Your letter of August 1st having been directed to San Francisco, has, by some eccentric freak of efficiency in the Post Office, just been brought to me here.

I find it very difficult to give you the advice you wish; I mean advice that would be really valuable to you, but I will do my best. My knowledge of the country from personal observation you must understand is extremely limited and it is quite possible that much that I have seen [261]and experienced is more exceptional than I am aware of, although I have taken considerable pains by comparing notes with intelligent men whose range of observation has been wider, to guard against this danger. I don’t know what your knowledge of California affairs may be but presume that it is not very different from that which I possessed before I thought of coming here, so that the simplest general answer to your inquiries will be given in the statement that in all matters to which they relate I have been extremely disappointed.

The population out of San Francisco with which I have come in contact consists almost entirely of thriftless, fortune-hunting, improvident, gambling vagabonds; I mean in its essential character. Of course there is a wide range and I see men who by comparison with others are respectable but of men who have a deep abiding faith in living by intelligent industry directed to the essential benefit of their fellow citizens, I see almost none. That is the most important fact of my observations. The occupation which is the grand basis of all the wealth in the State and out of which all other enterprises and occupations—gambling, stage-driving, saw milling, farming, preaching and what not—grow; by which they are sustained and without which they would all come to grief any day is that of gold mining. Under this head are included the two entirely distinct operations of washing gold out of the surface soil, and of mining proper; that is to say, the excavation of quartz veins containing or supposed to contain gold, and the treatment of the quartz subsequent to its extraction from these veins. The situation in which the first can be pursued with greater profit than is included in the wages of ordinary agricultural labor in the East are very limited. Far more limited now than a few years since and growing rapidly more limited every year. Nine tenths of this business in this part of the country has already fallen into the hands of Chinese who are content to work for moderate wages. Consequently the communities of white men which have been heretofore established and built up upon the profits of placer mining, including the farmers and gardeners and all others who supplied the wants of placer miners, are in a large majority of cases either in a decaying condition or already completely broken up. Within a dozen miles of where I live there are [as many remains] of old mining villages, cities some of them were called, which are now completely deserted except perhaps by a few Chinamen or Mexicans.

On the other hand quartz mining is becoming every year more productive and more profitable, and new towns based upon its profits are being built up. To this time however, of all of the quartz mining enterprises in the State, I do not suppose that one in ten thousand has been pursued with profit for five years nor one in one thousand for a single year. The quartz mining speculations which have collected each its small population of miners and mechanics and have required each its number [262]of houses to be built, machinery to be constructed, and invited the settlement of farmers and tradesmen in its vicinity, which have absorbed each its share of capital and of labor, and which after all this have already proved failures and been definitely abandoned, exceeds the number of those which have been attended with success or which have not failed as yet so badly as to compel those interested to abandon them, by at least one hundred to one.

Of the various explorations, or quartz mining undertakings, which have been started with the advantage of the best attainable scientific advice in the State, of careful engineering and of practically unlimited capital, on this Estate of seventy square miles, during the year that I have been upon it, not one has paid expenses or at this moment gives strong assurance that it ever will do so. And as far as my observation extends or as I am able to obtain information from others, this experience is not in the least exceptional. On the contrary the chances of success with us have been far greater than usual and a very much greater degree of prudence and circumspection and counting of the cost has been exercised than is usual. The reason that quartz mining continues under these circumstances of course is that among ten, twenty or fifty thousand blanks, a prize is sometimes secured, and, among all the mining operations in the State which have been gambled upon in the last ten years, there have been half a dozen, possibly a dozen, very rich prizes.

You must imagine for yourself what the condition of society is under these circumstances. It is nowhere; there is no society. Any appearance of social convenience that may be found is a mere temporary and temporizing expedient by which men cheat themselves to believe that they are not savages.

