california history - California Historical Society

Transcription

history
california
california history
volume 9 0
number 2
2 0 13
The Journal of the California Historical Society
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C U RAT I N G
TH E B AY
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Crowdsourcing a New Environmental History
CURATING THE BAY
We are proud to be a
part of the community
APRIL 7, 2013
to
AUGUST 25, 2013
This exhibition is curated by Jon
Christensen, our second Curating California
scholar-in-residence and adjunct assistant
Wells Fargo office, Lodi Depot — California 1915
professor and Pritzker fellow at the Institute
We have been active community partners for over 160 years in California — as friends,
families, neighbors, and business leaders. Whether Express Agents in times past or
Community Bankers of today, we’re dedicated to helping our communities succeed while
preserving shared history along the way.
of the Environment and Sustainability and
the Department of History at UCLA.
Stop by any of our eleven Wells Fargo History Museums or visit us at wellsfargohistory.com
wellsfargo.com
© 2013 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. All rights reserved.
Member FDIC. (856626_07826)
Please visit our website for more information on events and programs:
CaliforniaHistoricalSociety.org
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6/18/13 11:22 AM
california history
volume 90
number 2
2013
Executive Director
anthea hartig
contents
Editor
JANET FIREMAN
From the Publishers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Managing Editor
Shelly Kale
Collections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Reviews Editor
JAMES J. RAWLS
The American Conquest of Alta California and
the Instinct for Justice: The “First” Jury Trial in California . . . . . . . 4
Design/Production
sandy bell
Editorial Consultants
LARRY E. BURGESS
ROBERT W. CHERNY
By Barry Goode
Farmer’s Market: Agribusiness and the Agrarian Imaginary
in California and the Far West . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
By Todd Holmes
JUDSON A. GRENIER
The Wasp’s “Troublesome Children”: Culture, Satire,
and the Anti-Chinese Movement in the American West . . . . . . . . 42
ROBERT V. HINE
JAMES N. GREGORY
By Nicholas Sean Hall
LANE R. HIRABAYASHI
LAWRENCE J. JELINEK
PAUL J. KARLSTROM
SALLY M. MILLER
GEORGE H. PHILLIPS
LEONARD PITT
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Donors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Spotlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
California History is printed in
Hanover, PA by the Sheridan Press.
Editorial offices and support for
California History are provided by
Loyola Marymount University,
Los Angeles.
on the front cover
Circular irrigated fields dot the landscape across wide areas of California’s San
Joaquin Valley—an outgrowth of the California agribusiness boom begun in the
first half of the twentieth century. As Todd Holmes demonstrates (pages 24–41),
the rapid development of California’s agribusiness forged one of the first dialectics
between cultural symbols and economic enterprise in the modern American West.
© Mark Cohen; www.markcohenphotography.com

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from the publishers
CALIFORNIA HISTORY, Spring/Summer 2013
Published quarterly © 2013 by California
Historical Society
LC 75-640289/ISSN 0162-2897
$40.00 of each membership is designated
for California Historical Society membership
services, including the subscription to California
History.
KNOWN OFFICE OF PUBLICATION:
California Historical Society
Loyola Marymount University
One LMU Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659
ADMINISTRATIVE HEADQUARTERS/
NORTH BAKER RESEARCH LIBRARY
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Contact: 415.357.1848
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Website: www.californiahistoricalsociety.org
Periodicals Postage Paid at Los Angeles,
California, and at additional mailing offices.
POSTMASTER
Send address changes to:
California History CHS
678 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94105-4014
THE CALIFORNIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY is a
statewide membership-based organization designated by the Legislature as the state historical
society. The California Historical Society inspires
and empowers Californians to make the past a
meaningful part of their contemporary lives.
A quarterly journal published by CHS since 1922,
California History features articles by leading
scholars and writers focusing on the heritage
of California and the West from pre-Columbian
to modern times. Illustrated articles, pictorial
essays, and book reviews examine the ongoing
dialogue between the past and the present. CHS
assumes no responsibility for statements or
opinions of the authors.
www.californiahistoricalsociety.org
We are pleased to announce that California History has a new publisher! Previously scheduled to cease publication, the journal has found another home with
one of our largest and most distinguished American university presses—University of California Press. After nearly a century of issues devoted to the culturally rich histories of California, we are delighted to have formed such a fitting
alliance between our two organizations and are excited by the opportunities
new ownership will bring to California History. To learn more about UC Press’s
diverse and award-winning programs, visit www.ucpress.edu.
This is the California Historical Society’s final issue of the journal, copublished
with UC Press and prepared by CHS’s editorial team, Dr. Janet Fireman, Shelly
Kale, and Dr. James Rawls. Dr. Rawls has volunteered for thirty years as the
publication’s book review editor in a remarkable demonstration of dedication to
California historiography. Enjoy his extended reviews section as you take in the
breadth and diversity of this issue’s provocative articles, selected by Dr. Fireman,
which examine how Californians navigated through legal, economic, cultural,
and social upheaval during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We are also pleased to announce that California History will continue under the
editorial leadership of Dr. Josh Sides. Josh holds the Whitsett Chair of California
History and serves as director of the Center for Southern California Studies at
California State University, Northridge. Broadly knowledgeable and irrepressibly
energetic, he will build upon the fine reputation of the journal by intensifying
its academic rigor and expanding its readership.
UC Press will publish the first issue of California History under its masthead
this fall. Beginning in August, institutions and individuals alike should be on
the lookout for communications containing important information and updates
on how to renew subscriptions through UC Press. The journal—both archived
and current content—will still be accessible through JSTOR’s online hosting
platform and will continue as one of CHS’s many benefits of membership.
We remain grateful for the support of our Boards of Trustees and Directors,
respectively, and in particular want to give our thanks to Jon Christensen and
our staff colleagues Hannah Love and Shelly Kale.
Our lasting gratitude goes out to all our members and supporters who believe in
the power of history and of scholarly inquiry and production as part of the cultural core of humanity. We hope that you will support CHS and California History
and join our combined efforts in expanding the journal’s reach and relevance.
Most sincerely,
Anthea M. Hartig, Ph.D.
Executive Director
[email protected]

