The plough is speeding in a thousand furrows everywhere. Cattle
and flocks are being graded and improved. Far-sighted men look
to franchise and public association. The day dawns when the giant
gaming hells, flaunting palaces of sin, and the violent army of
miscreants must be suppressed.
Everywhere, California shows the local irritation between the
buccaneers of the first days, and the resolute, respectable citizens.
The latter are united in this local cause, though soon to divide
politically on the battle-field.
Driven from their lucrative vices of old, the depraved element, at
the polls, overawes decency. San Francisco's long wooden wharves,
its precipitous streets, its crowded haunts of the transient, and
its flashy places of low amusement harbor a desperate gang. They
are renegades, deserters, and scum of every seaport--graduates of
all human villany. Aided by demagogues, the rule of the "Roughs"
nears its culmination. Fire companies, militia, train bands, and
the police, are rotten to the core. In this upheaval, affecting
only the larger towns, the higher classes are powerless.
Cut off, by the great plains, from the central government, the State
is almost devoid of telegraphs and has but one little railroad.
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