Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1875 — Bonanza Aristocracy. [ARTICLE]

Bonanza Aristocracy.

Many of the Eastern journals are exceedingly anxious to know what influence the bonanza will have upon social life in San Francisco. Seme are of the opinion that we shall experience here a condition of things like to the. Eastern and Northern States during and after the war, when great fortunes fell to the army infractors and the lucky speculators in petroleum; that as in the old communities in the Atlantic States an aristocracy of shoddy and oil was built up, so now in California there will be a bonanza aristocracy; that the great fortunes gathered' from stock and mining ventures will bring to the social surface the illiterate and vulgar, and tnat our well-born and blue-blood people will be compelled to endure the shame and mortification of being out-dressed and outjeweled by the vulgar rich. This danger is now imminent, and the shock of sudden wealth is less marked in effect in San Francisco than in perhaps any other city of the world. In the first place we are nearly all of us but adventurers ourselves; so few of us ever had grandfathers that we somehow do not feel the loss. We have some people among us who were most excellently born, descended from the creme de la creme of Beacon Hill, Boston, whose remote ancestors were pirates, their later descendants slave-dealers, and numbers of their relatives of the present generation are engaged in the bold pursuit of codfish on the banks of Newfoundland and the spouting sperm whale of the Arctic Seas. We have some eminent citizens descended from those early patrons of cultivated vegetable gardens in the vicinity of the city of New York; early planters of early cabbages upon the island of Manhattan, whose ancestors tilled their own acres till vulgar enterprise pushed them from their dunghills and converted their farms into town lots. We have a number of members of" the first families of the Old Dominion, descendants from Pocahontas and John Smith, or in direct line from Washington; some whose ancestry may be traced to the auction block, whose maidens were

swapped for tobacco; others of Huguenot descent, though originally tailors, shoemakers and vulgar artisans, their base mechanic’s blood having been purified by permeation and kept undefiled by freedom from labor evet since. We have, of course, some most excellent people whose patents of nobility only run back to the ownership of negroes at the South. The more select classes are, however, in the minority; the great mass of us are base-born descendants of fanners, mechanics, traders and laborers — born without spoon of any kind in our mouths-~brought up with the assistance of two-tined-forks. Some of us are immigrants who came around the Horn, or via the Isthmus, in the steerage. We are adventurers brought together from all parts of the United States and of the world. We all came poor and in the earlier history of California engaged in all sorts of pursuits, all kinds of labor. Our object was to get rich, and as there was no “ society” with its imperious laws, making labor dishonorable, we worked, we mined, we toiled on farms, kept peanut stands, sold vegetables, manufactured and sold bad whisky, kept livery stables, kept school, ran omnibus lines and corner groceries, were blacksmiths and foundrymen, sold drugs at retail and gambled a little on the sly. We were steamboat clerks, ginger-pop manufacturers, peddlers, superintendents of mines; some of us worked by the month in saw-mills and on board river craft, or earned an honest dollar as boatmen, stevedores and ’longshoremen; some of us were common sailors, who, having come ashore from men of war, neglected to return, and for a subsistence > washed dishes in restaurants or waited in hotels. Our wives kept millinery stores and we carried home the bandboxes; our mothers-in-law kept boarding-houses or furnished rooms, and we stayed with the old lady till we got rich and ashamed and then pensioned her off to retire from the business. Some of us practiced law or swapped things, or practiced medicine, or preached, or turned stockbrokers. We all invested our earnings in mines, real estate, mercantile ventures, gas, water and railroad franchises. We have obtained monopolies in gold, land, mines, mills, gas, water, ice, milk, chemicals, grain, lumber, steamboats and express companies. We have cornered mines and merchandise; we have pooled stocks; we have gambled in every venture that offered a chance of gain. We have loaned our money at usurious rates of interest. Those who ran the gantlet successfully and got rich have organized themselves into a “ good society,” and, while they have not driven the well-born and highly-cultivated from their association, have put them upon their good behavior—have said to them that they are only allowed upon sufferance, and will only be tolerated so long as they comply with the rules that govern the new organization. The first and leading article" of the constitution of our society is: “No reflections upon the past;” “No asking questions“ No waking up of ancestors, and all that antiquated nonsense;” “No hints at former employments.” Like the clown in lhe circus, with all our spots and spangles, “ Herewe are, Mr. Merryman; how do you like us?” When new candidates come forward for admission all we demand is that they must be well-to-do, of good character, wear good clothes, and be fully up to the proper standard of deportment. If they do not wear the regalia and pay their dues they are dropped out. The real truth is, our people are all standing upon so nearly the same plane in point of birth, education, employment and general respectability—we are all so nearly adventurers, so new to each other, and so really indifferent to the exactions and standards that older communities have set up for themselves —that when some good, honest gentleman or some good, worthy and modest gentlewoman, with sons and daughters properly reared, enriched by sudden fortune, comes knocking at the door and asking admission to our society, it gives them an immediate welcome. Now and then some of our people who had grandfathers shrug their shoulders and scowl. Now and then some of the newly enriched put on airs with their diamonds; but, as a rule, we soon become reconciled

to each other, and go on harmoniously together. Good breeding culture are highly respected, good manners are fully appreciated. A little shoddy and a little bad grammar are overlooked among the older members, while from the younger gentlemen and ladies we expect a deportment and a culture that are up to the highest standard of social excellence. So we promise that if our bonanza aristocracy of to-day is not quite the genuine thing we will present one in the next generation fully up to the average of the descendants of the pirates, slave-sellers and codfish kings of Beacon Hill, or of the market gardeners of Manhattan, of the first families of Virginia and Carolina. For our society to become firstclass and our descendants as good as anybody is only a question of time.— San Francesco Chronicle. •

The Paris correspondent of the New York Times tells of a bold attempt at stealing a newspaper business, as follows: “The American Register has just had an adventure which is probably unique in the history of journalism. A dishon est employe* tried to steal the journal. Two editions are published, one for London and one for Paris, and the London business clerk took it into his head to appropriate the former. He got up a paper called the American Trawler, a sac simile of the Register in everything but this one word, and which would deceive anyone when folded upon the newsstands. He copied all the advertisements, and then called upon the advertisers to read a letter from the proprietor, as he alleged, which said that the Register was to be withdrawn in favor of the journal he exhibited. Many of the advertisers were taken in, as this man had long been dealing with them for the Register. The curious part of the affair is that it came very near succeeding.” —Twenty six students of Cook Academy, at Havana, Schuyler County, N. Y., were poisoned lately by eating headcheese which had been boiled in a cop* per kettle. They have recovered.