Ca l i fo rn i a Hi s tor y
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Alison Mudditt
Director
University of California Press
[email protected]
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collections
The Portia at Alviso Wharf, Santa Clara, Cal., ca. 1890s
California Historical Society, FN-25872/CHS2012.1041.jpg
San Francisco Bay
Probably no geographical feature is
represented more across the spectrum
of the CHS collections than San Francisco Bay. Posters, books, ephemera,
manuscripts, photographs, and other
formats capture the bay in its many
functions—as California’s first major
port and as transportation hub, strategic military site, industrial mecca,
fishery, scenic backdrop to cities,
bridges, and ballparks, and complicated
and critical element of the region’s
ecosystem. The prominent and vital
role the bay plays in California’s history
ensures a ubiquitous presence in the
CHS collections.
During the nineteenth century, a variety of commercial vessels transported
cargoes to and from harbors and ports
around San Francisco Bay. This photograph depicts the ship Portia docked
at Alviso, the former boating and ship-
ping port of San Jose that was the
transportation center for travel from
the Santa Clara Valley to San Francisco
in the years prior to the railroads.
Located in the southernmost part of
the bay, Alviso is one of many locations
featured in CHS’s exhibition “Curating
the Bay: Crowdsourcing a New Environmental History” (April 7–August 25,
2013), a cultural and environmental
history of San Francisco Bay.
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The American Conquest of Alta California
and the Instinct for Justice:
The “First” Jury Trial in California
By Barry Goode
Friday, Sept. 4. I empanelled to-day the first jury ever summoned in California. The plaintiff and defendant are
among the principal citizens of the country. The case was one involving property on the one side, and integrity of
character on the other. Its merits had been pretty widely discussed, and had called forth unusual interest. Onethird of the jury were Mexicans, one-third Californians, and the other third Americans. This mixture may have
the better answered the ends of justice, but I was apprehensive at one time it would embarrass the proceedings;
for the plaintiff spoke in English, the defendant in French, the jury, save the Americans, Spanish, and the witnesses all of the languages known to California. But through the silent attention which prevailed, the tact of Mr.
Hartnell, who acted as interpreter, and the absence of young lawyers, we got along very well.
The examination of the witnesses lasted five or six hours; I then gave the case to the jury, stating the questions
of fact upon which they were to render their verdict. They retired for an hour, and then returned, when the foreman handed in their verdict, which was clear and explicit, though the case itself was rather complicated. To this
verdict, both parties bowed without a word of dissent. The inhabitants who witnessed the trial, said it was what
they liked—that there could be no bribery in it—that the opinion of twelve honest men should set the case forever
at rest. And so it did, though neither party completely triumphed in the issue. One recovered his property, which
had been taken from him by mistake, the other his character, which had been slandered by design. If there is
anything on earth besides religion for which I would die, it is the right of trial by jury.1
T
his is how the judge Walter Colton
described what he called the first jury
trial in California. It is how all the great historians of California who have noted the 1846 trial
have described it, too.2 But much of that description is wrong and the rest is incomplete. (Indeed,
it was not even the first jury trial.) The truth is far
more interesting. On one hand, it is the story of
an attempt to render justice in an occupied frontier in a time of war. On another, it is the story of
a newly appointed officeholder’s endeavor to deal
with the most controversial issue he faced while
standing for election. Both are true.
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Monterey in 1846
The trial was held in Monterey on September 4,
1846. Although Monterey was the capital of Alta
California, it was a small community whose elite
consisted of a handful of Mexican government
officials and Hispanic, American, English, Scottish, Irish, and French entrepreneurs.3 In addition, there was a polyglot population of laborers
in the surrounding area. The community functioned reasonably well, but this mix of nationalities, languages, and cultures created some
inevitable misunderstandings and frictions.
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Following the United States’ seizure of Monterey in July 1846, Commodore Robert F. Stockton appointed Naval
Chaplain Walter Colton as the town’s alcalde (chief magistrate). This mural depicting the settlement of Monterey
features Colton’s first residence (lower left) and Colton Hall (lower right). One of the most influential persons in the
American occupation of California, Colton observed in the preface of his memoir, Three Years in California: “California will be no more what she has been: the events of a few years have carried her through the progressive changes
of a century.”
Library of Congress; mural by Carol M. Highsmith
Mexican law provided relative stability in the
fields of real property and family law.4 But in
other areas, the Mexican legal and political systems were the source of much dissatisfaction,
particularly among the expatriates. The central
authority in Mexico City was too remote to govern effectively.5 In the twenty-five years since
Mexican independence, there had been at least
twelve internal revolts against the provincial government in Alta California.6 Government was
routinely unstable.
Justice was administered locally by alcaldes,
local magistrates who exercised executive, legislative, and judicial powers. The alcaldes were not
trained in the law. Instead, they were respected
members of the community who were expected
to govern with wisdom, common sense, and an
ability to work well with people. Mediation—not
litigation—lay at the heart of the judicial system.
The alcaldes sought to foster reconciliation and
agreement.7
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There were no juries, in either civil or criminal cases. Civil disputes featured compulsory
mediation and an ineffective system for collecting money owed to a successful claimant.8 This
created discontent among the American residents who were used to a more adversarial, less
conciliatory system of justice and who believed
Mexican law was incapable of protecting their
business interests.9
Many were expecting an end to Mexican rule.
There had been much discussion about which
power—the United States, England, or France—
would take Alta California from Mexico.10 So it
was no surprise when an American fleet, under
the leadership of Commodore John Drake Sloat,
seized the town on July 7, 1846 to begin the
occupation of Alta California.
The locals were eager to learn how Sloat would
administer justice. The commodore had given
thought to that. His first act was to issue a conciliatory proclamation: “Henceforward California
will be a portion of the United States, and its
peaceful inhabitants will enjoy the same rights
and privileges as the citizens of any other portion of that territory, with all the rights and privileges they now enjoy, together with the privilege
of choosing their own magistrates and other
officers for the administration of justice among
themselves. . . . I invite the judges, alcaldes, and
other civil officers to retain their offices, and to
execute their functions as heretofore, that the
public tranquility may not be disturbed; at least,
until the government of the territory can be more
definitely arranged.”11
Sloat asked the incumbent alcaldes, Manuel Díaz
and Joaquín Escamilla, to remain in office.12 But
they declined to serve. So he directed the purser
from the sloop Cyane, Rodman M. Price, and the
surgeon from the sloop Levant, Edward Gilchrist,
to go ashore and assume their duties.13
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A week later, on July 15, Commodore Robert F.
Stockton sailed into Monterey harbor aboard
the frigate Congress.14 Eight days afterward, Sloat
retired, turning command over to Stockton.15
Stockton took a different view of how California
should be governed: he declared martial law. His
proclamation “require[d] . . . all officers, civil and
military . . . to remain quiet at their respective
homes and stations, and to obey the orders they
may receive from me, and by my authority.” It
also promised, “As soon . . . as the officers of the
civil law return to their proper duties, under a
regularly-organized government, and give security for life, liberty, and property, alike to all, the
forces under my command will be withdrawn,
and the people left to manage their own affairs in
their own way.”16
These mixed messages made it difficult for the
inhabitants of Alta California to know what law
governed them. First, Sloat had announced that
he wanted Mexican officials to remain in power
but to apply American law, at least in part. Then,
in a more bellicose statement, Stockton directed
Mexican officials to “remain quiet at their . . .
stations” and follow his orders until civil government was restored.17 Regardless of what was
said about governance, two Americans—Price
and Gilchrist—now held the most powerful local
positions as alcaldes.
Soon it became clear that Stockton was not going
to stay in Monterey to give his orders. Between
July 15 and August 1, he prepared to sail south
to continue the battle for Alta California. He
decided that he could not leave Gilchrist and
Price in Monterey, since he needed the surgeon
and supply officer for more urgent roles.18 That
left the question: who could Stockton spare? He
must have concluded the ship’s chaplain was
most expendable, for on July 28, he ordered
Walter Colton ashore.
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The Judge
It was a strange turn of events for the Congregational Church minister from Vermont. Walter
Colton was born on May 9, 1797, one of twelve
children. It was said that his father had not
missed a Sabbath service in more than forty
years.19 Although Colton was sent to learn cabinetry at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in Yale
at nineteen and then attended Andover Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1825.20
After being licensed by the church, he took a
position as chaplain and professor of belles
lettres at a military academy in Connecticut.21
Four years later, he moved to Washington, D.C.,
where he edited a newspaper. He also became
friends with President Andrew Jackson, who
attended services at which Colton preached.22
When Colton resigned from the newspaper,
President Jackson offered him a position as chaplain in the U.S. Navy. Colton accepted. One of
only nine navy chaplains, he was commissioned
on January 14, 1831.23 He served on various ships
as well as on shore in Washington, D.C., Boston,
and Philadelphia, until he sailed on the Congress
with Commodore Stockton on October 25, 1845,
bound for Valparaíso, Callao, Honolulu, and
Monterey.24
Stockton and Colton developed a relationship
during the many months they sailed together.
Stockton was a religious man who occasionally gave lay sermons.25 He preached that “[a]ll
the troubles between man and man, and all the
troubles that have arisen in the Christian community, arise in the first place from a disregard
of [the Bible’s] sacred precepts.”26 So who better
to maintain order in a land with unsettled law
than the ship’s chaplain?
Colton took up his duties as alcalde on July 30,
1846. He noted immediately that his jurisdiction
included “the reckless Californian, the half-wild
Indian, the roving trapper of the West, the law-
Walter Colton (1797–1851) served as alcalde of Monterey from 1846 to
1849—an uncertain time in uncertain territory. Untrained in the law, he
administered justice guided by his theological training and personal sense
of right and wrong. He described his position as involving “every breach
of the peace, every case of crime, every business obligation, and every disputed land-title within a space of three hundred miles. . . . There is not a
judge on any bench in England or the United States, whose power is so
absolute as that of the alcalde of Monterey.”
California Historical Society, FN-08312/CHS2013.1161.tif
less Mexican, the licentious Spaniard, the scolding Englishman, the absconding Frenchman,
the luckless Irishman, the plodding German,
the adventurous Russian, and the discontented
Mormon.” And, he lamented, “[t]hrough this
discordant mass I am to maintain order, punish
crime and redress injuries.”27 Two days later, his
former ship, the Congress, sailed out of Monterey
harbor to war. Only the Savannah—one of the
ships of the Pacific Squadron that had captured
Monterey—stayed in port to secure the newly
seized city.
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Colton seems to have made a good first impression on the local Americans. A July 30, 1846
letter from James Henry Gleason to his uncle,
Captain John Paty, records: “Our new ‘Alcalde’,
in the person of Rev. Walter Colton enters on the
duties of his office today. It is a wise appointment,
he is a Christian gentleman, capable, just, kind
hearted, but firm in his convictions of right.”28
The new alcalde may have brought good judgment and interpersonal skills to the job, but he
also brought significant impediments. He was a
Protestant minister in a Catholic land, spoke no
Spanish, was ignorant of the customs of the community, and knew none of its inhabitants. He
found lodging in the home of Thomas O. Larkin,
the American consul who could, undoubtedly,
have been a great help.29 But Stockton asked
Larkin to help him negotiate with the Mexican
leaders who had retreated toward Los Angeles. By
August 1, 1846, Larkin sailed south with Stockton
and did not return to Monterey until September
15, 1846.30 Thus, Colton had the benefit of no
more than two days of advice from Monterey’s
most prominent and informed American.
Colton did, however, find a local guide. He
inherited from Price and Gilchrist a secretary
named William Garner, whose services proved
invaluable to the novice officeholder.31 Garner
was born in 1803 and educated in London. In
1824, he shipped out on a whaler, arriving in
San Francisco Bay in the fall of 1824. When the
ship set out again, he had a serious dispute with
the captain, who in November 1824 set Garner
and four others ashore in Santa Barbara. They
were marooned in a foreign land.32 A resourceful young man, Garner learned Spanish, converted to Catholicism, married, and established
a lumber business in the Carmel Valley. He was
sometimes active in Mexican politics and military
affairs and knew many of the provincial leaders.
In 1839, he was granted Mexican citizenship and
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in 1843 built a home in Monterey. On January 27,
1846, the Mexican alcalde of Monterey appointed
Garner as the town’s head constable.33 When the
Americans seized the town, Garner was one of
the only incumbent officeholders to switch sides.
Colton recognized Garner’s value, just as Price
and Gilchrist had. As Garner’s biographer
wrote, “[Colton] and Garner seem to have taken
an instant liking to each other. William Garner
became not only his efficient clerk and skillful
translator but his guide and mentor—showing
him the country . . . explaining the manner of
thinking and living with the Californians.”34
Colton set about learning his job. There is an
intriguing document in the Mexican archives in
Salinas, which any new judge would recognize
instantly. It is a “cheat sheet” for a new bench
officer. It includes a form of oath to be administered to a witness, a draft form of warrant, and
a draft form of an affidavit. Clearly, Colton was
assembling the tools of his new trade.35
Colton occupied an office and kept it open from
9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.36 Horse theft was, in the
nineteenth century, as common as auto theft
is today. By the end of his first month in office,
Colton had sentenced a total of eight Indians,
three “Californians,” and one Englishman for
stealing horses or bullocks.37 He gave none a
jury trial.38
As alcalde, Colton also had legislative and executive powers. On August 13, 1846, he ordered
that “no one is to sell or dispose of any intoxicating liquors whatever, and all persons that have
formerly vended liquor, and all store and shop
keepers and keepers of public houses are prohibited from keeping any liquors, or wines of
any kind or description in their shops or stores,
so doing . . . will be looked upon with the greatest severity, and punished by forfeiture of their
liquors, fine and imprisonment at the discretion
of the Magistrate.”39 This seems unlikely to have
made him popular in some quarters.
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Colton also returned to the newspaper business. Just two weeks after coming ashore, he
and another American, Robert Semple, began
publishing The Californian, the first newspaper printed in California. Parts were printed in
English, parts in Spanish. Garner did at least
some of the translations.
Colton’s Political Problem
Meanwhile, challenges were brewing for Colton
on two fronts. One was political. On August
13, 1846, Stockton captured Los Angeles and
believed the Mexican army to be routed. On
August 17, he issued a new proclamation that
continued martial law and anticipated California’s organization as a territory of the United
States. But until then, he said, “the people will
be permitted, and are now requested to meet in
their several towns and departments . . . to elect
civil officers.”40 On August 22, he ordered that
elections for the position of alcalde take place
on September 15, conducted by the incumbent
alcalde.41 Colton published both proclamations in
The Californian in English and Spanish.
Colton had been in office only three weeks. Here
was his chance to return to his assignment as a
navy chaplain. Although he could not immediately rejoin the Congress, which was somewhere
in southern California prosecuting the war with
Mexico, he could have gone back to his duties
as chaplain aboard the Savannah, which had
remained in port. Indeed, he had conducted Sunday services aboard that ship. But he seems to
have taken a liking to public office, for he decided
to stand for election.
Stockton may have secretly directed his appointed
alcaldes to try to retain office.42 His San Francisco
alcalde, Washington Bartlett, sought election on
September 15.43 But running for alcalde seemed
to present political difficulties of the first order.
Indeed, Bartlett’s clerk, Joseph T. Downey, frankly
admitted that “if the People had their own way,
our Naval Judge would lose his office and well he
knew it.”44 Downey described how the election
was rigged to ensure Bartlett’s victory.45
In Monterey, an established elite of Americans,
British, and Californios (and others of Spanish or
Mexican descent) held office and ran successful
businesses. They were a coherent social group
that had led the community—politically, socially,
and commercially—for many years. Most had
looked forward to the American takeover and the
freedom and stability it would bring. Colton was
an outsider, at best a recent arrival to their circle.
If the Americans were sincere about the principle of self-rule, it seemed unlikely that a newly
arrived military man would be elected.
Colton’s Other Problem: Isaac Graham
While Colton was sorting through the problem
of how to get elected, his second challenge was
brewing. He was about to deal with a dispute
spawned by one of the nastiest Americans in Alta
California: Isaac Graham.
Although Graham has had a few defenders, most
have described him as an illiterate, combative,
obstreperous figure. In 1846, his erstwhile friend
Joseph L. Majors signed a petition alleging that
Graham “is perpetually corrupting the peace
of our vicinity and for the last six years has not
ceased to invite or attempt revolutions, challenges
for duels, assassinations, and disobedience of the
laws even to the extent of arming himself when
summoned.”46 Earlier, Majors had written to the
Mexican authorities, renouncing Graham as “a
seditious malefactor who is constantly disturbing
the peace and precipitating others in trouble and
difficulties which have no goal.”47
In divorce proceedings, Graham’s second (bigamous) wife accused him of domestic violence:
“I was so tired of being beat . . . and [found]
it impossible to please the old tyrant.”48 His
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6/18/13 11:23 AM
The men spent several months trapping, hunting, and surviving dangerous encounters with the
Arapahoe and Pawnee tribes.53 (Two members of
their party were killed.) By the end of 1830, they
arrived in Taos, New Mexico. It is probable that
Graham continued trapping in the West before
heading to California sometime between 1833
and 1835.54 There is evidence of him in Salinas
in 1833,55 and he is recorded in the Los Angeles
census of 1836 as a thirty-four-year-old tramp or
transient.56 However, most historians believe that
Graham was living in the vicinity of Monterey by
1836. Indeed, in November of that year he helped
Juan Bautista Alvarado overthrow the government of Nicolás Gutiérrez.57
But for the pistol and knife, this would be a misleadingly formal
portrait of one of the nastiest, roughest, besotted men in Alta California, Isaac Graham (1800–1863). Even his friends did not defend his
character. Colton agreed: this was a bad man.
Courtesy of California History Room, California State Library,
Sacramento, California
mother-in-law advised her daughter to put “poison spiders” in the dumplings she fed him.49
Perhaps the most succinct summary of Graham’s
reprobate life was a comment by a contemporary: upon hearing of Graham’s death, Captain
Thomas Fallon noted dryly, “his mourning period
would be brief.”50
Graham was born in the western reaches of Virginia in 1800 in Fincastle, a small town nestled
in the Roanoke Valley between the Appalachian
Mountains and the Blue Ridge. When he was
three, his family moved farther west to Crab
Orchard, Kentucky, a small town whose population even today is fewer than a thousand.51
When he was eighteen, he left home. In 1823, he
married a Miss Jones, with whom he had four
children. But by May 1830, he headed west with
Henry Naile and several others, including, perhaps, William Ware and Joseph L. Majors.52
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Graham was a member of a small but growing
community of Americans settling California.
Initially, he lived near Salinas in an area called
Natividad. There he ran a distillery with his old
trapping partner, Henry Naile. Their tule hut
became known as a gathering place for disreputable trappers, runaway sailors, and other
“ruffians.”58 In 1840, Governor Alvarado ordered
the arrest of Graham and many others for plotting against the Mexican government. They were
sent to Mexico to stand trial but were acquitted
and returned to Monterey the following year.59
Graham reestablished himself in the redwoods
north of Santa Cruz. Since foreigners could not
own land in Alta California, he and Naile worked
through their friend Majors (who had obtained
Mexican citizenship) to get title to Rancho Zayante.60 Graham either built or bought the first
water-powered sawmill in California and began
producing boards.61 By 1846, lumber had become
a major industry. Nearly one million feet of
boards, shingles, and spars were exported that
year.62 Ships picked up wood from the beach at
Santa Cruz and sold it along the California coast
and in the Sandwich Islands.63 It was this trade
that gave rise to the dispute facing Colton.
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Graham brought his lumber to the Santa Cruz beach from his property at Rancho Zayante, the site of his sawmill. In
the early 1840s, he was unable to acquire the land due to his refusal to apply for Mexican citizenship, a prerequisite to
taking title. His friend Joseph Majors took title instead as a front for Graham and a partner. In 1843, Graham’s second
attempt to take title was rebuffed by the Mexican authorities. He finally established his ownership of the property after
the American occupation.
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
The Dispute
Graham had been nursing a claim against
Charles Roussillon, one of his competitors in the
lumber business. A Frenchman who had come
to California from Bordeaux, possibly as early as
1833, Roussillon had set up a water-powered sawmill not far from Graham’s.64
The French community in Alta California was
small. Jean-Louis Vignes, another native of the
Bordeaux region, had settled in Los Angeles
in the early 1830s and established a rancho
and vineyard on about 104 acres. He actively
recruited other skilled Frenchmen to join him.65
His nephew Pierre Sansevain arrived around
1839.66 Roussillon and Sansevain probably met at
Vignes’s rancho. They became close friends and
started a number of businesses together.67
Sansevain obtained a grant of land, the Cañada
del Rincón rancho in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
It adjoined the southern border of Graham’s
property at Zayante.68 There, he and Roussillon built a sawmill sometime between 1842
and 1844.69
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“ With crackling blows of axes sounding musically driven
by strong arms,
Riven deep by the sharp tongues of the axes, there in
the redwood forest dense,
I heard the mighty tree its death-chant chanting . . .
Chant not of the past only, but the future.”
In his poem “Song of the Redwood-Tree,” Walt Whitman immortalized the fallen California redwoods. In
sawmills resembling this steam-powered one—illustrated in the August 1860 issue of Hutchings’ California Magazine—the material was produced from which the future of California would be built. Graham’s
water-powered sawmill was reputed to be California’s first.
Graham built a steep road—still in existence as
Graham Hill Road—on which to haul lumber
from the Zayante hills to the Santa Cruz beach.70
Roussillon likely used that road, too. Both men
piled their lumber on the beach and sold it to visiting ships. Their piles were about twenty yards
from one another.
These competing piles of lumber created the
conflict that led to the case now confronting
Colton. Graham contended that Roussillon sold
lumber to two trading vessels but directed the
buyers to take the wood from Graham’s pile
rather than his own. In short, Graham charged
that Roussillon sold Graham’s inventory and
pocketed the cash.
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Graham said that Roussillon’s deceptions
occurred once in 1845 and once in 1846. It is
possible that he did not seek satisfaction in court
the first time because he distrusted Mexican justice. But that explanation is not wholly satisfactory, for Graham brought two disputes involving
other parties to the Mexican alcalde in 1846. One
was settled by arbitration in April and one by
mediation in May.71
Whatever the reason, Graham waited until
August 30, 1846 to lay his dispute with Roussillon formally before Colton.72 The alcalde was
then likely making preparations for the imminent election.73 However, Graham and Roussil-
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lon had been assembling affidavits since at least
August 9, and Colton was well aware that the
matter was brewing. As he wrote, “[i]ts merits
had been pretty widely discussed, and had called
forth unusual interest.”74 Indeed, as early as
August 20 Colton had written to the alcalde of
Santa Cruz, asking him to order five people to
appear in Monterey to testify.75
Graham instituted his suit with a “complaint of
theft.”76 It charged Roussillon with selling about
10,000 feet of Graham’s lumber to the ship
Fama in July 1845 and with taking another 5,000
feet of boards, 50 joists, and 52 rafters and selling
them to the Euphemia in July 1846. Although the
complaint uses the criminal term theft, the case
was treated as a civil matter, in which Graham
asserted that Roussillon converted Graham’s
property to his own use.
Graham v. Roussillon caused quite a stir within
the community. As Colton put it, “the plaintiff
and defendant are among the principal citizens
of the country. The case . . . involv[es] property
on one side, and integrity of character on the
other.”77 How he handled the dispute could have a
significant impact on the September 15 election.78
Colton Picks a Jury
Colton set the trial for Friday, September 4. Then,
in a masterstroke, he decided that a twelve-man
jury would try the case—unlike every other case
he had heard. It was a brilliant maneuver. Colton
would not have to render a decision by himself
and suffer, alone, the political consequences of
its outcome.
But that was not the extent of his creativity. Colton
put four of his rival candidates for alcalde—William Hartnell, Juan Malarin, Manuel Díaz, and
Milton Little79—on the jury, thereby tying most
of his competitors to the controversial case and
ensuring they would share any resulting credit
or blame.
Although Colton’s diary describes the jury as
having equal numbers of Americans, Californios, and Mexicans, it is not accurate. He placed
five Americans on the jury: Charles Chase and
George Minor, respectively the fleet surgeon and
a lieutenant off the Savannah;80 Talbot H. Green,
a native of Pennsylvania and resident of Monterey
since 1842;81 Milton Little, a New Yorker who had
arrived in 1844;82 and Robert Thomes, who had
migrated from Maine to California in 1841.83
It is difficult to understand how Colton distinguished between Mexicans and Californios.84
Juan Malarin, who came from Peru, had been
in California since 1820; William Hartnell,
who was born in England, since 1822.85 Colton
regarded them as Californios, perhaps because
they had lived in Alta California for more than
twenty years.
The remaining five jurors were from Mexico,
and all had arrived more recently. José Abrego
and Florencio Serrano had come to San Diego
with the Híjar-Padrés party in 1834. Abrego made
his way to Monterey and worked as a hatter and
trader. He owned considerable land and held a
variety of offices under the Mexican government,
including treasurer of territorial finances.86 (He
was wealthy enough to own one of the first pianos in California.87) Serrano also was prominent
in the community, serving as a teacher, judge,
and, in 1844, one of two alcaldes.88 Manuel Díaz,
who had lived in Alta California since 1843, was
alcalde at the time the United States seized Monterey.89 Pedro Narváez served in the Mexican navy
and had been the captain of the port of Monterey
since 1839.90 Rafael Sánchez was a Mexican sublieutenant who arrived in Monterey about 1842.
He had extensive landholdings and was in charge
of the Custom House in 1845.91
The Jury as a Political Symbol
Colton’s decision to appoint a jury served his
immediate political needs. But in a larger sense,
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it was an important signal to the Americans
and British in Alta California: trial by jury was
emblematic of the liberty they hoped the American conquest would bring. A jury trial plucked
deep chords in their memories of home and their
understanding of how a “proper” government
should function.
It is hard to overstate the significance of juries
to the mid-nineteenth-century Anglo American
mind. As the legal scholar Stephan Landsman
has observed, “[T]he . . . rise of the jury in both
England and America [is] . . . intertwined with the
creation and defense of fundamental rights.”92
In England, the jury was said to be “the rand
bulwark of [an Englishman’s] liberties.”93 In each
of the American colonies, local law jealously
protected the right to trial by jury.94 Indeed, the
Declaration of Independence cited King George
III for depriving colonists of that right.
While Colton was growing up, the “use and
democratization of juries was expanding.”95 By
1830, Justice Joseph Story, writing for the United
States Supreme Court, observed, “trial by jury
is justly dear to the American people. It has
always been an object of deep interest and solicitude, and every encroachment upon it has been
watched with great jealousy.”96
Alexis de Tocqueville understood the American jury to be a political institution that “places
the real direction of society in the hands of the
governed, or a portion of the governed, instead
of leaving it under the authority of the Government.”97 But more than that, “the jury, which is
the most energetic means of making the people
rule, is also the most efficacious means of teaching it to rule well.”98
The depth of the American commitment to law
and the jury is evident in the way in which it was
utilized by the overland pioneers.99 West of Saint
Joseph, Missouri, there were no institutions of
government to regulate the emigrants. Yet when
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homicides occurred, the travelers convened juries
to try the matters, even if it meant delaying their
trips—which could be dangerous, since they were
racing to cross the Sierra Nevada before snow
made the mountains virtually impassable.100
Colton’s Variations
By the mid-nineteenth century, the functions of
the jury were not much in dispute. Trial procedures had acquired a significant degree of uniformity in the American states. If a litigant wished
to have a jury trial, a sizeable panel of potential
jurors was summoned to court. From that panel,
men were chosen by lot—in open court—and
called into the jury box. There they were screened
in a voir dire (“to see, to speak”) process of questioning prospective jurors to be sure they had
little or no information about the dispute, no relevant biases, and no preconceptions about how
the case should be decided. Once a jury of (usually twelve) men was impaneled, its members sat
in silence as evidence of an alleged crime or civil
wrong was presented to them. At the end of the
trial, the judge instructed them on the law and
told them what factual issues they were to decide.
The jury then retired to deliberate in secret and
render a decision. Jurors were neither required
nor expected to give a reason for their verdict.101
Colton’s jury served some of these functions.
Most notably, it heard evidence, determined the
facts in dispute, and agreed upon a verdict. However, Colton’s recollection of the legal process
was incomplete, and his jury was unusual in
several ways.
First, Colton seems not to have asked the parties if they wanted a jury. He had previously
conducted criminal trials without the benefit
of a jury. Now, for the first time, it appears, he
decided to assemble one, without a jury demand
from either party or an opportunity for the litigants to waive the jury.
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Second, the selection of jurors was not random. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
common-law England, the sheriff selected people
and brought them to court to serve as jurors.102
As this led to charges of bias or corruption,
American jurisdictions generally prepared lists
of potential jurors from which a jury would be
selected by lot in open court. This helped to
ensure that they were not pre-selected to guarantee a certain result at trial. Colton ignored these
protocols. He neither compiled a list of potential
jurors nor chose the actual jury panel by lot in
open court, handpicking them instead.
Third, Colton assembled a jury akin to that which
ancient law called a jury de medietate linguae (jury
of the half-tongue). Until Victorian times, English
statutes permitted a foreigner who was party to
litigation to request a special jury composed of six
foreigners and six English citizens. Although use
of this special jury was all but abandoned in the
United States, Colton’s instinct for justice caused
him to mirror this antiquated practice. (Both the
American and Frenchman were considered “foreigners” in Monterey’s Mexican community.)103
Fourth, Colton’s blue-ribbon jury of the community’s political, business, and military elite was
definitely not a jury of the litigants’ peers. They
looked down on Graham and his roughneck, illbred, illiterate existence.104
Finally, the parties had no opportunity to challenge individual jurors. This right to challenge a
potential juror is deeply ingrained in both common law and America’s early statutory law.105
That jurors must be disinterested is a bedrock
principle of American jurisprudence, ensuring
that there are no pre-existing relationships or
biases that might prevent a fair trial.106
In Graham v. Roussillon, the absence of challenges was not an academic point, for the jurors
were hardly strangers to the controversies that
Graham had aroused in the community. Indeed,
except for Chase and Minor (the two jurors from
the Savannah), the jurors knew one another quite
well, and some of the witnesses, too,107 further
compromising their impartiality.
Since Monterey consisted of fewer than one
hundred homes,108 it was inevitable that many
jurors were neighbors. Juan Malarin, Milton
Little, and Pedro Narváez owned city lots within a
block or two of one another.109 William Hartnell
had a house in town and a ranch in Alisal (now
Salinas).110 Manuel Díaz also lived in town;111 his
sister was married to alcalde candidate David
Spence, who owned property on the same block
as Malarin.112
Other jurors were related. Pedro Narváez and
José Abrego married sisters; so, too, did Juan
Malarin and Manuel Díaz. The four women all
came from the Estrada family and were first
cousins. Malarin’s daughter married an Estrada
brother.113
Other jurors were joined by historical events.
As members of the Híjar-Padrés party of immigrants, Abrego and Florencio Serrano had known
each other at least since 1834. Robert Thomes
and Talbot Green came to California with the
Bidwell-Bartleson party in 1841.114 Abrego and
Narváez had negotiated the Mexican government’s surrender when Commodore Thomas ap
Catesby Jones had mistakenly seized Monterey
in 1842.115 Abrego and Hartnell had attended a
meeting at Thomas Larkin’s house to discuss
the political situation in the spring of 1846.116 A
few days later, Abrego was called upon by Mexican General José Antonio Castro for advice and,
along with Narváez and Rafael Sánchez, signed a
declaration expressing their support for Castro in
the latest internecine dispute in Alta California.117
Hartnell and Narváez met Sloat the day he sailed
into Monterey harbor.118
Serrano was a local teacher whose students
included the sons of Malarin and Narváez and
the court clerk, William Garner.119 A couple of
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Joseph Revere, a lieutenant aboard the sloop-of-war Cyane, sailed into Monterey harbor in 1846, where he made this
sketch of the town. He also visited the redwoods above Santa Cruz and described the logging operations there: “The
people here are chiefly engaged in the lumber trade, excellent saw-mills having been erected by Mr. Graham and
others, which are constantly in operation, all the lumber they can produce selling readily at high prices.”
California Historical Society, CHS2013.1162.tif
years earlier, Malarin had enrolled his son in
Hartnell’s school.120 Indeed, Hartnell and Malarin had been acquainted since the 1820s.121
There were commercial links, too. Hartnell
helped Colton establish The Californian by finding
the printing press, identifying potential subscribers, and serving as an editor of the Spanishlanguage section.122 Lieutenant George Minor
provided office space for the paper in an American barracks.123 Both Hartnell and Green bought
advertisements in Colton’s newspaper.124 When
Serrano sold a town lot to Larkin on July 3, 1846,
Hartnell translated the document into English.125
In short, this was a jury composed primarily of
men who had extensive relationships reaching
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back twenty years or more. Seven had been highranking officials in the Mexican government,
three were prominent American businessmen,
and many were partisans in the disputes that
roiled the Mexican government. Graham, too,
was active in a number of those battles for power.
Some of the jurors were on the same side as Graham; some on the opposite side. This jury was
not a blank slate.
The Trial
One other element was missing from the jury
trial: lawyers. Colton observed, “through . . . the
absence of young lawyers, we got along very
well.”126 That was not a stray comment.127 A
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year later, in 1847, when attorneys had appeared
in Monterey, he was pleased to implement the
Mexican law that prohibited lawyers from making closing arguments. He thought that would
only slow the wheels of justice: if “the floodgates
of eloquence” were lifted, he explained, “I should
never get through with the business pressing on
my hands.”128 Consequently, in Graham v. Roussillon the two litigants represented themselves.
There are notes of the testimony. Although others have attributed them to Colton, they were
actually written by the clerk, Garner.129 According
to Colton, the trial lasted a few hours, yet Garner’s notes are only five and a half pages. Since
Hartnell had to translate all the testimony, the
case would have proceeded slowly.130 But even
if the trial were slow paced, it seems likely that
some testimony escaped Garner’s quill.
As plaintiff, Graham presented his case first.
Remarkably, he did not testify. Instead, he called
six witnesses. One testified about the 1845 incident and three about the 1846 incident. The
other two gave rather confusing testimony; Garner did not record which incident they were discussing. When the men had finished, it was clear
that Graham had failed to prove his case.
The only witness to address Graham’s complaint
that Roussillon had sold about 10,000 feet of
Graham’s lumber to the Fama in 1845131 was Graham’s old crony, William Ware,132 and most of his
testimony consisted of hearsay. He related what
Graham, G. H. Nye (captain of the Fama), and
E. H. Dunn (first officer) had said while standing on the beach the previous year: Graham said
that some of his lumber was missing and Dunn
said that it was put on the Fama. Dunn said he
bought the lumber from Roussillon, but when
asked to identify the pile from which it came, he
pointed to where Graham said he had stockpiled
his boards. Since Ware did not testify to any
quantities, the jury had no idea whether 10,000
feet was taken, as Graham maintained, or some
other amount.
Graham committed the amateur’s mistake of asking his witness a question without knowing what
answer would be given. Garner’s notes record
that when Ware was “asked if he knew that said
lumber belonged to Graham or not, he answered
he did not know,”133 a response that could not
have helped Graham’s cause.
With respect to the 1846 incident—regarding
Graham’s 5,000 feet of lumber—Graham called
William Swasey to the stand. Although Swasey
had been in California less than a year and in
Monterey only six months,134 he was Larkin’s
clerk, which probably gave him presumptive
credibility. But he, too, offered largely hearsay
evidence. He was on the Santa Cruz beach with
Graham and Dunn in July 1846 and heard Graham complain that his lumber had been taken
and must have been delivered to the Euphemia.
Swasey testified that Dunn said he bought the
wood from Roussillon, who twice told him which
pile of lumber to use. (He later sent a man to
point out the pile again.) Swasey testified that he
knew “for certain” that the lumber belonged to
Graham; however, he did not say how he knew
that. (A lawyer would have objected that the
testimony lacked foundation.) Garner recorded
Swasey’s final dig before he left the stand: “Witness thinks the owner might easily be able to
distinguish his own pile of lumber from another
person’s.” However, again, Graham’s witness
failed to establish how much lumber was taken
and certainly did not offer evidence to support
Graham’s complaint.
Although Graham had listed Dunn as a potential witness, he did not call him. Instead, Colton
allowed other witnesses to give hearsay testimony
about what they heard Dunn say. This seems a
bit unfair, considering that Dunn had executed
an affidavit on August 4, 1846, in which he
swore that he had said nothing to Graham to
give him “any idea or authority” to take action
against Roussillon with regard to lumber dispatched to the Euphemia. (Dunn’s affidavit is
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Graham and Roussillon placed their lumber in this area of the Santa Cruz beach near the mouth of the San Lorenzo
River. In the account of his sea voyage to California, William Henry Thomes described bringing the lumber aboard ship:
“We anchored about half a mile from the beach . . . [W]e had several times to raft lumber and shingles, and up to our
necks in water for twelve hours a day, for a week at a time. . . . It was cruel work.” This 1885 photograph was made ten
years after the railroad arrived at the Santa Cruz beach.
Santa Cruz Public Libraries
silent with regard to the 1845 incident involving
the Fama.)135
The other two witnesses to the 1846 incident,
William Davis and Francisco Alviso, gave almost
diametrically opposite testimony, although both
agreed that about 8,000 feet of lumber were
loaded onto the Euphemia, 3,000 more than Graham claimed. Davis, part owner of the Euphemia,
testified that he originally obtained 1,900 feet
from Roussillon and then asked him to bring an
additional 6,000, while Alviso said that he had
brought 6,000 feet to the ship, after which 2,000
more were requested.
Alviso seems to have been something of an evasive witness, but he was not skilled at dissembling.136 First he said that Roussillon told him
to deliver the extra 2,000 feet of lumber. Then
he contradicted himself, declaring that he did
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not know who ordered him to do that. Finally,
he swore that Roussillon did not tell him from
which pile to take the lumber and did not give
him any orders.
But Graham impeached Alviso with a written
statement the witness had signed on August 12,
when he was summoned before the alcalde in
Santa Cruz. There, Alviso acknowledged that
Roussillon had ordered him to take the lumber to
the beach. Somewhere in this tangled web, Alviso
asserted that he did “not know whether the lumber belonged to Graham or no.” The jury was not
persuaded by his testimony.
Graham called two other witnesses who may
have been in business together selling lumber:
George Chapell137 and Alexander Bernal. Garner’s
notes do not specify which of the two incidents
they discussed. Each gave a confusing account of
the quantity of lumber they delivered and sold.
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The Euphemia was a British brig captured during the War of 1812. In 1845, William Heath Davis
and his partners, E. & H. Grimes, bought it for trade in the Pacific. It arrived in Monterey on March
31, 1846 and sailed the Alta California coast until August 23, 1846, when it departed for Hawaii with,
among other things, the lumber bought from Roussillon that Graham claimed was his. By 1849, Davis
sold the Euphemia to San Francisco for use as a prison and insane asylum. In 1921, during excavation for a new building, the remains of the ship were discovered in the bay mud under 30 feet of silt at
the corner of Battery and Sacramento Streets, where it remains buried today.
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In the 1840s, logging was rough, dirty work done by “a pretty obstinate set of fellows” who lived in the hills and came
into town for drink and supplies. Nicholas “Cheyenne” Dawson described his state after several months whipsawing timber: “I was nearly naked; what clothes I had were soiled and ragged as I could hire no washing or mending
done. . . . My diet for a year had been meat alone, except two or three times when I had eaten a tortilla.”
Chapell muddled matters further by testifying
that while working at Graham’s mill, Graham
told him “to use the lumber on the beach if he
wished to do so.” Chapell said he delivered 1,200
feet of Graham’s lumber to Roussillon. Bernal
confirmed that he and Chapell had sold Graham’s lumber.
Just before Graham closed his case, he must
have realized that none of his witnesses had
mentioned the joists or rafters. He recalled Ware,
who testified that he saw a rafter with Graham’s
mill mark on it near Roussillon’s house two days
earlier. Graham also re-called Bernal, who said
that Graham had brought him to a place near
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Roussillon’s house where he saw some joists with
Graham’s mark on them.
In short, Graham rested his case without establishing any particular quantity of lumber, joists,
or rafters that might have been converted by
Roussillon. It appears that Graham’s case was
more bluster than substance, much like the man.
Roussillon’s evidence painted a different picture.
His first witness, François Poile,138 testified that
Roussillon had sold some lumber to the clerk of
an unnamed vessel. When Roussillon directed
Poile to show the clerk which lumber to take,
Poile pointed to 1,200 feet lying on the beach.
Those boards, he acknowledged, originated at
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Graham’s mill, but Chapell had delivered them
to Poile, who, in turn, had delivered them to
Roussillon.
Graham wanted to question Poile, but the concept of cross-examination appears to have eluded
Colton. According to Garner’s records, “Poile
[was] re-called by Graham.” When questioned by
Graham, Poile stuck by his story.
Next, Roussillon called Robert King,139 whose
testimony focused not on Graham but on Henry
Naile, Graham’s partner in Graham and Naile,
the partnership that ran the sawmill140 (Naile
had been killed in April 1846). King testified that
Naile was present in 1845, when Roussillon was
delivering lumber to the Fama. There ensued a
discussion about whether the lumber belonged
to Roussillon or to Graham and Naile’s establishment. The men examined the mill marks and
decided it came from Graham and Naile. Roussillon and Naile settled the dispute. Sometime
afterward, King heard Graham and Naile arguing
about the matter. King testified that he had said
to Naile, “I thought you settled this long ago,”
to which Naile had replied, “I did but Graham
has heated my brain so much that I hardly know
what I am about.”
To bolster King’s testimony, Roussillon called Jose
Bolcoff, a well-respected Russian immigrant who
was alcalde of Santa Cruz in 1845. Bolcoff testified
that Roussillon had described to him the dispute
with Naile, after which he told the Frenchman
that “he had better settle it because it was bad to
have to go to law about the things.” Bolcoff added
that within a few days, both Roussillon and Naile
told him they had settled the matter.
Finally, Roussillon himself testified very briefly
that “the mistake consisted [of ] 3,243 feet [and]
that it was shipped by Nail[e]’s consent.” Presumably, he was referring to the events of 1846, as
his position was that the 1845 dispute was long
since settled. He added that Naile also mistakenly
had taken 1,000 feet of rafters from Roussillon.
The Verdict
It is clear that the jurors believed Roussillon, for
their verdict tracked his testimony exactly. They
found that (1) the amount taken was 3,243 feet,
for which Roussillon owed Graham $97.29, (2)
Naile had taken 1,000 feet of rafters from Roussillon, warranting an offset, thereby reducing the
judgment to $67.29, and (3) Graham should pay
the court costs “as [Roussillon] once offered to
settle it amicably.”141
That was enough to decide Graham’s suit, which
simply sought an order that Roussillon pay him
money. But because the real stakes in the case
also involved Roussillon’s reputation, Colton
also asked the jury to determine intent. The jury
found that the lumber “was taken but through
mistake which was settled by [Roussillon]
at once.”142
Although it was not part of the evidence at trial,
Colton also found that there was an open account
between Roussillon and Graham and Naile; the
latter owed the former $30. So he reduced the
judgment to $37.29.143 Although Colton wrote
that “neither party completely triumphed in the
issue,”144 it is clear that the verdict was a complete vindication for Roussillon.
When Graham was presented with a bill for
court costs of $40, he left town owing $2.71. He
did not pay it for nearly a year.145 Nonetheless,
Graham gave Colton an immediate public relations present. Before leaving Monterey, he signed
a note: “I am satisfied from the investigation
before the court of Monterey in the case pending between me and Don Carlos Roussillon, and
from the verdict of the Jury in the same, that
any remarks which may have been made by me,
impeaching the moral honesty of said Roussillon,
were without just foundation.”146 (According to
one historian, “this statement was undoubtedly
drawn by Judge Colton.”147) Colton printed the
note in full in his newspaper the following week,
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together with a short account of the trial and verdict. The story ended, “To this enlightened and
impartial verdict both parties bowed without a
dessenting [sic] word.”148
Colton had accomplished what few before him
had been able to do. He had tamed Graham. He
had safely navigated the shoals of a high-profile
trial and had a well-earned, pre-election coup to
show for it.
The Election
The election for alcalde was held three days following publication of the account of the trial in
The Californian. Three hundred thirty-eight votes
were cast. Colton received only sixty-eight, about
20 percent. But with the remaining votes divided
among six candidates, his votes were enough to
win by three. David Spence, who had not served
on the jury, received sixty-five votes. The candidates who had served on the jury split a combined total of 165 votes.149
The Aftermath
In his diary, Colton recorded his love of juries:
“If there is anything on earth besides religion for
which I would die, it is the right of trial by jury.”
He was not alone. Others bringing American justice to the occupied frontier were determined to
bring juries with them. On September 22, 1846,
soon after he conquered New Mexico, General
Stephen Kearney published a comprehensive
Organic Law of the Territory of New Mexico.150
It included a bill of rights, the fifth clause of
which read, “That the right of trial by jury shall
remain inviolate.”151 The accompanying Laws
for the Government of the Territory of New Mexico
preserved the office of alcalde, but stipulated
that “either party to any cause pending before an
alcalde may . . . demand that the same be tried by
a jury.”152
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Nevertheless, Colton would preside over many trials before he convened another jury. There is no
hard evidence that he conducted another jury trial
until October 6, 1847, when two Indians were
charged with murder, a capital offense.153 Colton
appears not to have used the one “thing on earth
besides religion for which I would die . . . trial by
jury” as he continued to try “the reckless Californian, the half-wild Indian,” and others.
Colton’s failure to use juries reflects the region’s
uncertain legal environment. The Mexican War
was still being fought and California was only a
conquered province. The United States Congress
neither made California a territory nor passed
laws to govern it. Under international law, this
meant that existing Mexican law and institutions
were to be retained until lawfully changed.154
This principle informed Stockton’s August 17,
1846 proclamation that “until the . . . various civil
departments of the government are arranged . . .
the people will . . . elect civil officers and . . . administer the laws according to the former usages of
the territory.”155 Mexican law did not provide for
trial by jury. Arguably, Colton violated the law
when he convened a jury in Graham v. Roussillon.
Although the Americans in Alta California were
eager to enjoy the protection of American law,
both the military governors and the Polk administration tried, more or less, not to usurp Congress’s authority to prescribe laws for California.
But Congress refused to make laws to govern the
newly conquered land.156
The residents of Alta California chafed at the
congressional inaction; there was considerable
public dissatisfaction with the confused state
of the law. But the instinct to use juries was
strong.157 Over time, the American alcaldes began
using them in serious cases. By 1847, there were
scattered references to juries in official reports
from the military commanders.158 On December
29, 1847—almost sixteen months after Graham
v. Roussillon—Colonel Richard B. Mason, the
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military governor of California, issued an order
requiring alcaldes to hold jury trials in cases
“when the amount involved shall exceed one
hundred dollars.” He specified that the jury was
to consist of six men.159
But during that sixteen-month period, only rough
wartime justice prevailed. As late as June 1847,
Larkin described the uncertain state of affairs:
“We must live on in lawless blessedness. We
have, however, a fair supply of lawyers, and each
can produce the laws of his native state and urge
on the alcalde their adoption as most applicable
to the case at hand.”160
Untrained in the law and presiding in a confused
legal environment, Colton did his best to summon a “shadowy remembrance” of the common
law of the eastern states in which he had lived.161
He studied the military orders he received. He
took guidance from his new constituents, biblical tradition, and the occasional lawyer. He
concocted a unique mixture of martial law, common law, Mexican law, and California customs,
leavened by his theological training and personal
sense of right and wrong.162 He produced as
much justice as could be created in an uncertain
time. By all accounts, he did a remarkable job, if
not one to be cited as legal precedent.163
Two Other “First” Jury Trials
Colton’s assertion that Graham v. Roussillon was
the first jury trial in California is not true. There
is evidence of at least two others. The first was
recorded by Richard Henry Dana in Two Years
Before the Mast. In 1835 or 1836, an American
living in Pueblo de Los Angeles was murdered.
When the government of Alta California refused
to address the crime, a group of American trappers and hunters, along with some resident
Englishmen, arrested the culprit and formed an
impromptu court. “They proceeded to try the man
according to the forms in their own country. A
judge and jury were appointed, and he was tried,
convicted and sentenced to be shot.”164 Colton
had read Dana’s account165 but presumably had
forgotten this vignette when he called Graham v.
Roussillon the first jury trial in California.
The other jury trial was held during the Bear
Flag Revolt, a fortnight before Sloat sailed into
Monterey Bay. The account is recorded in a letter Vice Consul William Leidesdorff wrote to
Larkin on June 19, 1846. After the Bear Flaggers seized Sonoma, a young man was trying
to lasso a horse owned by General Mariano
Guadalupe Vallejo. When the horse kicked him,
the callow lad shot the animal. He was arrested
and “a jury summoned and the Culprit put on
his trial for the offence. He acknowledged the
act, and the Jury assessed the horse to be worth
$30 and that he must pay that amount to Genl.
Vallejo, the owner.”166
As these examples show, American expatriates
living in California during this era did not leave
behind American notions of justice. Those deepseated values drove their instinctive response to
the need for ordered justice in a far-off territory.
Nonetheless, Colton’s trial was the most public
early display of the American ideal of justice.
Even at a time when no one was entirely sure
what law governed the conquered territory,
Graham v. Roussillon pointed the way to the
future. It gave Americans in Alta California hope
that liberty, as they knew it, would become the
organizing principle of their adopted home. It
showed that real change was coming, even when
statehood—and a constitutional right to trial by
jury—was still four years in the future.
Barry Goode is the Presiding Judge of the Contra Costa
County Superior Court. A graduate of Kenyon College and
Harvard Law School, he serves on the board of directors of
the California Supreme Court Historical Society and is a
member of the American Law Institute. He has published
two law review articles, served as an adjunct professor of law,
and lectured widely.
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Farmer’s Market:
Agribusiness and the
Agrarian Imaginary in
California and the Far West
By Todd Holmes
O
n a cold January day in 1909, the agri
cultural scientist Kenyon Butterfield and
his fellow members of the Country Life
Commission delivered their final report to President Theodore Roosevelt, which charted a course
of progress for rural America and its farmers
confronting the industrialized landscape of the
new century. In many respects, the sixty-five-page
document echoed the ideals of modern agriculture that Butterfield had championed for years.
As one of the primary architects of the nation’s
land-grant university and agricultural extension system, he had long distinguished between
the “old” farmer who had put the continent to
plow and the “new” farmer who embraced “the
strong arm of science” and turned an acute eye
toward “the commercial mechanisms of . . . business.” Indeed, the commission’s report marked
an important turning point in the discourse on
American agriculture. For just as it promoted “a
new rural social structure” for the nation, that
transformation, according to historian Travis
Koch, hinged on a new definition of “farmer.”1
Thirty years later, in the agricultural valleys of
California, the meaning of farmer once again
stood at the center of debate. Prompted by the
published works of Carey McWilliams and John
Steinbeck, Senator Robert La Follette initiated a
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round of congressional hearings that sought to
explain the intensive type of agriculture emerging in the fields of the Golden State. The new
farmer promoted by progressive reformers such
as Butterfield decades earlier had taken unprecedented form in California and the Far West—one
that stood in stark contrast to the Jeffersonian
yeoman of America’s agrarian imagination. For
McWilliams and Steinbeck, those tending the
fields were not the farmers of yesteryear but capitalist businessmen who had turned California’s
farms into “factories in the field.” Senator La
Follette’s congressional committee echoed these
concerns, lamenting how the “industry” of California agriculture was “rapidly eliminating the
prosperous family farm.”2
The conflicting notions of farmer promoted by
progressive reformers and 1930s activists refract
important light on the evolution of America’s
agrarian imaginary. Butterfield’s depiction of the
new farmer represented the modern criteria that
progressives deemed necessary for rural America
to participate successfully in the new century.
The works of Steinbeck and McWilliams some
thirty years later, on the other hand, embodied
the rising apprehension toward this industrial
agriculture and the death knell it seemed to
sound for what they considered the “traditional”
agrarian idyll. That such apprehension continues
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In the early twentieth century, agricultural reformers saw the need to push American agriculture along more modern
and business lines, but as depicted in this political cartoon about President Theodore Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission, many agrarians harbored reservations about the government’s vision. While Midwestern farmers viewed
themselves as different from the businessmen of industry, California agrarians envisioned agriculture closely affiliated
with them, thus setting the stage for debate on a new representation of the farmer in the new field of agribusiness.
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University
to reverberate across America seventy years later
underscores how scholars and the general public
still grapple with the realities of both industrial
agriculture and conceptualizations of farmer.3
This article argues for a closer examination of
California agribusiness and the agrarian imaginary of farmer that enveloped the industry’s
development during the first half of the twentieth
century. Over the decades, scholarship on California agriculture has not ventured far outside the
land-labor paradigm established by McWilliams
in his seminal work, Factories in the Field. Scholars from Paul Gates, Donald Pisani, and Lawrence Jelinek to Ernesto Galarza, Cletus Daniels,
and Steven Richard Street, among others, have
put historical flesh on land concentration, corporate ownership, and exploited migratory labor
that McWilliams ascribed to the state’s agricultural industry. In more recent years, historians
such as Victoria Woeste and David Vaught rightfully have sought to balance this predominant
view by detailing the complexity of labor relations
in the state and the smaller operations that not
only existed but also prospered within the agricultural economy. To be sure, these works have
greatly enriched our understanding of California’s unique agricultural industry. Yet that understanding still largely remains confined within
the land-labor paradigm, leaving unanswered
many questions about agriculture’s place within
California’s larger industrial-economic context,
as well as its role in the evolution of America’s
agrarian imagination.4
Divided into two sections, the discussion that follows seeks to push beyond that of land and labor
to examine more clearly industrial agriculture
through a business lens and to explore how the
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agrarian imaginary of farmer was crafted politically by this industry and its critics during the
first half of the twentieth century. David Vaught
has correctly stressed the need for scholars to
examine “[California] growers on their own
terms.” In the first section, the economic examination of California agriculture underscores that
those growers’ terms were, first and foremost,
business. Well before progressive reformers
like Butterfield promoted the new farmer, agriculture in the Golden State already rested in an
ever-expanding industrial model. These agriculturalists, large and small, viewed themselves as
businessmen, as did the corporate executives
who maintained a myriad of investments in the
industry. Against this economic backdrop, the
second section traces the evolution of farmer and
the dialectic between economic enterprise and
cultural symbolism. Just as agribusiness and its
corporate investors used the term farmer strategically to navigate public perception and influence
state officials and government policy, critics of
industrial agriculture also employed it to voice
apprehension of a capitalist food system that was
quickly erasing traditional agrarianism. Together,
both sides nurtured the seeds of America’s agrarian imaginary.
Few identities are rooted deeper in the nostalgic
soils of Americana than that of farmer. And no
agricultural region has proved more significant in
both exploiting and recrafting that identity than
California and the Far West. Not surprisingly, the
struggle between agribusiness and the agrarian
imaginary of farmer presaged much of the discussion that continues today on industrial food
production. Perhaps fittingly, it first appeared in
the capitalist countryside of the Far West.
A NEW INDUSTRIAL MODEL
At the turn of the century, California agriculture stood well entrenched within a burgeoning industrial model. Flush with capital and
endowed with a benign Mediterranean climate,
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commercial agriculture flourished within the
state’s fertile, 450-mile-long Central Valley and
its surrounding foothills. While monocropping
was nothing new to American agriculture, California’s climate and geography allowed for the
production of an abundance of specialty crops
in monocrop enclaves. Rice and grains dominated the northern valley, nuts and fruit orchards
claimed both the northern and southern foothills,
and high-value specialty crops ranging from
grapes and cotton to vegetables covered the valley floors throughout the central and southern
regions. The economic bounty of this enterprise
grew apace the increasing crop variety and acreage that stretched across the state. Ranking as the
state’s dominant industry by 1900, agriculture
reached a production value of $350 million in
1916 and supplied over two-thirds of the nation’s
fruit and vegetables by 1920. Within a decade,
it would generate an output value three times
that of the national average, and a few years after
Senator La Follette ended his 1940 congressional
investigation, it would lead the nation in both
agricultural output and revenue.5
Industry was surely the best term to describe the
state’s agriculture, as it rested directly within a
production model not seen anywhere else in the
nation. From the earliest years of the twentieth
century, California agriculture was imbued with
the tenets of modern industry: capital intensive,
highly organized, scientifically guided, professionally managed, technologically enhanced,
and astutely marketed. Those operating within
this agricultural economy—although in many
respects as diverse as the crops they produced—
were no less business oriented. While differing
in size and crop specialization, these operations,
whether large or small, corporate or cooperative,
were all united by the same ethos of business,
functioned within the same industrial model, and
depended on the associated cluster of scientific
and business knowledge guiding that model.
Richard Walker has characterized California as
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“one of the purest cases of capitalist agriculture
in the world.” In more generalized terms, it could
simply be said that California and the Far West
became the home of industrial agriculture and
created the original “farmer in a business suit.”6
The Big Five
Organizing thousands of individual producers
within the industrial model of agriculture represented one of the primary steps in the steady
march of agribusiness—a term used here to
denote both industrial agriculture and its corporate lineages, from investing and financing
to research and development, petrochemicals,
and transportation. In no place was this industrial organization and model more immediately
discernible than in Hawaii. By the time of U.S.
annexation in 1898, the burgeoning sugar industry dominated every aspect of the political and
economic life of the future Island State, creating
a landscape—spanned by individual producers
large and small—where “cane was King.” Yet
by the early years of the twentieth century, the
industrial model of Hawaii’s sugar kingdom—
from processing and distribution to marketing,
scientific research, and financing—largely rested
in the hands of five companies: Castle & Cooke,
Alexander & Baldwin, C. Brewer & Company,
Theo H. Davies & Company, and American Factors. The Big Five, as they were known, spearheaded the industrialization of sugar in the Far
West, creating a business framework and relationship that would be replicated time and again
in California.7
In 1905, the Big Five established the California
and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C&H Sugar), a
cooperative that handled all aspects of Hawaii’s
sugar exports. Although white planters on the
islands had organized as early as 1850 to pool
resources and effectively manage the importation of labor, the C&H cooperative represented
the culmination of agriculture’s industrial organization. The Big Five were not independent
planters but multimillion-dollar corporations
with interlocking directorates that harnessed the
production of independent operators and controlled almost every aspect of sugar production,
from field to market. From their corporate offices
in Honolulu and San Francisco, the companies
managed not only the marketing of C&H sugar,
but also its transportation through the Matson
Navigation Company, which accounted for more
than 90 percent of all island-mainland shipping
and whose 74 percent majority of corporate stock
was owned by four of the five companies. C&H’s
refinery, located on the northeastern shore of the
San Francisco Bay, processed all of Hawaii’s raw
sugar exports from cane, as well as the majority of California sugar beets. By 1910, just one
year after Butterfield and his fellow commissioners submitted their report, it reigned as the
largest and most sophisticated operation in the
world—a status that delineated the agrarians of
America’s hinterland and the businessmen of the
Far West.8
Under the direction of the Big Five, the sugar
industry in Hawaii also stood at the crossroads
of modern science, or in the words of one journalist in 1911, “farming with brains.” As early as
1895, the Big Five had established an experiment
station on Honolulu dedicated to sugar production that employed a range of scientists in eleven
principal departments, such as agricultural engineering, botany, chemistry, and genetics. Within
a decade, the station served as the basis for the
creation of a college of Agricultural and Mechanical Arts, later known as the University of Hawaii.
From these scientific endeavors, sugar cane
became standardized by 1922 with a genetically
altered strand that, yielding 100 tons per acre,
gave the Big Five—and its growers—control of
the most superior breed of cane in the world.9
The Big Five supported and expanded this industrial agricultural model with a steady stream of
investment and financing. Above all else, the
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A familiar fixture of the Bay Area skyline, the C&H Sugar Refinery in Crockett, California embodied the
heightened industrialization of agriculture in the Far West. Opened in 1906, the refinery processed 67,000
tons of the raw sugar cane produced by Hawaii’s Big Five. Today, it processes over 700,000 tons of sugar, giving the C&H brand dominance over the entire sugar market of the trans-Mississippi West. The refinery also
highlights an important Hawaii-California connection often overlooked in western history.
companies’ executives were businessmen. They
sat on the boards of corporations in Hawaii and
California, ranging from railroad and land corporations to water and gas companies. Most notably, their business ties included such financial
institutions as Wells Fargo, the Bank of Hawaii,
and Lewers & Cooke. Drawing on these extensive
resources, the Big Five extended sugar’s industrial model over the decades to specialty crops
that became familiar brand names on American
grocery shelves after mid-century: Dole Pineapple, Bumble Bee Seafoods, Royal Hawaiian
Macadamia Nuts, and Cabana Bananas.10
Cooperatives
The vertical and horizontal integration that
underpinned the Big Five’s successful effort to
place Hawaiian agriculturists within an indus-
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trial model was replicated in a variety of forms
throughout California. And as in the future
Island State, the horizontal integration of California cooperatives represented the primary step
in that steady progression toward industrial agriculture. Indeed, cooperatives were not unique to
California and the Far West, as many associations
covering a variety of staple crops, most notably
grain, proliferated across the nation.
What differentiated those of the Far West as the
most successful were specialty crops largely produced nowhere else in the country. Cooperatives
placed California’s bounty in planned economies,
where associations largely eliminated competition among member growers, stabilized prices
through controlled production, and maintained
a united front in the market. Over the years,
characterizations have abounded regarding
these associations. While proponents often have
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politicized them as groups formed out of the
heroic struggle of small growers, critics such as
the economist Ira Cross have described them as
nothing more than “mere profit-making associations.” Economically speaking, these California
cartels—numbering 197 statewide as early as
1915—organized agriculture to an unprecedented
degree. They standardized production and helped
usher in the latest innovations of modern science
into even the smallest field and orchard. Moreover, they placed agriculturalists big and small
in an industrial model. Thus, as Richard Walker
has observed, the cooperatives of California were
primarily “just good business.”11
At the pinnacle of this organizational effort were
Sun-Maid Raisin Growers of California and the
California Fruit Growers Exchange, better known
as Sunkist. Created in the 1890s, Sun-Maid and
Sunkist boasted millions in annual sales and
controlled over 90 and 75 percent of their respective crops within the first three decades of the
twentieth century, securing their place as two of
the largest and most successful cooperatives in
the nation. The structure and orientation of such
associations was not lost on business publications; Fortune magazine lauded the placement
of agriculture within the “corporate model.”
Structured like a “pyramid,” the Sunkist cooperative, for example, centralized the production of
13,500 citrus growers through a bureaucracy of
210 packing associations and twenty-six regional
exchanges overseen by a board of twenty-six
directors. Moreover, the cooperative operated fifty-seven district offices throughout the
United States and Canada and touted annual
expenditures of over $20 million in advertising
and $120,000 in scientific research. Sun-Maid
boasted similar achievements in the market.
From its corporate offices in Los Angeles and San
Francisco, the company coordinated production
and distributed its brand on a national and international scale, ultimately maintaining foreign
outposts in Toronto, London, and Shanghai.12
True to this “corporate model,” the executives of
these cooperatives were just as much businessmen as they were agriculturalists. Sun-Maid’s
founder and president, M. Theo Kearney, was an
entrepreneur who made a fortune from his land
investments in the Fresno region of the Central
Valley. The self-styled J. P. Morgan of the Valley appointed numerous bankers to Sun-Maid’s
board of directors, and after his death in 1906
his successors maintained similar business ties.
Vice presidents Samuel P. Frisselle and A. Emory
Wishon, for example, served on the California
Chamber of Commerce and occupied executive
positions in prominent California businesses
such as Kern Oil and the Pacific Gas and Electric
Company. So, too, did the executives of Sunkist,
whose business lineage included ten banks, the
Irvine Company, and Union Oil.13
While California’s cooperatives placed scores of
crops within the industrial model, the independent agriculturalists operating within these structures were no less business oriented than the
executives who served on the associations’ boards
of directors. George F. Johnston, one of southern
California’s first Anglo grape growers, began
his operation in 1901 outside the small town
of Etiwanda. Like many of the state’s smaller
agricultural operations, the George F. Johnston
Company fit the mold of American business
much more than that of farming. Johnston chose
the area of Etiwanda for its accessibility to river
and well irrigation and specialized in the muscat
grape, which could be divided among the raisin, wine, and fresh table markets. Raisins and
wine production offered independent growers
like Johnston reliable markets through contracts
with Sun-Maid and California vintners. Table
grapes, on the other hand, were a much more
volatile market. In hopes of capturing the early
harvest sector of this lucrative market, Johnston
extended his operations farther south and east in
1913, purchasing properties in the Imperial and
Coachella Valleys. Like other businessmen, he
continued to grow his enterprise over the next
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twenty years. He leased or purchased more land,
shifted his southern crop to new grape varieties, employed an ever-expanding labor force of
Japanese, Mexicans, and Italians, and conducted
business with fruit merchants in over twenty-five
cities across the United States and Canada. Johnston’s average annual revenue never exceeded
much over $200,000 (in today’s currency), but
the nature of his small operation was surely that
of agri-business.14
Agriculture Gone Corporate
As cooperatives like Sunkist and Sun-Maid helped
place thousands of agricultural businessmen like
Johnston in the industrial model, enterprises
such as Di Giorgio and the California Packing
Corporation (CalPak) were the epitome of agriculture gone corporate. Indeed, corporate agriculture had many nineteenth-century precedents
in California. By the late 1800s, for instance, the
Miller and Lux Company had revolutionized the
cattle and meatpacking industry in the West,
securing its place as the only agricultural corporation to be listed among the nation’s 200 largest industrial enterprises by century’s end. The
Natomas Company charted a similarly innovative
path in agriculture. By the 1880s, the gold mining–turned–reclamation giant of the Sacramento
Valley stood at the forefront of specialized horticulture in the state, maintaining impressive winery and nursery operations, as well as thousands
of acres of cultivated land, which included the
world’s largest vineyard. Di Giorgio and CalPak
built profoundly upon these corporate lineages.15
Incorporated in 1920, the Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation began as a merger of over forty different
companies that founder and namesake Joseph Di
Giorgio pieced together and operated during the
previous decades. Like many in the state’s agricultural community, Di Giorgio was a self-made
businessman who came to California with an
acute eye toward the region’s untapped potential
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in fresh fruit production. In 1910, he purchased
the Sacramento-based Earl Fruit Company from
the Chicago meatpacking giant Armour, commencing an unprecedented expansion throughout the state that eventually brought some
20,000 acres within the company’s fold. As did
the Big Five and California’s cooperatives, Di
Giorgio placed these landholdings at the nexus of
modern science and industrial management. The
company’s specialization in orchards and vineyards utilized the latest innovations in irrigation,
genetic grafting, petrochemicals, and production
processes. Moreover, from its corporate offices
in San Francisco and New York, the corporation
connected fruit production to a meticulously
managed distribution network spanning the
United States and Canada. As early as 1923, it not
only boasted over $50 million in sales but also
reigned as the largest merchant shipper-grower
operation in the nation, successfully unifying the
production and marketing of its products and
those of smaller firms.16
Over the next two decades, Di Giorgio continued his industrious trajectory of growth. By the
1930s, his operations included agricultural lands
in Central and South America, banana plantations in the West Indies, orchards in Washington, Idaho, and Georgia, and citrus groves in
Florida. Besides extensive land and production
facilities, the company also consolidated its stake
in the fruit exchanges of Baltimore, New York,
Chicago, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, as well as
in a California winery. The winery’s annual output of seven million gallons made Di Giorgio
the second largest private distributor of wine in
America. By 1946, with landholdings exceeding
40,000 acres, more than half of them in California, Fortune magazine heralded Di Giorgio as
“the largest grape, plum, and pear grower in the
world.” Time simply labeled the Italian-born businessman the “Fruit King.”17
Like Di Giorgio, CalPak established its own economic realm across California and the Far West’s
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From its first processing plant on Hyde and Beach Streets in San Francisco, the California Packing Corporation (CalPak)
grew exponentially throughout the twentieth century. By the 1940s, there were close to fifty processing plants like this one in
California alone, with many more in a dozen states. Later, under a new name, Del Monte, the company expanded internationally, maintaining its reign over food processing while also claiming a significant stake in the fresh tropical fruit market.
industrial agriculture kingdom. Its vertical integration, like that of the Big Five and Di Giorgio,
allowed it to control every aspect of the production process, from seed to market. Yet, where Di
Giorgio’s corporate dominance in agriculture was
based on multifunctions as grower, merchant,
and shipper of fresh fruit, CalPak sowed new
ground by focusing these areas on food processing. In many respects, it forged one of America’s
earliest industrial foodways.
Originally the California Fruit Canners Association, CalPak emerged in 1916 and enjoyed unhindered expansion, acquiring over a dozen packing
corporations throughout the next three decades.
By mid-century, it was the world’s largest packer
of foodstuff. From its San Francisco headquarters, it operated sixty-four processing plants
in ten states, over 20,000 acres of agricultural
production in California, and numerous farming
operations in northern and Midwestern states,
Hawaii, and the Philippines. Like cooperatives,
CalPak ushered in the latest innovations of modern science and industry to more than 10,000
sharecroppers who farmed its landholdings and
produced the fruits, vegetables, and other foodstuffs the company processed. Boasting sales of
over $111 million by 1945, CalPak presented consumers a range of processed food products under
its brand names Gold Bar, Glass Jar, Granny
Goose, and Del Monte, which ultimately became
the corporation’s official name.18
Interlocking Directorates
Land has often stood at the center of discussions
on capital and investment within the agricultural
economy. Yet the shared financial interests and
personnel from the corporate sectors of transportation, energy, and finance reveal a clear picture
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of both the business view of California’s industrial agriculture and its place within the larger
economy.19
No corporation shaped California more
significantly than Southern Pacific Railroad, and
certainly few things figured more prominently
within the company’s transportation monopoly
than California agriculture. Through its subsidiary, the Pacific Fruit Express, Southern Pacific
contracted with the whole of the agricultural
industry, transporting the state’s specialty crops
to markets across the nation. Indeed, in the
first half of the twentieth century, food arguably
was just as important to the company as its passengers. Moreover, as one of the West’s largest
landowners, Southern Pacific became a leading
proponent of scientific agriculture, working with
agricultural programs at the University of California and Texas A&M to develop its western landholdings, which stretched from the West Coast to
the Lone Star State.20
California’s oil companies also viewed the state’s
agricultural industry as a prime area for business
investment. Standard Oil of California, for example, collaborated with state researchers at the University of California in the scientific development
of insecticide. By 1920, this research yielded
the California Spray-Chemical Company, which
within a decade became a sole subsidiary of Standard Oil. Investment most notably was forged
between the state’s oil companies and agricultural
industry through the board of directors. Standard
Oil maintained corporate ties with the Big Five
in Hawaii and the Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation,
while Union Oil shared executives with Sunkist,
Di Giorgio, and two of the state’s leading agricultural land companies, California Delta Farms and
the Kern County Land Company.21
The two primary municipal gas and electric corporations, Southern California Edison and the
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), also
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built strong bonds of business with agriculture.
Along with gas and electricity, both companies
supplied water for agricultural and municipal
purposes. Southern California Edison’s board of
directors created business links with the Big Five,
Di Giorgio, CalPak, and California Delta Farms.
PG&E, the West’s largest gas and electric company, maintained ties with Sunkist, the Big Five,
CalPak, and the Kern County Land Company.22
More than any corporation, Bank of America
proved the most significant investor in the development of California’s agricultural industry.
When in 1904, Amadeo Pietro Giannini founded
the Bank of Italy, the original financial seed that
would grow into Bank of America, the state’s
agricultural industry was at the forefront of his
mind—a focus reflected in the bank’s board of
directors. By 1920, five directors held prominent positions in one or more of California’s
agricultural sectors. Over the decades, such ties
increased as the bank shared executives with
the Big Five, Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation, and
CalPak, among others. Yet Bank of America’s
investment in agriculture was also much more
direct. By the 1940s, it not only held one in every
ten farm mortgages and financed substantial portions of specialty crops such as cotton, grapes,
and citrus, but also continued to foster scientific
innovation through the agricultural research
center it established at UC Berkeley in 1928—a
center that still bears Giannini’s name. The bank
even maintained direct investments in agriculture through such subsidiaries as California
Lands Inc., which placed hundreds of thousands
of acres of foreclosed farmland under the bank’s
ownership. As longtime vice president Earl Coke
recalled, “The bank is firmly convinced of the
necessity of providing funds for economic sections . . . that produce wealth. Agriculture is the
main one that actually produces wealth.”23
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MEN OF THE SOIL
How the development of industrial agriculture in
California and the Far West was advanced during
the first half of the twentieth century by California businessmen and politicians—and how it was
received by the general public—centered more
on the cultural symbol of farmer than on the
miraculous progress of industry. Ultimately, the
discourse and struggle that enveloped the march
of agribusiness in the Far West during these
decades played a significant role in nurturing
America’s agrarian imaginary.24
From Thomas Jefferson to Frederick Jackson
Turner, an agrarian model of the West settled
into the national consciousness. That California’s
industrial agriculture fit neither this Jeffersonian
idyll nor that of the new farmer touted by progressive reformers was not lost on the business
community. As early as 1910, economists lauded
California cooperatives as “profit-making associations” and noted how little they differed from
“the ordinary business corporation.” Such praise
echoed for decades as scientific methods made
the Central Valley the “most valuable farm lands
in the world” and placed agriculture under the
management of “businessmen on an intensely
business-like basis.” California agribusiness even
garnered international attention during these
decades: The Economist printed numerous articles, from the Hawaii-California “Sugar Trust” to
Sunkist and the citrus industry, whose soils were
“too valuable for ordinary farming.”25
The region’s agriculturalists, above all, upheld
the distinction between traditional farming and
their businesslike operations. They did not refer
to themselves as farmers but often preferred
the more specialized titles of grower, rancher,
orchardist, nurseryman, horticulturalist, and
vineyardist. A survey of agricultural news reports
published in California’s rural newspapers
between 1900 and 1950 demonstrates the pervasiveness of these preferences, underscoring the
industry’s professionalization.26
Bank of America’s expansion in California was replicated on
a national level from the 1940s on, earning founder Amadeo
Pietro Giannini a place on the cover of the April 15, 1946 issue
of Time magazine. The branch banking system that became
Giannini’s trademark proved invaluable for agricultural communities, offering badly needed loans and financial services.
Contrary to such preferences, however, the use
of farmer by agro-businessmen represented a
vital strategy in navigating the political inroads
of the state and federal governments, as well
as in influencing the general public. On one
hand, the term surely resonated culturally with
the self-made status of agriculturalists and their
investors, such as George Johnston, Joseph Di
Giorgio, and Bank of America’s A. P. Giannini.
On the other hand, it stood as a potent public
relations strategy. Instead of distinguishing themselves from ordinary farmers, agriculturalists
often found it advantageous to stand beneath the
national trope, forging in the process one of the
earliest dialectics between cultural symbols and
economic enterprise.
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Currents of Change
Between the two World Wars, businessmen and
policy makers crafted farmer in expedient ways
to fit the currents of change. The Great War
presented the first opportunity to employ this
strategy, spurring both an increased demand for
food production and a perceived labor shortage in
California fields. The state’s agricultural industry
spearheaded contract negotiations between the
United States and Mexico, securing the importation of thousands of Mexican workers for the
1918 harvest. Yet, the conversation about the binational labor program did not depict a workforce
of foreigners filing into the corporate models of
Di Giorgio or Sunkist. Instead, reports invoked
a patriot farmer, with “Mexican labor” coming to
the aid of “California farmers” and their effort to
“harvest the crops needed to win the war.” As the
Boston Globe proclaimed, “the American farmer
did not wait to be conscripted—he enlisted in this
war work at the beginning.”27
Indeed, the image of the patriot farmer
strummed a nationalist chord of significance,
especially one of whiteness—a characteristic that
fit more closely the agricultural operations of
America’s heartland than its Far West industrial
counterparts. California’s and Hawaii’s specialty
crops had long relied on an army of cheap,
racialized labor largely composed of immigrant
workers from China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. During the Great War, agro-businessmen
attempted to refashion the image of their operations to match that of the white majority. George
Johnston, for example, displayed only his Italian
employees—most likely supervisors—on the
company’s label rather than his workforce of Japanese immigrants. Similarly, promotional materials distributed by the Chambers of Commerce
in the Central Valley offered bucolic scenes that
absented the valley’s racialized labor system,
such as a 1915 Tulare County pamphlet featuring
a white farmwife leisurely knitting amid the vista
of the family’s citrus orchard.28
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The image of the patriot farmer gained new
significance during the peacetime decade of
the 1920s. Nationalism replaced the war effort,
underpinning debates over tariffs and foreign
imports that erupted in the halls of Congress. At
the center of this ongoing debate was sugar and
the proposal to lower tariffs applied to foreign
producers such as Cuba. Hawaii’s Big Five led the
charge against reduced tariffs, banning together
with mainland sugar beet producers to promote
one of the earliest “buy American” campaigns.
Here the patriot farmer stood as the bulwark
against foreign encroachment: “American farmers,” in the words of the Wall Street Journal, were
fighting for survival against the “producers and
sugar interests of Cuba.” Throughout the decade,
the Big Five and its Domestic Sugar Producers’
Association continued to lobby successfully for
maintaining the sugar tariff, promoting themselves as “American farmers . . . entitled to all reasonable application of the protective tariff.”29
As the Big Five proved adept at invoking the
image of the patriot farmer to obtain a protective tariff from the federal government, so, too,
did they adroitly fashion the portrayal of the
yeoman farmer amid the Great Depression to
benefit from New Deal policies like the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Sugar production
in Hawaii had been the subject of international
attention for decades prior to the 1930s, earning
praise from The Economist as “one of the largest”
and “most important sugar producing areas in
the world.” In his 1924 comparative report on
sugar production in Hawaii and Formosa, Japanese chemist Shoyai Yogi noted Hawaii’s impressive business structure and how its industry was
run “scientifically . . . on a large scale . . . [with] the
sugar lands held by corporations.” A decade after
Yogi’s research, the Big Five achieved federal
subsidies under the AAA as sugar was placed
within the list of “basic agricultural commodities” alongside pigs, corn, and beans, and help
was afforded, in the words of Congress, to the
“Hawaiian farmer”—a title not mentioned in the
report of the Japanese chemist.30
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Promotional pamphlets about the Central Valley issued
by the state Chamber of Commerce during the first half of
the twentieth century combined the common imagery of
whiteness and California’s Edenic landscape. Above all,
the emphasis of white agrarianism obfuscated the business
thrust and minority labor that underpinned the industrialized agriculture of the Far West. Other promotional
material published during this time included pictures of
white children frolicking in orange groves and women in
immaculate summer dresses harvesting in the fields and
conducting a traditional, barefoot grape crushing.
Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library
The George F. Johnston Company’s Japanese field labor stands in sharp relief to the imagery of whiteness.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, field labor in Hawaii and California embodied a rotating caste of racialized labor. In the Golden State, this system advanced throughout the decades from Native
Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Sikhs (South Asians) to the Filipino and Mexican workers that composed
the bulk of the agricultural labor force by World War I.
Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
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Sun-Maid Raisin vice president Samuel P. Frisselle, Sunkist president Charles C. Teague, and
CalPak president Leonard Wood. As federal funding remained hamstrung by the Depression and
overextended expenditures, the state’s congressional delegation expanded upon yeoman imagery
and placed Golden State agriculturalists among
the Dust Bowl migrants of the Midwest. “Every
high wind that blows from the East,” one delegate
warned, “carries with it millions of tons of our dry
and thirsty soil,” forcing thousands of “California farmers to leave their homes.” In September
1935, President Roosevelt approved an appropriation of $20 million for the Central Valley Project—one of the largest state-federal water projects
in American history—that ultimately funded the
construction of forty dams and eleven canals at a
federal price tag exceeding $2 billion.31
The Labor Movement
As suggested by the landscape on this brochure cover, the
agricultural industry was a principal benefactor of the
Central Valley Project—from the northern agricultural
communities of the Sacramento Valley, receiving two-thirds
of the state’s water, to those of the more arid San Joaquin
Valley in the south, which previously relied on river and
well irrigation. Today, the majority of the CVP’s water is
still used for agriculture: 5 million-acre feet flows to about
3 million acres of irrigated agriculture.
California’s agricultural industry invoked the
same image in its effort to garner federal funding
for the Central Valley Project. Proposed in 1933,
the water program was not originally pitched
within the tones of agrarianism. Yet the following
year, California’s Chamber of Commerce sent letters to President Franklin Roosevelt and congressional delegates pleading for federal assistance,
characterizing the water project as “vital to all
California farmers.” Among the signatories was
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Outside of tariffs, subsidies, and federal funding, labor represented the main battleground for
California’s agro-businessmen. The decade of the
1930s witnessed an outbreak of over 140 strikes,
as America’s labor movement emerged in full
force throughout the fields and orchards of the
Golden State. Similar to the organizing attempts
of the International Workers of the World in
the years before World War I, the strikes of the
1930s—led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations—focused on improving wages and working conditions. Within this contested landscape,
the imagery of the patriot farmer and Jeffersonian yeoman intertwined to project an arresting
symbol of California farmers protecting the family farms against the onslaught of communist
unions. The nation’s newspapers painted a vivid
portrait: “farmers . . . arming themselves” against
“communist agitators”; “California farmers under
attack”; “Red strike leaders” attempt to incite
“revolt against society”; and strikes on “California
farms . . . merely camouflage” for “Communist
overthrow of the American government.”32
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At the forefront of opposition toward “communist” unions stood the newly created organization of California agriculturalists, the Associated
Farmers. Formed in 1933, the AF represented
not only a bulwark against the “red threat,” but
also an important promoter of farmer on behalf
of the region’s agricultural industry—a label
included in the organization’s name, according
to Sun-Maid vice president S. P. Frisselle, since
it would “carry more weight with the public.”
The company characterized itself as an organization “formed to gain for the farmers the benefits
of unified strength in defense” and pledged to
“aggressively” combat “communistic agitation
in the state’s agricultural centers.” While the AF
fashioned itself within the niche of western vigilantism, newspaper headlines continued to weave
the imagery of the patriotic yeoman: “Farmers
Form Benefit Group”; “Dirt Farmers Organize”;
and “Farmers to Combat Reds.” Even Business
Week, whose counterparts in financial reporting had long distinguished between traditional
farming and the industrial agriculture of the Far
West, ran headlines trumpeting agrarian tones:
“Farmers Join to Smash Strikes”; “Farmers Break
Strike”; and “Anti-Union Farmers Spread Out.”
Indeed, it was imagery well crafted. As one AF
publication touted, the group was organized “by
farmers, run by farmers, [and] . . . financed by
farmers,” or as AF President William Garrison
preferred, “men of the soil.”33
Contrary to such rhetoric, the genesis of the AF
did not emerge in the farmhouses of California’s
Central Valley, but rather took shape in a meeting
of the state Chamber of Commerce. In much of
the nation, agricultural associations such as the
Grange and Farm Bureau stood as the institutional voice of farmers. In California and the Far
West, however, those associations were secondary
to the Chamber of Commerce, whose directorate
mirrored the business relations of the region’s
industrial agriculture. Members of the chamber’s
directorate included Sun-Maid vice president
Samuel P. Frisselle, Sunkist president Charles
Teague, A. Emory Wishon of PG&E and SunMaid Raisin, CalPak president Leonard Wood,
and vice-presidents of Bank of America, PG&E,
Southern California Edison, and Standard Oil.
And while the Chamber continued to issue pamphlets promoting the agrarian imagery of California’s Central Valley, it also constructed a vast
apparatus to fund the AF. Donations rolled in
from financial houses such as Bank of America,
Bank of California, and Crocker First National
Bank; transportation companies such as Southern Pacific; energy corporations such as PG&E,
Southern California Edison, Standard Oil, and
Union Oil; and the Big Five through C&H Sugar
and Honolulu Oil. Ultimately, between 1934 and
1939, the AF received almost $200,000 (some
$3.3 million in today’s currency) in donations.34
To ensure the persistence of favorable public relations, the AF established a publicity fund headed
by the Fruit King himself, Joseph Di Giorgio.
Working diligently, Di Giorgio collected thousands of dollars from California’s business community aimed at promoting “the farmer’s side”
of the ongoing conflict in the state’s agricultural
fields. Indeed, Di Giorgio was no stranger to the
art of employing the farmer identity. In 1937, the
Chamber of Commerce hosted an honorary dinner for him and his company, Di Giorgio Farms.
While Di Giorgio often referred to his multithousand-acre estate in Kern County as Di Giorgio
Farms, he also blurred the use of the name with
reference to his business, which clearly had a
more bucolic tone than Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation. Di Giorgio had dissolved Di Giorgio Farms
in 1923, absorbing it within the larger parent corporation. Yet he continued to use the company’s
name effectively throughout the decades. The
odd fit of farmer and Di Giorgio was not lost on
the Los Angeles Times, which, months after the
dinner, quipped to readers in a long panegyric on
the businessman, “Call Mr. Di Giorgio a farmer;
he likes it.”35
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Although Far West agro-businessmen successfully employed the farmer label to navigate political and governmental inroads during the first
few decades of the twentieth century, the labor
strikes of the 1930s brought the term under
significant scrutiny. Indeed, the depiction in the
nation’s newspapers of picket lines and labor
violence spreading across California’s Central
Valley seemed to most readers something more
akin to industry than agriculture. While public
opinion of the strikes is difficult to gage, the
labor conflict did seem to etch out one result on
the national psyche: a distinction between California agriculture and the American family farm.
In many respects, this distinction harkened back
to discussions that arose in California as early as
1915. Just as the region’s agro-businessmen and
corporate investors had long viewed the agricultural enterprises of the Far West vastly different
from those in the nation’s heartland, so too did
California reformers, who initiated the Commission on Land Colonization and Rural Credits to
conduct an intensive study of the state’s large
landholdings, agricultural production, and labor
relations. At the heart of the commission’s report
was the dwindling number—if not absence—of
the family farm, which it defined as “that unit of
farm business which can be handled by the average family to produce the sum accepted as necessary to cover the various expenditures.” Although
the commission’s policies to facilitate the reemergence of the family farm in the Golden State
proved unsuccessful, they did help to create one
of the earliest dichotomies between traditional
farming and the state’s industrial agriculture,
which the labor unrest of the 1930s brought to
the national level.36
The Ideal “Agrarian Other”
Indeed, the struggle between farm workers and
California’s agro-businessmen highlighted the
distinctiveness of the region’s agricultural industry and opened the door for critique. Yet in a
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dichotomy, critiquing one side necessitates the
implicit referencing to the other. Fleshing out
and creating this ideal “agrarian other” rested
not so much in the hands of labor as it did in
the perspectives of social critics—most notably
Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, John Steinbeck, and
Carey McWilliams—who rallied to labor’s side of
the conflict. Through their work, America’s agrarian imaginary substantially deepened its roots in
the Far West.
More than anyone, the photographer Dorothea
Lange helped put a face to this ideal agrarian
other. Working for Roosevelt’s Resettlement
Administration—later the Farm Security Administration—between 1935 and 1939, Lange and
husband Paul Taylor traveled throughout the
South and Midwest documenting the effects
of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression on the
nation’s rural families and their western migration to California. Lange’s vivid photographs, distributed free to newspapers around the country,
connected a Depression-ridden nation and highlighted an agrarianism lost. From the foreclosed
farms and barren, drought-ravaged landscapes of
Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas to the migrant
farm worker camps and picket lines of California,
Lange’s photographs detailed the travails of the
white family farm and the industrial agriculture
that welcomed these itinerants as laborers. By
1939, Lange and Taylor’s work for the FSA culminated in American Exodus, a book of photos
and text that, in the words of the historian Linda
Gordon, promoted the “family-farm ideology.”
In the years that followed, Taylor, for his part,
would build experientially on the family farm
promotion of his and Lange’s collective work,
becoming one of the most outspoken critics of
California’s industrial agriculture and its usurpation of the 160-acre limit on federally subsidized
irrigation water.37
Where Lange and Taylor depicted the agrarian
other in the emerging industrial-traditional farming dichotomy, writers John Steinbeck and Carey
McWilliams further built upon the family-farm
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ideology. As early as 1936, labor battles pushed
Steinbeck to step out of the novel and into journalism. Writing in The Nation, he attempted to
inform readers about “the complete revolution
[that] has taken place in California agriculture,”
detailing an industry dominated by “large-scale
farms . . . incorporated farms . . . and a large number of bank farms.” This industrial, businessmanaged agricultural environment, according to
Steinbeck, is “what the emigrants from the dust
bowl find when they arrive in California.” Over
the years, Steinbeck continued to critique industrial agriculture from the purview of the family
farm, publishing Their Blood Is Strong (1938),
which used a number of Lange’s photographs to document the stories of Dust Bowl
migrants–turned–farm workers in California, and
the prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
For striking workers such as these Mexican laborers, violence and growers’ repression played an important role in distinguishing the industrial
agriculture of the Far West. As strikes proliferated across California’s
agricultural communities during the 1930s, the unrest attracted a host of
reformers to the farm labor cause, including Carey McWilliams, Paul S.
Taylor, Dorothea Lange, and John Steinbeck. Steinbeck, in particular,
sought to feature the reported exploitation of growers like Joseph Di Giorgio in his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath.
Library of Congress
This 1933 photograph of cotton strikers in the San Joaquin Valley highlights how white migrants stood beside Mexican and Filipino Americans on the picket lines. Similarly, the important role played by women of color, as scholars
like Devra Weber and Vicki Ruiz have shown, offers another side of a story long overshadowed by Dorothea Lange’s
famous photograph Migrant Mother, with its focus on white Dust Bowl migrant workers.
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; photograph by Paul S. Taylor
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Dorothea Lange’s photographs spotlighted the vanishing white family farm and a bucolic agrarianism much more representative of the
Midwest than the Far West. This migratory worker came to California from an Oklahoma farm in April 1938. Five months later, he
joined the cotton strikers, leading an automobile caravan attempting
to picket the large fields of corporate farms.
Library of Congress, photograph by Dorothea Lange
In the latter, Steinbeck’s promotion of the agrarian ideal to distinguish California agriculture is
unmistakable, juxtaposing the Joad “farmers”
with the industrial operations of the Gregorio
rancher and Bank of the West—thinly veiled
caricatures for Joseph Di Giorgio and Bank
of America.38
Carey McWilliams’s Factories in the Field appeared
months after The Grapes of Wrath hit America’s
bookshelves. Like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
(1906), McWilliams’s work sought not only to
disclose and highlight the plight of labor but
also to grapple with the industrialization of food,
which centered on the definition of farmer and
its use by California’s agro-businessmen. Since
World War I, the state’s agriculturalists had
adroitly fashioned the farmer image to garner
legislative gains. In the years prior to Factories
in the Field, they again used the image to obtain
exclusion from labor bills such as the National
Labor Relations Act, Social Security Act, and
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Fair Labor Standards Act. McWilliams struggled
throughout the book to distinguish between his
ideal of traditional farming (the family farm) and
the reality of industrial agriculture. “In no other
state has farming so quickly lost its traditional
character”; “Farms have become factories”; “It is
no longer agriculture in the formerly understood
sense of the term”; California agriculture is now
“monopolistic . . . highly organized . . . [and] corporately owned”; it is an industry that “continues
to masquerade behind . . . the farm.” As he would
write months later in The Nation, “A sharp distinction must be made between the traditional
working farmer-owner of America and the . . .
industrial farming of California.”39
By December 1939, the struggle found its way
into the halls of Congress, where Senator Robert
La Follette and his Committee on Civil Liberties
initiated one of the most intensive investigations to date of California’s agricultural industry.
Indeed, the influence of McWilliams, Steinbeck,
and other critics was evident. In its twenty-eight
days of public hearings, the La Follette Committee interrogated executives from Bank of
America, Sunkist, and the Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation and subpoenaed scores of documents
on labor relations, landholdings, and business
investments. Yet the agrarian imaginary that the
critics had helped develop was just as influential.
Even as the committee maintained that California
agriculture stood unjustly exempt from labor legislation, it also lamented how this “agricultural
industry” was “rapidly eliminating the prosperous family farm.” As in previous decades, such
agrarian idealism did not permeate the business
press: As Fortune magazine fittingly pointed out
months earlier, “California agriculture is not
‘farming’ . . . it is industry as much as lumbering
and oil are industries.”40
SHADOW AND REFLECTION
The struggle over farmer and the agrarian ideal
continued to churn in the decades after the final
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hit of the gavel by La Follette’s committee. By
1955, Harvard business professor John H. Davis
coined the term that would finally describe the
industrial model of agriculture that had resided
in the crosshairs of critics such as McWilliams
and Steinbeck: agribusiness. Two years later, he
introduced this term to the nation in his aptly
titled book Farmer in a Business Suit. Like Kenyon
Butterfield and the authors of the 1909 Country
Life Commission report, Davis encouraged farmers to better integrate their operations into the
ever-expanding industrial economy of postwar
America. And just as Butterfield had promoted
his new farmer concept, the agricultural industry
of the Far West was already spearheading this
march of progress. In many respects, agriculture
offers a reversal of narrative winds for twentiethcentury American history. Instead of moving
west, agriculture spread east.41
In the decades that followed, the industrial model
of Far West agriculture not only grew to new
heights, but also migrated east. Castle & Cooke of
Hawaii’s Big Five expanded internationally under
its subsidiary the Dole Company, while smaller
business operations like that of George F. Johnston largely gave way to corporate entities such
as Di Giorgio, R. J. Reynolds, and Tenneco. Similarly, a number of corporations joined the likes of
Bank of America and PG&E within the investor
ranks. After mid-century, California agribusiness
forged new relationships, from Kaiser Industries
and General Electric to Dow Chemical and Sears,
Roebuck and Company. Moving east, the industrial agriculture model once again established
modern business enterprises in the fields of the
South and Midwest, turning farmers into the
very businessmen advocated by John H. Davis.
As in the Far West, operations large and small
were brought into the industrial model through
contracts with corporations such as H. J. Heinz,
Green Giant, and Monsanto and shared the economic stage with industry giants such as Cargill
and General Foods.42
Accompanying agribusiness’s eastward migration was the contentious struggle over farmer
and the agrarian imaginary that had become both
shadow and reflection. Agro-businessmen of all
stripes continued to draw on the well-developed
dialectic between cultural symbolism and economic enterprise and employ the label of farmer
to navigate the inroads of government and public
relations. Critics echoed the calls of Steinbeck
and McWilliams by invoking the agrarian ideal
of the traditional family farm—calls that reached
fever pitch amid the Midwest farm crisis of
the 1980s.43
Today, the battle between agribusiness and the
agrarian imaginary still occupies an important
place within America’s public and scholarly discourse. Both have expanded in ways that many
could not have envisioned during the first half
of the twentieth century. Just as industrial agriculture has come to envelop every aspect of the
nation’s food system, the employment of the
agrarian imaginary has become as diversified
as the industrial crops and production it was
intended to critique, from organic agriculture and
community gardens to “buy local” campaigns and
“slow food” movements. That this psychic and
corporeal struggle continues in the twenty-first
century may indeed say more about the nation’s
anxiety over industrial food production than
agribusiness itself. At the very least, it underscores how impenetrable the field of agrarianism
proved for leftist critiques and solutions. Because
California and the Far West was, in fact, the
seedbed for these developments, the agricultural
history of the region must be revisited with fresh
eyes that investigate beyond critiques of land,
labor, and business production. In short, scholars
of all stripes should explore more thoroughly the
farmers of America’s capitalist countryside.44
Todd Holmes is a PhD candidate in the History Department and the program coordinator for the Agrarian Studies
Program at Yale University. He has written extensively on
California political, business, and agricultural history and is
currently finishing a dissertation and book manuscript on the
corporate West and the rise of Reaganism. In fall 2013, he
joins the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford
University as a postdoctoral fellow.
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The Wa∂p’∂
“Trouble∂ome Children”
Culture, Satire, and the Anti-Chinese Movement in the American West
By Nicholas Sean Hall
T
he West Coast was going down in
flames. Or at least that was how The
San Francisco Illustrated Wasp depicted
the region to its readership of middle- and
working-class Anglo Americans in an April
1882 political cartoon. As Congress debated
what would become the Chinese Exclusion Act
a month later, the Wasp published a two-page
chromolithograph entitled The Burning Question,
one of a series of cartoons supporting the case
for immigration restriction. The image put into
caricature the cultural imagination of whites in
the American West, who by the late 1870s had
worked themselves into a frenzy over the putative
cultural and economic threats posed by the “Chinese menace.” In the late 1860s, the Democratic
Party had rehabilitated its image—stained by the
stigma of secession during the Civil War—on a
platform of exclusion. Simultaneously, “anti-coolie” clubs held clandestine meetings to discuss
ways to rid the Pacific Coast of its Chinese immigrants. Despite this opposition, these immigrants
did have their allies in the West, particularly
among Protestants and members of the Republican Party. Yet these allies too disappeared by the
late 1870s as white political opinion solidified
against the Chinese.
The period of radical Reconstruction in the
five years following the Civil War had heralded
potentially revolutionary implications for race in
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America, particularly the Thirteenth, Fourteenth,
and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States
Constitution, all adopted by 1870. That moment,
however, did not last. With the federal government in full retreat from this racially egalitarian
period—illustrated most notably in its concession of “home rule,” including the restoration of
white supremacy, to the South in the Great Compromise of 1877—nearly all whites in California
began clamoring for the federal government to
also address its racial “problem.” Entreaties from
the state’s representatives in Congress to bar the
Chinese from immigrating to the United States
became louder and more agitated. Californians,
however, would be thwarted by the presidential
veto pen until the inauguration of restrictionfriendly Chester A. Arthur in 1881.1
The final push by western congressional representatives to close the gate to the Chinese came
in the spring of 1882. Like many other elements
of western popular culture produced during this
period—books, magazines, plays, broadsides,
paintings, and the like—the Wasp reflected the
West’s growing impatience with federal inaction.
As the congressional vote neared, the satirical
weekly produced “yellow peril” cartoons vilifying Chinese immigrants at increasingly shorter
intervals. In The Burning Question, a damsel in
distress (“Pacific States”) screams for help atop
a burning building. A caricature of a disembodied “Chinese menace” looms threateningly in
the sky above her. Firefighters rush to the scene
with a fire hose (“Anti Chinese Bill”), but several
men with knives and queues attempt to cut off
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The Burning Question, April 14, 1882
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
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the water supply.2 Would the federal government
save the western states?
The Wasp’s cartoons provide numerous visual
cues that made its political messages effective,
putting into sharp relief the anti-Chinese crusade
as seen through the eyes of politically moderate whites in the Far West. They also represent a
critical historical component of the anti-Chinese
movement in late-1870s California—an unstudied
element of western popular culture that served as
both a mouthpiece for western social issues and
a critic of local and national figures it deemed
hypocrites.3 Close examination of the weekly’s
cartoons reveals the publication’s shifting—and
at times contradictory—stance on the people and
issues of its day. They suggest its determination
to integrate California into the national politics of
race at a critical juncture in American history (the
final collapse of Reconstruction in 1877) while
taking on the daunting task of portraying a flawed
California society in such a way that would not
discourage whites in the eastern United States
from immigrating to the West.
The Wasp achieved remarkable popularity in
its late-nineteenth-century heyday, despite its
relatively parochial circulation and the expense
of publishing in the midst of the nineteenth
century’s deepest economic depression. Within
months of its first issue, circulation grew to
5,000, reaching 7,000 by 1879. While most of its
upstart rivals had collapsed within a year or two
due to high production costs, the Wasp quickly
became the most widely read magazine west of
the Rocky Mountains.4 As a voice of western antiChinese sentiment, it stood in contradistinction
to earlier anti-Chinese violence—from Gold Rush
pogroms to the well-publicized massacre of sixteen men, a woman, and a child in Los Angeles
in 1871—as well as to more radical elements of
the late 1870s, including the infamous Workingmen’s Party of California (WPC).5
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Place serves a key role in understanding the
Wasp’s uniquely western portrayal of race and
marginality. As scholars have shown, social
and racial hierarchies tend to vary according
to region; different social milieus contain their
own contingent imperatives.6 Social and political actors in late-1870s California still grappled
with establishing the proper place for its myriad
people, particularly but not exclusively its marginal groups. Wealthy railroad magnates, Irish
laborers, Chinese immigrants, indigenous people, Mormons (who suffered under the stigma
against polygamy, whether they took part in the
practice or not), Mexicans, and a tiny African
American minority composed the regional society of the nineteenth-century American West.
Most of these groups, powerful and powerless,
received their fair share of ridicule from the
Wasp’s artists and writers.7
The unlikely success of the Wasp stemmed from
its biting social criticism, its irreverent attitude
toward powerful figures, and its staff’s keen
sense of popular discontent with economic downturn, unemployment, and “problem groups.”
This does not discount, however, the quality of
publication the Wasp gave its readers, particularly
after the weekly mastered the creation of highquality cartoon art complemented with sophisticated satire during its first year of publication.
Once it found its wings, only Thomas Nast of
Harper’s Weekly in New York surpassed Wasp
cartoonist G. Frederick Keller in the excellence
of his caricature and wit.8
The Wasp meted out ridicule to a myriad of caricatured subjects, from senators and presidents to
Chinese immigrants and Mormon polygamists.
But how did these illustrations—the weekly’s
visual language—construct, reinforce, and/or
subvert stereotyped images of the West’s marginal groups and their most virulent opponents?
How did the publication use mockery in its
images to deploy messages about the putatively
“proper” or “natural” place of groups within soci-
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ety, serving as the locus of criticism of and agitation for the Chinese exclusion crusade?
Building the Wasp’s Nest
When the first issue of the Wasp rolled off the
presses on August 5, 1876, San Francisco had
only one other illustrated periodical, the virulently anti-Catholic Thistleton’s Illustrated Jolly
Giant. Just before he published his first issue,
Wasp owner and publisher Francis Korbel coaxed
editor George Mackrett away from his rival to
take charge of the new publication.9 Korbel’s
initial foray into publishing did not feature,
however, the colorful, biting wit or the full-color
chromolithographs that would come to define the
weekly in its prime. The latter appeared in stages:
the first issues contained only black-and-white
illustrations. Then, in December 1876, the Wasp
began to run cartoons in black with a green background wash. The full three-color chromolithograph that became so popular during the Gilded
Age made its debut nearly six months later, in
the May 26, 1877 edition.10
Korbel, a Czech dissident, began publishing
the Wasp sixteen years after his escape from the
Austrian Empire. He fled to the United States
in 1848, first to New York and then to San
Francisco, the booming capital of the California
Gold Rush. He sent for his brothers, Anton and
Joseph, and by the early 1860s the reunited trio
had established a business producing cigar boxes
and labels. To identify particular brands, and to
set their product apart from that of competitors,
cigar-box makers relied on lithographed labels.
The Korbels found an excellent man to produce
their cigar-label lithographs in G. Frederick
Keller, known at the time as an artist of structures and scenic views.11
When Korbel assigned Keller to work on the
Wasp, the illustrator had to hastily learn to
caricature the powerful and powerless. His first
drawings hardly reflect the virtuosity and skill
he later displayed.12 Also an immigrant, Keller
had arrived from Prussia in the late 1860s to
apprentice with the lithographer George Baker.
Although the craft was new to him, Keller
came into political cartooning at an opportune
moment, when advances in lithography (a means
of creating mass reproductions wherein an artist etched a drawing into wax before applying it
to a lithographic plate, which then printed it on
a blank page) made an easy transfer from the
medium of cigar-box labels to political cartoons.13
Korbel’s background deeply influenced the views
he brought to the Wasp. His flight to the United
States had all the earmarks of hyperbolic stories
told by immigrants in mid-nineteenth-century
San Francisco taverns. In 1848, the iron-fisted
Prince Windiszcrec ordered Korbel arrested
and imprisoned for taking part in a failed coup
against his regime. According to the story, Korbel, wearing civilian clothes smuggled in by his
grandmother, casually walked out through an
unlocked gate, smoking a cigar (perhaps inspiring his initial business venture in California).
Whatever pride Korbel felt in his immigrant
story, however, seems never to have affected his
views on the plight of Chinese immigrants in the
West, at whom he took frequent aim in the pages
of his weekly.14
To understand the Wasp requires a solid idea of
the context in which Korbel conceived it. The
same sense of justice that drove the publisher
to plot against the Hapsburgs fed his growing
distaste for the rampant corruption in urban
political machines and the newly centralized
federal state.15 Not one to fear a challenge to
injustice, Korbel established the Wasp to voice his
grievances against government complicity with
tyrannical railroad monopolies and unrestricted
immigration from China. The publication took
special aim at the owners of the Central Pacific
Railroad, the local corporate giant, as the source
of both threats. The Wasp fit well with San Francisco, one of the most racially and religiously
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diverse cities in North America, a place where
irreverence and creativity found ample reward. In
this milieu, the mockery of its editorial cartoons
received a welcome reception.
Having naturalized after the Civil War and
now free to exercise his American right to free
speech, Korbel seized his opportunity to create
a mouthpiece for his views on American soil. In
1876, he produced an illustrated periodical filled
with political cartoons that skewered Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes
and praised his Democratic challenger, Samuel
Tilden. To Korbel, Tilden represented the antithesis of everything for which President Ulysses S.
Grant stood. While the Grant administration
remained mired in scandal and corruption for its
duration, Tilden, as governor of New York, had
brought the Tweed and Canal Rings to justice.
Korbel’s enthusiasm for Tilden’s campaign likewise motivated Keller; as the election neared, he
began to show the first signs of his vicious style
of ridicule that would set him apart from the
lion’s share of his contemporaries.16
The disparity between the popular and electoral
votes in the 1876 presidential election and the
equally infamous Hayes-Tilden Compromise
of 1877—granting the Republican Party the
presidency in exchange for the removal of all
federal soldiers from the South—left Korbel disenchanted with partisan politics, and his weekly
soon dropped the Democratic cause. However,
the publication continued to take contradictory
political stances. Following its initial phase as a
Democratic vehicle, the Wasp vacillated between
independent and Republican positions before
abandoning political endorsement entirely—a
position it would hold throughout the next four
years.17 Until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the weekly maintained a nonpolitical stance, selecting its targets from a broad
political and social spectrum.
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That national politics initially motivated Korbel
to publish a politically oriented journal suggests
that while the Wasp may have covered its fair
share of local or western issues, it was aware of
its place in a larger national context. Its cartoonists and editors read sister illustrated weeklies
from the East Coast. As it did with other Bay
Area publications, the Wasp borrowed material
from Joseph Keppler’s New York–based illustrated weekly, Puck. Although Puck had a wider
readership in a much more populated region of
the nation, the quality of the Wasp’s illustrations
and satire effectively made it Puck’s West Coast
counterpart.18
During the 1880 presidential race, the Wasp ran
The Great American Circus. Instead of the hardand-fast partisanship of the previous presidential
election, the cartoon spotlights the Wasp’s new
nonpartisan political stance by portraying all politicians as members of a circus show. Uncle Sam,
one of Keller’s favorite cartoon tropes, serves as
ringmaster to the key players—leading political
candidates—in the circus’s center ring. In the
background on the right is the Republican platform, replete with the party’s elephant symbol
(originally created by Nast for the 1874 elections).
In front of it, Democratic New York City comptroller John Kelly and “Johnny Reb” (standing on
a pedestal labeled “CSA,” Confederate States of
America) hold a banner promoting the November
2, 1880 election. In the background on the left,
the Wasp joins Chic (a short-lived New York satirical weekly), Puck, and Harper’s Weekly as players
in the circus band—a self-congratulatory gesture
highlighting the Wasp’s critical role in the “circus” of American politics. The cartoon implies
that the Wasp and its East Coast illustrated contemporaries set the tune to which national politicians “performed” for the electorate.19
Keller shows equal disdain for the Democrats. In
the foreground on the left (not pictured), a welldressed woman representing the wealthy rides
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The Great American Circus, October 23, 1880 (detail)
California Historical Society; CHS2013.1169.tif
on top of a Democratic jackass (a party icon since
Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign).
The animal rests upon the exploited poor, characterized by a man in a barrel with a dollar sign,
who bears the burden of all those he carries. The
message is clear: the Democrats duped the poor
into supporting a party that promoted the interests of the rich to the working class’s own detriment. In front of these figures (pictured above),
Democratic presidential candidate Winfield
Scott Hancock performs a delicate act, tenuously
standing atop a galloping horse while balancing
his running mate, William Hayden English, on
his head.
Such cartoons positioned the Wasp as part of a
highly influential group of American satirical
publications. They suggest the influence that the
weekly believed it held among its contemporaries
and its nearly 10,000 subscribers, emphasizing
the publication’s salience as a prominent cultural arbiter and source of social criticism in the
American West.
Images of Marginality
Though racism, bigotry, and gross asymmetries
of wealth existed in all American regions during
the late nineteenth century, divisions of groups
in the American West ran along many particular racial, ethnic, and religious lines. Unlike
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The Three Troublesome Children, the December
1881 cover illustration, depicts marginal groups
unique to the American West and their alleged
threats.20 In it, Keller represents Columbia—the
female personification of the United States—
as a maternal figure with three children. The
coolie laborer (“China Question”)—the unfree
worker on a fixed contract sent by labor agents
in China—pulls her hair as a bearded Mormon
squirms on her lap and spits in her face.21 Both
the Chinese and Mormon characters are disdained for their anti-American inclinations—the
former for their supposed disinterest in acculturating to American ways of life and the latter
for their social insularity and open contempt for
the federal government and its attempts to interfere with their ways. Utilizing a common artistic
trope to denote marginality, Keller depicts figures
of the “lowest” social groups toward the bottom
of the cartoon. Here, the lowest is the American
Indian, who destroys toy soldiers at Columbia’s
feet, suggesting the perceived threat of violence
from indigenous peoples yet to be removed to
reservations.22
The Three Troublesome Children, December 16, 1881
the South, where whites enforced the strict
caste subordination of African Americans, the
West’s solutions were more opaque and difficult
to implement. And while the Wasp’s cartoons
conveyed messages about the place of marginal
groups—particularly the Chinese—the weekly
also took aim at local and national elites, from
greedy San Francisco rail magnates to corrupt
federal politicians, most commonly for exercising
near-conspiratorial power, corruption, or gross
managerial incompetence.
Two cartoons illustrate the Wasp’s grasp of these
groups at the local and national levels. The first,
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The cartoon also conveys a palpable sense of
frustration: while Columbia contends with the
“troublesome children,” Uncle Sam pays little
attention to her plight, insouciantly reading a
newspaper (“Politics”) while a cat-o’-nine-tails
(“Law”) hangs unused on his chair. The image
lambastes Uncle Sam for administering no discipline to pressing national problems and conveys
a deep sense of exasperation at the federal government’s reluctance to contend with these three
pressing concerns.
Uncle Sam, however, takes a leading role in Uncle
Sam’s Troublesome Bedfellows.23 This 1879 cartoon
offers a broader representation of the nation’s
problem groups than simply those unique to the
West. In it, both the Chinese and Mormons have
been ejected from Uncle Sam’s bed. His Indian
bedmate, however, remains on the mattress,
along with two other groups more germane to
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Uncle Sam’s Troublesome Bedfellows, February 8, 1879
the East (the Irishman) and South (the African
American).
The derisive suggestion that the Chinese and
Mormons imperiled American institutions again
implies that state power can and should be exercised to exclude undesirable groups. Though
suggesting the firmer hold by the Irish, African,
and Native on their claim to American soil, the
cartoon also warns that these bedfellows may
be subject to ejection, deportation, or exclusion
should they refuse to “behave themselves in a
dutiful manner.”24
As the federal government’s enforcement of new
rights granted by radical Reconstruction policies to emancipated African Americans began
to wane in the South, as many as 26,000 blacks
migrated to Kansas from former Confederate
states in 1879–80 alone.25 Although African
Americans had been present in California in very
small numbers since the Gold Rush, it would not
be until World War II when blacks would arrive
in California in significant numbers.26
Despite their small presence in early California,
the Wasp did not hesitate to cast African Americans in a derisive light. Not only did the publication suggest that they were one of the nation’s
many problem groups, it also took a nominally
Democratic stance on federal policy in the South
in general and black independence and enfranchisement in particular. In the wake of the Great
Compromise and the installment of Hayes in the
White House, the Wasp lamented another term
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power. Two tiny white figures, Uncle Sam and
Columbia, flee their colossal successors—symbol of new and threatening African American
political inclusion—to the reins of power. Keller
not only has utilized the comic device of impossibly fantastic asymmetries in size between the
black and white figures, he also has relied on
stock characters culled from blackface minstrelsy,
which was, like the traveling circus (depicted in
The Great American Circus), one of nineteenthcentury America’s most popular forms of
pre-vaudevillian entertainment.27 That Keller
illustrated these minstrel characters literally
cloaked in American pride raiment indicates the
negativity with which he viewed current events
in the nation.
The Future Representatives of Our Nation, February 24, 1877
California Historical Society; CHS2013.1170.tif
of Republican rule in the executive branch and its
implications for the American racial order.
This sentiment is nowhere more evident than
in the weekly’s February 24, 1877 cover illustration depicting enormous African American
caricatures, one male and the other female, on
the steps of the White House, clad in the garb
of Uncle Sam and Columbia. Instead of the flag
with which nineteenth-century artists typically
rendered the figure of Columbia, Keller derisively
shows her carrying a flaccid hat on a staff, denoting the Wasp’s conviction that the Great Compromise would result in a decline of American
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In hindsight, the caricatured threats strike modern readers as exaggerated, if not hysterical and
highly ironic, given the well-known aftereffects
of the Great Compromise: the “redemption” of
home rule and white supremacy to the South.
However, it does indicate that whites in California, known for their antipathy toward African
Americans from the state’s earliest days, feared
that the extension of political rights to black men
imperiled the nation’s republican institutions.28
In June 1880, Korbel hired the Englishman
Harry Ellington Brook to edit the Wasp. Though
it was during Brook’s tenure that the weekly
became renowned for its politically neutral
stance,29 as analysis of the Wasp’s cartoons indicate, this period actually began in the year prior
to Brook’s arrival. With the implementation of
Jim Crow segregation, black disenfranchisement,
and political coercion following passage of the
Great Compromise, African Americans faced
unemployment, eviction, or violence for voting
for the Republican ticket or even for voting at all.
In an April 1879 cartoon, two political operatives
stand behind a ballot box. A simian-faced Irishman sports the label “Democratic Demagogue,”
while protruding from the pocket of his well-
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dressed compatriot is the label “Republican Wire
Puller” (a reference to the GOP’s well-publicized
corruption). As the men look out onto the oftimagined “Chinese hordes” congregating on the
street, the Democrat asks his Republican companion, “Would it not be splendid if we could use
the Chinese as ‘Voting Cattle’ as we do the niggers in the Southern states?”
The cartoon, however, elides the existence of two
nearly insurmountable barriers to the scenario it
represents. Blacks in the South could, according
to law, vote for any candidate of their choosing,
yet they seldom, if at all, voted Republican (the
party that had liberated them from slavery) due
to the on-the-ground reality of white terror and
coercion.30 Second, in regards to the Chinese, the
1790 Congress had promulgated an immigration policy restricting naturalized citizenship to
“free white persons” who had immigrated to the
United States. This decree remained the official
policy of the United States until it was nullified by
the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952.
The Chinese had directly challenged that policy
in California in the spring of 1878, a year prior
to the cartoon’s publication. Lorenzo Sawyer,
presiding over the United States Courts for the
Ninth Circuit, delivered his opinion in the case
of Ah Yup, a Chinese immigrant who petitioned
for naturalization on the grounds that he, as a
Chinese man, qualified as white and was therefore eligible for American citizenship. Sawyer
concluded that the case had, in fact, shown the
elusive nature of the definition of “white,” as science had failed to adequately account for racial
differentiation. However, the judge countered, in
the United States, the word had “a well settled
meaning in common popular speech,” in a way
that had become “constantly used in the sense
so acquired in the literature of the country, as
well as in common parlance.”31 Lacking empirical grounds on which to base his ruling, Sawyer
opted instead to base his juridical logic on the
grounds of social consensus and a tacit endorse-
“Would it not be splendid if we could use the Chinese
as ‘Voting Cattle’ as we do the niggers in the Southern
states?,” April 25, 1879
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley
ment of the legitimacy of white supremacy. The
Chinese, unlike blacks in the South, had no de
jure claim to the franchise in any case.
The Case of the Chinese
As evidenced by the frequency and hysterical
nature of their portrayal, however, no group—
Indians and Mormons included—preoccupied
the minds of the Wasp’s staff more than the
Chinese. The issue became Korbel’s principal
concern following the publication’s retreat from
political partisanship. Keller dutifully channeled
into his illustrations his employer’s malaise
with the two major political parties and their
reluctance to address the Chinese threat. In the
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ensuing decades, the Chinese became the Wasp’s
favorite target as it rolled off the presses each
week.
California’s ambivalent relationship with Chinese
immigrants began almost as soon as they arrived
at Gold Mountain, the name they gave to Gold
Rush California. In San Francisco, city planners
included the Chinese—wearing silk robes made
in their native land—in a parade celebrating California’s admission to the Union in 1850.32 Two
years later, Governor John McDougal suggested
that California might use more laborers from
China to help drain the state’s swamplands. But
migration gained considerable momentum during the following years, when the flow of Chinese
migrants swelled from 325 forty-niners to 20,026
arrivals in 1852. In May of that year, the state legislature required that all foreigners without plans
to naturalize pay a three-dollar annual tax. In
reality, the tax was a thinly veiled handicap on all
nonwhite or foreign competition for California’s
gold: Chinese, Mexican, Chilean, Hawaiian, Peruvian, and Argentinean.33
The lure of gold was not the only reason people
in China were willing to indenture themselves to
powerful merchants to cross the Pacific. Imperialism helped to push these immigrants onto
ships. During the Opium Wars of 1839–42 and
1856–80, Britain had enforced, through force
of arms, its right to sell opium to the people of
China against the wishes of the Qing government. These wars resulted in indemnities to
Western powers, creating a massive debt in
China that the state attempted to ameliorate
by imposing stifling taxes on its people. By the
1850s, many Chinese men sought more stable
economic footing in the United States.34 Even
after the momentum of the Gold Rush began to
wane, steamship companies and agents in China
recruited laborers to meet the tremendous manpower needs in the developing American West.35
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Most famously, between 1865 and 1869, 10,000
Chinese workers provided a crucial labor force
for the Central Pacific Railroad during its construction of the western segment of the transcontinental railroad.36 California, unlike other
regions where the Chinese settled, saw an arrival
rate twice that of Anglo American immigrants
during the 1870s. After the railroad’s completion,
many former workers banded together in urban
enclaves (most notably in San Francisco’s Chinatown) to protect themselves against violence by
white vigilante groups that had continued since
the Gold Rush.37 They typically found employment similar to railroad work—menial, low-wage
jobs, most commonly as domestics or launderers—performing much of the dirty, dangerous
but necessary work required to support growing
populations.38
Many of San Francisco’s European and European
American citizens already viewed the Chinese as
the nonwhite “other,” the antipode to their own
position in society.39 The foreignness of Chinese
immigrants’ dress, language, and culture came to
embody all that white San Franciscans defined as
anathema to their American identity. When the
bottom dropped out of the economy, their anger
exploded. The Panic of 1873, spawned by the
insolvency of Jay Cooke & Co. (one of the federal
government’s primary Civil War financiers), coupled with speculation in Virginia City’s Comstock
Lode, sent ripples of economic downturn to San
Francisco, raising resentment of Chinese immigrants to new heights. Prior to the Depression,
because the Chinese had found work in thankless, low-wage jobs, whites did not perceive them
as a threat to their economic well-being. But by
the mid-1870s, as the city’s number of unemployed white men grew, so too did their animosity toward Chinese workers. The missionaries
and racial radicals who had once been the sole
allies of California’s Chinese now capitulated to
the popular anti-Chinese tide and withdrew their
support.40 Under such conditions, the West Coast
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became a cauldron of anti-Chinese antipathy, racism, and violence.
The 1877 restoration of white supremacy to the
South marked an opportunity for the state’s antiChinese movement to solidify and take on new
momentum. Californians seized the opportunity
to insert their brand of white supremacy into
highly contested debates about race in post–Civil
War America. The Wasp consistently lamented
what it perceived as a lack of sympathy in the
eastern United States for the invasion by “Chinese hordes” on the Pacific Coast. The weekly
maligned Hayes throughout his presidency for
ignoring the outcry against the continued importation of Chinese coolie labor. Although the Wasp
mocked a number of marginal groups, its cartoonists expended a disproportionate amount of
effort ridiculing the Chinese and those deemed
complicit in their continued arrival on the
West Coast.
One of the leading sources of the anti-Chinese
movement stemmed from the ideology of free
labor, a significant political vehicle in the decades
leading up to the Civil War. Although whites
in the West tended to subsume all Chinese
under the rubric of coolie labor, most Chinese
immigrants lived as free individuals to a greater
or lesser extent.41 The white exclusionist movement utilized “free labor” ideology to conflate
coolies with voluntary Chinese immigrants, who,
while exploited, underpaid, and often trapped in
cycles of debt, controlled their destination and
negotiated the terms of their labor contracts.
The former often journeyed to the United States
on a credit-ticket system, making many voluntary Chinese immigrants more analogous to
European indentured servants than the “slave”
label that the western anti-Chinese movement
so readily attached to them. In all its cartoons
on the “Chinese question,” the Wasp never distinguished between voluntary and involuntary
immigration from across the Pacific.
In March 1879, the Wasp published Reasons Why
the Anti-Coolie Bill Had No Effect in response to
Hayes’s veto of a congressional bill that would
have prevented U.S.-bound Chinese ships
from carrying more than fifteen passengers.42
In the cartoon, Hayes, wearing women’s clothing, futilely attempts to beat back an enormous
crocodile (“Coolie Immigration”) with a rolled
paper (“Anti Chinese Bill”). A fence (“Burlingame
Treaty,” an 1868 agreement giving China “most
favored nation status” and guaranteeing free
immigration of the Chinese to the United States)
prevents Hayes from keeping a white workingman, wearing a hat (“western states”) from the
jaws of a crocodile in its natural habitat, the wetlands. Though no crocodiles lived in sloughs on
the Pacific coast, the reference to the work of so
many Chinese laborers in their work for agribusiness firms converting California’s marshlands
into farmland is clear.
Others also keep Hayes from beating back the
crocodile: his wife, Lucy, wearing men’s clothing
(Mrs. Hayes earned a reputation for her influence
over her husband, having converted him to the
abolitionist cause prior to the Civil War); Henry
Ward Beecher, the liberal pastor of Boston’s Plymouth Church; Thomas De Witt Talmage, whose
dramatic style at the pulpit of New York’s Central
Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn drew crowds
rivaling Beecher’s; and a pilgrim, identified by his
hat as a “Puritanical Demagogue.”
What positions had earned these East Coast
individuals the ire of the West Coast’s virulently
anti-Chinese publications? In his veto message,
Hayes had tried to soothe angry Californians by
claiming that their problem was one “deserving
of the most serious attention of the people of the
whole country, and a solicitous interest on the
part of congress and the executive.” However, he
reasoned, international obligations (“articles 5
and 6 of the treaty with China, commonly called
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Reasons Why the Anti-Coolie Bill Had No Effect, March 15, 1879
‘the Burlingame treaty’”) outweighed the alleged
threat the Chinese posed to republicanism in the
Far West.43
For his part, Beecher—his reputation sullied by
his infamous trial for adultery in 1875—had long
held a tolerant attitude toward the Chinese. In a
lecture on their immigration a month after the
Wasp published its cartoon, he argued that “the
Chinaman does not send to China the railroads
he has helped to build, or the improvements he
has helped to make in the soil and in the industrial facilities of the country.”44 The reverend
mocked Californians’ complaint that the Chinese
had rebuffed all attempts to convert them to
Christianity, quipping, “Well, we have clubbed
them, stoned them, burned their houses and
murdered some of them—yet they refuse to be
converted. I don’t know any way except to blow
them up with nitro-glycerine if we are ever to get
them to Heaven.”45
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Talmage, whose repute as a lecturer earned him
both fame and wealth, preached to his flock that
“underground life in New York is 50 per cent
worse than Chinatown in San Francisco.” He
refuted the argument that the Chinese contributed little or nothing to California’s economy,
pointing to the taxes they paid to the government
and the rent they remitted monthly to San Francisco’s landlords. And as to the veracity of claims
about the alleged “menace” threatening California, Talmage was unconcerned. “The Chinese
scare,” he declared, “is the greatest humbug that
has ever been enacted.”46
The gender confusion and cross-dressing used by
the cartoonist to portray the president and First
Lady was a popular comedic trope in nineteenthcentury culture.47 In this image, Hayes’s feminization exemplifies white California’s exasperation
with the federal government’s inability to protect
western states. Keller also portrays the First Lady,
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who had worked extensively with the Methodist Missionary Society, as literally “wearing the
pants” in her marriage, pulling Hayes away from
his responsibility to protect American citizens.
Eastern moralists and politicians simply did not
comprehend western problems and encouraged
the government to put off dealing with them.
Other illustrations suggest that the Wasp shared
the nineteenth-century fear of miscegenation.
In Coming Races, the satirist’s play on the word
races pits two definitions of the term against each
other. Images in the cartoon’s lower and upper
portions portray actual races—a horse race, a
swimming match, and a rowing race. In the
center, a multiracial family composed of an Irish
father, a Chinese mother, and two seemingly
deformed and apelike children figure most prominently. Coupled with the lighthearted wordplay
is the disconcerting portrayal of mixed-race children. Here, satire serves as admonition as well
as reproach concerning the dire consequences of
interracial union.
The message’s salience becomes all the
more significant when considering that antimiscegenation ideology, based on the absolute
imperative to protect white, feminine domesticity, helped make legitimate a reign of terror
against Southern black men. The cartoon shows
a white-Chinese couple in lieu of a black-white
interracial union and reverses the gender roles
of the dominant anti-miscegenation discourse.
Curiously, it posits an unlikely union, as the vast
majority of Chinese immigrants who arrived in
California were men. Most of the women were
kidnapped prostitutes. The remainder were typically wives whose marriages had been arranged
in China. The likelihood of a marriage between
an Irish man and a Chinese woman in latenineteenth-century California would have been
slim at best.48
Coming Races, June 26, 1880
The Bipartisan Consensus and
the Rise of the Workingmen’s Party
of California
The Workingmen’s Party of California (WPC)
had its roots in the primarily German socialist organization on the East Coast and evolved
directly out of frustration with the two-party
establishment. Although both major political
parties had included opposition to the Chinese
in their platforms by 1871, six years later California’s white working-class men had had enough
of their perceived inaction. During the Gilded
Age in California, fear of “yellow peril” and
resentment of monopoly capital grew in tandem.
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White resentment of Chinese immigrants and
their alleged capitalist puppet masters spawned
a briefly successful political party—the WPC—
based on a simplistic, double-sided platform of
anti-monopolism and Chinese exclusion.
corruption of the railroad companies and the
Chinese immigrants they had imported. From
the outset, the party conducted all of its rallies
and publicity under the banner “The Chinese
Must Go!”50
In the summer of 1877, the Great Railroad Strike
spread from the East to the West Coast by workers unhappy with wage cuts during the failing
economy. The crisis prompted the eastern Workingmen’s Party to attempt—though feebly and
unsuccessfully—to take leadership of the labor
revolt in major cities throughout the nation.
The government responded by calling out local
militias to put down the strikes. In July 1877, a
peaceful sandlot sympathy rally by San Francisco
workers descended into an anti-Chinese riot.
Rioters clashed with police, broke into more
than twenty laundries, and set fire to the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company docks. After two days
of lawlessness, a vigilante army of 4,000 volunteers led by William T. Coleman, a member
of San Francisco’s Republican leadership and
head of the 1856 Vigilance Committee, took to
the city’s streets to restore order. Either hoping
to avoid an all-out massacre, as had occurred in
Los Angeles six years earlier, or spurred by wire
reports of a “second civil war” between labor and
capital from eastern cities, the “pickaxe brigade”
sought to avoid similar atrocities on the streets of
San Francisco.49
Like the anti-coolie clubs before it, the WPC tried
to balance its rhetoric between legal means of
persuasion and threats of vigilante violence. In
October, Kearney and a contingent of his followers marched to the front porches of the Nob Hill
elite and, most notably, the Big Four. In their
speeches party leaders exhorted their constituents
to procure the group’s ends by musket should the
Central Pacific Railroad not heed their demand
to send all its Chinese workers into the ranks of
the unemployed. The city’s establishment, led
by Republican mayor Andrew Jackson Bryant,
responded to the ominous speeches by arresting
Kearney and other WPC leaders time and again—
raising their bail on each occasion—but this
served only to increase Kearney’s popularity.51
Following the riot, the city’s workers opted for
more diplomatic means of expressing their discontent. Although bipartisan efforts to end the
nationwide railroad strikes by force stimulated
the establishment of the WPC, the new party also
grew out of objections to the violence Coleman
and his men had employed in quelling the antiChinese riot. Headed by Denis Kearney, an Irish
Catholic immigrant and drayman who gained
notoriety as a sandlot orator in the aftermath of
the summer riot, the WPC flew the dual flags
of immigration restriction and anti-capitalism,
blaming the nation’s economic woes on the
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At first, the Wasp sympathized with the WPC.
Its December 7, 1877 cover lauded the party’s
“first blow at the Chinese question.” The cartoon
features a workingman, carrying the sign “Working Men’s Procession, Nov. 29th,” punching a
Chinese man in front of a Chinatown business.
The workingman is portrayed as rowdy but performing a valuable community service. Like Coming Races, the image’s satire lies in its semiotic
conflation of the literal and figurative uses of the
word “blow.” Rather than tackling the problem
through legal channels, the workingman literally has taken the law into his own hands. Keller
also depicts a distorted reflection of the Chinese
immigrant in a window storefront, literally portraying the Chinese immigrant as a bogeyman
who imperiled California’s future.
Korbel soon soured on the WPC and especially
on Kearney. Though he did not oppose the
WPC’s position on Chinese immigration, as
a businessman he feared the party’s virulent
anti-capitalism. Wary of the horrific and well-
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publicized brutality of the 1871 Chinese massacre, his publication took on a moderate stance
critical of anti-Chinese radicals and government
reluctance to restrict trans-Pacific immigration.
The Wasp began to ridicule the party’s leader.
Kearney’s outrageous speeches and bombastic
behavior did not help his cause with the local
publications. In April 1878, when he bestowed
upon himself the title of lieutenant general, the
Wasp began publishing caricatures of him as
a jackass in military garb.52 In its parody, the
weekly walked a fine line between both antiChinese and anti-Kearney views. Whereas most
of San Francisco’s press—including the Argonaut,
the Wasp’s main illustrated rival—opposed the
WPC, the Wasp focused on satirizing the party’s
means but not its ends.
In ChineeMushGo!!, a title mocking Chinese
immigrants’ attempts to linguistically assimilate
into San Francisco life, the Wasp illustrates Kearney in the midst of one of his trademark tirades
on a “Sand Lot Platform” at the San Francisco
waterfront. Two steamships are moored behind
him. Kearney stands with his back turned to the
ship “To China,” onto which two white men force
a solitary Chinese man. In front of Kearney, who
The First Blow at the Chinese Question,
December 8, 1877
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley
ChineeMushGo!!, July 26, 1879
Courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley
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Political Assassinations—Taking the Consequences, Harper’s Weekly, September 13, 1879
The Huntington Library, San Marino, California
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appears nearly apoplectic, a stream of Chinese
immigrants flows off the ship “From China.” The
lead immigrant reflects the Wasp’s position on
the party’s bloviating leader: instead of fearing
Kearney’s tantrum, he thumbs his nose at the
WPC leader, suggesting that Kearney’s hysteria
was powerless in the face of the determination of
Chinese workers to come to America.
While white supremacy was normative in latenineteenth-century American life, the eastern
press did not show much sympathy for California’s “Chinese problem.” In September 1879,
Harper’s Weekly published Political Assassinations
as its cover illustration. The image shows an
African American freedman on the left (“South”).
The subheading “The Mississippi Plan” references the 1875 plan of the state’s Democrats to
expel or silence both black and white Republicans through violence and terror. A Chinese man
occupies the right side (“West”), the home of
“The California Plan” and the “Sand Lots.”53
The black man ambles by notices of the August
1879 murder of Captain Henry M. Dixon, an
independent candidate for Yazoo County sheriff,
who had been shot to death by J. H. Barksdale,
a candidate for chancery clerk. The Chinese
man walks past posted reports of the attempted
murder the same month of Isaac Kalloch (the
WPC’s candidate for mayor of San Francisco) by
San Francisco Chronicle managing editor Charles
DeYoung.54 The notices also indicate that Californians are a “bad lot” for whom “Denis Kearney
is Boss.” In the cartoon’s caption, Nast points
out the lawless hypocrisy of the South and West:
“‘The Nigger Must Go’ and ‘The Chinese Must
Go’—The Poor Barbarians Can’t Understand Our
Civilized Republican Form of Government.” Both
sections of the cartoon share the phrase “mob
law”—the vehicle for the sometimes figurative,
and other times literal, assassinations of both
African Americans in Mississippi and Chinese in
California. The illustration makes clear that East
Coast publications saw their region as more civilized and accepting of its minority groups than
did the American West, ignoring a long history of
racial violence in the Northeast.
In addition to caricatures of Chinese immigrants,
the Wasp also lampooned the hypocrisy of white
San Franciscans who supported the anti-Chinese
movement politically while conducting business
for their goods and services. Undoubtedly, many
people who economically sustained the Chinese
in these ways were among the weekly’s readership. With a braying Kearney jackass at its center,
The Chinese Must Go! But Who Keeps Them? portrays scenes of white San Franciscans patronizing
Chinese businesses, including laundries, the
predominant independent Chinese enterprise
in California. Two scenes illustrate whites buying goods from the Chinese proprietor of a cigar
factory and a fish peddler. Only one scene, in
the lower left, features whites performing a service—providing transportation—for the Chinese.
The cartoon posits that Kearney has missed the
point: instead of placing the blame for coolie
immigration on the shoulders of the wealthy,
specifically, and capitalism in general, he should
first look to the working-class men and families
who benefited from and helped sustain Chinese
immigrant ventures.
In reality, however, the Wasp’s publisher himself was complicit in “keeping” the Chinese in
California. The Chinese owned and worked in
over 90 percent of San Francisco’s cigar-making
factories. Korbel profited directly from enterprising and hardworking Chinese immigrants at his
cigar-box manufacturing business. A businessman first and foremost, he was willing to criticize
the very practices in which he partook in order
to sell as many issues as possible and maintain a
healthy bottom line.55
The Wasp’s staff did not always agree with the
weekly’s opinions and, at times, conflicting messages resulted in the same issue. The writer and
wit Ambrose Bierce, who was hired by Korbel in
1881, opposed both the anti-Chinese and antiMormon sentiments in the West. Though he
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The Chinese Must Go! But Who Keeps Them?, May 11, 1878
never directly challenged the Wasp’s recurrent
ridicule of both groups, he took issue with such
views in his written editorials. Always the misanthrope, Bierce even favored allowing Mormons
to practice polygamy free of persecution, declaring “Name o’ God, let ’em polygam! They do not
force upon others a plurality of wives!”56 He also
objected to the belief of West Coast denizens
that their own intimate knowledge of California’s
“Chinese question” was more grounded than
that of citizens and lawmakers in other regions
of the country. As Congress debated the Chinese Exclusion Act, Bierce wrote in the Wasp in
March 1882: “Without any consuming ambition
to be brickbatted as a Chinophile, I venture to
point out that the claim to infallibility, which our
people base their superior knowledge of the practical workings of Chinese immigration, as compared with eastern ignorance thereof, is mostly
nonsense. It commonly occurs that the clearest,
most logical and most practical view of social
and economical questions is taken from outside
by observers whose interests are not directly
affected. Might it not be true in this instance that
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the Massachusetts looker-on sees the game more
clearly than the players?”57
Despite such expressions of ambivalence concerning the Chinese, the WPC gained a major
political foothold, winning a number of seats
in the legislature in the fall of 1878. That year
also saw a convention to revise the outdated
state constitution of 1849, written in haste at
the height of the Gold Rush.58 WPC delegates
dominated the convention’s left wing, in which
they organized a committee on Chinese immigration. John Miller, head of the committee, gave
voice to its members’ resentment of the East
Coast’s dismissive attitude: “If they say this is
not an evil, and the Chinese are as good as any
other class of immigrants—that we are making a
great noise and confusion about nothing—let us
send over four, or five, or ten thousand of these
people . . . belonging to the diseased and criminal
classes . . . and see how they like it. There would
be no surer way of changing their views upon the
Chinese question.”59 As we have seen, the Wasp
shared Miller’s sentiment, one that may have
had some basis in fact; not only did the eastern
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The Constitutional Pump, November 2, 1878
press show little interest in publishing any commentary on the West’s “Chinese question,” it also
showed little reluctance to portray California as
irrational and violent.
As it did with all issues of concern to San Franciscans, the Wasp offered its opinion and analysis
of the convention’s proceedings. In its two-page
center illustration, The Constitutional Pump, a
sole figure represents the conference’s varied
contingents: the WPC, the clergy, women, the
Temperance Party, and members of the two
major political parties. To his right, the Wasp (in
literal, entomological form) observes the scene
through binoculars from its perch atop a fence.
As the figure pumps the state capital, out spew
a number of documents identifying a range of
issues: women’s rights, Chinese exclusion, temperance, the eight-hour day. These issues appear
to crush the white female representing the “Old
Constitution,” imbuing her with nineteenthcentury beliefs about white feminine virtue.
“Help!! I am going down!!” she cries, as the bills
drown her and run into the sewer.
The cartoon also contains two significant inset
illustrations. In the upper right corner, a moneybag with an oilcan’s handle and spout bears the
inscription “Daily supply of oil for the pump,” a
reminder to the taxpayer of the convention’s daily
costs. In the upper left corner, a Chinese immigrant blocks the blast of a cannonball from the
“constitutional convention” with a “Burlingame”
shield. The drawing implies that the expenditures
of the new constitution would be all for naught:
with an intransigent federal government unwilling to renege on its agreement with a foreign
nation, quixotic clauses in the new constitution
outlawing Chinese immigration would be a costly
waste of time.
The indispensability of cheap Chinese labor
belied the simplistic rhetoric of the WPC’s
“Chinese Must Go!” rallying cry. This proved to
be a major factor in exposing hypocrisy within
the party’s ranks, leading to its swift fall from
political influence. In addition to party infighting
and corruption, police found San Francisco’s
mayor, the WPC’s Isaac Kalloch, hiding 250
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Siesta, January 13, 1882
Uncle Sam’s Nightmare, March 24, 1882
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Chinese laborers in a warehouse at Page and
Gough Streets. Kearney lost his momentum
through squabbles with his subordinates and
prolonged absences as he traveled throughout
the East Coast to promote the greenback movement.60
The Wasp did not hesitate to take credit for Kearney’s and the WPC’s undoing. In Keller’s 1882
cartoon Siesta, a muse (“The Illustrated Press
of America”) lulls a number of satyrlike figures
to sleep. In a typically demeaning rendering,
swine commiserate on the lower right, one the
“Chinese Question” and the other “Polygamy.”
A Mormon goat reclines next to porcine characters. Keller represents the “Indian Question” as a
rattlesnake; the venomous reptile of the American West symbolizes the violent threat posed by
America’s indigenous peoples. He portrays the
Southern Pacific Railroad as a vulture and the
powerful corruption and avarice of emerging
industrial capitalism (“Stocks”) as the bull and
bear. Behind the political figures in the foreground lies the skeleton of a donkey with a sword
plunged into its chest. Kearney’s trademark hat
sits atop the sword’s handle, accompanied by
the note “Killed by the Wasp.” Here Keller portrays the illustrated press generally through the
simile of musical accompaniment and the Wasp
specifically as the vehicle to lull both the powerful and problematic to sleep.
The Wasp and the Closing of the Gate
With Congress debating Chinese exclusion in
1882, the Wasp did what it did best: it published
finely drawn cartoons rendering in caricature the
threat posed by the “Chinese menace.” In Uncle
Sam’s Nightmare, Uncle Sam rests in his bed as
the Mormon goat (“Polygamy”) weighs him down
and a trio of female Mormon goats watches in
the background. A weight with an Asian face and
the inscription “Chinese Question,” supported
by “Chinese hordes” behind it, creates an even
heavier burden on the national symbol as he
rests, oblivious to the imminent threats of immigration and polygamy.
More than anything else, however, what stands
out is the construct of the two caricatures. Mormons resembled the American mainstream in
race and national origin; cartoonists had to invent
a stock character to represent them. But the very
difference of the Chinese made it necessary only
to exaggerate their putatively threatening cultural characteristics. For example, the repeated
portrayal of Chinese eating rats symbolized their
willingness to work for starvation wages. Chinese
exoticism offered satirical artists the opportunity to render instantly recognizable stereotypes
clothed in black humor.
While the Wasp regularly marked certain social
groups as “problem” and subjected them to
mockery and opprobrium, it took special pains to
embed in its cartoons memorable, satirical messages about the West’s “Chinese problem.” The
weekly’s owners and staff knew well the attitudinal tenor of their readership and the emotional
cues to which they would respond. After the
Great Compromise, Korbel no longer used his
weekly as a platform for his own political agenda,
but rather to maximize his bottom line. As a
cultural formation of western American society,
The Wasp helped to amplify already smoldering
grievances among the white working class west
of the Rockies. It functioned as a major catalyst
in the racist hysteria that culminated in the 1882
legislation heralding a sixty-one-year period of
near-complete cessation of Chinese immigration
to the United States.
Nicholas Sean Hall recently completed his doctoral work
in history under the tutelage of William Deverell at the University of Southern California. His dissertation, “‘This Strange
and Distant Land’: Isolation, Problem Groups, and the Incorporation of California, 1846–1882,” examines the cultural
and intellectual integration of California into the American
nation, arguing that the push to restrict Chinese immigration
in the 1870s was the state’s final successful gambit to fully
incorporate into the national fabric.
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notes
The American Conquest of Alta
California and the Instinct for
Justice: The “First” Jury Trial in
California, By Barry Goode, PP 4–23
Caption sources: Walter Colton, Three Years
in California (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1949); “Song of the Redwood-Tree”:
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/
wwhitman/bl-ww-redwood.htm; Joseph Warren, A Tour of Duty in California (New York:
C.S. Francis & Co. 1849); William Henry
Thomes, On Land and Sea in California in
the Years 1843, ’44 and ’45 (Boston: DeWolfe,
Fiske & Co., 1884); Nicholas Dawson, Narrative of Nicholas “Cheyenne” Dawson (Overland
to California in ’41 and ’49 and Texas in ’51)
(San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1933).
1
Walter Colton, Three Years in California
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1949),
17; facsimile of the first edition (New York:
A.S. Barnes, 1850), edited and with an introduction by Marguerite Eyer Wilbur. Citations refer to the Stanford edition unless
otherwise noted.
2
See, for example, Hubert H. Bancroft,
“History of California, vol. 5, 1846–1848,”
The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. 22
(Boston: Elibron Classics, 2004), 289n1;
Theodore H. Hittell, History of California
(San Francisco: N. J. Stone, 1897), 2:590;
Zoeth S. Eldredge, ed., History of California (New York: Century History, n.d.),
3:88–89; Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., The Trials
of Isaac Graham (Los Angeles: Dawson’s
Book Shop, 1967), 46–58; William Henry
Ellison, A Self-Governing Dominion, California 1849–1860 (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1950), 12–13;
J. M. Guinn, History of the State of California
and Biographical Record of Coast Counties,
California (Chicago: Chapman, 1904), 150;
Clifford M. Drury, “Walter Colton, Chaplain
and Alcalde,” California Historical Society
Quarterly 35, no. 2 (1956), 97; Josiah Royce,
California: From the Conquest in 1846 to the
Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1987), 186n2
(passing reference only); Nellie Van de Grift
Sanchez, “The Spanish Period,” in California and Californians, ed. Rockwell D. Hunt
(Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1926), 172;
Woodrow J. Hansen, The Search for Authority in California (Oakland: Biobooks, 1960),
74. Some historians assert a jury trial in San
Francisco involving Sam Brannan was the
first. See, for example, Franklin Tuthill, The
History of California (San Francisco: H. H.
Bancroft & Company, 1866), 214. But that
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is clearly wrong. See Nunis, Trials of Isaac
Graham, 47n4, and infra, 23.
3
Thomas O. Larkin, “Notes on the Personal
Character of the Principal Men” (n.d., probably April 20, 1846), in The Larkin Papers,
ed. George P. Hammond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), 4:325–29;
Thomas O. Larkin, “Names of the British
Subjects, and Citizens of the United States
Who Resided in Alta California,” repr. in
First and Last Consul: Thomas Oliver Larkin
and the Americanization of California, ed.
John A. Hawgood (Palo Alto: Pacific Books,
1970), 109–18; David J. Langum Sr., Law
and Community on the Mexican California
Frontier (Los Californianos Antepasados,
Vol. XIII) (San Diego: Banard Lithographers, 2006): 17–29.
4
These were among the areas of law most
important to a largely agricultural, sparsely
populated area. See, for example, Miroslava
Chávez-Garcia, Negotiating Conquest: Gender
and Power in California, 1770s to 1880s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004); Lisbeth Haas, Conquest and Historical Identities
in California, 1769–1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Langum, Law
and Community, 232–42. But when Mexico
permitted foreigners to trade along the Alta
California coast, “this growth of trade made
courts for the adjustments of controversies
greatly desired . . . [and created] increased
needs for a law of merchants”; Richard R.
Powell, Compromises of Conflicting Claims: A
Century of California Law, 1760–1860 (Dobbs
Ferry: Oceanea, 1977), 49.
5
The Californios themselves were often
dissatisfied with the lack of a proper judicial
system. On Oct. 18, 1831, Carlos Antonio
Carrillo, the Alta California representative to the Mexican Chamber of Deputies,
addressed that body, decrying the absence
of an effective judiciary in his province and
proposing a law to establish an appropriate
judicial branch there; “Speech by Carlos
Antonio Carrillo, Deputy for Upper California to the Chamber of Deputies, Requesting
the Establishment of Adequate Courts for
the Administration of Justice” in The Coming of Justice to California: Three Documents,
ed. John Galvin, trans. Adelaide Smithers
(San Francisco: John Howell, 1963), 49–62.
A law was passed in 1837, but it was not
given effect in Alta California for years
and even then was not fully implemented;
Langum, Law and Community, 35–40.
6
Michael Gonzalez, “War and the Making
of History: The Case of Mexican California,
1821–1846,” California History 86, no. 2
num ber 2
(2009), 10. The instability in Alta California reflected the problems of the Mexican
central government, where, Gonzalez says
(ibid., 23), “at least forty-nine individuals
sat as president or interim political chief
between 1821 and 1857.”
7
If there was a dispute, the alcalde sought
to reconcile the parties. If initial efforts
failed, then each party would appoint an
hombre bueno. These representatives met
with the alcalde to seek a negotiated resolution. Usually, they were successful in
compromising the dispute. For a more
complete description of the legal system,
see Theodore Grivas, “Alcalde Rule, The
Nature of Local Government in Spanish and
Mexican California,” California Historical
Society Quarterly 40, no. 1 (Mar. 1961), 11;
Powell, Compromises of Conflicting Claims,
29–30. For a contemporary (somewhat
jaundiced) American view of the alcaldes,
see R. A. Wilson, The Alcalde System of California (1851) 1 Cal. 559. For general descriptions of the hombre bueno procedure, see
Langum, Law and Community, 97–104 and
Chávez-Garcia, Negotiating Conquest, 29. For
a specific example of conciliation, see Donald Munro Craig, ed., William Robert Garner,
Letters from California 1846–1847 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1970), 30.
The parties also resorted to arbitration
from time to time, particularly with regard
to business disputes; Langum, Law and
Community, 213–31.
8
9
Langum, Law and Community, 130; “The
days of ’46: ms: recollections of William
Baldridge, 1877,” 32, William Baldridge,
dictated to Lovisa Thompson, MSS C-D 36,
Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley.
10
Bancroft, History of California, 5:60–63,
207–23; Harlan Hague and David J.
Langum, Thomas O. Larkin: A Life of Patriotism and Profit in Old California (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 1–2,
8, 102, 113–15; Robert Glass Cleland, “The
Early Sentiment for the Annexation of California: An Account of the Growth of American Interest in California, 1835–1846,” The
Southwestern Historical Quarterly 18, no. 3
(Jan. 1915): 231–47; Oscar Lewis, ed., California in 1846 (San Francisco: The Grabhorn
Press, 1934), ix; Thomas O. Larkin to Faxon
Dean Atherton, Oct. 20–21, 1842, in Doyce
B. Nunis, Jr., ed., “Six New Larkin Letters,”
Southern California Quarterly 49, no. 1 (Mar.
1967), 69, 83; Thomas O. Larkin to “Journal
of Commerce,” July 1845, in Hammond,
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
The Larkin Papers, 3:292–96; Reuben L.
Underhill, From Cowhides to Golden Fleece:
A Narrative of California, 1832–1858, Based
upon Unpublished Correspondence of Thomas
Oliver Larkin, Trader, Developer, Promoter,
and only American Consul (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1939), 96–99; Joseph
de Rosamel, Upper California, in William
F. Shepard, “California Prior to Conquest:
A Frenchman’s View,” California Historical Society Quarterly 37, no.1 (1958), 71. See
also the debate between either Pio Pico or
José Antonio Carillo and Mariano Vallejo
recounted in Joseph W. Revere, A Tour of
Duty in California (New York: C. S. Francis,
1849), 24–30.
attached. Colton, Three Years in California,
17. Bancroft reports Colton’s appointment
in two places. In one, Stockton “appointed
Walter Colton . . . in place of Price and
Gilchrist.” In the other, Colton “served . . .
with Rodman M. Price.” Compare Bancroft,
History of California, 5:254 and 5:288. The
Aug. 29, 1846 edition of The Californian,
the newspaper edited by Colton, contains
an announcement that two justices are serving Monterey (p. 1) and the Aug. 22 and
29, 1846 editions contain an order signed
“Walter Colton, Rodman M. Price, U.S. Justice” (p. 4). Thus, it is unclear whether Price
stayed in Monterey or shipped out with
Stockton at the end of July.
11
19
Timothy J. Demy, “An Analysis of the Life
and Ministry of Walter Colton (1797–1851):
Congregational Minister and United States
Navy Chaplain” (ThD thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1990), 81. Biographical information on Colton is also found in Henry T.
Cheever’s memoir in Walter Colton, The Sea
and the Sailor, Notes on France and Italy (New
York: A. S. Barnes, 1856), 337–437, and Walter Larsen, “Walter Colton: Yankee Alcalde”
(master’s thesis, University of California Los
Angeles, 1950).
“Operations of the Pacific Squadron.
Despatches [sic] of Commodore Sloat,
Containing an account of his proceedings
on the west coast of Mexico,” Executive
Documents, 30th Congress, 2nd Session,
1848–49, Ex. Doc. No. 1, at 75–76.
12
John D. Sloat to George Bancroft, at sea
aboard the Flag Ship Levant, July 31, 1846,
repr. in House Executive Documents, 29th
Congress, 2nd Session, 1846–47, Vol. 3, No.
19, at 99–101 and in House Documents,
Reports, 29th Congress, 2nd Session, 1846–
47, Vol. 1, Document 4, at 640.
13
Bancroft, History of California, 5:231.
Information about Rodman’s and Gilchrist’s
billets is taken from Edwin A. Sherman, The
Life of the Late Rear Admiral John Sloat of
the United States Navy (Oakland: Carruth &
Carruth, 1902), addenda to the appendix.
14
“Operations of the Pacific Squadron,”
1008.
15
Ibid.
16
House Documents, Reports, 29th Congress, 2nd Session, 1846-1847, Volume 1,
Document 4, No. 3, at 669–70, repr. as “To
the People of California,” The Californian,
Sept. 5, 1846, http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cdnc/cgibin/cdnc?a=d&d=C18460905.2.3&cl=searc
h&e=05-09-1846-13-09-1846–en–20–1–txtIN-The+Californian, and in Hammond, The
Larkin Papers, 5:175.
17
On July 13, 1846, five officials of the Mexican regime in Monterey met and agreed
they would remain loyal to Mexico. They
signed an oath and resigned their offices.
Craig, William Robert Garner, Letters from
California, 38; Bancroft, History of California,
5:235n29.
18
Colton notes “the services of these
officers were deemed indispensable to the
efficiency of the ships to which they were
20
Demy, “Life and Ministry of Walter
Colton,” 85–98.
21
Ibid., 99.
22
Ibid., 109–11.
23
Ibid., 112–13.
24
Drury, “Walter Colton,” 98–103.
25
Walter Colton, Deck and Port; or Incidents
of a Cruise in the United States Frigate Congress to California (New York: A. S. Barnes,
1850), 323 (June 7), 349 (June 21). The text
of a sermon Stockton gave in Honolulu
one month before landing in Monterey is
reprinted in Samuel J. Bayard, A Sketch of
the Life of Commodore Robert Stockton (New
York: Derby & Jackson, 1856), 104–9.
26
Bayard, Life of Commodore Robert Stockton,
107–8.
27
28
Colton, Three Years in California, 19.
Duncan Gleason, “James Henry Gleason:
Pioneer Journal and Letters, 1841–1856,”
Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 31, no. 1 (Mar. 1949), 32. Young James
Henry Gleason first sailed from Boston to
the Sandwich Islands in 1841 and became
a Yankee trader. By 1846 he had settled
in Monterey and was managing his commercial affairs from a store on shore; ibid.,
21–22, 30–31. His uncle, John Paty, had
preceded him, arriving on the Pacific Coast
in 1836. Paty established himself as an
important ship owner, captain, and trader;
William Heath Davis, Seventy-five Years in
California (San Francisco: John Howell,
1929), 188, 192.
29
Colton, Three Years in California, 17. As to
his inability to speak Spanish, see Florencio
Serrano, “Apuntes para la Historia de la
Alta California” (Berkeley: Bancroft Library,
1877), 118 (Colton had great difficulty
because he did not know the “idioma
Castellano”).
30
Larkin to Jacob Leese, July 29, 1846; Larkin to Abel Stearns, Aug. 6, 1846; Larkin
to Archibald Gillespie, Sept. 16, 1846, in
Hammond, The Larkin Papers, 5:178; 5:184
(departure); 5:238 (return).
31
California, 38.
32
A variation on the story holds that Garner deserted his ship when it anchored at
Santa Barbara in Jan. 1826. “Biographical
Sketches: Obituary of William R. Garner—A
Pioneer of 1826—Sketch of His Life,” San
Jose Pioneer, Apr. 27, 1878.
33
California, 5–37.
34
California, 38–39. Serrano (“Apuntes,” 118)
concurs that Garner was a great help to
Colton.
35
The document is in volume 8, page 732
of the Mexican Archives maintained by the
Monterey County Historical Society in Salinas, California (hereafter cited as Mexican
Archives). Even today, new judges typically
are eager to collect “scripts,” i.e., models
of statements and documents their job
requires them to employ frequently.
36
“Laws,” The Californian, Aug. 29, 1846.
37
38
Ibid., 36, 39. At least some had confessed.
39
“Notice,” The Californian, Aug. 15, 1846;
rep. Aug. 22, 1846; Aug. 29, 1846; Sept. 5,
1846; Sept.12, 1846. The military authorities
had previously issued similar orders. See
the “Aviso” issued by Captain Mervine, July
15, 1846, Mexican Archives, 13:1257.
40
“To The People of California,” The Californian, Sept. 5, 1846.
41
Ibid.
42
He certainly seems to have given them
warning that he planned to have elections.

