. Much of the cultivated land of the State is in their possession, and some of them are among its largest land-owners. The city population also enjoys a greater degree of comfort than the same class in New York or Boston. Three of the savings-banks of San Francisco, representing nearly half the capital of the entire number of such institutions in that city, are under Irish control, and Irishmen are also among the most successful merchants, bankers, and manufacturers of California. The late mayor of San Francisco, and an ex-governor of the State are Irishmen and Catholics, and three Irish-Americans in succession have filled the office of United States senator, one of whom still represents the State in Washington. We are not able to give the precise amount of the Irish population in California; but, including the children of Irish parents, it cannot be less than a fourth of the whole. It is needless to state that the immense majority of the Irish in California are Catholics, and that their zeal for every thing pertaining to religion forms a marked contrast to the indifference of their non-Catholic fellow-citizens.
The Germans come next to the Irish in importance, probably amounting to two thirds of their number. They are more blended with the rest of the population than in the Eastern States, and there is only one distinctively German settlement in California, namely, the town of Anaheim on the southern coast. About one fourth of them are Catholics, but they only possess one German church in the state, forming, in this respect, a strong contrast to their countrymen in the Mississippi Valley and on the Atlantic seaboard. Of the non-Catholic Germans, the Jews form a considerable and very wealthy portion, and preserve their distinctive national habits much more tenaciously than the rest of their countrymen. The synagogue Emmanuel in San Francisco is the most costly and elegant place of worship on the Pacific coast, while the German Protestants have scarcely a church in California, and indeed, few of them can be regarded as Christians in any sense.