Year: 1873

The public spirit Of the ancient Romans
ordained that all the grand highways of the
world should lead to Rome. Modern thor
Oughfares may lead to San Francisco if they
will, but there will be no compulsion about
it. With millions of idle capital seeking
opportunities for speculation, she still per-
mlts the enterprise OF an interior village to
project and build all her thoroughfares of
trade and commerce, and then quarres for
privileges which only ownership can con-
troll Now brought in competition with all
the great cities of the continent and Eu-
rope, she still wears the provincial garb and
INDUCES the provincial habits of her early
isolation. With thousand useful avenues
open to profitable Investment of foreign
capital, she forces all that comes here into
the old channels of speculation and usurious
banking. Through emigrant-aid associa-
tious, she spreads circulars replete with
growing descriptions of an unrivaled eli
mate, rich virgin soil, and boundless
homesteads; but it is work, that the penni-
less immigrant wants when he lands upon
her wharves, and she offers him none. She
invites the enterprising manufacturer here,
with declarations of unlimited resources of
the raw material to stock his mills and feed
his looms but when he comes she offers
him no cheap capital with which which to
lay the foundation of her future Manches-
tiers and Lowells, her Birminghams and
Lynns.


San Francisco should become the ship
builder of the Union, and should control the
carrying trade of the Pacific. She can have
but one rival but that rival is sleepless,
energetic antagonist. England has appro-
priated the rich carrying trade Of our whole
Atlantic coast. The masts of her vessels,
and the smoke-stacks of her steamships
stand like forest trees upon every bay, har-
Dor, and inlet from Maine to Texas. Not a
breeze that ruffles the ocean, nor current
that ripples its surface, that is not felt by
some portion of her ubiquitous merchant
marine. The rich harvests of the Atlantic,
all its thoroughfares, are hers j; and nothing
can deprive her of them save one of those
terrible visitations-a national war. She
must continue the sailor and ship builder of
the Atlantic; for such is the calling of her
island people-she has the power, and is in
possession.


But there is broader ocean, with un-
claimed highways, grander possibilities OF
commerce, richer harvest, and mightier
field Centrally located upon its border
the lumber-yard of the continent on the
north, the boundless productions of the
tropics upon the south, the granary, the
mineral vaults, the silk and cotton fields of
the Pacific Coast stretching their unnum-
bered acres in the background San
Francisco, all unmoved; seemingly uncon-
scious of her duty and her destiny. Look
ing out upon the only field that is left to
American marine enterprise, she makes no
effort, enters no protest, against its occupa-
tion by the same power that is now para
mount upon the Atlantic.


But not alone is her mission material
it is intellectual and moral as well. With
her commerce must go her civilization and
and her religion, her language and laws.


From her position, she must stand as the
representative of the United States to the
Oriental nations. To Europe we present
Boston as the exponent of our civilization,
and New York of our commercial charac-
ter. But to Asia, San francisco must
stand as the exponent of both, with the ma
tionai religion added. Her mission is there
fore three-fold, and her responsibility in the
same proportion. The evidence is not yet
visible that she is equal or will be equal to
her mission. In time she may outgrow the
speculative tendency of her childhood, born
of the habit of risking everything on chance,
and dedicate herself to the production of le-
Ultimate results.


Candor compels the acknowledgment,
however, that there have been palliating
causes for the ruling passion of speculation
which controls too many men of affluence,
and deals the aeath-blow to the cordial
adoption of any intelligent city policy for
the inception and prosecution of useful pub
lie enterprises. Mining was for years the
main pursuit, and is still one of the leading
pursuits of the people of this coast and al
though, in itself, perfectly legitimate oc-
cupation, yet its well-known hazardous and
exciting character has undoubtedly genera
ted and invoked the spirit of gambling and
speculating that is repeating on California
street a scarcely improved edition of the
notorious Wall street of New York. To
the score of mining, therefore, we may
charge the instigation of the mania that
warps the public Judgment, dwarfs public
enterprise, and undermines that pride of
city without which nothing great can ever
be mplished.-From The City at the
Golden Gate" in the Overland Monthly for
January.