6/18/13 11:24 AM
notes
See, for example, Larkin’s letters to alcaldes
in San Jose and Santa Cruz, written as early
as mid-July: Larkin to James Stokes, July 17,
1846, Larkin to Jose Bolcoff, July 20, 1846
in Hammond, The Larkin Papers, 5:139,
5:147. In the former, Larkin wrote, “Should
you wish to continue you can with all ease
procure your own election.” It seems probable that Stockton (who was close to Colton)
warned Colton well in advance that he
intended to order elections.
43
Zoeth S. Eldredge, The Beginnings of
San Francisco (New York: John C. Ranking,
1912), 545; Marius A. Duvall, A Navy Surgeon in California 1846–1847: The Journal of
Marius Duvall, ed. Fred Blackburn Rogers
(San Francisco: John Howell, 1957), 56; Bancroft, A History of California, 5:295.
44
Joseph T. Downey, The Cruise of the Portsmouth: A Sailor’s View of the Naval Conquest
of California, 1845–1847, ed. Howard R.
Lamar (New York: Yale University Press,
1958), 146.
45
Duvall, Navy Surgeon in California, 56
(“Bartlett practiced ‘pipe-laying’ and was
chosen Alcalde. Capt. M[ontgomery] disapproved of it, and says he will annul the
election. Quite an omen of what will be
done in future elections!!!”). Downey gives
two descriptions of the fraud. In the first,
he describes how he was kept up all night
preparing blue ballots for Bartlett and white
ballots for his opponent. When someone
attempted to cast a white ballot, he was
subject to various challenges that depressed
the vote. In addition, Bartlett’s supporters
recruited the military men occupying San
Francisco to cast ballots for their Lieutenant.
Downey, Cruise of the Portsmouth, 146–47.
In a later volume, Downey claims that as
a drunken practical joke, he stuffed the
ballot box so that he, Downey, won first
election, which Bartlett promptly annulled.
Fred Blackburn Rogers, ed., Filings from an
Old Saw: Reminiscences of San Francisco and
California’s Conquest, by “Filings”—Joseph T.
Downey (San Francisco: John Howell, 1956),
53–54.
46
Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham, 46.
47
Starr P. Gurke, “Translations of PreStatehood Documents: Villa de Branciforte,”
75, MS-8, Folder 2:2, McHenry Library, Special Collections, University of California at
Santa Cruz (hereafter cited as UCSC).
48
Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham, 119. The
California Supreme Court affirmed that the
marriage was bigamous. Isaac Graham v.
Tillatha C. Bennett (1852) 2 Cal. 503.
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•
vol ume 90
49
Skip Littlefield, “Isaac Graham: The RifleToting Firebrand of the Zayante,” Santa
Cruz Sentinel, Mar. 3, 1985.
(bought from Peter Lassen); Hertzog, “Isaac
Graham: California Pioneer,” 74–75 (built).
62
Skip Littlefield, “Isaac Graham: Mountain
Man Becomes Ship Builder,” Santa Cruz
Sentinel, Mar. 10, 1985.
Larkin, “A Report to the U.S. Government: California in 1846 and its Resources
as Then Known,” 2 and 15, repr. in Lewis,
California in 1846, 1–16.
51
63
50
http://www.city-data.com/city/CrabOrchard-Kentucky.html.
52
Dorothy A. Hertzog, “Isaac Graham: California Pioneer” (master’s thesis, University
of California, Berkeley, 1941), 1–10; Nunis,
Trials of Isaac Graham, 8–9.
53
Hertzog, “Isaac Graham: California Pioneer,” 10–15; Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham,
6–9.
54
Professor Nunis does a meticulous job
of tracking Graham’s movements between
1830 and 1832 and surveys the sources
regarding the date of Graham’s arrival in
California; Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham,
12–15. Ms. Hertzog, too, surveys his movements and the various sources on the date
his arrival in California; Hertzog, “Isaac
Graham: California Pioneer,” 8–18.
55
Hertzog, “Isaac Graham: California Pioneer,” 17.
56
J. Gregg Layne, “The First Census of the
Los Angeles District,” Historical Society of
Southern California 18, no. 3 (1936), 84, 90.
Note that Graham’s birth date of 1800 does
not match the census data that lists him as
being 34 years old in 1836.
57
The story of how Graham provided the
arms (and fired the sole shot) that unseated
Gutiérrez is recorded in many places. See
Susanna Bryant Dakin, The Lives of William
Hartnell (Stanford: Stanford University
Press: 1949), 210–11; Nunis, Trials of Isaac
Graham, 21–22.
58
See, for example, Nunis, Trials of Isaac
Graham, 19; Irving B. Richman, California
Under Spain and Mexico, 1535–1847 (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin, 1911), 266; Edward S.
Harrison, History of Santa Cruz County,
California (San Francisco: Pacific Press,
1892), 200.
59
Bancroft (History of California, 4:2–35)
sorts through the various versions of these
events.
Lewis, California in 1846, 1–16; Doyce B.
Nunis, Jr., ed., Joseph Belden, 1841 California
Overland Pioneer: His Memoir and Early Letters (Georgetown: Talisman Press, 1962), 59.
Professor Nunis (59n48) says it is likely that
Graham sold his lumber through middlemen, too.
64
Bancroft is uncertain as to the date Roussillon came. He says he first appears in
Los Angeles in 1843, “but is said to have
come in ’37 or even ’33.” Bancroft, History
of California, 5:705. Another historian says
Roussillon arrived in Los Angeles in 1842;
Daniel Lévy, Les français en Californie (San
Francisco: Grégoire, Tauzy, 1884), 65.
65
Annick Foucrier, La rêve Californien:
Migrants français sur la côte Pacifique,
XVIIIe–Xxe siècles (Paris: Belin, 1999),
40, 52.
66
Ibid., 52.
67
Roussillon is listed in the census at Branciforte (Santa Cruz) in 1845; Robert H. Jackson, “The 1845 Villa de Branciforte Census,”
Antepasados 4 (1981), 45.
68
Warren A. Beck and Ynez D. Haase,
Historical Atlas of California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), Plate
30. Annick Foucrier, “Sailors, Carpenters,
Vineyardists: The French Pioneers in Santa
Cruz,” Santa Cruz County History Journal
3 (1997), 138, 142. On Sept. 10, 1847, Sansevain filed a formal complaint against Graham for trespassing on his property to cut
timber; Mexican Archives, 13:301.
69
An early source says it was built in 1842;
Santa Cruz Sentinel, Aug. 5, 1865. A local
historian accepts that date; Leon Rowland,
Santa Cruz: The Early Years (Santa Cruz:
Paper Vision, 1980), 55. Professor Foucrier
puts its construction in 1843; Foucrier, La
rêve californien, 62. Bancroft says 1844; Bancroft, History of California, 5:708.
70
60
Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham, 34. The
small town of Zayante still exists.
The alignment of the road has changed
over the years. The original route was
described in “Circuit Rider,” Santa Cruz
Sentinel-News, Dec. 13, 1942.
61
71
Sherwood D. Burgess, “Lumbering in
Hispanic California,” California Historical Society Quarterly 41, no. 3 (1962), 244
num ber 2
72
Mexican Archives, 8:802. The dispute
over the lumber arose in Santa Cruz, not
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
Monterey. Thus, Graham should have
brought his complaint to the alcalde in
Santa Cruz, his old friend Joseph L. Majors.
However, Graham and Majors had a serious falling-out. Graham must have decided
to avoid Majors and bring the matter to
another jurisdiction. Although one can
conceive of several explanations, there is
no writing to explain why Colton took the
case rather than change venue back to
Santa Cruz.
73
On Aug. 25, Stockton ordered Francis
Johnson to carry the proclamation calling
for the election “with all possible speed”
from Los Angeles to points north and authorized him to spare no expense in obtaining
horses along the way. Stockton to Johnson,
Aug. 25, 1846, in Robert Field Stockton,
Letter Books and Miscellaneous Materials,
1846–47, 106. It is approximately 375 miles
from the Los Angeles harbor at San Pedro
to Monterey following the route connecting the Spanish missions. That means the
proclamation should have reached Colton
no later than the end of August. See Jonathan Boniface, The Cavalry Horse and His
Pack (Kansas City: Hudson-Kimberly, 1903),
91 (60–75 miles per day without changing horses), 229–32 (significantly more on
forced marches).
74
75
Leon Rowland, “California’s First Jury
Trial,” in Leon Rowland’s Scrapbook, 252,
Leon and Jeannette Rowland Collection,
MS 051, UCSC.
76
Mexican Archives, 8:802.
77
78
To his credit, Colton did not set the case
for trial after September 15. No record
remains to explain why he set the trial for
such an early date.
79
The Californian, Sept. 19, 1846.
80
Sherman, Life of Admiral Sloat, addenda
to the appendix. Lamar reports that Chase
had been in the Navy since 1814; see
Downey, The Cruise of the Portsmouth, 23n7.
81
Green had the most tangled story of any
of the jurors. He came to California in 1841
as a member of the Bartleson-Bidwell party.
When he settled in Monterey the following year, he got his start in business in the
employ of Thomas O. Larkin. He became a
well-respected merchant and was so trusted
that he was made collector of the port after
the American occupation. However, in
1851 (while running for mayor of San Fran-
cisco) he was revealed to be Paul Geddes, a
Pennsylvanian who had stolen bank funds
and fled West, deserting a wife and at least
four children. John Adams Hussey, “New
Light Upon Talbot H. Green,” California
Historical Society Quarterly 18, no.1 (1939):
39–63; Davis, Seventy-five Years in California,
226–27; Zoeth Skinner Eldredge, Beginnings
of San Francisco, 580–81.
82
Little was a member of the Chiles-Walker
party of 1843. He settled in Monterey in
1844 and worked as a trader; Bancroft,
History of California, 4:715.
83
Thomes traced his ancestry to the
Mayflower. When he came to California,
he worked as a carpenter, builder, and
cattle rancher. By 1846, he had a house in
Monterey and land in what is now Tehama
County. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., The BidwellBartleson Party (Santa Cruz: Western Tanager, 1991), 203.
84
The classic definition of a Californio is
one who was born in California, as opposed
to one who emigrated from Mexico; Leonard
Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social
History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians,
1846–1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), xv, 7. In that sense, none
of the jurors was a Californio. However, the
contemporary view may have been more
fluid. Indeed, Colton may have counted
Abrego and Serrano as Californios, since
they had emigrated with the Híjar-Padrés
party in 1834. Bancroft records that Abrego
complained to Pico that “he is tired of being
denounced and insulted as a ‘Mexican’”;
Bancroft, History of California, 5:35n9.
85
Dakin, Lives of William Hartnell, 33–35;
Although he had no legal training, Malarin
was appointed Presiding Justice of the
Tribunal Superior for Alta California in
1840. That was an appellate court that did
relatively little business in the few years in
which it functioned. Langum, Law and Community, 40–42.
86
Abrego owned what is now Pacific Grove
and later acquired more land near what
became the Hotel Del Monte. Davis, Seventyfive Years in California, 391; Robert G.
Cowan, Ranchos of California (Fresno: Academy Library Guild, 1956), 61. For Abrego’s
history, see, generally, Marie E. Northrop,
Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California:
1769–1850 (Burbank: Southern California
Genealogical Society, 1984), 2:1–2; Bancroft,
History of California, 2:686, 4:97, 557–58.
87
Rockwell D. Hunt, California Firsts (San
Francisco: Fearon, 1957), 243–44.
88
Florencio Serrano, Testimonios de Florencio Serrano, trans. William Wilkinson (n.p.:
Booksurge, 2009), 12–14 (introduction by
William Wilkinson), 105; Bancroft, History
of California, 5:716–17; Edna E. Kimbro and
Anthony Crosby, “Casa Serrano: Limited
Historic Structure Report: Preliminary
Review Copy, July 1, 1999, Monterey County
Public Library History Room.
89
Larkin described him as “merchant and
alcalde for 1846. . . . Of some property, good
general information, advice, note, and
influence in Monterey. Quiet and retired.”
Larkin, “Notes on Personal Character of the
Principal Men,” in Hammond, The Larkin
Papers, 4:326. See Bancroft, History of California, 2:780.
90
Narváez was well respected and had served
as an arbitrator in an 1845 dispute between
a Spanish trader and the British consul in
California; Langum, Law and Community,
217.
91
Bancroft, History of California, 5:711;
Cowan, Ranchos of California 83; Wallace
Elliott & Moore, History of Monterey County
with Biographical Sketches of Prominent Citizens (San Francisco: Pacific Press, 1881),
140.
92
Stephan Landsman, “The Civil Jury in
America: Scenes from an Unappreciated
History,” Hastings Law Journal 44 (Mar.
1993), 579, 582. See also Leonard W. Levy,
The Palladium of Justice: Origins of Trial by
Jury (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), 53.
93
Sir William Blackstone, quoted by Mr.
Justice Strong in Strauder v. West Virginia,
100 U.S. 303, 308 (1880).
94
Landsman, “The Civil Jury in America,”
592.
95
Harold M. Hyman and Catherine M.
Tarrant, “Aspects of American Trial Jury
History,” in The Jury System in America: A
Critical Overview, ed. Rita James Simon (Beverly Hills & London: Sage, 1975), 35.
96
Parsons v. Bedford, 28 U.S. (3 Pet.) 433,
446 (1830). Justice Story noted that the right
to trial by jury was believed to be written
into every state constitution.
97
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in
America, trans. Henry Reeve (New York:
D. Appleton, 1904), 1:302. See, generally,
Chapter XVI.

