The Pullman Cars In The Winter Used To Be Full Of Sick People,
Banished From The East By Physicians Who Do Not Know What Else To Do
With Their Incurable Patients.
They went to the large hotels of Los
Angeles or Pasadena, to pay a rate they cannot afford.
They shivered in
half-warmed rooms; took cold after cold; their symptoms grew alarming;
their money wasted away; and finally, in utter despair, they were
hurried back homeward, perhaps to die on board the train. Or it may be
that they choose cheap lodging-houses, at prices more nearly within
their reach. Here, again, they suffer for want of home food, home
comforts, and home warmth, and the end is just the same. People
hopelessly ill should remain with their friends; even California has no
health to give to those who cannot earn it, in part at least, by their
own exertions.
It is true that the "one-lunged people" form a considerable part of the
population of Southern California. It is also true that no part of our
Union has a more enlightened or more enterprising population, and that
many of these men and women are now as robust and vigorous as one could
desire. But this happy change is possible only to those in the first
stages of the disease. Out-of-door life and physical activity enable the
system to suppress the germs of disease, but climate without activity
does not cure. So far as climate is concerned, many parts of the arid
regions in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, as well as portions of Old
Mexico (Cuernavaca or Morelia, for example) are more favorable than
California, because they are protected from the chill of the sea.
Another class of health-seekers receives less sympathy in California,
and perhaps deserves less. Jaundiced hypochondriacs and neurotic wrecks
shiver in California winter boarding-houses, torment themselves with
ennui at the country ranches, poison themselves with "nerve foods," and
perhaps finally survive to write the sad and squalid "truth about
California." Doubtless it is all inexpressibly tedious to them;
subjective woe is always hard to bear - but it is not California.
There are others, too, who are disaffected, but I need not stop to
discuss them or their points of view. It is true, in general, that few
to whom anything else is anywhere possible find disappointment in
California.
With all this, the social life is, in its essentials, that of the rest
of the United States, for the same blood flows in the veins of those
whose influence dominates it. Under all its deviations and variations
lies the old Puritan conscience, which is still the backbone of the
civilization of the republic. Life in California is a little fresher, a
little freer, a good deal richer, in its physical aspects, and for these
reasons, more intensely and characteristically American. With perhaps
ninety per cent of identity there is ten per cent of divergence, and
this ten per cent I have emphasized even to exaggeration. We know our
friends by their slight differences in feature or expression, not by
their common humanity. Much of this divergence is already fading away.
Scenery and climate remain, but there is less elbow-room, and the
unearned increment is disappearing. That which is solid will endure; the
rest will vanish. The forces that ally us to the East are growing
stronger every year with the immigration of men with new ideas. The
vigorous growth of the two universities in California insures the
elevation as well as the retention of these ideas. Through their
influence California will contribute a generous share to the social
development of the East, and be a giver as well as a receiver.
Today the pressure of higher education is greater to the square mile, if
we pay use such an expression, than anywhere else in our country. In no
other state is the path from the farmhouse to the college so well
trodden as here. It requires no prophet to forecast the educational
pre-eminence of California, for the basis of intellectual development is
already assured. But however close the alliance with Eastern culture, to
the last, certain traits will persist. California is the most
cosmopolitan of all the states of the Union, and such she will remain.
Whatever the fates may bring, her people will be tolerant, hopeful, and
adequate, sure of themselves, masters of the present, fearless of the
future.
*** END OF CALIFORNIA AND THE CALIFORNIANS by David Starr Jordan ***
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