All this is the general rule; now for the exceptions. In the few instances where quartz mines have been established which have continued for some time to be profitable, there society is forming on something like a substantial foundation and there you find some real phenomena of civilization. Then all this mining of course makes a general trade which has a few nuclei such as San Francisco and one or two lumber marts and places of concentration, exchange and embarcation of merchandize. In these especially there must be a vigorous class of men, vigorous in whatever they put their hands to, vigorous and enterprising, daring, audacious, often more than that, criminally reckless. Of course these qualities are sometimes applied to good, benevolent, religious purposes. How much such application there is in the State I am not in a position very well to judge, not having come in the slightest degree in contact with it outside of San Francisco and there only slightly, in connection with Starr King and the Sanitary Commission. This side of Stockton, eighty miles distant, I do not know of a single church in operation except one run exclusively by Secessionists, and more I suppose as a political than a religious enterprise [263]There is not a public school in operation in this part of the country, at the present time, to my knowledge. More than half our population are heathens, pagans, worshippers of idols, and on an average these are the more industrious, orderly, peacable, temperate and altogether respectable and civilized. They are oppressed, swindled and abused in the most atrocious manner by the rest. They are nevertheless patient, meek and docile, though of course suspicious, and hard of yielding confidence or trusting at all to white men. Many of them understand and some speak English. If they have ever learned anything of white men except new forms of vice and wickedness, I can’t think by what means it has been. I never have heard of the slightest effort or purpose on the part of any white man, woman or child to do them good.

As to business in your line I can say but little from personal observation. A Spanish Catholic priest and two illiterate Methodists, one of the North and one of the South church, have at different times each done a little light skirmishing here but I did not witness it. Those who did do not speak very respectfully of it. The general opinion of those with whom I have conversed on the subject seems to be that the churches have generally sent stuff here that they could not very well dispose of at home and that for this reason when a man of sterling quality comes here, which he generally does in the first place on account of his health, he is very likely to be made a lion of. Those of his own sect and especially the particular congregation that secures his services as its special property are very proud of him, feed and clothe him well, and trot him out at every possible opportunity very much indeed as they do their fine horses and with very much the same air of saying: “When I came here I was a miserable sinner, not worth a damn’d cent, now you see what I can afford to do.”

A much larger proportion of the population here being of extremely disorderly, careless, reckless habits, than of the Atlantic States, much less regardful of appearances and subservient to custom, it is natural to suppose and it seems to me evident that there is a greater degree of esprit de corps, spiritual or sectarian pride, and self glorification in moral rectitude and religious observances, among those who do set up church establishments, than even in New England. Religion is more fashionable in San Francisco than the Opera or fine horses, but just as in New York there are a good many respectable men, that is to say successful men, whom the fashion does not take to the Opera or to the Park but rather to the church, so in San Francisco I observed a very large class of respectable and fashionable men who, to use the California phrase, “don’t go much on preaching”, at any of the shops. I think this class is very much the larger of the two, though it makes very much less show and is much less anxious to make a show (and consequently does not exhibit itself in distinctive organizations, cliques, sets or congregations) than the [264]other. It contains a great many men of sincerely good disposition, generous, benevolent and, as I suppose, sincerely religious, unconsciously so perhaps, certainly unostentatiously and even silently so.

I have not observed that Bishop Kipp, who is an exceedingly proper, decorous, punctilious and altogether nice, fashionable man, has gained the confidence or essential friendship of these men much more than the more awkward and provincial class of clergymen. Starr King, who was also an adept in the proprieties, though rather as a master than a servant of them, did get the confidence and respect and a certain kind of spiritual control or master key entrance to the hearts of these men, in a most wonderful manner. And he used it in such a way as not only to pay off the debts of nearly all the poor struggling churches and charitable enterprises in San Francisco and many others throughout the State, and to get several hundred thousand dollars for the Sanitary Commission, and to make California pay its war taxes cheerfully and put down the Secessionists in deep and permanent humiliation, who at the beginning of the war ruled in its society as assuredly as in New York and more so, and to accomplish more deeds of private, secret and humble benevolence than can ever be known or imagined by his best friends, but so as to leave a strong and permanent disposition to patriotism, high commercial honor, charity, and benevolence in the minds of numbers of men who never did and probably never will go regularly to church or conform methodically to any of those customs and observances which constitute the everyday uniform of those with whom clergymen are usually forced to mainly confine their acquaintance and influence. How it was that King got this influence and though dead and buried still has it, you should be better able to judge by your training and duties than I, as also whether it was a good, proper and orthodox exercise of the priestly function, as also whether other men of the same trade, yourself, for instance, by using the same means might secure some measure of the same success. Possibly it should not be called a success, any more than a profitable investment which King might have made in mining stocks should have been considered a success for him in his priestly function; such I believe is the opinion of Bishop Kipp and of most of the fashionable clergymen and those who follow after them. King’s career was certainly exceptional. From the fact that it was so you may infer the rule.