6/18/13 11:24 AM
notes
98
Ibid., 307.
99
See, generally, John Phillip Reid, Law for
the Elephant: Property and Social Behavior on
the Overland Trail (San Marino: Huntington
Library, 1997).
100
John Phillip Reid, Policing the Elephant:
Crime, Punishment and Social Behavior on
the Overland Trail (San Marino: Huntington
Library, 1997), 117–32.
101
See, generally, “Jury,” in Encyclopaedia
America, ed. Francis Lieber (Philadelphia,
PAA: Lea and Blanchard, 1845), VII, 286–93
(written by Justice Joseph Story according
to his son, William W. Story, in Life and
Letters of Joseph Story [London: John Chapman, 1851], 27); Francis X. Busch, Law and
Tactics in Jury Trials (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1949), 27–29, 36–37, 78–86; Joseph
H. Choate, “Trial By Jury” (address to the
American Bar Association, Aug. 18, 1898),
repr. in Joseph Hodges Choate, American
Addresses (New York: Century, 1911), 197.
There were, to be sure, variations in the jury
systems of the different states with regard to
things such as the unanimity requirement
for a verdict, the extent to which the judge’s
statement of the law bound the jurors, the
kind of cases that were outside the purview
of the jury system (e.g., minor offenses and
cases within the jurisdiction of admiralty
and equity), the number of peremptory challenges allowed, and the extent to which a
civil verdict could be set aside or modified
by a judge. But the fundamental principles
outlined above had broad acceptance.
Women did not begin to serve on juries
until around the time of the Nineteenth
Amendment (which gave them the vote).
See People of the State of Michigan v. Harold
Barltz, 180 N.W. 423 (1930) and “Annotation: Conferring Right of Suffrage Upon
Women as Qualifying Them as Jurors,”
American Law Reports 12 (1921), 525 and
American Law Reports 16 (1922), 1154, and
“Eligibility of Women as Jurors,” American
Law Reports 157 (1945), 461. Utah was one
of a handful of states that allowed women to
serve before then, it being the first, starting
in 1898. John H. Langbein, Renee Lettow
Lerner, and Bruce P. Smith, History of the
Common Law: The Development of AngloAmerican Legal Institutions (Austin: Wolters
Kluwer Law & Business, Aspen Publishers:
2009), 536.
102
William Blackstone, Commentaries on the
Laws of England (1768; repr., Buffalo: William S. Hein, 1992), Book Three, 352–54;
Francis X. Busch, Law and Tactics in Jury

