California, here I am

JOSEPH HENRY STEELE

A periscopic picture of the land of Bigger Ballyhoo and of showmen and freaks who inhabit America's Riviera

Significant it is that Death Valley and Mount Whitney, the lowest and highest points in the United States, are in California. The Golden State is like that; nothing is average or usual or just fair—it is all or nothing. The cult of the Biggest strikes the keynote; whether it's in sunshine or sin or salvation, California insists upon outdoing all her sister states.

Vulgarity may reach the nth degree of intolerance, but the finest schools in America are here. California is the Eden of American voodooism, but its citizens have a lazy calm that is the envy of visiting tourists. Graduates of success schools overrun its boundaries, but actually the state offers unbounded opportunities. Hollywood is here, but the state can point to many genuine native artists. Main Street is called El Camino Real, but it is an avenue polychromed with stucco and tile and stately palms.

Growth is a passionate religion. Every Californian believes earnestly that his is the grandest state in the union and certainly the richest and most powerful of the glowing future. This passion has assumed such fanatic proportions that amazing developments have taken place which would not have been possible except under such blinded reason. People of no other state have such an inordinate belief in their homeland.

California's attitude toward the world may be expressed in two phrases: she is out, first, to boost her material growth, and, second, to preserve the state for Californians. In other words, we must encourage outsiders to come here, but we must be sure that they do not take the state away from us.

Under the first category comes the propaganda of the All-Year clubs, the multifarious booster organizations, and the sectional chambers of commerce. Elaborate and eloquent pamphlets constantly flood the country, inviting the young to the new land of opportunity and welcoming the rich and the old to spend their remaining days here—first investing their life savings in farm and city real estate.

Time was when California modestly claimed the superiority of its climate in winter, but since then the All-Year clubs have been inspired to combat this timidity. Why should California be content to be merely a winter resort? Were not the summers just as salubrious and life-prolonging? And so every day in the year the advantages of the Golden State are hammered into the hinterlanders. This process will be kept up until all the mountain land is disposed of and until every acre of land is irrigated, even at a cost exceeding the value of its crops.

The modern American device of racketeering has been successfully and profitably practiced in this state for many years. Within the law, to be sure, and masked under a variety of pseudonyms, Californians have promoted subdivisions, oil wells, beach clubs, Foursquare gospel tabernacles, and societies named after other states.

In California, Aimée and her venerable "Ma" Kennedy are still climbing to immortality and sanctification; "Shouting Bob" Shuler's radio blasphemies found thousands of sympathetic bashi-bazouks; Rheba Crawford, the "angel of Broadway," married herself into money and a political job; churches of "psychic science" spring up like Coca-Cola signs; Billy Sunday sits back in comfortable retirement; and Tom Mooney still waits for his pardon.

In this great wilderness stands San Francisco, a broadminded, human, understandable, and lovable city. It is the one locality in the state in which honesty may be found in abundance. Little of moral hocus-pocus or alcoholic hypocrisy exists in this cosmopolitan city of the north. In fact, northern California has little in common with its more populous Bryanese twin of southern California. Liberal, tolerant, and with a genuine claim to culture, San Francisco still breathes something of the traditions of Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, and George Sterling. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has flourished and has made possible decent art galleries and excellent eating and drinking places and discouraged any invasion of Philistinism.

San Francisco is a proud and earthy city, keeping its hands in its own pockets, its nose clean, and its interior well fed. Its fascinations are many: cliffside streets, restful parks, water-fronts, Chinatown, superb hotels, the harbor, the sea food. And, although the Poodle Dog, the Fly Trap, the Pompeiian Garden, Delmonico's, and other celebrated restaurants of yesterday have joined the limbo of sweet memories, one may still find Tait's, the Castle, and a Fior-d'Italia. And if a friend will recommend you, or if you will say that "Doc La Veau" sent you, or if there is an honest twinkle in your eye, you may be served a martini to start with, red or white wine with your main course, and galliani or strega with your demi-tasse.

