Los Angeles herald., 1891-06-02
GENUINE REPUBLICANIsM THE NKRD
OF THE HOUR.

Mr.. Arthur McEwen, in his letters to
the interior press, and the Newsletter
OF the San Francisco hebdomadals, are
busy establishing the fact that the city
of the Golden Gate is provincial COM
munity. This may be so. The real
underlying their assumption
is that there is no aristocratic element,
based on wealth and leisure, the inher-
itance of centuries, in that metropolis of
the Pacific coast. tits trulya great pity
that there is not more blue blood in
Frisco. When it comes to comparison
with New York, for instance, the
Golden Gate is at great dis
advantage. In Gotham they have
such noble families as the Astors, Van
derbilts, Lorillards, Havemeyers, and
others, who would go into commissions
if any one were to hint that they had
any thing less than at least thirty-four
quarterings of nobility behind them.
Old John Jacob Astor was supposed, in
his time, to be pretty good judge of
hides, which knowledge he afterwards
extended to conversance with furs. Old
Commodore Vanderbilt was won't, in his
early days, to peddle vegetables grown
on Staten island in the city of New York,
rowing them to his market in canoe.
What the Lorillards did not know about
the making of snuff and tine-cut chew
ing tobacco it was no use for any other
men to try to learn. On a close inspec-
ton, we are inclined to think that San
Francisco can hold her own in any COM
parison with the aristocratic people of
the east. The men who have made
money there have, as a general thing,
been enterprising and adventurous. To
the casual observer it is really a unique
community, with much that is inter
esting about it, and with a decidedly ro-
mantle and Argonautic flavor withal. 1t
may be that San Francisco lacks social
frills, and arabesques, and all tina
aerial and fanciful nonsense. She may
not have as many liveried servants as
New York, and the buffers of her
noucedu riche may not have as yet ac-
quired the true John Thomas air, but
she is all the better for that. A
French lady, writing in the Newsletter,
in her letters to friend, gives a de-
scription of the rich women of San
Francisco which shows that they are
not altogether spoiled and worthless, as
yet. They have not accepted life as a
mere butterfly existence, in which the
trick is to loll in bed till late hours, to
60 through massage treatment before
taking up the weary labors of the day,
such labors consisting of frivolous occu-
pations which introduce downright dis
sipation, but it is perhaps just as well
that they have not. The age is steadily
becoming more democratic. We are in
the last decade of the nineteenth cen
tury, and have reached the period when
sensational revolutions are to be
expected. The fact that the rich
people OF San Francisco retain a trifle of
common sense and are not given up abso-
lutely to Sybaritish indulgence may be
very useful to them some day. 1t is
very much question as to whether the
circumstance that the most serious
employment of young mobiles in Eng
land is the driving of stage coach will
greatly recommend the idea of un-
limited leisure, while the Sir Gordon
Cummings gambling episode, with the
Prince of Wales thrown into alto reIieuo
as -blackleg, with the Cleveland
street enormities in the background,
have had agreat tendency to dissipate
the aristocratic glamour in England.
which received pretty severe shock in
France in the Revolution of hundred
years ago. What any well-wisher of San
Francisco, and of all other cities in the
United States, would like to see would
be the growth of genuine spirit of re-
publican simplicity, with self-help and
industrial achievement as its foundation.
A second rate European spirit of dilet-
tanteism and a mushroom aristocracy
are the most execrable possible develop
ments in this country. We can very
well afford to discard and to despise the
frippery which even monarchical
Europe will cast off in few decades, at
the most.