•
vol ume 90
Trials, 78–80; J. H. Baker, An Introduction
to English Legal History, 4th ed. (London:
Butterworths Tolley, 2002), 509 (criminal
cases).
103
Blackstone, Commentaries, Book Three,
360–61 (although when both parties were
foreigners neither was entitled to such a
jury) and Book Four, 346; Busch, Law and
Tactics, 96–97; Hiroshi Fukurai, “Embracing Affirmative Jury Selection for Racial
Fairness,” Racial Issues in Criminal Justice:
The Case of African Americans, ed. Marvin D.
Free, Jr. (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 241–45.
There are rare examples of the use of juries
de medietate linguae in America. See, for
example, Respublica v. Mesca, 1 Dall. 73, 1 US
L.Ed. 42 (Pa. Supreme Court 1783); United
States v. Carnot, 25 F. Cas. 297, 1834 U.S.
App. Lexis 418, 2 Cranch C.C. 469 (D.C.
Cir. 1824). After statehood California prohibited the use of such juries; People v. Chin
Mook Sow (1877) 51 Cal. 597.
104
See Hague and Langum, Thomas O. Larkin, 77–81.
105
Busch, Law and Tactics, 101–31; Barry
Goode, “Religion, Politics, Race, and Ethnicity: The Range and Limits of Voir Dire,”
Kentucky Law Journal 92 (2004), 601,
602–6; Baker, Introduction to English Legal
History, 509 (criminal cases). The right to
challenges for cause was unassailable in
both civil and criminal cases. The right to
peremptory challenges was embedded in
criminal procedure. At common law, there
were no peremptories in civil cases; however
legislatures created those rights. Indeed, in
California, the legislature created the right
to peremptory challenges in civil cases as
early as 1851; California Civil Practice Act of
1851, Section 161 (enacted Apr. 29, 1851).
106
In the remote past in England, jurors
were those who witnessed the events at
issue. But even in England “the idea that
the jurors themselves should be cognizant
of the facts . . . [was] finally disposed of [in
1816].” In the United States, “the practice of
summoning as jurors persons familiar with
the facts has, with rare exceptions, never
prevailed”; Busch, Law and Tactics, 36, 171.
107
Gonzalez, “War and the Making of History,” 14.
108
Hague and Langum, Thomas O. Larkin,
126; Langum, Law and Community, 136.
109
Donald M. Howard, Cowpath to Main
Drag: Monterey’s Alvarado Street, A Business
History 1830–1930 (Pacific Grove: Monterey
Peninsula Historiography Chronicles,
num ber 2
1996). They are bound papers in the Monterey County Public Library History Room,
979.476. A lithograph, Monterey in 1842,
hanging in Colton Hall, shows that Serrano
and Abrego also had houses in town.
110
See Hartnell’s advertisement in the
first edition of The Californian, Aug. 15,
1846, offering his services at his house in
Monterey.
111
Davis, Seventy-five Years in California,
16–17.
112
Colton, The California Diary (Oakland:
Biobooks, 1948), 235; Howard, Cowpath to
Main Drag, 248.
113
Northrop, Spanish Mexican Families, 1–2,
77–80, 156.
114
Sanchez, California and Californios, 2:43;
Bancroft, History of California, 4:266–68.
115
116
William F. Swasey, The Early Days and
Men of California (Oakland: Pacific Press
Publishing Co., 1891), 57–58.
117
Bancroft, History of California, 5:41n21.
118
Ibid., 5:224n1.
119
Florencio Serrano, “List of Families with
Boys in the Monterey Public School,” Sept.
17, 1846, in Hammond, The Larkin Papers,
5:239.
120
Dakin, Lives of William Hartnell, 178.
121
Ibid., 98.
122
Ibid., 273–74.
123
Dakin, Lives of William Hartnell, 273–74;
Bancroft, A History of California, 5:292.
124
The Californian, Aug. 15 and 29, 1846.
125
“Florencio Serrano and Francisco Arias
to Thomas Oliver Larkin,” July 3, 1846, in
Hammond, The Larkin Papers, 5:99.
126
127
For a clue to Colton’s attitude towards
lawyers, see The Californian, Sept. 26, 1846.
There, he used, as a bit of filler, the joke:
“LAWYERS: There are nine hundred and
fifty-five Lawyers in the city of New York.
Heaven help the Gothomites [sic].”
128
Colton, Three Years in California, 200. A
modern judge with a busy calendar is very
familiar with the tension between ensuring
the due process rights of litigants and needing to complete the day’s business. Most
struggle to insure the former.
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
129
Professor Nunis assumes the notes
were made by Colton; Nunis, Trials of Isaac
Graham, 49. But a careful comparison of
known specimens of Colton’s and Garner’s
handwriting shows Garner was the scribe.
(That would be a reasonable thing for a
court clerk to do.) For samples of Garner’s
handwriting, see Mexican Archives, 6:920,
13:1563, and 14:441. Many documents
signed by Colton appear to be in Garner’s
handwriting as well. For example, an official
document is signed by Colton and witnessed by Garner; Mexican Archives, 8:794
(it appears that Garner, not Colton, wrote
the body of the document); see also 8:762,
13:275. Two letters written by Colton himself
are found in the Mexican Archives at 14:433
and 13:287 and two draft proclamations in
Colton’s hand are at 8:1261 and 13:1753.
130
It is not clear why Colton did not employ
Hartnell simply as a translator. There was
no reason to make him a juror as well,
except perhaps, the impending election.
131
There was no testimony about the
month in which this was supposed to have
happened. But Bancroft (History of California, 4:565) says that the Fama arrived
from Honolulu in June 1845. The Fama was
shipwrecked in Feb. or Mar. 1846; Gleason,
“James Henry Gleason: Pioneer Journal and
Letters,” 21–22.
132
Ware had been in the trapping company
with Graham in the early 1830s and was
Graham’s partner in Rancho Zayante; see
Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham, 5n6, 7n11, 34.
Ware also may have been imprisoned with
Graham in 1840 during the Graham Affair;
Bancroft, History of California, 4:17. In the
1845 census he is listed as a 45-year-old
unmarried Irish laborer; Jackson, “The 1845
Villa de Branciforte Census,” 53.
133
All of the description of the trial testimony is taken from Garner’s notes; Mexican
Archives, 8:831–36.
134
135
Swasey, Early Days and Men, 34–39.
136
Alviso is listed in the 1845 census as
a 51-year-old laborer with a wife and five
children; Jackson, “The 1845 Villa de Branciforte Census,” 52.
137
George Chapell was an Englishman who
was well established in the lumber business.
He had been seized during the Graham
Affair in 1840 and shipped to Mexico with
Graham. They returned together. Burgess,
“Lumbering in Hispanic California,” 239;
Bancroft, A History of California, 4:33n58;
Jackson, “The 1839 Villa de Branciforte
Census,” 53.
151
Ibid., 32.
152
Ibid., 43.
138
Juan Malarin was the foreman of that
jury; Mexican Archives, 13:1395–1419. Craig
gives a good summary of the case in his
introduction to Letters from California, 47.
Colton also handled a land dispute in May
1847 in which he used eleven “arbitrators”;
Mexican Archives, 8:839, 13:1255. In 1935
a newspaper columnist wrote, “Alcalde
Colton was so pleased with the decision of
the jurors [in Graham v. Roussillon] he was
frequently calling on them for other cases.
In fact he had about 20 pet jurors equally
divided among the Californians and AngloSaxons, who decided most of his cases for
him”; Paul Parker, “The First Jury Trial in
California,” Salinas Independent, Oct. 25,
1935. However, Parker cites no source for
his assertion.
Garner records him as “Francisco
Poilor.” But it appears that he was François
Poile. Rowland describes him as “a probable
deserter from a French vessel at Monterey
the year before”; Rowland, “Santa Cruz Gave
California Its First Jury Trial,” Santa Cruz
Evening News, Oct. 28, 1933.
139
Garner records him as “Quin.” Robert
King was an Englishman who came to California in 1834 or 1835. (One account says
his real name was Haverstock. He assumed
the name “King” to avoid British authorities after he jumped ship in Monterey.) He
worked as a lumberman and owned land in
Santa Cruz. In 1840, he was arrested in the
Graham Affair. He was not unfamiliar with
alleged thefts of lumber. In 1842, Josiah
Belden had him arrested for stealing more
than 500 feet of sawn boards. Helen Collins,
“Maria Susana del Carmen King y Juarez,”
Antepasados 7 (1986–87), 41; Sara A. Bunnett, Marion Pokriots, and W. Dean Reynolds, Record Books of the Alcaldes of Santa
Cruz, California 1847–1850 and April Term
1851 (Santa Cruz: Genealogical Society of
Santa Cruz County, 1992); Bancroft, History
of California, 4:17; Josiah Belden to Thomas
O. Larkin, Aug. 7, 1842, in Hammond, The
Larkin Papers, 262–63.
140
Bancroft, History of California, 4:751;
Nunis, Trials of Isaac Graham, 33–35, 43–45.
141
142
Ibid.
143
Colton required Roussillon to present
his account book to the Santa Cruz alcalde
to verify the amount owed by Graham and
Naile; Rowland, “Santa Cruz Gave California
Its First Jury Trial,” 12.
144
145
146
147
Nunis, The Trials of Isaac Graham, 55n20.
That is likely so, especially since Graham
was illiterate. Craig, William Robert Garner,
Letters from California, 22. Such flowery language seems unlikely to have been drafted
by the lumberman.
148
149
150
House Executive Documents, 29th Congress, 2nd Session, 1846–1847, Volume 3,
Document 19, No. 24.
153
154
The American Insurance Company et al.
v. 356 Bales of Cotton, 26 U.S. (1 Pet.) 511
(1828); Strother v. Lucas, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.)
410, 9 L. Ed. 1137 (1838); Rockwell D. Hunt,
“Legal Status of California,” Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 12 (Nov. 1898), 65. The existing laws
were overlain with military law (to govern
the troops) and, at times and places, martial
law. For a contemporary statement of this,
see Samuel H. Willey, “Recollections of
General Halleck, As Secretary of State in
Monterey, 1847–9,” The Overland Monthly
9, no. 1 (July 1872): 12. But see People v.
Folsom (1855) 5 Cal. 373, 379–80: “any Mexican law inconsistent with the rights of the
United States or its public policy, or with
the rights of its citizens, were annulled by
the conquest.”
155
House Documents, Reports, 29th Congress, 2nd Session, 1846–1847, Volume 1,
Document 4, No. 3, 669–70, repr. as “To
the People of California,” The Californian,
Sept. 5, 1846, and in Hammond, The Larkin
Papers, 5:175.
156
Secretary of War W. L. Marcy to General Stephen Kearny, “California and New
Mexico, Message from the President of
the United States,” House Executive Documents, 31st Congress, 1st Session, No. 17,
245–47. To avoid offending Congress, Polk’s
Secretary of War ordered Kearny not to give
effect to the detailed set of laws (including
the right to trial by jury) that he had drafted
for New Mexico; ibid., 244–45.
157
See, for example, “Prospects of California,” The Californian, Aug. 15, 1846; California Star, June 19 and 26, 1847; Woodrow

6/18/13 11:24 AM
notes
James Hansen, Search for Authority in California (Oakland: Biobooks, 1960), 76–79.
158
See, for example, House Executive Documents, 31st Congress, 1st Session, Serial
573, No. 17, “California and New Mexico:
Message from the President of the United
States,” 384, 419–22 (Aug. 19, 1847: special
court with twelve man jury convened to try
three men for murder); 410 (Oct. 26, 1847:
manslaughter in first degree tried to a jury
of twelve); 447 (Dec. 22, 1847: if jury is
hung, a new jury may be impaneled); 488
(Mar. 2, 1848: grave cases must be tried to a
jury); 494 (Mar. 16, 1848: business dispute
tried to jury of six).
159
“California and New Mexico,” 452; Mexican Archives, 13:1769.
166
William A. Leidesdorff to Thomas A.
Larkin, June 19, 1846, in Hammond, The
Larkin Papers, 5:56.
Farmer’s Market: Agribusiness
and the Agrarian Imaginary in
California and the Far West, By Todd
Holmes, PP 24–41
The author would like to thank John Mack
Faragher, James C. Scott, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Gabriel Rosenberg, Victoria Woeste,
and Rachel Winslow for their helpful
suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this article. He would also like to
especially thank Janet Fireman, the editorial
staff, and anonymous reviewers at California
History.
160
Larkin to the New York Herald, June 1,
1847, quoted in Bancroft, History of California, 5:608n26.
161
Hittell, History of California, 590.
162
Colton spoke admiringly of a fellow
American alcalde who resorted to the Old
Testament for a rule of decision; Colton,
California Diary, 215–16.
163
As is true of any public figure, Colton
had his detractors. The California Star (June
19, 1847) criticized him for habitual leniency: “if a culprit is sent to Monterey for
punishment to the Rev.-puissant-Coke-Alcalde
of that renowned berg, he dismisses him
to the field of his former crimes, with the
godly admonition, ‘Go, and sin no more.’
The thief pays his fee, and re-enters upon
the duties of his profession.”
164
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before
the Mast (New York: Signet Classic, 1964),
161. Dana was in Los Angeles in both 1835
and 1836 and he is not precise in dating
the event. An intriguing possibility is that
Graham (a trapper) may have been in Los
Angeles at the time of the trial, since there
is evidence of him having spent time in the
Los Angeles area in the early to mid-1830s
and he is listed in the 1836 census of the
Los Angeles area; Layne, “The First Census
of the Los Angeles District,” 84, 90.
165
Colton cited Dana’s book in his own.
See the first edition of Three Years in
California, 402, http://books.google.com/
books?id=XzsVAAAAYAAJ&printsec=
frontcover&dq=three+years+in+California+
colton&source=bl&ots=osHoiRDrox&sig=
_5Jn54ZbxDd–ZWxbjtGO_7bB2I&hl=en&
sa=X&ei=PluDUInvG6_wiQLH8IG4Aw&
ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA.

