Even Now,
Far And Wide, People Think Of California As A Region Where Wealth Is Not
Dependent On Thrift, Where One Can Somehow "Strike It Rich" Without That
Tedious Attention To Details And Expenses Which Wears Out Life In Effete
Regions Such As Europe And The Eastern States.
In this feeling there is
just enough of truth to keep the notion alive, but never enough to save
from disaster those who make it a working hypothesis.
The hope of great
or sudden wealth has been the mainspring of enterprise in California,
but it has also been the excuse for shiftlessness and recklessness, the
cause of social disintegration and moral decay. The "Argonauts of '49"
were a strong, self-reliant, generous body of men. They came for gold,
and gold in abundance. Most of them found it, and some of them retained
it. Following them came a miscellaneous array of parasites and
plunderers; gamblers, dive-keepers and saloon-keepers, who fed fat on
the spoils of the Argonauts. Every Roaring Camp had its Jack Hamlin as
well as its Flynn of Virginia, John Oakhurst came with Yuba Bill, and
the wild, strong, generous, reckless aggregate cared little for thrift,
and wasted more than they earned.
But it is not gold alone that in California has dazzled men with visions
of sudden wealth. Orange groves, peach orchards, prune orchards, wheat
raising, lumbering, horse-farms; chicken-ranches, bee-ranches,
sheep-breeding, seal-poaching, cod-fishing, salmon-canning - each of
these has held out the same glittering possibility.
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