He Is As Generous As The
Best, And Takes What The Fates Send Him With Cheerful Enthusiasm.
Flood
and drought, temblor and conflagration, boom and panic - each comes in
"the day's work," and each alike finds him alert, hopeful, resourceful
and unafraid.
The typical Californian has largely outgrown provincialism. He has seen
much of the world, and he knows the varied worth of varied lands. He
travels more widely than the man of any other state, and he has the
education which travel gives. As a rule, the well-to-do Californian
knows Europe better than the average Eastern man of equal financial
resources, and the chances are that his range of experience includes
Japan, China, New Zealand and Australia as well. A knowledge of his own
country is a matter of course. He has no sympathy with "the essential
provinciality of the mind which knows the Eastern seaboard, and has some
measure of acquaintance with countries and cities, and with men from
Ireland to Italy, but which is densely ignorant of our own vast domain,
and thinks that all which lies beyond Philadelphia belongs to the West."
Not that provincialism is unknown in California, or that its occasional
exhibition is any less absurd or offensive here than elsewhere. For
example, one may note a tendency to set up local standards for literary
work done in California. Another more harmful idea is to insist that
methods outworn in the schools elsewhere are good because they are
Californian. This is the usual provincialism of ignorance, and it is
found the world over. Especially is it characteristic of centers of
population. When men come into contact with men instead of with the
forces of nature, they mistake their own conventionalities for the facts
of existence. It is not what life is, but what "the singular mess we
agree to call life" is, that interests them. In this fashion they lose
their real understanding of affairs, become the toys of their local
environment, and are marked as provincials or tenderfeet when they stray
away from home.
California is emphatically one of "earth's male lands," to accept
Browning's classification. The first Saxon settlers were men, and in
their rude civilization women had little part. For years women in
California were objects of curiosity or of chivalry, disturbing rather
than cementing influences in society. Even yet California is essentially
a man's state. It is common to say that public opinion does not exist
there; but such a statement is not wholly correct. It does exist, but it
is an out-of-door public opinion - a man's view of men. There is, for
example, a strong public opinion against hypocrisy in California, as
more than one clerical renegade has found, to his discomfiture. The
pretense to virtue is the one vice that is not forgiven. If a man be not
a liar, few questions are asked, least of all the delicate one as to the
"name he went by in the states." What we commonly call public opinion -
the cut and dried decision on social and civic questions - is made up in
the house. It is essentially feminine in its origin, the opinion of the
home circle as to how men should behave. In California there is little
which corresponds to the social atmosphere pervading the snug,
white-painted, green-blinded New England villages, and this little
exists chiefly in the southern counties, in communities of people
transported in block - traditions, conventionalities, prejudices, and
all. There is, in general, no merit attached to conformity, and one may
take a wide range of rope without necessarily arousing distrust.
Speaking broadly, in California the virtues of life spring from within,
and are not prescribed from without. The young man who is decent only
because he thinks that some one is looking, would do well to stay away.
The stern law of individual responsibility turns the fool over to the
fool-killer without a preliminary trial. No finer type of man can be
found in the world than the sober Californian; and yet no coast is
strewn with wrecks more pitiful.
There are some advantages in the absence of a compelling force of public
opinion. One of them is found in the strong self-reliance of men and
women who have made and enforced their own moral standards. With very
many men, life in California brings a decided strengthening of the moral
fibre. They must reconsider, justify, and fight for their standards of
action; and by so doing they become masters of themselves. With men of
weak nature the result is not so encouraging. The disadvantage is shown
in lax business methods, official carelessness and corruption, the
widespread corrosion of vulgar vices, and the general lack of pride in
their work shown by artisans and craftsmen.
In short, California is a man's land, with male standards of action - a
land where one must give and take, stand and fall, as a man. With the
growth of woman's realm of homes and houses, this will slowly change. It
is changing now, year by year, for good and ill; and soon California
will have a public opinion. Her sons will learn to fear "the rod behind
the looking-glass," and to shun evil not only because it is vile, but
because it is improper.
Contact with the facts of nature has taught the Californian something of
importance. To have elbow-room is to touch nature at more angles; and
whenever she is touched she is an insistent teacher. Whatever is to be
done, the typical Californian knows how to do it, and how to do it well.
He is equal to every occasion. He can cinch his own saddle, harness his
own team, bud his own grapevines, cook his own breakfast, paint his own
house; and because he cannot go to the market for every little service,
perforce he serves himself. In dealing with college students in
California, one is impressed by their boundless ingenuity. If anything
needs doing, some student can do it for you.
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