•
vol ume 90
1
Travis A. Koch, “Farmers and the Federal
Government: Progressive-Era Rural Reform
and the Origins of Modern Agriculture in
America,” seminar paper, April 2012, 18–21
(in author’s possession). I am extremely
grateful to the generosity of Travis Koch
for sharing his work and helping reshape
my thinking on early agricultural reform.
Report of the Commission on Country Life,
23 January 1909, 19, University of California Digital Library, http://archive.org/
details/reportofcommissi00unitiala; Kenyon
Leech Butterfield, Chapters in Rural Progress (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1908), 53, 59.
2
“Inquiry To Open On Farm Labor,” Los
Angeles Times, Dec. 6, 1939, 5; John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath (New York: The
Viking Press, 1939); Carey McWilliams,
Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory
Farm Labor in California (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1939). U.S. Congress,
Senate, Subcommittee of the Committee
on Education and Labor, Hearings, 74th
Cong. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1940), 61 (hereafter cited as
La Follette).
3
Stemming from the works of Jacques
Lacan, scholars over the decades have used
the term “imaginary” in a variety of ways
to explore the confluence of memory, perception, and materiality. In this essay, the
agrarian imaginary builds upon Richard
Hofstadter’s “agrarian myth” to denote
the romanticized and nostalgic view of
America’s yeoman family farm that was
increasingly displaced by industrial agriculture. Although changing over time, it is
often characterized by small landholdings,
family ownership, and varying levels of
num ber 2
self-sufficiency and sustainability. My view
of the agrarian imaginary has significantly
been informed by Julie Guthman; Guthman,
Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic
Farming California (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2004). See also Richard
Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryant
to FDR (New York: Vintage Books, 1955),
chapter 1.
4
For the land and labor paradigm, see
McWilliams, Factories; Walter Goldschmidt,
As You Sow (New York: Glencoe, 1947); Paul
Gates, Land and Law in California: Essays on
Land Policies (Ames: Iowa State University
Press, 1991); Gates, “Public Land Disposal
in California,” Agricultural History 49 (1975):
158–78; Ellen Liebman, California Farmland:
A History of Large Agricultural Landholdings
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983);
Donald J. Pisani, From Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California
and the West, 1850–1931 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1984); Lawrence Jelinek,
Harvest Empire: A History of California Agriculture (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser Publishing Company, 1982); Ernesto Galarza,
Farm Workers and Agri-business in California,
1947–1960 (South Bend: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1977); Cletus Daniels, Bitter
Harvest: A History of California Farmworkers,
1870–1941 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981); Linda Majka and Theo Majka,
Farm Workers, Agribusiness, and the State
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1982); Devra Weber, Dark Sweat, White
Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and
the New Deal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Matt Garcia, A World of
its Own: Race, Labor, and Citrus in the Making of Greater Los Angeles, 1900–1970 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2001); Richard Steven Street, Beasts of the
Field: A Narrative History of California Farm
Workers, 1769–1913 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). For important critiques
of McWilliams’s land and labor thesis, see
Victoria Woeste, The Farmer’s Benevolent
Trust: Law and Agricultural Cooperation in
Industrial America, 1865–1945 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1998);
David Vaught, Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875–1920
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1999). Also see Richard Walker, The
Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness
in California (New York: The New Press,
2004). Another vein of scholarship on
California agriculture that rests outside the
scope of this essay is a focus on cultural
production and the mastering nature. See
Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water,
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
Aridity, and the Growth of the American
West (New York: Oxford University Press,
1985); Steven Stoll, The Fruits of Natural
Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1998); Douglas Cazaux
Sackman, Orange Empire: California and
the Fruits of Eden (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005).
5
Stoll, The Fruits of Natural Advantage, 1–5.
Only 2 percent of the world has a Mediterranean climate. Walker, Conquest of Bread,
1; Daniels, Bitter Harvest, 43; Felice A.
Bonadio, A. P. Giannini: Banker of America
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994), 60, 42.
6
Christopher Henke, Cultivating Science,
Harvesting Power: Science and Industrial
Agriculture in California (Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 2008); Susanne Freidberg, Fresh:
A Perishable History (Cambridge: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2009);
Walker, Conquest of Bread. Historians of
California agriculture are deeply indebted
to Walker’s excellent synthesis. Quoted in
Walker, Conquest of Bread, 13; John H. Davis
and Kenneth Hinshaw, Farmer in a Business
Suit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957).
7
John Whitehead, “Hawai’i: The First and
Last Far West?” Western Historical Quarterly 23, no. 2 (May 1992): 153–77; Victoria
Wyatt, “Alaska and Hawai’i” in The Oxford
History of the American West, ed. Clyde
Milner and Carol A. O’Connor (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994). Whitehead
and Wyatt do not mention Hawai’i in relation to agribusiness, yet their works are
groundbreaking in bringing the Pacific into
the fold of western history. See also David
Igler, “Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges
in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850,
American Historical Review 109 (June 2004):
693–719. Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association (HSAP), Sugar in Hawaii (Honolulu:
HSAP, 1949), 35–40, 68–69; Whitehead,
“Hawai’i,” 172. The Big Five replaced the
original sugar king Claus Spreckles when
they took over his company, Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company, in the 1890s.
8
John Vandercook, King Cane: The Story
of Sugar in Hawaii (New York: Harper &
Brothers Publishers, 1939), 53–63; HSAP,
Sugar in Hawaii, 35; “Hawaiian Trade in
Hands of Few,” Wall Street Journal, Nov.
22 1932; “New Sugar Refinery,” San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 6, 1910; California
and Hawaiian Sugar Refining Co.,” San
Francisco Chronicle, July 18, 1910; Walker’s
Manual of California Securities and Direc-
tory of Directors, 1920 (San Francisco: H. D.
Walker, 1920), 373, Beinecke Rare Books
and Manuscript Library, Yale University,
New Haven, CT) (hereafter cited as Walker
Manual with applicable date). The importance of the sugar industry in the West can
be seen in that by 1911 sugar corporations
were given their own section in the Walker
manuals. For the interlocking directorates
of both the Big Five and the Hawaiian sugar
industry, see the names Cooke, Castle,
Baldwin, Alexander, Atherton, Waterhouse,
Dillingham, and Lowrey in Walker Manual
1911, 238–56; Walker Manual 1920, 370–88;
Walker Manual 1930, 836–57; Walker Manual
1940, 1009–33.
9
Vandercook, King Cane, 53–63; Ray S.
Baker, “Wonderful Hawaii,” American
Magazine (Nov. 1911), 30; Vandercook, King
Cane, 129–30; L.A. Henke, “Cane Varieties
in Hawaii,” Facts about Sugar 15 (July–Dec.
1922), 320.
10
George Cooper and Gavan Daws, Land
and Power in Hawaii: The Democratic Years
(Honolulu: Benchmark Books, 1985) 3;
Walker Manual, 1911, 351, 367, 372–73;
Walker Manual 1920, 490, 507; Walker
Manual 1925, 736, 738, 753, 832; “Wells
Fargo Bank Control Has Changed,” San
Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 7, 1921. For the
later industrial models and products, see
Castle & Cooke Corporation in Walker
Manual 1960, 684–85; Walker Manual 1965,
777–78; Cooper and Daws, Land and Power,
210. Castle & Cooke used its financial ties
in both Hawaii and California to withhold
bank loans to James Dole, allowing C&C to
take control of Dole’s Hawaiian Pineapple
in 1932. James Dole was then sent on a
vacation, only to return and find his office
relegated to a storeroom. In a stroke of
irony, C&C renamed its subsidiary the Dole
Co. in 1960.
11
Historians of California agriculture owe a
great debt to Victoria Woeste’s magnificent
work on cooperatives. See Woeste, The
Farmer’s Benevolent Trust. Walker, Conquest
of Bread, 205–11; Stoll, Natural Advantage,
77. Quoted in Walker, Conquest of Bread,
205, 212. For more on the less successful
existence of cooperatives in the South and
Midwest, see Charles Postel, The Populist
Vision (New York: Oxford University Press,
2007); R. Douglas Hurt, Problems of Plenty:
The American Farmer in the Twentieth Century (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), chapter
4; Deborah Fitzgerald, Every Farm a Factory:
The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003),
110–14.
12
Hurt, Problems of Plenty, 52; “Cooperation
at a Profit,” Fortune 14 (July 1936), 47–48;
Charles C. Teague, Fifty Years a Rancher:
The Recollections of Half a Century Devoted
to the Citrus and Walnut Industries of California (Los Angeles: n.p., 1944), 93–95, 431;
Walker Manual 1925, 559; Walker Manual
1930, 754–55; Walker Manual 1935, 910–11.
13
Woeste, The Farmer’s Benevolent Trust,
81–82; Walker Manual 1920, 632; Walker
Manual 1925, 431, 599, 559, 768. For
Sunkist, see Directorate of Chamber of
Commerce and Affiliated Companies,” La
Follette, 18054–55; Walker Manual 1915,
470–71 (A. P. and O. T. Johnson); Walker
Manual 1920, 525 (P. J. Dreher); Walker
Manual 1925, 411, 431, 826 (Teague), 765
(Chas. Eygabroad), 773 (W. M. Griswold),
794 (H. A. Lynn), 797 (O. W. Maulsby), 798
(H. B. McClure), 823 (W. E. Sprott).
14
My research on George Johnston was
greatly supplemented by Gabriel Winant’s
work in the Johnston Papers at Yale. Gabriel
Winant, “Green Pastures of Plenty, Dry
Desert Ground: Labor, Production, and
Geography in Southern California Viticulture, 1900–1935,” unpublished manuscript,
in possession of author. Johnston to P.
L. Cuccia, July 8, 1914, Box 6, Folder 117;
Johnston to Ruperto Martinez, Nov. 3, 1914,
Box 7, Folder 139; H. T. Jones to Johnston,
July 29, 1914, Box 10, Folder 190; Johnston to E. H. Morton, Dec. 29, 1921, Box
8, Folder 162; Johnston to Morton, Dec. 1,
1922, Box 10, Folder 200; Shipping Log
1916, Folder 263, Box 15; Shipping Log
1925, Folder 457, Box 38; Dennis, Kimball,
& Pope Merchants, Folders 76–80, Box 5;
Sgobel & Day Merchants, Folders 127–29,
Box 7; Hancock Brothers Fruit Merchants,
Folders 99–100, Box 5; Monthly Time Book
1929–1940, Folder 383, Box 23; Bank Statements 1917–1925, Folder 414, Box 25; Bank
Statements 1926–1927, Folder 421, Box 26;
Bank Statements 1932–1934, Folder 459,
Box 38, George F. Johnston Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Yale University.
15
David Igler, Industrial Cowboys: Miller &
Lux and the Transformation of the Far West,
1850–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Natomas Company Background, Application 6975, 25 January 1922,
Public Utility Commission, F3725:7099,
Earl Warren Papers, California State
Archives, Sacramento, California.
16
Ruthe Teiser, “The Di Giorgios: From
Fruit Merchants to Corporate Innovators,”
oral history transcript, 1983, 4–11, Bancroft

6/18/13 11:24 AM
notes
Walker Manual 1911, 127–28, 352; Walker
Manual 1915, 57–58; Walker Manual 1920,
29, 533, 230, 489, 621; Walker Manual
1940, 288, 511, 216, 485, 1015, 1017, 1024;
Profile-Ag Report, 3101, 3111.
17
23
Felice A. Bonadio, A. P. Giannini: Banker
of America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 9, 18, 116; Walker Manual,
1910, 21–29; Walker Manual 1920, 78–79.
525 (P. J. Dreher), 535 (M.T. Freitas), 543
(Secondo Guasti), 566 (John Lagomarsino),
581 (Joseph Migliavacca); Walker Manual
1935, 930–35; Walker Manual 1940, 885–90,
585–86; Profile-Ag Report, 3063; Walker,
Conquest of Bread, 260–65; see also Marquis
James and Bessie R. James, Biography of a
Bank: The Story of Bank of America NT & SA,
1904–1953 (San Francisco: Bank of America,
1982), 89, 115, 255, 406; Moira Johnston,
Roller Coaster: The Bank of America and the
Future of American Banking (New York:
Ticknor & Fields, 1990), 30, 60–65, 134.
The Great Depression witnessed a massive
spike in foreclosures, numbering 45,000
in 1933 to 15,700 in 1939. Bank of America
and other large landowners like Di Giorgio
were on the receiving end of the real estate
crisis. Bank of America’s California Lands
Inc. claimed 531,000 acres by 1936. Worster,
Rivers of Empire, 234–35; Liebman, California
Farmland, 95–97; J. Earl Coke, “Reminiscences on People and Change in California
Agriculture, 1900–1975: Oral History Transcript (1976), 172, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
“Di Giorgio Fruit Corporation
Unharmed,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 8, 1935;
1935, 557–62. The two subsidiaries were Earl
Fruit Company and International Fruit Corporation. “Serious Break Among Growers,”
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 23, 1927; Jelinek,
Harvest Empire, 64; Walker Manual 1940,
511–13; Walker Manual 1945, 424–26; Walker
Manual 1950, 533–35; “I Work; You Work;
the Land Works,” Los Angeles Times, Aug.
15, 1937; “Joseph Di Giorgio,” Fortune (Aug.
1946), 97; “Fruit King,” Time, Mar. 11, 1946.
18
1935, 485–88; Walker Manual 1940, 458–61;
“CalPak: The Adventures of Del Monte
Brand,” Fortune (Nov. 1938): 76–83; Walker,
Conquest of Bread, 220–22, 245; Cooper,
Power, 210; Walker Manual 1945, 375–78.
19
Large landholdings and land companies
have often represented the crux of the landlabor paradigm presented by Carey McWilliams and further discussions on capital
concentration in California agriculture. For
a good overview of land concentration, see
Liebman, California Farmland. By looking at
the corporate investment from the sectors
of transportation, energy, and finance, the
article is attempting to place agriculture in a
clearer economic context.
20
Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of
the American West, 1850–1930 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2005), 6–7,
73, 282–83; Walker Manual 1940, 299–302;
Walker, Conquest of Bread, 99–100; Hearings Report of Subcommittee of Labor and
Public Welfare, United States Senate (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1972), Appendix A- Profile of Agribusiness,
3112 (hereafter cited as Profile-Ag Report).
For more on Southern Pacific, see Richard
White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and
the Making of Modern America (New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2011).
21
Sackman, Orange Empire, 66; “Insects
and Institutions: University Science and the
Fruit Business of California,” Agricultural
History 69, no. 2 (Spring 1995), 222, 239;
Walker Manual 1935, 1067–72. For directorate links, see Walker Manual 1920, 581, 613;
Walker Manual 1940, 511, 1092, 1108; Walker
Manual 1955, 555, 612; Profile-Ag Report,
3069, 3115.

22
Library, University of California, Berkeley;
“30 Fruit Companies Merged,” Washington
Post, June 13, 1921; “Business News,” Los
Angeles Times, Apr. 26, 1924; Walker Manual
1925, 415.
•
vol ume 90
24
Agribusiness is often discussed within
the agricultural input and commodity processing chains that took hold nationally after
World War II. My use of the term in this
article relies on Richard Walker’s broader
definition, highlighting both industrial
agriculture and its corporate lineages. Such
lineages include: investors and boards of
directorates, financiers like Bank of America, research and development centers like
UC Berkeley, the petrochemical subsidiaries
of Standard Oil, and the transportation networks of Southern Pacific. Walker, Conquest
of Bread, 12–13. For great studies on cultural
production and capital concentration in
nineteenth and early-twentieth-century California, see George Henderson, California
and the Fictions of Capital (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999) and Sackman,
Orange Empire.
25
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, in
The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas
Jefferson, ed. Adrienne Koch and William
Peden (New York: Random House, 1944),
num ber 2
280; Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The
American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950),
123–33; Fredrick Jackson Turner, “the
Significance of the Frontier in American
History,” in Rereading Frederick Jackson
Turner, ed. John Mack Faragher (New York:
Henry Holt, 1994), 32, 39. 43; Fred Wilbur
Powell, “Co-Operative Marketing of California Fresh Fruit,” The Quarterly Journal
of Economics 2, no. 2 (Feb. 1910): 393–418;
Ira B. Cross, “Co-operation in California,”
The American Economic Review 1, no. 3
(Sept. 1911): 535–44; Victor W. Killick, “Most
Valuable Farm Lands in the World,” Technical World Magazine 22, no. 1 (Sept. 1914),
68–70; Paul Holden, “Agricultural Standardization on the Pacific Coast,” Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 137 (May 1928), 107–8; “Sugar in
California,” The Economist (Dec. 24, 1910),
1292–93; “United States,” The Economist
(Jan. 28, 1911), 167; “The Boom in California,” The Economist (Feb. 16, 1924), 287;
“The Growth of Los Angeles,” The Economist
(Feb. 28, 1925), 390.
26
Results in the “Access Newspaper
Archive” of rural California newspapers
from 1900 to 1950: farmer 86,370, grower
47,489, rancher 41,051, orchardist 3,560,
nurserymen 3,242, vineyardist 1,319, agriculturalist 683, horticulturalist 73, viticulturist
42.
27
“Seek Workers from Mexico: California
Farmers Turn to Foreign Sources,” Los
Angeles Times, May 18, 1918; “Mexico to Supply Labor,” New York Times, June 17, 1918;
“Items of Interest to Busy Farmers,” San
Francisco Chronicle, Aug. 4, 1918; “Warns of
Shortage of Labor on Farms,” Boston Daily
Globe, Aug. 23, 1918.
28
For good surveys of the racialized labor in
California and Hawaii, see Street, Beast in
the Fields, Cooper and Daws, Land and Power
in Hawaii, Evelyn Glenn, Unequal Freedom:
How Race and Gender Shaped American
Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2002); Dionicio Valdes,
Organized Agriculture and the Labor Movement before the UFW: Puerto Rico, Hawaii,
and California (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2011). For further discussion on
the imagery of California agriculture, see
Douglas Sackman’s inspiring analysis of
the citrus industry’s box labels and other
promotional products; Sackman, Orange
Empire.
29
“Resume Hearing on Sugar Tariff,” Wall
Street Journal, Jan. 22, 1924; “Will Start
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
Campaign for Domestic Sugar,” New York
Times, May 14, 1928; “Sugar in the Senate,”
Wall Street Journal, Jan. 11, 1930.
30
“The Position of Sugar,” The Economist
(Nov. 15, 1913), 1065; “Cane Sugar Economics,” The Economist (May 19, 1928), 1039;
“Hawaiian Sugar Crops,” Los Angeles Times,
Jan. 13, 1924; “President’s Message on
Sugar Relief,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 1934;
“AAA Considers Molasses Order to Aid
Farmer,” Washington Post, Nov. 28, 1934.
In California, the AAA proved a boon for
large producers as 2 percent of the state’s
agriculturalists received 44 percent of federal subsidies in 1938. See Jelinek, Harvest
Empire, 75.
31
“Both Sides of Central Valley Water
Project,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 15, 1933;
“Chamber Plea Sent President,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 20, 1934; “Directorate of
Chamber of Commerce and Affiliated
Companies,” La Follette, 18054–55; “State
Gets Huge Fund,” Los Angeles Times, Sept.
13, 1935; Worster, Rivers of Empire, 240. See
Paul S. Taylor, Essays on Land, Water, and
Law in California (New York: Arno Press,
1979).
32
Jerold Auerbach, Labor and Liberty: The
La Follette Committee & the New Deal (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 177. “Eleven
Seized in Farm Riot,” Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 9, 1933; “Strike War Flares Up,” Los
Angeles Times, Oct. 9, 1933; “4 Killed, 2
Dying in Coast Strikes,” New York Times,
Oct. 11, 1933; “Needed: A Swift Kick,” Los
Angeles Times, Nov. 28, 1933; “Reds Linked
to Strife,” Los Angeles Times, June 9, 1934.
For more on farm labor organization in
California during the 1930s, see Daniels,
Bitter Harvest; Devra Weber, Dark Sweat,
White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton,
and the New Deal (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994).
33
Clarke A. Chambers, California Farm
Organizations: A Historical Study of the
Grange, the Farm Bureau and the Associated
Farmers, 1929–1941 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1952), 39–52; “Farmers
Form Benefit Group,” Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 20, 1933; “Cold Terror in California,”
Nation, July 24, 1935; “Red Ouster Move
Urged,” Los Angeles Times, Apr. 26, 1934;
“Farmers to Combat Reds,” Los Angeles
Times, May 10, 1934; “Communists Pick
California as World Uprising Center,” Washington Post, June 29, 1934; Frederick Jackson
Turner, “The West and American Ideals,” in
Faragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner,
152; Farmers Form Benefit Group,” Los
Angeles Times, Sept. 20, 1933; “Dirt Farmers Organize,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 15,
1933; “Farmers to Combat Reds,” Los Angeles
Times, May 10, 1934; “Riverside Farm Group
to Fight Red Agitators,” Los Angeles Times,
Aug. 4, 1934, 11; “Farmers Join to Smash
Strikes,” Business Week (May 22, 1937), 37;
“Farmers Break Strike,” Business Week (July
17, 1937), 37; “Anti-Union Farmers Spread
Out,” Business Week (Dec. 4, 1937), 46; La
Follette, 24603.
34
Samuel P. Frisselle testimony, La Follette, 17909-13; “Directorate of Chamber
of Commerce and Affiliated Companies,”
La Follette, 18054–55, 17917–27, 17941–43;
“Industrial Farming,” The Nation (Jan.
1940), 97; Chambers, California Farm Organizations, 9–30. The membership numbers
of both the Grange and Farm Bureau were
exceptionally low until after 1940, and
only the Farm Bureau grew in numbers of
significance.
35
La Follette, 17644–52 ; “Governor Merriam to Attend Di Giorgio Dinner,” Los
Angeles Times, Feb. 2, 1937; “Decree of Dissolution,” Apr. 9, 1923, Di Giorgio Farms
Company, California Articles of Incorporation 89435, California State Archives,
Sacramento, California; “I Work; You Work;
the Land Works,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 15,
1937. Di Giorgio used “Di Giorgio Farms”
in particular when the corporation again
became ensnarled in labor strife during the
1940s. See, for example, “A Community
Aroused,” Associated Farmers Publication,
1947, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Yale University; “Joseph Di Giorgio
to Governor Earl Warren,” Jan. 10, 1948;
“Joe Lewis of Farm Research To Warren,”
June 18, 1948, Earl Warren Papers, California State Archives, Sacramento, California
F3640:2372 (hereafter cited as EWP). For
more on the 1947–50 Di Giorgio Strike, see
Ernesto Galarza, Spiders in the House and
Workers in the Fields (South Bend: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1970).
36
Report of the Commission on Land Colonization and Rural Credits, State of California
(Nov. 29, 1916), 7–8, 90, University of California Digital Library, http://archive.org/
details/reportofcommissi00caliiala. For a
good overview of reformers and California
agriculture in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, see Daniels, Bitter Harvest, chapters 1–3.
37
Linda Gordon, “Dorothea Lange: The
Photographer as Agricultural Sociologist,”
Journal of American History (Dec. 2006):
698–727, quote 701; Gordon, Dorothea
Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2009); Jess Gilbert, “Eastern Urban Liberals and Midwestern Agrarian Intellectuals: Two Portraits of
Progressives in the New Deal Department
of Agriculture,” Agricultural History (Spring
2000): 162–80; Anne Whiston Spirn, Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and
Reports from the Field (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2008); Richard Steven
Street, “Lange’s Antecedents: The Emergence of Social Documentary Photography
of California’s Farmworkers,” Pacific Historical Review 75, no. 3 (2006): 385–428; Paul
S. Taylor and Dorothea Lange, An American
Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (New
York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939); Paul Taylor, “The Excess Land Law: Execution of a
Public Policy,” Yale Law Journal (Feb. 1955):
477–514. For a detailed look at Taylor’s
discussion of the law over the decades, see
Taylor, Essays on Land, Water, and the Law
in California (New York: Arno Press, 1979).
The Excess Land Law statute of the 1902
Reclamation Act limited federally subsidized
water to landholdings of 160 acres or less.
38
John Steinbeck, “Dubious Battle in
California,” Nation (Sept. 12, 1936), 302–4;
Steinbeck, “The Harvest Gypsies,” San
Francisco News, Oct. 5–12, 1936; Steinbeck,
Their Blood Is Strong (San Francisco: Simon
J. Lubin Society of California, 1938); Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: The
Viking Press, 1939); Susan Ferriss and
Ricardo Sandoval, The Fight in the Fields:
Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers’ Movement (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997), 127; Bonadio, A. P. Giannini,
249.
39
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (New York:
Doubleday, Page & Company, 1906); Robert
Wagner (May 15, 16, 1935), Congressional
Record, 74th Cong., 1st sess., 7565, 7649;
Daniels, Bitter Harvest, 259; National Labor
Relations Act (Feb. 21, 1935), Congressional
Record, 74th Cong., 1st sess., 2368; “Social
Security,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 26, 1935;
“Andrews Suggests Changes,” New York
Times, Feb. 12, 1935; “Votes to Separate
FERA and AGE Fund,” New York Times, Feb.
15, 1935; Elbert Thomas (June 14, 1938),
Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 3rd sess.,
9176, 9161; Bonadio, A. P. Giannini, 42;
“Excerpted Wage Bill Draft,” Washington
Post, June 13, 1938; Hiram Johnson (June
14, 1938), Congressional Record, 75th Cong.,
3rd sess., 9162–63; McWilliams, Factories,
48, 266.
40
Auerbach, Labor and Liberty, 184, 190; “La
Follette Committee Finishes Work Here,”

6/18/13 11:24 AM
notes
San Francisco News, Jan. 30, 1940, EWP
F3640:297; Daniels, Bitter Harvest, 284; “I
Wonder Where We Go Now,” Fortune (Apr.
1939), 91.
The Wasp’s “Troublesome Children”:
Culture, Satire, and the Anti-Chinese
Movement in the American West,
by Nicholas Sean Hall, PP 42–63
41
1
John H. Davis, “From Agriculture to Agribusiness,” Harvard Business Review 34 (Jan.
1956): 107–15; John H. Davis and Ray Allan
Goldberg, A Concept of Agribusiness (Boston:
Harvard University, 1957); John H. Davis
and Kenneth Hinshaw, Farmer in a Business
Suit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957);
Alan Fusonie, “John H. Davis: Architect of
the Agribusiness Concept Revisited,” Agricultural History (Spring 1995): 326–48.
42
Walker Manual 1965, 777–78, 811–12;
1980, 402–4; Profile-Ag Report, 3063, 3073,
3075, 3077, 3101, 3092, 3109, 3088-89,
3082; Peter Pringle, Food, Inc.: Mendel to
Monsanto—The Promises and Perils of the
Biotech Harvest (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003); Mary Hendrickson and William
Heffernan, “Concentration of Agricultural
Markets,” Feb. 2002, Department of Rural
Sociology, University of Missouri, http://
www.foodcircles.missouri.edu/CRJanuary02.pdf; Wayne Broehl, Cargill: Going
Global (Hanover: University Press of New
England, 1998).
43
Linda Lobao and Katherine Meyer,
“The Great Agricultural Transition: Crisis,
Change, and Social Consequences of Twentieth Century U.S. Farming,” Annual Review
of Sociology (2001): 103–24; Peggy Barlett,
American Dreams, Rural Realities: Family
Farms in Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1993); Darrin Qualman, The Farm Crisis and Corporate Power
(Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2001); Kathryn Marie Dudley, Debt
and Dispossession: Farm Loss in America’s
Heartland (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000). A survey of national newspapers during the 1980s reveals the term
“family farm” skyrocketing when compared
to the decades both before and after.
44
For a great discussion on the agrarian
imaginary and organic agriculture, see
Guthman, Agrarian Dreams; Christy Getz,
Sandy Brown, and Aimee Shreck, “Class
Politics and Agricultural Exceptionalism
in California’s Organic Agriculture Movement,” Politics and Society (Dec. 2008):
478–507.

•
vol ume 90
For more on the split within California’s
Union-Republican Party and the return of
War Democrats to their party in California,
see Najia Aarim-Heriot, Chinese Immigrants,
African Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the
United States, 1848–82 (Urbana-Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 2003), 105–7;
Robert J. Chandler, “Friends in Time of
Need: Republicans and Black Civil Rights
in California during the Civil War,” Journal
of the Southwest 24, no. 4 (Winter 1982),
336–7; Eugene Berwanger, The West and
Reconstruction (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 202–5; Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor
and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California
1971), 81–88; Joshua Paddison’s recent
monograph American Heathens: Religion,
Race, and Reconstruction in California (Berkeley: University of California and Huntington
Library Press, 2012) gives an excellent synopsis of white California’s descent into rabid
Sinophobia—across nearly all religious and
political cleavages—as a corollary to the
retreat from radical Reconstruction in Washington, D.C.
2
The queue was a hairstyle forced upon the
Han Chinese by the Qing Dynasty featuring a shaved scalp to the temples with the
remainder of the hair tied into a tight braid.
See William T. de Bary, Sources of Chinese
Tradition (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1999), 326.
3
Scholars have not written a great deal
generally on the Wasp. The San Francisco
Historical Society published the first effort,
Kenneth M. Johnson’s introductory essay in
the 1967 book The Sting of the Wasp: Political and Satirical Cartoons from the Truculent
Early San Francisco Weekly (San Francisco:
Book Club of California, 1967). The book
contains Johnson’s fifteen-page depiction of
the weekly and an extended set of reproductions of the publication’s illustrations. Roger
Olmsted’s article “The Cigar Box Papers: A
Local View of the Centennial Electoral Scandals,” California Historical Quarterly 55, no.
3 (Fall 1976): 256–69 deals only with the
Wasp’s origins as a West Coast mouthpiece
for Samuel Tilden’s 1876 Democratic bid for
the presidency, but provides some intriguing analysis of the weekly’s early illustrations and editorials in their rough and
unrefined form. Bruce Johnson, in his essay
num ber 2
“The Wasp” in Edward Chielens, ed., American Literary Magazines (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 432–37, added more
to the narrative first put forth by Kenneth
Johnson nine years prior. Historical geographer Gray Brechin’s short piece “The Wasp:
Stinging Editorials and Political Cartoons,”
Bancroftiana 121 (Fall 2002), written as a
biographical note for the Bancroft Library’s
extensive collection of historical issues of
the Wasp in 2002, serves as an excellent, if
brief, introduction to the magazine’s first
ten years. The best and most recent treatment of the weekly, Richard Samuel West’s
The San Francisco Wasp: An Illustrated
History (Easthampton: Periodyssey Press,
2004), painstakingly documents the series
of editors and publishers at the head of the
publication, gives extended histories of its
artists and does a credible job of providing
a larger historical context for the narrative.
Both book-length treatments also contain
extended color plates of myriad Wasp caricatures. The illustrations in both books,
however, appear merely as illustrations for
the larger history of the Wasp; both opt for
simple description of a great deal of images
in lieu of in-depth examination of the social
and political messages contained in the
visual language of a few examples. Though
no scholar has yet analyzed the anti-Chinese
movement through political cartoons, the
historiography of the movement is rich
indeed. Early treatments, such as Mary Roberts Coolidge’s Chinese Immigration (New
York: Arno Books, 1909), Elmer Sandmeyer’s The Anti-Chinese Movement in California
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1939)
put forth the “California thesis,” which saw
white agitation for exclusion in California
as the primary engine for legislative action.
Stuart Crieghton Miller took exception with
this theory in The Unwelcome Immigrant:
The American Image of the Chinese (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1969), arguing that late-nineteenth-century cultural
formations—books, newspapers, journals,
the penny press, cigar boxes, broadsides,
etc.—reflected a nationwide antipathy
toward the Chinese. Although Miller’s thesis has been effectively discredited and the
California thesis restored by Saxton’s The
Indispensable Enemy (1971) and Gwendolyn Mink’s Old Labor and New Immigrants
in American Political Development: Union,
Party and State, 1875–1920 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986), Miller’s work has
paved the way for several recent works on
race by cultural historians, such as Robert
Lee’s Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular
Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
Press, 1999), Deirdre Murphy’s “The Look
of a Citizen: Images of Immigration in
Gilded Age Painting and Popular Press
Illustration” (PhD Diss., University of
Minnesota, 2007), and Mae Ngai’s recent
reflection on the term “coolie” in western
popular culture in “Western History and
the Pacific World,” The Western Historical
Quarterly 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2012): 282–88.
In Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins
of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994),
sociologist Tomás Almaguer has suggested
that the anti-Chinese crusade was one of
many elements of the development of white
supremacy in California. Aarim-Heriot’s
Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and
Racial Anxiety compares the comparison of
racialized depictions of African Americans
and Chinese immigrants throughout the
nineteenth century. Other monographs have
explored additional dimensions of the antiChinese crusade. See Nayan Shah’s Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San
Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2001).
11
Ironically, the cigar-making industry was
one of the central loci of the anti-Chinese
crusade. By the mid-1870s, organizations
such as the Pacific Coast chapter of the
White Cigar Makers Association had vilified
the Chinese for driving down the wages of
white cigar makers. However, these whites
had much more to blame on industrialization than the Chinese. The cigar-making
industry, just as had been the case with gold
mining two decades prior, had outgrown its
artisanal phase. A newly developed mold
had simplified cigar shaping and it no longer made sense for one individual to see the
entire process through from beginning to
end. As a result, the industry now relied on
enormous, highly capitalized cigar-making
firms, which, through routinization, allowed
these firms to hire unskilled laborers (i.e.,
the Chinese) to begin the process of cigar
making. See Saxton, The Indispensable
Enemy, 214.
12
Olmsted, “The Cigar Box Papers,” 258.
13
West, The San Francisco Wasp, 3–4.
14
5
For more on anti-Chinese violence, see
Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War
against Chinese Americans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008) and Scott
Zesch’s recent monograph, The Chinatown
War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre
of 1871 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2012).
Johnson, The Sting of the Wasp, 304;
West, The San Francisco Wasp, 3–4. Once the
area’s redwoods had been felled for cigar
boxes, the Korbel brothers began planting
grape vines. Korbel Vineyards is today one
of northern California’s most renowned
producers of sparkling wine. After the initial area’s redwood depletion, the brothers
invested in a sawmill seventy miles north
near the Russian River, which had ample
redwoods for cigar box-making.
6
15
4
Johnson, The Sting of the Wasp, 2, 4; West,
The San Francisco Wasp, 1.
For the rise of centralized federal authority during and after the Civil War, see Richard Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of
Central State Authority in America (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1990).
For an excellent analysis of the contingency of social formation as differentiated
between early-twentieth-century New York
City and rural Arizona Territory, see Linda
Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2001); see also Evelyn Nakano Glenn’s
description of different hierarchies of race,
class, and gender in Hawaii, the American
Southwest, and the American South in
Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender
Shaped American Citizenship and Labor
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2002).
20
The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, Dec.
16, 1881.
7
21
West, The San Francisco Wasp, 26.
8
Ed Salzman and Ann Leigh Brown, The
Cartoon History of California Politics (Sacramento: California Journal Press, 1978), 16.
9
10
Johnson, “The Wasp,” 434; West, The San
Francisco Wasp, 26.
16
Olmsted, “The Cigar Box Papers,” 259.
17
18
Ibid., 27.
19
The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, Oct.
30, 1880.
Gary L. Bunker and Davis Bitton describe
how cartoonists derived the stock character
of the bearded Mormon from the postbellum image of Mormons as goats—a symbol
of the licentiousness of polygamy—in The
Mormon Graphic Image, 1834–1914: Cartoons,
Caricatures, and Illustrations (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1983), 27; see also
W. Paul Reeve’s monograph Religion of a
Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle
for Whiteness (New York: Oxford University
Press, forthcoming).
22
Albert Boime points out that African
Americans generally appear in similar positions in American art—typically in dependent and subservient fashion, in The Art of
Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1990).
23
The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, Feb.
8, 1879.
24
The cartoon’s accompanying editorial
explains that “Uncle Sam’s capacious bed
holds a great variety of bed-fellows; and
quite a number of them are rather troublesome by reason of the very marked peculiarities which they possess. Recently the
old man has had his patience exhausted by
two of them, and the result may be seen by
referring to our double-page illustration. His
leg is a pretty strong one when he chooses
to give it a fling, and it is just possible that
he will give it a fling on the other side. We
know, of course, that this country is the
natural home, the open armed mother, so to
speak, for the oppressed of all nations. That
will do so long as the oppressed come here
and behave themselves in a dutiful manner;
but when they want to turn round and lick
the old woman, to make her do their sweet
bidding, in fact, the thing becomes a little
overpowering and it is just possible that the
broom handle may be brought into requisition. The picture to which we referred might
be attentively studied, and with a great deal
of profit too, by a number of people who
are troubling him, it is just possible that he
might extend that right to some others who
are doing their best to make themselves a
nuisance. The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp,
Feb. 8, 1879, 435.
25
Though somewhat dated historiographically, the best account of this exodus to Kansas is still Nell Irvin Painter’s Exodusters:
Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction
(New York: Norton, 1985).
26
For more on the tiny minority of African
Americans in California during the rush
for riches, see Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks
in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995). For more on these
demographic shifts in the state, see Roger
Lotchin, Fortress California, 1910–1961: From
Warfare to Welfare (Urbana-Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 2002); Robert
O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the
Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton:

6/18/13 11:24 AM
notes
44
Chinese women also came to the United
States, though nearly all were involuntary
migrants brought to American by exploitative businessmen. For more information,
see Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social
History of Chinese Women in San Francisco
1995).
It was common in the nineteenth century
to totalize “problem groups” under one supposedly unifying moniker—Americans often
used “the Chinaman” or “John” when referring to the Chinese.
27
35
47
Several scholars have pointed to blackface minstrelsy as a sign of simultaneous
loathing and yearning among European
American performers and audiences and a
crucial component of the social construction of “whiteness.” See David Roediger, The
Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of
America’s Working Class (New York: Verso,
1991), particularly chapter 6; Eric Lott,
“White Like Me: Racial Cross-Dressing and
the Construction of American Whiteness,”
in Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed.
Amy Kaplan (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1994); Michael Rogin, “Blackface
White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds
His Voice,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 3 (Spring
1992): 417–53.
28
At the state’s 1849 Constitutional Convention, one of the first items on the agenda
was a barely defeated effort to prohibit any
African Americans from entering the state.
See Aarim-Heriot, Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and Racial Anxiety, 24–27.
29
30
For more recent treatments on the antiblack violence that took place in tandem
with the retreat from the radical egalitarian
promises of radical Reconstruction, see Kaddida Williams, They Left Great Marks on Me:
African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I (New
York: New York University Press, 2012)
and Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of
Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and
the meaning of Race in the Postemancipation
South (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2009).
31
In re Ah Yup, Circuit Court, District of
California, 1 F. Cas. 223; 1878 Cal. LEXIS
1593, April 1878; for an extended reflection
on the intellectual and legal implications
of the case, see Ian F. Haney Lopez, White
by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New
York: New York University Press, 1997).
32
Kevin Starr, California: A History (New
York: Modern Library, 2005), 97–98.
33
Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different
Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New
York: Little, Brown, & Co., 1998), 79–83.