Finally society is growing less unstable and uncivilized in the State with considerable rapidity. The number of paying quartz mines and especially of districts within which quartz mining operations promise to be on an average permanently profitable is increasing. The possibility of establishing permanent communities and a real civilization with its various joint stock advantages in churches, schools, civil-courts and family homes, is thus secured at many points The demand for pastoral services, as for all other conveniences of civilization, must consequently be increasing [265]The people all being more or less touched with the contagion of gambling and consequently more careless in their expenditures, whether of money or of grace, and being at the same time much less given to close dealing and careful scrutiny of what they get in return for that which they give out, will I imagine be much less exacting with regard to those actions, habits, opinions and house and home affairs of their pastors, which are none of their business, than parishes are apt to be in the East.

There is an immense number of young men constantly coming to California and who generally go to the devil at a rate of speed seldom paralleled in well organized communities. I have examined a few to ascertain the reason of it more exactly than I could by general observation. Their explanation in each case was a very simple one: they had nowhere else to go. My private opinion is that capital in churches would not pay here at present half as much as capital expended in some other ways. Some young men don’t like meetings nor even pastoral conversation. I never did and if I had not been somewhat cowardly I think I should always have steered clear of them and I think if I had been a better man, that is to say a somewhat braver one and truer, truer to my own convictions, I should have kept clear of them a good deal more than I did. And in that case if I had known no other way to amuse myself, very possibly I should have taken to gambling.

I don’t know whether what I have written will serve your purpose at all or not, or whether if it does so it will have an encouraging or discouraging effect upon your disposition to come here. I have given you my impression of what seem to me to be the important general facts bearing upon the question. I don’t consider myself competent to suggest the application of them, but I will tell you one thing that I do think, and feel myself competent to think, ought to be done, simply, if you please, as a matter of decency and respectability; that is to say, from a decent and respectable regard for the opinions of the world. I think the neglect on the part of your church organizations of this body of Chinese heathens living under our laws, every man of them under the direct influence of a population superior in numbers which is not heathen, and which carries with it if not civilization many of the powers, influences and advantages of civilization, which civilization is itself generally supposed by those who have enjoyed it to be in some degree a result of and expression and force of Christianity, is the deepest possible disgrace and makes in the highest degree possible, contemptible, the measure of common sense and logical consistency which belongs to and is associated with the human organization of Christian purpose. “Somebody ought to be whopped for this.” Somebody ought to come here, fitted by education, training and association, by familiarity with the existing religious enterprises, their working and results, as well as by some considerable degree of common sense and [266]sufficient vigor and manliness of character to let him out of established routines and methods of considering a subject of this character; study the whole subject thoroughly, and then go home and whop the churches. Still they don’t deserve to be hauled over the coals so much as these beautiful Christians of California who can see the duty plainly enough of not going to sleep in sermon time and who, I think it not at all unlikely, many of them, actually contribute to the funds of the Foreign Missionary Society, but who entirely forget to raise their voices, even, against the most outrageous injustice and imposition, contumely, contempt and inhumanity, which is daily exercised under their noses, and for which they are themselves often directly responsible, upon this Chinese portion of the American population. Remember that they are Pagans, evidently sincere and devout, that their morality is, on an average, even according to the artificial standard of the churches, higher than that of those who thus abuse them, and that those who thus abuse them are known to them without distinction of persons as Christians, and that their conduct must be supposed by them to result from and manifest the true spirit of Christianity in contrast with that of their own Paganism.