California's inordinate penchant for adjectives has attracted an annual horde of tourists, estimated at a million, many of whom settle there or return after having disposed of their worldly goods elsewhere. Synthetic homes—from factory to occupant—dot the landscape, and what was once a picturesque country, sung by Bret Harte and Jack London, threatens to become a desert of prosaic publicity and conducted tours.

California is proud of many things: its average temperature; the Great Engineer who resides currently in the White House; the automobiles per capita; the late spearmint king's Catalina Island; the new city hall in Los Angeles, which houses the celebrated water-drinker of France, Mayor John C. Porter, who greeted the victorious University of Southern California football team after the classic Notre Dame joust with something to the effect that their victory would bring business to the City of the Angels.

California is proud of the largest orange groves; Mount Lassen, the only active volcano in the country; the champion athletes; the record nut crops; friar William Gibbs McAdoo; the Olympiad (which is worth millions to the boosters!); its rank as second largest news center (vide the press syndicates); Mabel Walker Willebrandt's grapebricks; Hiram Johnson's holy-rolling; and hoop-de-doodle, world without end.

There was a time when California was most famous for its city of San Francisco, the Singapore of North America. Its Barbary Coast was picturesque and thrilling; some beautiful careers were germinated in it, and poetry and literature and life and liberty invested it with an individuality which still vivifies California's background. Then came the birth of a strange, omnivorous race called "realtors," and with them came civic clubs, native sons, and a pseudoculture that created an Olympus called Progress where dwelt the dreadful gods, Bigger and Better.

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Now behold the spectacle! Los Angeles has people and square mileage and all manner of dazzling Chamber of Commerce figures; San Francisco has antiquity, the martyrdom of 1906, tradition; Los Angeles is a new city: an infant with its own enfant terrible, Hollywood.

With California's scrambled history and her physical paradoxes, we must consider her equally baffling population data. The latest census places her total population at 5,677,251; ranking sixth in the United States. Of her total population only 1,723,084 are native sons and daughters.

California has by far the largest number of Orientals: 37,361 of the Chinese, whose stronghold is the San Francisco area, and 97,456 Japanese, who are mostly southern Californians. It has a relatively large Indian population, 19,212; Mexicans, 368,013; and Negroes, 81,048.

The smallest city is Coram, situated on the Sacramento River, the largest stream in the state; the largest city is Los Angeles, which is situated on a river namesake that is often practically dry. Retired Eastern farmers, curiously enough, settle in the cities, which accounts for the fact that California's population is 73.3 percent urban, an unusually high proportion.

No California statistician has been known to boast that his state leads its nearest competitor, New York, by more than 3,000 persons who do not know their own age; California has 13,759 of these. The enrollment of college, university and professional men is 31,886; of women, 24,679— ranking fifth in men and fourth in women, as compared with the rest of the country.

The span of life expectancy at birth is highest in Los Angeles, where it is fifty-three and one half years. Despite the classic climate, California has 10,109 licensed practicing doctors, a much higher ratio to the population than any other state. California is also second only to New York in its number of hospitals. The latter with seven million more in population has 608 to California's 427.

The state has had only thirty-four lynchings since 1889, four of which were Negroes. There is a prison population of 7,072, which is exceeded only by Illinois, New York and Ohio by less than a thousand each.

California in general, and Los Angeles in particular, seems to be an ideal arena for spectacular crimes.

California holds a front position in the liquor business. Its vast vineyards thrive busily supplying wine-bricks, grape brandy, and the vicious grappa. The Mexican border and Mexicans within the state turn out a plentiful supply of tequila and mescal. Canada pours the stuff down from the north. Mexicans have their backyards full of marihuana. And around election time the usual righteous gestures of raiding prevail.

This is California! As a state it can point with pride to a conglomeration of names that few states can equal:

Sister Aimée, who turned heaven into a sideshow; Will Rogers, who made illiteracy pay; Zane Grey, who specializes in big fish and best sellers; Rupert Hughes, a good writer gone syndicate; "Death Valley" Scotty, remnant of a vanishing race; A. P. Giannini, whose banks are everywhere; Jim Tully, hobo author; Upton Sinclair, the unsocial socialist; Herbert Hoover, Helen Wills, and Greta Garbo. The list is long, and at times tiresome, but that is California!