34
Princeton University Press, 2005); Josh
Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los
Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2006), and Douglas Flamming, Bound
for Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow
America (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2005).
•
vol ume 90
Karen Leong, The China Mystique: Pearl S.
Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and
the Transformation of American Orientalism
2005), 8.
36
Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 4.
37
These anti-Chinese pogroms have been
well detailed by Pfaelzer, Driven Out.
38
Deverell, Railroad Crossing, 36.
39
This argument was originally put forth
by Alexander Saxton in The Rise and Fall of
the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass
Culture in Nineteenth Century America (New
York: Verso, 1990).
40
See Paddison, American Heathens, especially chapters 5 and 6.
41
For an excellent treatment of the growth
of the free labor ideology, see Eric Foner’s
classic Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The
Ideology of the Republican Party before the
Civil War (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995). For more on the term “coolie”
and its implications, see Ngai, “Western
History and the Pacific World.” Moon-Ho
Jung’s Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and
Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 2006), a
study of the Chinese in Louisiana during
Reconstruction, looks at the designs of antebellum planters to use Chinese coolies—
already used in the Caribbean—to fill the
agricultural labor vacuum should emancipation occur. For other studies of the Chinese
outside the American West, see Lucy M.
Cohen, Chinese in the Post-Civil War South: A
People without a History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984); James
W. Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between
Black and White (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1971); Shih-shan Henry
Tsai, “The Chinese in Arkansas,” Amerasia
Journal 8 (1981): 1–18; Arthur Bonner, Alas!
What Brought Thee Hither?: The Chinese in
New York, 1800–1950 (Madison: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1997).
42
45
New York Tribune, Mar. 20, 1879.
46
New York Tribune, Sept.20, 1880.
For instance, Mark Twain in his masterpiece The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
which contains an instance where the title
character tries (unsuccessfully) to pass himself off as a girl; Mark Twain, The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn (London: Piccadilly,
1884).
48
For more on antimiscegenation legislation in the West, see Peggy Pascoe, What
Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and
the Making of Race in America (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2010).
49
Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 113–14.
For more on the Great Railroad Strikes of
1877, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New
York: HarperCollins, 1988), 583–85.
50
Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 17, 112.
51
Pfaelzer, Driven Out, 77–78; Saxton, The
Indispensable Enemy, 118–19.
52
53
For more on organized Democratic violence begun during Mississippi’s 1875 campaign, see Foner, Reconstruction, 559–63.
54
For more on Barksdale murdering Dixon,
see the New York Times, Aug. 21, 1879. For
more on the feud leading up to the De
Young shooting Kalloch, see Saxton, The
Indispensable Enemy, 139–40.
55
56
The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, Aug.
30, 1884.
57
The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, Mar.
24, 1882.
58
59
Carl Swisher, Motivation and Political
Technique in the California Constitutional
Convention, 1878–1879 (Pomona: Pomona
College Political Science Monograph Series,
1930), 21.
60
Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy, 146, 152,
171.
43
Hayes’ veto message printed in The Boston Globe, Mar. 2, 1879.
num ber 2
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6/18/13 11:24 AM
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6/18/13 11:24 AM
reviews
Edited by James J. Rawls
State of Mind: New
California Art Circa
1970
By Constance M. Lewallen and
Karen Moss, with essays by Julia
Bryan-Wilson and Anne Rorimer
(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2012, 296 pp., $39.95 cloth)
Phenomenal:
California Light,
Space, and Surface
Edited by Robin Clark with essays
by Michael Auping, Robin Clark,
Stephanie Hanor, Adrian Kohn,
and Dawna Schuld (Berkeley:
University of California Press
with the assistance of the Getty
Foundation, 2012, 240 pp.,
$39.95 cloth)
Reviewed by Paul J. Karlstrom, former
West Coast Regional Director,
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution, and author of Peter Selz:
Sketches of a Life in Art
These two books accompanied
art exhibitions now long gone. The
first purpose of such publications is
to throw further light on specific displays of art and to serve as a document
when the actual exhibition is history.
This, however, is a limited goal. These
books present two important California
“movements”—Conceptual Art and the
more specific southern California versions of minimalism grouped under
the sobriquet Light and Space—that
could be viewed as dominant during
a particularly fertile creative period in
the second half of the twentieth cen-

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vol ume 90
tury. The success and significance of
the books is the degree to which they
enlighten readers about the collective
work and, even more important, the
ways in which it can be seen as resulting from and contributing to not just
California history but an expanded way
of looking at art itself.
The books are considered here together
for several reasons. First, they come
from the same publisher at the same
time, the occasion of the hugely ambitious multivenue exhibition “Pacific
Standard Time,” sponsored by the
J. Paul Getty Museum, on the subject
of California art in and around 1970.
This historic event recognized and
celebrated the critical coming of age of
California as a major participant in latemodernist art.
Perhaps the most important exhibitions were those under consideration
here. And that status carries a considerable burden of responsibility. The
greatest challenge falls to the curators
of State of Mind. In the introduction to
her essay “A Larger Stage,” Constance
Lewallen states the authors’ approach
to an almost unmanageable subject:
“I believe that a thematic approach
will afford a fresh look at this seminal period [circa 1970] in California
num ber 2
Conceptual Art and demonstrate that
it foreshadowed much of the work
being created by young artists today.”
Contemporary art of the early years of
the twentieth century is unimaginable
without the rich history that goes back
to Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) and
his best-known historic beneficiary,
Andy Warhol (1928–1987). The single
basis for the Conceptual “movement,”
if one agrees to that unified description, is Duchamp’s oft-quoted dictum
that the idea and process involved in
art making is the art act itself, not
the object that may or may not result.
Also, Duchamp held that the artwork
is unfinished, incomplete, without
the viewer (or audience). These ideas
inform virtually all avant-garde art of
the twentieth century.
Throughout this extraordinarily dense,
layered, and detailed account—an
effort to bring together in a meaningful way a plethora of disparate forms,
content, and expressions—the four
authors bring impressively informed
and intelligent commentary to a subject that really cannot be forced into a
single clarifying definition. The term
Conceptualism, in this respect, is more
a “branding” than a movement. This
book is a noble effort that, through no
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6/18/13 11:24 AM
fault of the authors, cannot entirely
succeed. But they have managed,
through impressive detail about artists and art projects, to provide guideposts for an exciting and intellectually
rewarding roller-coaster ride.
The truth is that the problem we confront in thinking about Conceptualism
is the concept itself. If, as some of us
ironically point out, Conceptualism can
be anything at all as long as an artist
declares it is art, then the term is allembracing and possibly worthless. If
everything is art, then why talk or write
about it? What impresses about the
treatment of that difficulty by Lewallen
and her colleague Karen Moss is that
they understand that the phenomenon
needs somehow to be communicated,
not just through definitions but in
the experience of its great variety and
serious goals. Definitions begin with
Lewallen’s big statement that the
“movement” emerged in the 1960s
among groups of young artists, in this
country and abroad, who rejected “traditional modes of art making in the
context of enormous cultural and social
changes in the society at large.” There
we have one definition. Moss tells us
that through new ideas of place and
site, Conceptualism “redefined the idea
of an art object and the notion of representation.” In her essay, Ann Rorimer
proposes that California Conceptualists
“belong together . . . not solely by virtue
of their geographical place of residence
at the outset of their careers, but even
more so by their shared pursuit of
a wide range of aesthetic strategies
devoted to reinvigorating worn-out
practices of art making.” She goes on
to remind us that these artists extended
the innovations of minimal and pop
art by turning away from “mediumspecific” painting and sculpture.
This guiding notion is put even more
succinctly by artist Tom Marioni,
quoted by Moss, when he described
his project as “idea oriented situations
not directed at the production of static
objects.” Less familiar than some of the
other leading California figures associated with the movement—for example,
Eleanor Antin, Michael Asher, John
Baldessari, Chris Burden, Bruce Nauman, Allan Kaprow (Happenings), and
Ed Ruscha—Marioni’s name nonetheless appears throughout these essays
as a significant force—as curator at
the Richmond Museum and founder
of his own Museum of Conceptual Art
(MOCA) in San Francisco—in creating a vital Conceptualist community
in San Francisco. His provocative performances (e.g., “Piss Piece” of 1970,
in which he stood on a ladder and
urinated in a galvanized laundry tub)
partake of the body art branch of the
movement, in which the artist literally
becomes the work of art. In 1973, he
was handcuffed for seventy-two hours
to Linda Mary Montano for one of
her famous performances (ephemeral
except for photo documentation). Marioni and Montano saw art as a social
experience, as did the influential European Joseph Beuys.
This iteration of Conceptualism had
the potential to be the most unsettling,
as carried to extremes by artists such as
Burden and Barbara T. Smith. Burden
was notorious for Shoot (1973), a radical piece in which he had himself shot
in the arm by a young artist friend in
front of a small group of witnesses.
The threat of danger and injury was
reified. Burden later told curator Tom
Garver that he wanted to create an
“instant and evanescent sculpture.”
Smith was resolute in her determination to remove any distinction between
public and private acts, including
sexual intercourse. In Feed Me (performed at Marioni’s MOCA in 1973),
she invited “visitors” one at a time
to enter a small room where she sat,
naked and vulnerable, a tape repeating,
“Feed me, feed me.” With mostly male
participants, some of the potential
consequences for her were foreseeable.
The meaning of this openly transgressive performance, and its status
as art, inevitably would be debated,
especially among feminists. Apparently Smith saw her role as passive,
with the audience being responsible for
what happened. According to Garver,
who saw the 1973 performance, there
was a small peephole through which
observers (voyeurs, of which there was
a long line) could observe Smith and
whomever she was with. This served
to “protect” her in her passivity, making her “visitor” subject to social and
psychological consequences. This idea
of discovery through social interaction
(artist and viewer/participant) goes to
the heart of much conceptual activity.
And always in the background lies the
key question: what are the limits of
art? The cover of this richly illustrated
volume (64 color and 123 black and
white) was an inspired choice in terms
of an introduction to the subject and
the book’s contents. Robert Kinmont is
depicted doing a handstand on the very
edge of a sheer cliff. This is one photo
from a series entitled 8 Natural Handstands (1969/2009) in which the artist
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6/18/13 11:24 AM
reviews
is literally at the center of the artwork,
his individual human presence dominating nature. In a sense, it subverts
the long tradition of landscape art, but,
more important, it introduces the element of personal risk, imminent danger of bodily injury, and even death—
real world, real time. The image tells
us that such ideas are among the
contents of Conceptual Art’s deep and
varied bag of tricks and surprises.
There are seventy artists listed as participating in the exhibition, with many
others brought into the essays to provide history, context, and clarification
of relationships between ideas and
individuals. Admittedly, it is not always
easy for the nonspecialist to follow
the various lines of the developing
theme or even the cast of characters.
Given this formidable task, the authors
have produced mutually reinforcing
accounts that build upon one another
while offering a mass of detail that
inevitably challenges even art-informed
readers. Nonetheless, thoughtful and
attentive study opens a window with a
clear view of a complex but nonetheless
fascinating multifaceted art/cultural
landscape.
The second book in this closely connected pair, Phenomenal: California
Light, Space, Surface, discusses far
fewer artists and a more cohesive
enterprise. The thirteen artists in
the exhibition are Peter Alexander,
Larry Bell, Ron Cooper, Mary Corse,
Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John
McCracken, Bruce Nauman, Eric Orr,
Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De
Wain Valentine, and Doug Wheeler—
all well-known and respected veterans
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•
vol ume 90
of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s,
and several are art superstars. Though
the scope is smaller and the focus
much tighter, the approach is similar
to that of State of Mind, with a team
of five highly qualified contributors
examining different aspects of a southern California art movement that now
stands on its own as a worthy counterpart to the heretofore more famous and
celebrated New York version of minimalist sculpture.
In his introduction, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego director
Hugh M. Davies acknowledges that the
American art scene until recently has
been, in his term, New York–centric,
and serious artists, including those
in California, felt required to relocate
there. That pattern has changed. Davies
points out what has become obvious:
the creative center of the art world has
moved perceptively westward over the
past twenty-five years, and with that
has come a historical self-confidence
among those who write about past as
well as contemporary art in California.
The contributors to the present volumes show none of the former defensive, even apologetic, insecurity. Quite
the opposite, they recognize and take
for granted the stature and influence
of their subject, not just regionally but
internationally.
Even a few New York critics, chief
among them Roberta Smith of the New
York Times and Peter Schjeldahl writing for the New Yorker, acknowledge
the importance of the California art
scene—especially in Los Angeles—as a
worthy rival to New York. Of the more
than thirty exhibitions for which the
present books serve as partial records
num ber 2
and many of which Smith saw in an
exhausting five-day visit, she wrote with
almost giddy admiration, “Pacific Standard Time has been touted as rewriting
history. It seems equally plausible to
say that it simply explodes it, revealing
the immensity of art before the narrowing and ordering of the historicizing process.” Even more dramatic a
reversal of New York’s familiar critical
dismissal is her surprising statement
in another favorable review in which
she actually suggests that New York
“long ago accepted it [Los Angeles] as
an equal in the production of art, and
that New Yorkers may even suspect
that on a per-capita basis, Los Angeles
harbors more good artists than New
York does.” In the past, these would be
fighting words, or just plain rubbish,
in the acknowledged art capital of the
world. And the artists discussed here,
whether associated with Conceptualism
or Light and Space, are given credit for
this new paradigm, as Davies calls it.
They have done nothing less than contribute to a new art order. Schjeldahl,
in a 2010 review of a California show
in New York, similarly compares the
Los Angeles version of minimalism to
that of New York as entirely distinctive
in forms and ideas, “as if the movement had been reborn to more indulgent parents. . . . In the 1960s, puritanical New Yorkers (me included) liked
to deplore the air of lotus-eating chic”
that California minimalists shared. But
following his “epiphany,” Schjeldahl
described both the sculpture and Light
and Space installations as “increasingly
ethereal,” exhibiting a “sensuousness
that couldn’t have been more remote
from New York’s principled asperity. In
point of fact, they [the artists] advanced
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6/18/13 11:24 AM
a philosophical argument about the
role of art in life which has aged well.”
In some ways, it seems that Light and
Space, narrowly defined as a movement in comparison to open-ended
Conceptualism, is easier for the essayists to describe and convey. The rigor
they bring to the subjects is informed
by knowledge and insight, and careful looking, enhanced by the historical
perspective provided by almost half
a century. The curators and writers
bring in the essential figures regardless of whether they are included in
the exhibition, thereby making clear
their ambitions for historical comprehensiveness, a further “coming
of age.” Two crucial artists, the late
Michael Asher and Maria Nordman,
are featured in the book with lengthy
discussions. Asher is described by
exhibition curator Robin Clark in her
useful introduction as the Reluctant
Phenomenologist and in his Los Angeles Times obituary as a “dean of the
Conceptual Art movement.” Although
associated with Light and Space, especially in the 1960s, he preferred the
term situation aesthetics to describe his
practice. Nordman, who declined to
participate because she did not want
to have her work shown in a group
context, is described by Michael Auping in his marvelous chapter devoted
to light redefining space, as the creator
of “mind bending” interplay between
walls and light. She denies being part
of the movement, insisting that her
work is about people and “situations.”
Auping is not having it, arguing that
if Nordman is “not part of the Light
and Space Movement, then one could
argue that there is no Light and Space
Movement.” He goes on to write that
her “small but intense body of work is
the epitome of what could be called a
choreography of light and space.” His
description of three visits to her Pico
Boulevard storefront studio is evocative
and almost poetic, as is definitely her
art and that of her loosely associated
southern California colleagues.
Furthermore, it is no coincidence that
several of the Light and Space people,
Bruce Nauman in addition to Nordman
and Asher, make critical and lengthy
crossover appearances in State of Mind.
Nauman, with his extraordinary freeranging creative imagination, is among
those whose work defines the thrust of
Conceptualism internationally. In fact,
these are among the most inventive
and, especially in the case of Asher,
cerebral artists. With the goal of altering space and dematerializing if not
eliminating the object, their art is Conceptual at base. One absolutely critical
point, and one fully explicated in these
books, is that California art was as serious as any art elsewhere. However, it
wore different clothing and presented
itself in a variety of guises, from irony
and deadpan humor to outrageousness
and calculated shock. Roberta Smith,
once again, came to the defense of California minimalism as equal to that of
New York, and in its way more courageous in moving beyond more formalist painting and sculpture to explore
new territory. She was refreshed by the
lightness and transparency, the color
and sensuality, of the L.A. sculpturebased work that had been liberated
to pursue new horizons with light as
the medium. Robert Irwin and Donald Judd, in their thinking and work,
define this contrast at the highest
level. Among the chief offenses of the
Californian minimalists was that their
work was seen as superficial and seductive, lacking gravitas. But as Smith and
many others wonder, what’s wrong
with sensuality and beauty?
The reaction to the work of Irwin,
James Turrell, Nordman, and others
was, as Douglas Wheeler described his
own work, “sensate.” It was, without
apology or excuses, an effort through
perception and the medium of light to
alter our understanding of the environment—natural and man-made—and
even more our inherited ideas about
the very nature of art. Architect Frank
Gehry has said, “Light is something
that every architect talks about but
seldom deals with well. Artists in L.A.
gave us a lesson in that.” A friend of
artists, Gehry recognized that this was
a very big project indeed, in which even
those who retained the art object (albeit
transformed by refined surface treatment, vibrant colors, reflection, translucence, and transparency) were full
participants—among them De Wain
Valentine, Peter Alexander, Craig Kauffman, Helen Pashgian, and above all
Larry Bell. The goals are shared and the
overlapping means used in the service
of ideas constitutes the new art. The art
becomes the individual experience of
the work, leading to heightened awareness of a reality altered by and viewed
freshly through art. The key point to
remember is that for all the attention
to new materials and process (plastic,
cast resin, vacuum-formed) of the wellknown L.A. Finish Fetish reflecting
custom car and surfing culture (for
years a critical means to marginalize the work), and given the amazing
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6/18/13 11:24 AM
reviews
technical resources needed to cast
large-scale disks and cubes, the craft
was directed to the same ends: sculptural forms that subvert the traditional
qualities of solidity and permanence
expected of them.
In one way or another, the works
brought together in these complementary books are idea-based (conceptual)
and devoted to positioning the viewer
in relationship to his/her environment.
The traditional object displayed in art
gallery or museum space is rejected
or at least seriously and thoughtfully modified. For a period of phenomenally fruitful artistic endeavor,
these concerns became the project of
California art.
Like State of Mind, Phenomenal boasts
illustrations (100 color and 75 black
and white) that not only document the
exhibition but also allow the words to
carry specific meaning in relationship
to the art. The color plates are especially beautiful, given the gleaming
sensual aesthetic involved in most of
the works. In the final chapter, Adrian
Kohn offers a brief but provocative
look at writing about art and the inadequacy of words to the task of conveying the essence of what is visual. She
argues that the risk in experiencing art
through language “may allow words
and their logic to supplant the work and
its.” This is an unavoidable problem,
one that has been of considerable interest to Robert Irwin, who warns historians and critics of the serious loss or
forfeiture when transposing phenomena into language. Kohn’s concluding
observation seems somehow perfect for
both these books dealing with unfamiliar, challenging artworks that demand
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•
vol ume 90
much from the viewer in an unstated
contract between the artists and those
who experience their art: “In one’s own
engagement, picking words and testing
them helps you to look harder and see
more. While words may obscure art’s
strangeness at first, their failings—if
noticed—restore it.” These exemplary
studies deserve close reading, looking, and thinking to help us to “look
harder” and “see more.” Both books
should be considered definitive and
authoritative, and that was the clear
goal: interpretive studies that are not
limited to the objects or artists in either
exhibition. In some respects, they could
be a boxed set.
A Companion to
Los Angeles Edited by William Deverell and
Greg Hise (Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell, 2010, 536 pp., $228.95
cloth) Reviewed by Volker Janssen, Associate
Professor of History, California State
University, and editor of Where Minds
and Matters Meet: Technology in
California and the West Anyone familiar with Blackwell
Companions knows why they come at
such a high price: They are expansive
essay collections, meant as a resource
and reference rather than as volumes
to be read from beginning to end. And
anyone familiar with William Deverell’s
work as mentor and steward to new
scholarship at the Huntington-USC
Institute for California and the West
and his work on Blackwell Companions
to American History—A Companion
to the American West and A Companion
to California History—knows there is
num ber 2
no one better to team up with one of
the region’s most prolific urban and
architectural historians, Greg Hise, to
assemble this magnificent collection.
Long gone are the days when the
southern California metropolis was
simply a case study in suburban history. Over the last fifteen years or so,
historians of all fields and specialties
have discovered Los Angeles as a place
that raises new questions and provides
some unexpected answers. The multidisciplinary appeal of Los Angeles
is apparent in the list of contributors.
Urban, cultural, film, public, and legal
historians have joined political scientists, scholars of race and ethnicity,
photographers, artists, and novelists in
this project, and the contributions are
accordingly diverse. Case studies and
rich historiographies stand side by side
with Matt Gainer’s intriguing urban
photography, Robbert Flick’s photo
assembly on the San Gabriel River, and
“contemporary voices” on Los Angeles
that pull many of the historical questions and debates of this companion
into the present.
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6/18/13 11:24 AM
Deverell and Hise organized this companion around a couple of thematic
clusters. The first five essays discuss
the history of Los Angeles as a global
city—a central node in the Southwestern borderlands, the Pacific Rim, and
the foundry of a new multinational
and multiethnic identity. The second
batch of five essays, which includes
work by Eric Avila and George J. Sanchez, discuss Los Angeles as a site of
social conflict, from Indian uprisings
during the missionary period to the
Rodney King riots. Like the other clusters, the third group of four essays on
Los Angeles’s politics and economics
pushes the companion’s chronological reach considerably past the long
twentieth century. Most intriguing here
is Philip J. Ethington’s history of the
region—his essay spans 13,000 years.
Six essays on “cultures and communities” discuss movie culture, Los Angeles’s 1960s counterculture, Josh Kun’s
interpretation of Tijuana as a “crossborder suburb of Los Angeles,” and a
photographic illustration of the city’s
religious diversity. The final segment
includes an essay by Greg Hise and
illustrates the various ways in which
the Los Angeles region has been built
and shaped into both unique exception
and representative example of urban,
geographic, and environmental history. This companion will serve graduate
students well in their search for their
own voice in Los Angeles history. It will
be an ample resource for educators, for
historians in search of a concise collection that represents the “state of the
field,” and for anyone who thinks Los
Angeles is worth thinking about.
San Francisco’s
Playland at the Beach:
The Early Years
By James R. Smith (Fresno, CA:
Linden Publishing, 2010, 152 pp.,
$21.95 paper)
Reviewed by Charles Wollenberg,
Berkeley City College, author of
Berkeley: A City in History
San Francisco, the Far West’s first
real city, pioneered in developing the
region’s earliest urban amusement
parks, including Woodward Gardens in
the Mission District. Along with popular forms of entertainment, Woodward
had formal gardens and informative
zoological and natural history exhibits.
In contrast, Playland at the Beach had
few cultural conceits and highbrow
aspirations. As James Smith observes
in this informative book, “Playland
assaulted the senses” with a collection
of rumbling rides, loud carnival games,
strong cooking odors, and the raucous laughter of a bizarre mannequin
known as Laffing Sal.
The park began in the late nineteenth
century as a motley collection of attractions at Ocean Beach, south of the
Cliff House and Sutro Baths. In 1913,
the Hippodrome installed a carousel,
and over the next decade Chutes at
the Beach, as it was originally called,
attracted ten additional rides. Growth
continued during the twenties as the
park gradually came under the control
of the Whitney family and adopted the
name Playland at the Beach. It proclaimed itself the Coney Island of the
West and consisted of about one hundred concessions, including the Big
Dipper roller coaster. Playland survived
hard times during the Depression and
prospered in the boom years of World
War II and the immediate postwar era.
Smith’s volume concentrates on the
years between 1920 and 1945. While
the book includes a brief chronological
text, it mainly tells its story through
historic photographs. Many show the
construction of rides and buildings, but
there are also images of the people who
visited and worked at the park. Playland’s patrons were primarily white
middle- and working-class couples
and families; there are few photos of
the city’s elite or Asian and African
American residents. Ocean Beach was
first served by a steam train and then
electric trolleys, but the book particularly documents the growing influence
of the automobile. By the twenties,
traffic jams and parking problems were
occasional parts of the Playland experience. There are also pictures of unionized park workers picketing during
the 1934 general strike and uniformed
servicemen swarming the midway in
the 1940s.
Playland’s fortunes declined after
1960. Smith blames inept management following the Whitney family’s departure, but major social and
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cultural changes also took a toll.
Families moved to the suburbs and
new freeways provided access to
recreation alternatives far removed
from Playland’s cold summer fogs.
Disneyland initiated an age of meticulously planned, squeaky-clean theme
parks for middle-class consumers.
And Playland’s crude commercialism
seemed out of step with the values and
lifestyles of the sixties counterculture.
The park closed in 1972, eventually
replaced by a condominium complex.
Bits and pieces of Playland survive—a
Laffing Sal at the Santa Cruz boardwalk
and various materials at the PlaylandNot-at-the-Beach museum in El Cerrito.
Remarkably, the original Hippodrome
carousel still spins, now at Yerba Buena
Center in downtown San Francisco.
But for old-timers with fond memories of foggy Playland nights, scary
rides, and raucous smells, sounds, and
sights, this book is a prime source of
well-informed nostalgia.
Rulers & Rebels: A
People’s History of
Early California,
1769–1901
By Laurence H. Shoup (New York
and Bloomington, IN: iUniverse
.com, 2010, 568 pp., $32.95 paper)
Reviewed by Michael Steinberg,
Instructor of History, Diablo Valley
College
Laurence H. Shoup is a man on a
mission—a mission to share his understanding of a working class attempting
to create a better life, of a capitalist
ruling class of exploiters needing to
be confronted and overturned, and of
a world to be transformed. His Rulers & Rebels is early California history
through the lens of ideology. It is
all rulers, all rebels, all the time. He
doesn’t give up, he doesn’t surrender,
and he offers hope for the future.
Shoup makes a good case. He certainly
takes sides. His love of humanity, and
of the “people,” is profound. He knows
what he is about. Professor Shoup
recounts being encouraged by the late
Howard Zinn to “produce a people’s
history of California . . . [Zinn] set a
wonderful example of what it means to
be an engaged scholar in solidarity with
the people’s movements.” There you
have it: a genuine and capable scholar,
with a strong ideological bent, producing a fascinating, enlightening, sometimes frustrating, and often fruitful
history of California from 1769 to 1901.
Within his richly annotated and cited
500 pages filled with fascinating primary source materials may be found
Eureka! moments, Marxist economic
theory, occasionally too extensive lists
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begging for some ruthless editor’s
digital knife, illustrations too dim to
really see, and a genuine love for the
exploited, the poor, and the rebels of
society. He has a side, and his position
is clear. In this book, “capitalist” is a
curse word.
There is much to love and some to
question in this book. I love Shoup’s
well-cited research, knowledge,
insights, academic integrity, feeling for
the oppressed, and desire for justice
and democracy. He has shared some
wonderful, painful glimpses of a longlost and troubled past.
I am not, however, comfortable with
economic-agenda history, with an
analysis devoid of even mentioning
art, philosophy, humor, psychology,
religion, or science beyond the use
of technology for continual capital
accumulation. Today, when the rights
of working people to organize in selfdefense into unions may seem more
under threat and less accepted than
in decades past, Shoup is determined
to use the history of California to
demonstrate the significance of just
such a right. From the standpoint of
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furthering a broad wage earners’ sense
of class consciousness and of employing a Marxist descriptive vocabulary of
capitalist-wealth accumulation, labor’s
surplus value, and the exploitation and
“commodification” of people, he examines in great (occasionally too great)
detail California’s history.
Shoup’s exploration is impressive,
well documented, and well researched.
Some of the most interesting writing,
apart from his occasionally thick, datapacked, ideological examinations of
people and events, lies in the primary
source quotations of great length,
springing to life with that sense of
another era—the not-so-distant, dramatically different past. It is the stuff
of time travel that excites so many to a
love of history.
Earth Wisdom: A
California Chumash
Woman
By Yolanda Broyles-González and
Pilulaw Khus (Tucson: University of
Arizona Press, 2011, 256 pp., $24.95
paper)
Reviewed by Roberta S. Greenwood,
RPA, Greenwood and Associates, and
author of 9000 Years of Prehistory at
Diablo Canyon, San Luis Obispo County,
California
The viewpoints of the collaborating authors have inevitably colored
their contributions to this unique
and insightful volume. Dr. BroylesGonzález comes from a Yaqui-Chicana
background in Arizona to teach at the
university in Tucson. Pilulaw Khus
does not provide a genealogy but is
a ceremonial elder, clan mother, and
medicine carrier living near San Luis
Obispo in central California. She is a
graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, with some training
in law school, who chose to live for
years without electricity. Their collaboration lasted a decade.
Dr. Broyles-González’s extensive introduction of forty-six pages provides a
carefully reasoned context that reflects
upon local and Native history, as well
as Chumash concepts of survival strategies, self-determination, gender, resistance, and reemergence. She does not
attempt to evaluate Khus’s narrative,
but writes from her own experiences
and reflections. Chapters 1–13 are presented as oral history spoken by Khus.
There are endnotes but no bibliography
other than citations within the notes.
Chapter 3 contains a review of “The
Three Major Invasions,” referring to
the arrival of the Spanish padres and
military in the 1770s, then the Russians and Spanish, and finally the
Americans. The word Holocaust is used
to describe “the exceptional brutality and viciousness” imposed on the
Native people by the colonizers in a
very brief period of time. Elsewhere,
Khus compares site planning by the
utility companies as “the same kind of
genocidal action that Hitler brought
down on the people in Germany.”
Chapter 4 discusses various strategies
for resistance, including guerrilla warfare; relocation; adopting a superficial
veneer of Catholicism; coming closer
together as families, clans, and tribes;
and participating in various ceremonies that are mentioned often but
deliberately not described.
The role of women in the Chumash
culture is central within the book and
emphasized throughout. The bonding
of individuals has accompanied recognition of their power within both family and community. Khus has been an
activist since the late 1970s and speaks
from the viewpoint of the Life Force.
The strength of Khus’s opinions is suggested by the title of chapter 5, “Anthropologists, Archaeologists, and Grave
Robbers.” The certainty of some academicians and governments that they
know much about indigenous people
is “one of the most powerful and obstinate forms of racism and disrespect.”
Further, the academic lens is distorted
by advanced-degree training, racial
filters, and greed. While archaeologists
are not completely “without merit,”
they have done a great deal of damage
with their digging to fill museums.
However, the display of artifacts may
not be anathema to all Chumash, since
the Santa Barbara Chumash have been
amassing collections for years and are
actively working to acquire additional
land to build their own museum.
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Khus reviews the experience at Chumash sites such as Pismo Beach, Point
Conception, Paso Robles, Carrizo Plain,
and the Channel Islands and makes
special reference to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power facility in San Luis
Obispo. She writes that “close to thirty”
of her ancestors were pulled out of the
earth. In fact, sixty-seven human burials from the plant site were meticulously excavated, studied in a respectful
and noninvasive manner, and returned
to the Chumash. The published report
describing all of the artifacts and the
burials contributed much new information about the Native people and
their ways of life and established the
first chronology of human occupation along the central California coast.
Even though this research took place
in 1968–69, before the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) or the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
and National Environmental Policy Act
(NEPA) required it, the effort shows
that mitigation, while less positive a
result than preservation, is not necessarily a disadvantage to Native peoples.
Creating an Orange
Utopia: Eliza Lovell
Tibbets and the Birth
of California’s Citrus
Industry
By Patricia Ortlieb and Peter
Economy (West Chester, PA:
Swedenborg Foundation Press, 2011,
136 pp., $12.95 paper)
Reviewed by Michael F. Magliari,
Professor of History, California State
University, Chico, and coauthor (with
Michael J. Gillis) of John Bidwell and
California: The Life and Writings of a
Pioneer, 1841–1900
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Between 1873 and 1875 (the exact
date is disputed), someone in the newly
founded rural colony of Riverside
imported and planted the Brazilian
Bahia (or Washington) navel orange,
a citrus fruit that revolutionized commercial agriculture in California and
quickly became an icon of health and
wealth in the Golden State. Who merits
immortalization for this momentous
event? Local legend, enacted in community pageants and enshrined in
commemorative monuments, bestows
all glory upon Eliza Lovell Tibbets. Historians are not so certain. Responding
to a conflicting documentary record,
they advance three contested possibilities: Eliza Tibbets, Luther Calvin
Tibbets (Eliza’s third husband), or the
bipartisan compromise proffered by
Riverside chronicler Tom Patterson,
Eliza and Luther Tibbets.
Patricia Ortlieb, lead author of Creating an Orange Utopia, is no champion
of bipartisanship. In her terribly onesided volume, Ortlieb, the great-greatgranddaughter of Eliza and her first
husband, ignores Patterson’s work and
instead offers a glowing hagiography
of her celebrated ancestor. In the great
navel origins debate, Ortlieb and collaborator Peter Economy award exclusive credit to Mrs. Tibbets, referring
repeatedly to “Eliza’s oranges,” “Eliza’s
trees,” and “Eliza’s legacy.”
Indeed, Ortlieb makes many generous
claims for the alleged “mother of the
southern California orange industry.”
“Eliza,” she says, “was a woman far
ahead of her time” who possessed
“strong values of right and wrong”; an
“idealistic pioneer woman” who campaigned for abolition and female suf-
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frage while defying convention to shed
two husbands prior to marrying, in
1865, the also twice-married Luther, a
man to whom she was drawn, in part,
by their shared embrace of Spiritualism. In fact, the remarkable Eliza won
a devoted following as a charismatic
medium who not only communicated
with the departed but also channeled
the spirit of “an Indian girl named
Floating Feather.”
How accurate is Ortlieb’s portrayal?
Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell,
since Ortlieb fails to interrogate, or
even acknowledge, the scathing portrait published in 1943 by Minnie Tibbets Mills, Luther’s daughter (by his
second wife). Proclaiming her father
“Founder of the Navel Orange Industry of California,” Mills maintained
that Eliza had nothing to do with the
Bahia’s triumph. Contrary to Ortlieb,
Mills described her stepmother not
as a hardy pioneer woman but as a
greedy, home-wrecking adulteress and
manipulative hypochondriac. Driven
by her love of fawning attention, Eliza
staged elaborate séances to elicit praise
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from the living rather than messages
from the dead. Regrettably, her efforts
paid off because, claimed Mills, her
admirers ensured that, following their
respective deaths in 1898 and 1902,
Eliza, not Luther, received the laurels
for transplanting the navel orange. To
Mills’s further chagrin, their false narrative was subsequently cast in bronze
by the Daughters of the American
Revolution and the state of California,
each of which erected plaque-bearing
landmarks honoring Eliza while omitting Luther.
With her new book, Ortlieb had a
golden opportunity to reassess Mills’s
argument and set the record straight.
By choosing instead to pass over Mills
in complete silence, Ortlieb opted to
perpetuate myth, not history.
Pablo Tac, Indigenous
Scholar: Writing on
Luiseño Language and
Colonial History,
c. 1840
By Lisbeth Haas with Art by
James Luna (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2011, 288 pp.,
$49.95 cloth)
Reviewed by Clifford E. Trafzer,
Professor of History, Rupert Costo
Chair in American Indian Affairs,
University of California, Riverside, and
author of As Long as the Grass Shall
Grow and Rivers Flow: A History of
Native Americans
Lisbeth Haas offered a significant
contribution to California history by
introducing and presenting the original
manuscript of Pablo Tac (1820–1841),
a nineteenth-century Payomkowishum
(Luiseño) Indian scholar from Mission
San Luis Rey. In 1930, Carlos Tagliavini
published a heavily edited portion of
Tac’s manuscript. Here Haas provides
the first full text of Tac’s contribution—
including a Luiseño grammar, history,
and Luiseño-Spanish dictionary—in its
original form. The book also contains
an illustrated essay, “Fasten Your Seatbelts, Prepare for Landing,” by Luiseño
artist James Luna and elements of his
Tac exhibition.
Haas presents an in-depth introduction to Tac’s manuscript that places the
work in historical context. She points
out that between 1834 and 1841, while
Tac lived and studied for the priesthood
in Rome, the Luiseño scholar wrote his
manuscript for Vatican librarian Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti. Tac’s manuscript became part of Mezzofanti’s
archive, and Haas worked diligently to
find, translate, and interpret the entire
manuscript.
Pablo Tac translated his knowledge and
concepts from Luiseño into Spanish
and Latin, which he used to construct
his writings for Cardinal Mezzofanti.
His manuscript offers scholars an
original source written by a Luiseño
Indian about selected elements of his
culture during the early nineteenth
century. Contemporary scholars often
rely on the writings of Spanish citizens
and subsequent non-Indian scholars
to understand Native Americans during the Spanish colonial periods. Tac’s
manuscript allows scholars to study
Luiseño language, culture, and history through the written words of a
Luiseño man.
Haas offers a very rare document that
provides many insights into the culture
and religion of Tac and his people. Tac
carefully discusses cultural change
over time and Native adaptation to the
Spanish newcomers and their colonial
institutions. He often mentions horses,
villages, leaders, and laws. He provides
some details about the loss of Indian
self-determination, spaces, and places.
He clearly understood Luiseño sovereignty and the attempt by the Spanish
to control and change elements of
Native culture. He examines Luiseño
dance and stickball in some detail, but
his most revealing discussions center
on indigenous concepts of spiritual
power and religion.
Tac addresses Luiseño topics tied to
the sacred, including song, dance, and
music. He deals with regalia, ritual,
and ceremony, providing few details
but placing these subjects into the body
of his manuscript. His work includes
a sketch of an Eagle Dancer, a man
performing a sacred dance related to
spiritual medicine, song, and story.
Most important, he inserts comments
about the Tongva, Acjachemen, and
Luiseño god, Chanichñich. He wrote,
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“Channichnichop choonna auc,” or
“God is in all places.” In another segment of the manuscript, he wrote the
English equivalent of this phrase: “For
us the son of God descended from
the heavens, and also for us, he died.”
Significantly, Tac used the Luiseño
word Chanichñich for Dios (God). Thus,
he made his Native god the equivalent
of the Christian god—a blasphemous
statement. By doing so, he asserted his
own intellectual sovereignty, which ran
counter to Church teachings. In this
and other ways, Tac’s manuscript is
bold and insightful, if not subversive.
Contemporary Luiseño scholars,
including Patricia Dixon, Gary Dubois,
Mark Macarro, Willie Pink, and others could have helped interpret Tac’s
words and their significance to Luiseño
Indian culture, thereby enlarging and
enhancing Haas’s presentation of
Tac’s work. Still, in spite of this missed
opportunity, Haas has brought forward
a full rendition of Tac’s manuscript that
will be used by Indian and non-Indian
scholars for generations to come.
Southern California
Story: Seeking the
Better Life in Sierra
Madre
By Michele Zack (Sierra Madre,
CA: Sierra Madre Historical
Preservation Society, 2009, 384 pp.,
$45.00 cloth)
Reviewed by Paul Kahan, PhD,
independent scholar and author of
Eastern State Penitentiary: A History
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Southern California Story is a wellwritten, thoroughly researched, and
lavishly illustrated narrative history of
Sierra Madre in coffee table–book format that will find a welcome home in
the library of anyone interested in the
history of southern California. Written
by journalist Michele Zack (currently
the senior adviser for local history and
K-12 outreach at the Huntington-USC
Institute on California and the West),
the book won a 2010 American Association of State and Local History Award
of Merit.
In the introduction, Zack claims that
Southern California Story is the result of
five years of research, and it shows; this
comprehensive narrative touches on
environmental, political, and social history and is supplemented by a series of
carefully chosen and beautifully reproduced full-color graphics. Most coffeetable books are chock-full of colorful
pictures, so it is a credit to Zack that
Southern California Story’s illustrations
actively reinforce the book’s narration.
However, the book is more than just
pretty pictures; the narrative is compelling, well written, and accessible. Zack
clearly has an expert’s grasp of Sierra
Madre’s fascinating history and culture. She adeptly connects the region’s
history to larger social and cultural
trends, which is what distinguishes
good and great local history. For
instance, she does an amazing job placing southern California’s unique experiences during the 1930s into the larger
history of the Great Depression. As
someone who has written his share of
local and institutional histories, I can
attest to the fact that this is extremely
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difficult and is a testament to Zack’s
abilities as both writer and historian.
The only element that struck a discordant note for me was the choice of
cover illustration, Carolyn Gravette’s
2006 painting, Showtime!, which
depicts the Sierra Madre Playhouse.
The theater’s marquee proclaims a
run of Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s
depressing play about life in the
fictional Grover’s Corners. This seemed
at odds with the warm and optimistic
tone of the book because, while she is
thoughtfully critical of Sierra Madre’s
history, it is clear that Zack has a real
affection for the region.
I highly recommend this book for local
libraries, historical societies, and anyone with an interest in southern California’s history.
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Surfer Girls in the
New World Order
By Krista Comer (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press Books, 2010,
296 pp., $23.95 paper)
Reviewed by Daniel Cady, Associate
Professor, California State University,
Fresno
Six years after the publication of
Frederick Kohner’s Gidget (1957), a
twenty-one-year-old Brian Wilson
begged to know whether he was loved
by an admiring but diminutive “Little
Surfer Girl.” From his lyrical vantage
point in the water to her he mused, “I
have watched you on the shore, standing by the ocean’s roar.” While the
Beach Boys song suggests that one
day the two might surf in tandem, the
appropriate role assigned the landlocked girl is one of spectator cum
object of desire.
In Krista Comer’s thoughtful study
of female surfers, hypermasculine
fantasies are pushed—for the most
part—to the periphery, allowing the
author the needed intellectual space to
cover the ever-shifting and multilayered culture of “surfer girls.” What she
accomplishes in that space is genuinely
impressive. Employing multiple theoretical models and interdisciplinary
approaches, Comer argues that surfer
girls in body and action signify a cultural shift in everything—from how
one might approach the historiography
of the American West to “the fight
against jihadist terror.”
Once she contains the hypermasculine fantasies that serve to trivialize
surfer girls, Comer reveals the cultural,
economic, and theoretical forces that
animate her subjects’ world. Surfer
girls exist at the nexus of multiple historical and contemporary conflicts as
well as current theoretical trends. For
instance, Gidget—the popular culture
surfer girl prototype—must negotiate
Cold War gender norms and political
loyalties as well as expectations from
compliant normative girls in order to
remain subculturally relevant and happily autonomous. Internationally, local
Mexican surfer girls navigate a world
of dismissive local surfers, privileged
female surf tourists, and post-NAFTA
economic order. At the epicenter of
surf culture (California, not Hawaii),
women in the surf retail industry
combat hegemonic chain stores and
attempt to counter the passive images
of bikini-clad surf models while continually sparring with other regional
women-centered surf shops.
To mediate these international, intraregional, and—often—intergenerational conflicts, Comer advances the
concept of “girl localism.” She posits
that female surfers initially encounter
local surf breaks and steadily expand
their embrace to include third-wave
feminism, environmental activism,
pacifism, and women-centered consumer capitalism. This allows Comer’s
subjects—imbued with the “spirit of
Aloha”—to coalition-build across nearly
any cultural divide.
Many historians will likely balk at some
of Comer’s assertions—particularly
those regarding Cold War and western
history. Granted, she makes no claim
to be a historian and should not be
unnecessarily burdened by idiosyncratic disciplinary standards.
If, indeed, she were a historian, the
reader would have never been privy to
one of the book’s best anecdotes. In
the chapter on female surf vacations
in Mexico, a historian would have
been hard pressed to find immediate
meaning in the social theater exhibited in the faux lesbian wedding held
in a small local village restaurant and
the ensuing “dance battle” between
hip-grinding young male surfers and
a group of extroverted—and equally
raunchy—middle-aged Bay Area
women dubbed the Hot Flashes.
Comer characterizes the latter as an
example of “menopausal” women
“insisting on a female presence in a
public space, and, hence, with female
power.” Ultimately, the inclusion and
analyses of such happenings shed light
on experiences of this particular group
of young female athletes both at the
forefront of an international sport and
as harbingers of global transformation.
Surfer Girls in the New World Order is
quite simply an important book and
should find its place on the bookshelves of academicians of all stripes.
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Go East, Young
Man: Imagining the
American West as the
Orient
By Richard V. Francaviglia (Logan:
Utah State University Press, 2011,
310 pp., $36.95 cloth)
Reviewed by Sue Fawn Chung, Associate
Professor of History, University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of In
Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American
Miners and Merchants in the American
West
This is a creative perspective,
developed over several decades, of the
American West reinterpreted as the
Orient (defined as the Middle East to
Asia) and the response of Americans
to Asia and Asians. Francaviglia examines the geologic, climatic, and biotic
similarities of the two landscapes while
acknowledging that there are some differences; focuses on places and how
they were perceived; and looks at the
historical linkages in postcards, American and European literature, memoirs,
travel narratives, folk songs, art, films,
television, and other forms of popular
culture. He also uses contemporary
historians and writers who have similar
ideas to support his position. Throughout his presentation, the American
duality of positive and negative sentiments toward the Orient prevails and
the emotions of fear, jealousy, and
alienation are mixed with appreciation,
admiration, and identification.
The book of ten chapters is divided
into two parts: “The Frontier West as
the Orient (ca. 1810–1920)” in seven
chapters and “The Modern West as the
Orient (ca. 1920–2010)” in three chapters. Francaviglia begins in the nineteenth century because Americans had
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become more sophisticated international travelers and often compared the
exotic places they visited to their homeland (Colorado’s Rocky Mountains
were viewed as similar to the Swiss
Alps). At the same time, there is an
attraction to Oriental spiritualism. The
Mormons viewed their settlement in
Salt Lake City as similar to the Israelis
settling near the Dead Sea and referred
to the state of Utah as the Holy Land.
Those experiencing the open landscape of the semiarid American West
could relate to the Sahara, Arabia,
Mongolia, and other exotic Oriental
locations (John Charles Frémont, upon
reaching the “remarkable rock” that
reminded him of the Great Pyramid of
Cheops, named the lake surrounding
the rock Pyramid Lake in 1844). From
a geomorphologic perspective, Nevada
resembled eastern Uzbekistan and
southern Nevada, the Sahara.
The Orient was an exotic place that
fascinated Americans, and its culture
influenced American thinkers, businessmen, writers, and artists from the
early nineteenth century. The sexuality and charm of Mexican and Native
American women attracted the attention of American military personnel
as well as writers and artists (Charles
M. Russell’s painting Keeoma [1896] of
a Native American woman lounging
in front of a tepee is reminiscent of a
woman before a Middle Eastern odalisque). In the search for Eden, Douglas
Cazaux Sackman promoted California
as the place that produced the fruits of
Eden—oranges. As landscapes as cultural analogies prevailed, the railroads
chose such names for their towns
as Phoenix, connoting something
magical.
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The story would not be complete without an examination of the Chinese and
Japanese influence in the Far West.
As miners, railroad workers, and others—part of the new territories—they
were accepted and then rejected, as was
typical of the American ambivalence
toward Asians. The Chinese built their
own temples and Chinatowns, often
in their own style, while influencing
Americans to build structures and
gardens inspired by the Orient (Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood,
California). The Northwest was imagined as having a Japan-like landscape
(Mount Rainier was likened to Mount
Fuji), a notion reinforced by Japanese
immigrants who settled in Hood River,
Oregon, whose Mount Hood also
reminded them of their beloved mountain (the Mount Fuji connection continued in 2010 with the National Park
Service’s Mount Rainier–Mount Fuji
Sister Mountain Curriculum Project).
The Great Northern Railway named
its premier Minneapolis-Seattle train
the Oriental Limited. By the twentieth
century, Oriental themes in stories and
movies either endeared audiences to
Orientals or, as seen in World War II–
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themed television shows and movies,
furthered racism and discrimination.
Francaviglia has portrayed the Orientalized American West—with influences
from the Middle East to East Asia—as
not only a fragment of the larger
United States but also a component
of a broader American identity that is
deep-seated in the American mind with
both negative and positive images.
Go East, Young Man is full of colorful examples and is based on decades
of Francaviglia’s thinking about the
topic (as early as 1979, he published
a book and subsequently numerous
articles about the Mormon landscape).
It is very entertaining to read. Despite
numerous and varied details, there are
some errors, such as naming Gordon
Chang of Stanford University as an
Asian American art historian instead
of a professor of American and Asian
American history and citing Wang
Lee instead of Ang Lee as the director of the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon. When discussing the advent
of camels in Virginia City, Nevada, in
the 1800s in the misguided hope that
they could be used to transport salt
and other goods in the Nevada desert,
he fails to point out that it was the
Chinese who used camels to transport
goods along the Silk Road beginning
in the Han Dynasty (206 bc–ad 220).
Some art historians may argue about
Francaviglia’s comparisons of artworks
and paintings, but one cannot deny that
there certainly is “food for thought,”
which was the author’s original intention. On that basis, I would highly recommend Go East, Young Man.
Los AngeLes in CiviL WAr DAys,
1860–1865
By John W. Robinson
$19.95 PaPerback · 204 Pages
26 b&w illus.
Most accounts of california’s role in the civil
war focus on the northern part of the state,
san Francisco in particular. in Los Angeles in
Civil War Days, John w. robinson looks to the
southern half and offers an enlightening sketch of los angeles
and its people, politics, and economic trends from 1860 to
1865. Drawing on contemporary reports in the Los Angeles Star,
southern News, and other sources, robinson shows how the
war came to los angeles and narrates the struggle between the
pro-southern faction and the unionists.
An AristoCrACy of CoLor
race and reconstruction in California and
the West, 1850–1890
By D. Michael Bottoms
$34.95 HarDcover · 288 Pages
14 b&w illus.
white californians saw in reconstruction
legislation a threat to the racial hierarchy
they had imposed on the state’s legal system
during the 1850s. but nonwhite californians recognized an
opportunity to reshape the state’s race relations. Drawing
on court records, political debates, and eyewitness accounts,
bottoms brings to life the monumental battle that followed.
empire on DispLAy
san francisco’s panama-pacific
international exposition of 1915
By Sarah J. Moore
$34.95 HarDcover · 256 Pages · 15 color
PHotos aND 49 b&w illus.
the world’s fair of 1915 celebrated both
the completion of the Panama canal and
the rebuilding of san Francisco following
the 1906 earthquake and fire. the exposition spotlighted the
canal and the city as gateways to the Pacific. Empire on Display
is the first book to examine the Panama-Pacific international
exposition through the lenses of art history and cultural studies,
focusing on the event’s expansionist and masculinist symbolism.
QuiLts
California Bound, California made,
1840–1940
By Sandi Fox
$40.00 PaPerback · 208 Pages
204 color aND b&w illus.
the richly diverse legacy of california’s
quilts is beautifully chronicled in
words and images in this extraordinary
collection spanning a century of quiltmaking. Here is the story
of california’s quilts, from those california bound—carried on
the backs of mules and horses, in covered wagons, by ship or
by train—to those california made, created on the farms and in
villages and cities across the state.
universit y of
okLAhomA press
2800 veNture Drive · NorMaN, ok 73069
tel 800 627 7377 · ouPress.coM

