The record-union., 1893-05-09

San Francisco contemporary deplor-
ing the fact that the State has little or no
influence in obtaining for her sons place
and voice in national councils, may find
the root of the cause at home, and not
hold our brethren at the East blame
worthy. If any man has developed in
this State IN recent years of whom Cali
fornia ought to be proud and whom it
ought unitedly to put forward as a chosen
representative of California manliness
and ability deserving of place and dis
tinction among the sons of the republic.
who has not been assailed, maligned and
distrusted at home in quarrels, political
and otherwise, conducted in the face of
the Nation, we do not recall the instance.
Locally in nearly every community
this distrustful, suspicious and inexpress-
ably mean disposition is manifest. Prob
ably no organization that ever had exist
ence in this State was born of purer and
more unselfish purpose than the State
Board of Trade. 1t is absolutely public
spirited, such selfish purpose as lies be-
hind it being of the commendahle order
and relating to wide beneficence; good
for all of the State irrespective of sections
or their contentious. Yet every lover of
the State has been panied, nay, his best
impulses outraged, by the assault made
upon that institution, and the impugning
of the motives of the public-spirited men
who founded it and give to its promotion
the best efforts of their lives
We have known many noble labors to
relieve human suffering to be blackened
in the same way. We recall an instance
in which foremost citizen of the State,
in contributing to the relief of the Johns
town sufferers, did so only upon condi-
ton that his identity should be concealed,
because of the unhappy prevalence of the
disposition to attribute to all his liber-
ality the motive of selfish interest. For
the same reason he declined to labor in a
specially generous and public-spirited
movement, except secretly. This was
moral cowardice, to be sure, but it serves
the purpose of illustration.
In the recent and prevailing movement
to spur Sacramentans to activity and lib
erality in making public Improvements,
and in enlarging our industrial enter
prises, the same obstacles have been en-
countered; the men who have come to the
front are charged with ignobly selfish
purposes and as laboring solely to benefit
themselves, and for this reason only some
objectors have refused to join the process
sion.
There is an element of truth in the
charge, and it is well there is-but for the
selfish desire to conserve ones own in
terests, business activity would cease and
human effort in that direction would come
to an end.
Perhaps the whole question as locally
applied was summed up in reply given
recently to a citizen whose only objec-
ton to the movement was his suspicion
that it was promoted to give the mer-
chants of the city broader opportunity
ito sell socks" Whereupon a thought
full and quick-witted citizen replied,
"True, and if they could, by reason of
industrial expansion in Sacramento, sell
all the socks to be sold in the State or the
Union, would not you and I profit
by it?''
We remember when California on
Wheels" when whirling through the
wintry East upon its mission of Califor-
mia advertising, that it was the subject of
indecent home criticism, inspired by the
same suspicious and jealous spirit that
questions motives and refuses to judge
schemes and enterprises upon their
merits. The same fate has overtaken
nearly every public enterprise under
taken in California, and has proved the
dea.hblow to several of them, fact that
the people at the East note and comment
upon constantly.
The manifestations of this pitiful dis
position, we are compelled to confess, are
greater and more frequent in the north