The record-union., 1897-03-31
A SUICIDAL CRAZE.
1t is Said to Afflict the City of San
Francisco.

(From the Placerville Democrat)
San Francisco has pandered to the
Sandlot, the pug press and windy po-
litical swells, until she has lost her self
respect and soured on herself. No city
on earth was ever before befouled, pill
laged and disgraced by such a lot of po
litical lepers, lunatics and outlaws. In
constant rebellion against the laws of
trade, she has waged a political war
against her own commercial advantages
and rightful supremacy. In hostile ar
ray against the safeguards of capital,
labor and enterprise, she has rallied
against corporate cooperation, repeled
competition in trade and transportation
and thus fostered the hobbies and ex-
cited the hallucinations of her predatory
or crazy reformers.
Her genius for self destruction has
been equal to every emergency and she
has made the most of every opportunity.
To make a whooDing farce of suicidal
policies, a black mailing press and mass
meeting of blatherskites have rallied
and roared at her bidding. Thus she
gave Goat Island to the sea gflls and
sent her ships for charters and cargoes
to Port Costa. This was among the
first but not the last of ner boasted
achievements. Always going long on
the bunco games of her demagOgueS
and short on commercial advantages
proffered by her real benefactOrs, she
developed Leeds and the Traffic Asso-
citation, without a ship to scuttle or
car to wreck.
Her anti-railroad reaction was not at
oil ,.ar Pr1fo hat a n served
under Jay Gould and been cashiered for
stupid violation of railroad regula-
tions. was a phenomenal fool. In the roll
of reformer, he was ponderous and gro
tesque as John L. Sullivan in Sunday
matinee. To knock out the Southern
Pacific Company and draw his salary,
his first proposition was to put up the
rates on westbound overland traffic to
the point of prohibition and to reduce
local rates, in all directions, to the verge
of starvation. When told that to con
fiscate" the great monopoly by ''unre-
munerative rates. would bankrupt the
smaller ones, he said; IF the result is
taking the property of the small roads,
that cannot be helped"
For this theory of spoliation he had
the Endorsement of merchant princes,
Sandlot shysters and political scouts,
claiming to represent the metropolis of
the State; and having monkeyed with
the Railroad Commission and the Legis-
lature for it's adoption, it was repeated
in his last report to the So-called Traffic
Association. For San Francisco, the
Leeds experiment was a precious legacy
of failures, in trust for the Spreckels
syndicate, which she has installed on
her waterfront. And now she is an in
termediate station on a competing line
of transportation by rail and water
from Honolulu to Whooping Hollow in
the San Joaquin Valley. Her shippers,
in advance of it's competition, have en-
tered into special contracts with it's
management, to patroniZe none but
the competing route at rates of charge
not to exceed the extortions of Sutros
Octopus,
And there she sits on her sand-hills,
the sport and spoil of rival cities, that
in six years have drawn away from her
more than one-third of her commerce.
At the same diminishing ration of
trade and business sense, in twelve
years, she will have forfeited and lost
the other two-thirds, and be the happy
laughing stock and by-word even of her
own Ishmaelites. To boycott her bene-
factors and bewail her sinking fortunes,
will never bring back the commercial su-
premacy that has passed from her to
rival cities on Puget Sound in league
with every force and faculty of traf
fic and transportation by sea and land.
She may foster local feeders for every
old sea going tub on the coast and
clamOr for impossible or ruinous COM
petition, but without a treaty of peace
and cooperation with existing railroads,
and transcontinental commerce. her
destiny must be read in her past history |