6/18/13 11:24 AM
donors
The California Historical Society is deeply
grateful to the following individuals, corporations,
foundations, and government and business
organizations for their contributions.
INDIVIDUALS
$10,000 and above
Anonymous Donor
Dr. Albert M. Camarillo, Stanford
Mr. Jon Christensen, Los Angeles
Stephen & Barbara Hearst, San Francisco
Dr. Maribelle & Dr. Stephen Leavitt,
San Francisco
Mr. Stephen LeSieur, San Francisco
Mrs. Jeanne S. Overstreet, Bennington, VT
Mrs. Gee Gee Platt, San Francisco
$5,000 to $9,999
Mr. Robert Jay Chattel, Sherman Oaks
Mr. & Mrs. R. Thomas Decker, San Francisco
Dr. Anthea M. Hartig, San Mateo
Mr. John L. & Mrs. Susan L. Molinari,
San Francisco
Mr. Julian Stern, Los Altos
$1,000 to $4,999
Mr. Ted Balestreri, Monterey
Jan Berckefeldt, Lafayette
Mrs. May Blaisdell, Oakland
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Mr. John E. Brown, Riverside
Honorable Willie Brown, San Francisco
Mrs. John Edward Cahill, San Rafael
Honorable John Campbell, Irvine
Ms. Alice Carey, Pope Valley
Mr. Michael Carson & Dr. Ronald Steigerwalt,
Palm Springs
Mr. Robert David, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Reid W. Dennis, Woodside
Mr. & Mrs. Ray Dolby, San Francisco
Ms. Christine Fedukowski, San Francisco
Mr. Bill & Mrs. Ilse L. Gaede, San Francisco
Ms. Pam Garcia & Mr. Peter Griesmaier,
Oakland
Mrs. Gloria Gordon Getty, San Francisco
Mr. Tony Gonzalez, Sacramento
Mr. Tim J. Gullicksen, San Francisco
Mr. Fredric Hamber, San Francisco
Erica Hartig Dubreuil, Upland
Mrs. Charlene Harvey, San Francisco
Mr. Robert & Mrs. Kaye Hiatt, Mill Valley
Mr. Sean A. Johnston, San Francisco
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Mr. Guy Lampard, Mill Valley
Mr. Hollis G. Lenderking, La Honda

•
vol ume 90
Mr. Ray & Mrs. Lynn Lent, San Rafael
Linda Lee Lester, Gilroy
Mr. Bruce M. & Mrs. Cynthia Lubarsky,
San Francisco
Mr. William S. McCreery, Hillsborough
Mr. Holbrook T. Mitchell, Napa
Mr. Mark A. Moore, Burlingame
Mr. Richard Moscarello, Westlake Village
Mr. Peter Johnson Musto, San Francisco
Mr. Thomas R. Owens, San Francisco
Constance Peabody, San Francisco
Dr. Edith & Mr. George Piness, Mill Valley
Mrs. Cristina Rose, Los Angeles
Mr. Adolph Rosekrans, Redwood City
Mr. H. Russell Smith, Pasadena
Mr. John Swiecki, San Mateo
Mr. & Mrs. Steven L. Swig, San Francisco
Beverly Benedict Thomas, Studio City
Mr. Harold Tuck, Chula Vista
Mr. John & Mrs. Andrea Van de Kamp,
Pasadena
Mr. A.W.B. Vincent, Monte Carlo, MONACO
Mr. Ralph Collins Walter, Los Angeles
Mr. Timothy Whalen, Pasadena
Mr. Peter Wiley, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Wulliger,
Pacific Palisades
Mr. & Mrs. Lee Zeigler, San Francisco
$500 to $999
Ms. Judith Avery, San Carlos
Mr. Michael & Mrs. Marianne Beeman,
Woodland
Ms. Melinda Bittan, Los Angeles
Mr. DeWitt F. Bowman, Mill Valley
Mr. Ernest A. Bryant, III, Santa Barbara
Dr. Melvin & Mrs. Hella Cheitlin,
San Francisco
Mr. Robert & Ms. Rebecca Cherny,
San Francisco
Mr. Robert Coleman, Oakland
Mr. & Mrs. John C. Colver, Belvedere-Tiburon
Mrs. Suzanne Crowell, San Marino
Mrs. Leonore Daschbach, Atherton
Mr. Lloyd De Llamas, Covina
Mr. & Mrs. Frederick K. Duhring, Los Altos
Mr. Bill S. & Mrs. Cynthia Floyd, Jr.,
Portola Valley
Mr. Randall & Mrs. Helene Frakes,
San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Milo Gates, Redwood City
Mr. Harry R. Gibson III, South Lake Tahoe
Dr. Erica & Mr. Barry Goode, Richmond
Mr. & Mrs. Richard W. Goss II, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Scott M. Haskins, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Alfred E. Heller, San Rafael
Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Henderson,
Hillsborough
Ms. Ruth M. Hill, Daly City
Mr. Charles D. Hoffman, San Francisco
Mr. David & Mrs. Carolyn Hoffman, Fremont
num ber 2
Mr. William L. Horton, Los Angeles
Zachary & Elizabeth Hulsey, Burlingame
Mrs. Katharine H. Johnson, Belvedere-Tiburon
Mr. & Mrs. G. Scott Jones, Mill Valley
Mr. Douglas C. Kent, Davis
Mr. David B. King, Fremont
Mr. & Mrs. Gary F. Kurutz, Sacramento
Mrs. E. Lampen, San Francisco
Ms. Judy Lee, Redwood City
Mrs. Betsy Link, Los Angeles
Mr. Robert London Moore, Jr., Verdugo City
Mr. & Mrs. Leonis C. Malburg, Vernon
Mr. Stephen & Mrs. Alice Martin, San Mateo
Ms. Janis K. Masaoka, San Francisco
Ms. Cathy Maupin, San Francisco
Mrs. David Jamison McDaniel, San Francisco
Mrs. Nan Tucker McEvoy, San Francisco
Mr. Craig & Mrs. Julie McNamara, Winters
Mr. Robert Folger Miller, Burlingame
Mr. George & Mrs. Janet A. Miller,
San Francisco
Mr. Lawrence E. Moehrke, San Rafael
Mrs. Albert J. Moorman, Atherton
Ms. Susan Morris, Belvedere-Tiburon
Mr. & Mrs. Peter J. O’Hara, Sonoma
Dr. Ynez Viole O’Neill, Los Angeles
Dr. & Mrs. John O. Pohlmann, Seal Beach
Mr. Kevin M. Pursglove, San Francisco
Mrs. Wanda Rees-Williams, South Pasadena
Mr. Hugh Rowland, Oakland
Mr. Michael Rugen & Mrs. Jeannine Kay,
San Francisco
Mr. Paul Sack, San Francisco
Farrel & Shirley Schell, Oakland
Mrs. Teresa Siebert, Carmichael
Ms. Lynne Tondorf, Daly City
Ms. Jane Twomey, San Francisco
Mr. Paul A. Violich, San Francisco
Mr. Richard C. Warmer, San Francisco
Mrs. Jeanne & Mr. Bill C. Watson, Orinda
Mr. Paul L. Wattis, Jr., Paicines
Mr. Walter & Mrs. Ann Weybright,
San Francisco
Mr. Steven R. Winkel, Berkeley
Ms. Sheila Wishek, San Francisco
Mr. Daniel Woodhead, III, San Francisco
$250 to $499
Mr. Matt Adams, San Francisco
Mr. Hon Alger, New York, NY
Mr. Gordon Amrein, Santa Rosa
Mr. George H. Anderson, Hollister
Dr. & Mrs. Michael J. Antonini, San Francisco
Mr. Scott C. Atthowe, Oakland
Mr. & Mrs. Peter Avenali, San Francisco
Mr. Milton C. Axt, San Francisco
Ms. Marie Bartee, San Francisco
Mr. John William Beatty, Jr., Portola Valley
Mr. John & Mrs. Kaye Bejarano, San Mateo
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
Mr. Robert Bettencourt, Coyote
Ms. Janet F. Bollinger, Sacramento
Mr. Frederic W. Bost, San Rafael
Ms. Barbara Bottarini, San Francisco
Susan Brandt Hawley, Esq., Glen Ellen
Mrs. Helen R. Breck, Carmel
Ms. Carmelita Brooker, Escondido
Mr. Mark Brown, Walnut Creek
Ms. Joanne E. Bruggemann, Redwood City
Mr. & Mrs. Ralph T. Busby, Merced
Ross & Lillian Candenasso, Oakland
Mr. & Mrs. Curtis & Robin Caton, Berkeley
Mr. Gordon Chamberlain, Redwood City
Mrs. Park Chamberlain, Redwood City
Mr. Michael Charlson, Oakland
Mr. & Mrs. Herman Christensen, Jr., Atherton
Drs. James & Linda Clever, Mill Valley
Mr. John Coil, Santa Ana
Renate & Robert Coombs, Oakland
Mr. William C. Corbett, Jr., Fairfax
Mr. Jeff Craemer, San Rafael
Ms. Karen D’Amato, San Carlos
Mr. & Mrs. William Davidow, Woodside
T. R. Delebo, Sausalito
Mr. & Mrs. R. Dick, Healdsburg
Ms. Laura Bekeart Dietz, Corona Del Mar
Mr. Gere Dizerega, San Luis Obispo
Mr. & Mrs. William G. Doolittle, Carmel By
The Sea
Mr. David Drake, Union City
Mr. Robert M. Ebiner, West Covina
Jacqueline & Christian Erdman, San Francisco
Mr. David Ernst, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. John Fisher, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. James C. Flood, San Francisco
Mr. Robert C. Friese, San Francisco
Mr. Perry Franklin Fry, San Francisco
Mr. Karl E. Geier, Lafayette
Mr. Thomas R. Gherini, San Mateo
Mr. & Mrs. John Stevens Gilmore, Sacramento
Dr. & Mrs. George J. Gleghorn,
Rancho Palos Verdes
Mr. Fred F. Gregory, Palos Verdes Peninsula
Mrs. Richard M. Griffith, Jr.,
Belvedere-Tiburon
Mr. Allen Grossman, San Francisco
Ms. Jeannie Gunn, Burbank
Mr. Ronald R. Gustafson, Arcadia
Mr. Noble Hamilton, Jr., Greenbrae
Carl & Jeanne Hartig, Alta Loma
Mr. Warren Heckrotte, Oakland
Ms. Stella Hexter, Oakland
Mr. James Hofer, Redlands
Mr. Stephen H. Howell, San Francisco
Mr. Clifford Hudson, Oklahoma City, OK
Mr. Robert C. Hughes, El Cerrito
Mr. Richard Hyde, Belvedere-Tiburon
Mr. Federick Isacc, Berkeley
Mrs. Lon F. Israel, Walnut Creek
Ms. Carol G. Johnson, Redwood City
Mrs. Sylvia G. Johnson, Los Altos
Mr. Charles B. Johnson & Dr. Ann Johnson,
Hillsborough
James & Paula Karman, Chico
Ms. Margaret J. Kavounas, San Francisco
Mr. George Kennedy, Santa Cruz
Mr. Wayne T. Kennedy, San Carlos
Mr. William Kenney, San Mateo
Susan Keyte, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. George S. Krusi, Oakland
Judith Laird, Foster City
Mr. & Mrs. William C. Landrath, Carmel
Mr. Norman Tyler Larson, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Jude P. Laspa, San Francisco
Mr. Wayne C. Leicht, Laguna Beach
Mr. Leandro Lewis, Healdsburg
Jerri Lightfoot, Fremont
Mrs. Robert Livermore, Danville
Ms. Janice Loomer, Castro Valley
Mr. & Mrs. Frank Lortie, Sacramento
Mr. Weyman I. Lundquist, San Francisco
Mr. Edward C. Lynch, Vancouver, WA
Mr. Steven C. Lyon, San Francisco
Ms. Rosemary MacLeod, Daly City
Ms. Tracy Martin-Suits, Sacramento
Mr. & Mrs. Thomas H. May, Oakville
Wm. C. Corbett, Jr. & Kathleen McCaffrey,
Fairfax
Mr. Ray McDevitt, Mill Valley
Mr. Richard Smith & Mrs. Barbara McMillin,
San Francisco
Dr. Knox & Dr. Carlotta Mellon,
Carmel Highlands
Mrs. Amy Meyer, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Burnett Miller, Sacramento
Guy Molinari, Upper Saddle River, NJ
Mr. & Mrs. Joe W. Morganti, Berkeley
Ms. Elaine Myers, San Francisco
Mr. David Negus, Cloverdale
Ms. Joanne Nissen, Soledad
Mrs. Katherine Norman, Orinda
Mr. Stanley Norsworthy, Fresno
Ms. Mary Ann Notz, Burlingame
Mr. Thomas E. Nuckols, South Pasadena
Mr. Jack & Mrs. Helen Ofield, Lemon Grove
Ms. Harriett L. Orchard, Carmichael
Mr. O. Leland Osborne, Belmont
Ms. Diane Ososke, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Otter,
Belvedere-Tiburon
Ms. Mary J. Parrish, San Francisco
Mr. Warren Perry, San Francisco
James Brice & Carole Peterson, Pleasanton
Ms. Jennifer Pfaff, Burlingame
Ms. Bonnie J. Portnoy, San Rafael
Mr. Herbert C. Puffer, Folsom
Mr. Richard W. Reinhardt, San Francisco
Mr. James Reynolds, Berkeley
Mr. Terence Riddle, San Francisco
Mr. Daniel W. Roberts, San Francisco
Ms. Daimar Robinson, Salt Lake City, UT
Mr. Robert E. Ronus, Los Angeles
Jeanne Rose, San Francisco
Mrs. James H. Ross, San Mateo
Mr. Allen Rudolph, Menlo Park
Ms. Susan Sesnon Salt, Borrego Spring
Mr. Bernard Schulte, Jr., Orinda
Mr. Jacob Gould Schurman, IV, San Francisco
Rev. Thomas L. Seagrave, San Mateo
Mr. Robert J. Sehr, Jr., Alamo
Mr. Robert J. Sieling, San Carlos
Mr. Michael J. Silveira, Folsom
Mr. Keith Skinner, Berkeley
Ms. Harriet Sollod, San Francisco
Mr. Martin & Mrs. Sherril A. Spellman,
Fremont
Mr. Paul R. Spitzzeri, Sacramento
Mr. Sanford D. Stadtfeld, Sausalito
Stanley Stairs, Esq., New York, NY
Mr. Isaac & Mrs. Madeline Stein, Atherton
Mr. & Mrs. Barry H. Sterling, Sebastopol
Mr. & Mrs. Moreland L. Stevens, Newcastle
Mr. Robert Stoldal, Las Vegas, NV
Mr. Daniel F. Sullivan, San Francisco
Mr. & Mrs. Anson Blake Thacher, Ojai
Mr. Max Thelen, Jr., San Rafael
Mr. Richard L. Tower, San Francisco
Mr. Thomas Tragardh, San Francisco
Ms. Catherine G. Tripp, San Rafael
Ms. Anne M Turner, San Francisco
Mr. Christopher VerPlanck, San Francisco
Mr. Don Villarejo, Davis
Mr. Peter Wald, San Francisco
Mr. Ted Weber, Jr., San Francisco
Josh Weinstein & Lisa Simmons,
Santa Monica
Kathleen Weitz, San Francisco
Ms. Willy Werby, Burlingame
Mr. Ed & Mrs. Patti White, Los Altos
Mr. Warren R. White, San Francisco
Mr. Thomas J. White, Oakland
Joan Frye Williams & Martin Helmke,
Sacramento
Mr. & Mrs. Warren Wood, Carmel Valley
Ms. Nancy C. Woodward, Carmichael
Mr. Thomas Wyman, Palo Alto
Mr. Robert A. Young, Los Angeles
Ms. Deborah Zepnick, Calabasas

6/18/13 11:24 AM
donors
CORPORATE, FOUNDATION
& GOVERNMENT SUPPORT
$50,000 to $199,000
The Hearst Foundation, San Francisco
The James Irvine Foundation, San Francisco
The S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation,
San Francisco
$10,000 to $49,999
Bland Family Foundation, Saint Louis, MO
Grants for the Arts, San Francisco
Sherwin-Williams, Richardson, TX
The Barkley Fund, Menlo Park
The Bernard Osher Foundation, San Francisco
Union Bank of California Foundation,
Los Angeles
UnitedHealthcare, Cypress
Wells Fargo, San Francisco
$1,000 to $9,999
Bill Lane Center for the American West,
Stanford
Cal Humanities, San Francisco
California Department of Food & Agriculture,
Sacramento
California Rangeland Trust, Sacramento
Comcast, Livermore
Derry Casey Construction, Inc., San Francisco
Dodge & Cox, San Francisco
Hearst Corporation, San Francisco
Hewlett Packard, Vancouver, WA
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
Leona & Donald Davis Fund, Greenbrae
Louise M. Davies Foundation, San Francisco
Marvell Technology Group, Santa Clara
J. Rodney Eason Pfund Family Foundation,
Carmichael
Placer Partners, San Rafael
Port of San Francisco, San Francisco
Ronald & Ann Williams Foundation, Los Altos
Safeway Inc., Pleasanton
San Francisco Foundation, San Francisco
The Chrysopolae Foundation, San Francisco
The Consulate General of Switzerland in
San Francisco, San Francisco
The Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation,
San Francisco
Yerba Buena Community Benefit District,
San Francisco

•
vol ume 90
$250 to $999
Brick Row Book Shop, San Francisco
Chevron Texaco Matching Gift Program,
Princeton, NJ
Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Daly City
ht Lehmann Consulting, Sausalito
Limoneira Company, Santa Paula
Metropolitan Arts Partnership, Sacramento
Moore Dry Dock Foundation, San Francisco
Phillips, Spallas & Angstadt LLP,
San Francisco
Taylor Unity Foundation, Columbia
In Kind Donations
Kirk Amyx, San Francisco
Amyx Photography, San Francisco
Anchor Brewing Company, San Francisco
Anchor Distilling Company, San Francisco
Apéritifs Bar Management Services,
Santa Rosa
Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American
Cocktail, San Francisco
BAYCAT, San Francisco
Belfor Property Restoration, Hayward
Boudin Bakery Catering, San Francisco
David Burkhart, San Francisco
John Burton, Santa Rosa
California Bountiful Foundation, Sacramento
California Foundation for Agriculture in the
Classroom, Sacramento
Campo de Encanto Pisco, San Francisco
Cavallo Point, Sausalito
CBW Group, Inc., San Francisco
Center for Urban Education for Sustainable
Agriculture, San Francisco
Chen Design, San Francisco
Community Alliance with Family Farmers,
Davis
Cowgirl Creamery, San Francisco
Drakes Bay Oyster Company, Inverness
EcoCenter, San Francisco
Evvy Eisen, Point Reyes Station
Elixir Cocktail Catering, San Francisco
Elixir Saloon, San Francisco
Full Belly Farm, Guinda
Golden Gate Audubon, San Francisco
Daniel Godinez, Half Moon Bay
Hafner Vineyard, Healdsburg
H. Joseph Ehrmann, San Francisco
Hearst Ranch Winery, San Simeon
Hewlett Packard, Vancouver, WA
Heyday, Berkeley
Historypin, London, United Kingdom
House of Shields, San Francisco
HPA Strategies, Herglotz Public Affairs,
San Francisco
num ber 2
Katzgraphics, San Francisco
La Boulange Café & Bakery, San Francisco
Lagunitas Brewing Company, Petaluma
Literacy for Environmental Justice,
San Francisco
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles
Kevin & Nancy Lunny, Inverness
Otherwise Design, San Francisco
Eric Passetti, San Francisco
Richard Ramos, San Mateo
Safeway, San Francisco
San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco
San Francisco Maritime National Historical
Park, San Francisco
Sherman Clay, San Francisco
Stanford University, Stanford
T & D Willey Farms, Madera
The Buena Vista Café, San Francisco
The Candy Store, San Francisco
The Judson Studios, Los Angeles
Trader Joe’s, San Francisco
United States Bartenders Guild
Upper Playground’s San Francisco Heritage
Preservation Society, San Francisco
Vignette Wine Country Soda, Berkeley
Whitehead & Porter LLP, San Francisco
Waking State Design, Los Angeles
CALIFORNIA LEGACY
CIRCLE
Legacy Gifts Received
North Baker, Tiburon
Elise Eilers Elliot, Marin County
Muriel T. French, San Francisco
Barbara B. Grant, Los Angeles
J. Lowell Groves, San Francisco
Louis H. Heilbron, San Francisco
Arthur Mejia, San Francisco
Ms. Mary K. Ryan, San Francisco
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
O F F I C ER S
ROBERT CHATTEL, Sherman Oaks, President
R. Thomas Decker, San Francisco, Executive Vice President
STEPHEN LeSieur, San Francisco, Vice President
thomas r. owens, San Francisco, Vice President
cristina rose, Los Angeles, Vice President
Larry Gotlieb, Sherman Oaks, Secretary
John Brown, Riverside, Treasurer
BOARD O F TRU S TEEs
melinda bittan, Los Angeles
albert camarillo, Palo Alto
IAN CAMPBELL, Los Angeles
JON CHRISTENSEN, Los Angeles
TONY GONZALEZ, Sacramento
Robert Hiatt, Mill Valley
Gary Kurutz, Sacramento
BEVERLY THOMAS, Los Angeles
harold Tuck, San Diego
RALPH WALTER, Los Angeles
BLANCA ZARAZúA, Salinas
C ALI F ORNIA HI S TORI C AL
F OUNDATION BOARD
on the back cover
The Sunkist cooperative was a pioneer in crafting the California image.
Beneath the Edenic landscape it represented in this label, however, was a thriving business. Sunkist’s numerous subsidiaries produced commodities ranging
from high-quality lumber and citrus by-products, such as lemon oil and citric
acid, to the famous Sunkist soft drink. Agricultural cooperatives were principal
players in the expanding industrial model of California agriculture during the
twentieth century (see pages 24–41).
DEWITT F. BOWMAN, Mill Valley, President
Robert A. McNeely, San Diego
Bill McCreery, Hillsborough
EDITH L. PINESS, Mill Valley
DAVID BARRY WHITEHEAD, San Francisco
p r e s i d e n t s e M ERITI
JAN BERCKEFELDT, Lafayette
MARIBELLE LEAVITT, San Francisco
ROBERT A. McNEELY, San Diego
Carlotta mellon, Carmel Highlands
Edith L. Piness, Mill Valley
Stephen L. Taber, San Francisco
JOHN K. VAN DE KAMP, Los Angeles
executive director emeritus
MICHAEL McCONE, San Francisco
f e l l o ws
William N. Davis Jr., Sacramento
Richard H. Dillon, Mill Valley
Charles A. Fracchia, San Francisco
Robert V. Hine, Irvine
Gloria Ricci Lothrop, Pasadena
James R. Mills, Coronado
James Jabus Rawls, Sonoma
Andrew Rolle, San Marino
Earl F. Schmidt Jr., Palo Alto
Kevin Starr, San Francisco
Francis J. Weber, Mission Hills
Charles Wollenberg, Berkeley

6/18/13 11:24 AM
spotlight
Photographer
Michael Rieder
Location
Santa Barbara
Dog posing on the beach at Castle Rock in
Santa Barbara
ca. 1900–50
California Historical Society Collections
at the University of Southern California
All things must pass, change happens,
time goes by.
Late in the nineteenth century, near
Santa Barbara’s Pleasure Pier, Castle
Rock was a widely known landmark
and popular tourist attraction. People
picnicked and danced merrily at the
base of the rock, or climbed to the top;
others struck a pose for the camera. A
century before, in the Spanish period,
a castillo—a fortified gun emplacement

•
vol ume 90
or battery—had stood watch on the sea
from the cliff just above the detached
crag later known as Castle Rock.
The rocky outcrop arose, nigh on to
the waves at the head of a point jutting
westward into the sea. Only an eroded
fragment remained after the 1925
earthquake’s damage, just visible in the
photo here. Not long after this image
was made, the beloved sentinel disappeared; Castle Rock was destroyed during harbor construction in 1930.
num ber 2
A dignified dog—History’s avatar—
guards the scene and balances the
composition for a photographer’s documentation of Castle Rock’s remaining
time in the sun.
Janet Fireman
2013
6/18/13 11:24 AM
C U RAT I N G
TH E B AY
856626_07826
7x9.5
4c
Crowdsourcing a New Environmental History
CURATING THE BAY
We are proud to be a
part of the community
APRIL 7, 2013
to
AUGUST 25, 2013
This exhibition is curated by Jon
Christensen, our second Curating California
scholar-in-residence and adjunct assistant
Wells Fargo office, Lodi Depot — California 1915
professor and Pritzker fellow at the Institute
We have been active community partners for over 160 years in California — as friends,
families, neighbors, and business leaders. Whether Express Agents in times past or
Community Bankers of today, we’re dedicated to helping our communities succeed while
preserving shared history along the way.
of the Environment and Sustainability and
the Department of History at UCLA.
Stop by any of our eleven Wells Fargo History Museums or visit us at wellsfargohistory.com
wellsfargo.com
© 2013 Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. All rights reserved.
Member FDIC. (856626_07826)
Please visit our website for more information on events and programs:
CaliforniaHistoricalSociety.org
856626_07826 7x9.5 4c.indd 1
3/11/13 11:45 AM
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90_2_cover.indd 2
GALLERY HOURS: TUE – SUN 12PM – 5PM
CLOSED MONDAYS
SUGGESTED DONATION $5
415.357.1848
6/18/13 11:22 AM
history
california
california history
volume 9 0
number 2
2 0 13
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6/18/13 11:21 AM

california history - California Historical Society

Transcription

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