Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/463

Rh Bilks," a name which derived its significance from the number of ex-Honorables in their ranks, and which stuck so tightly that they even began to speak of themselves as "the Bilks." As showing how much agrarianism there is in the new Constitution, the candidate of that party for Governor, an ardent supporter of the instrument, is the largest farmer in the State, the owner of something like a quarter of a million acres!

Both Republicans and "Workingmen ran State tickets, while the Democratic party degenerated into a sort of "price club," ready to trade nominations with anybody who would make a combination. In this three-cornered contest the Republicans carried the State by a plurality, except where the other parties were united on the same candidate, and except as to San Francisco. Here the Workingmen's ticket was headed by the Rev. Dr. Kalloch, a leading Baptist clergyman well known at the East, and of great ability as a stump-speaker, who in the beginning of these events had the largest Chinese Sunday-school in the city, and preached the virtues of dealing with mobs by loading with grape and firing low, but who, when the movement assumed political force, shut up his Chinese Sunday-school and preached in such a different key that he completely captured the Workingmen, and was finally (though not by Kearney's wish) nominated by them for Mayor. The crack of De Young's pistol from behind the curtain of a coupé, fired Dr. Kalloch into the mayoralty and gave the Workingmen several municipal officers and a number of members of the Legislature, besides such candidates as had united their nomination with that of other parties. But about none of the men thus carried into office in whole or in part by the Workingmen's vote is there anything socialistic or communistic. They are merely ordinary office-seekers who took advantage of the Workingmen's organization as giving a certain vote, and who, though generally they would have endorsed communism had it been popular, would have done so no quicker than they would have endorsed imperialism or Mormonism or spiritualism or vegetarianism.

After this election, and during Kearney's absence in the East last winter, began a new movement which, however, did not emanate from the Workingmen's party proper, and was led by new men—the meeting and marching of the unemployed, demanding of large employers the discharge of the Chinese. The alarm this excited, until the advance of the season and the consequent demand for laborers in the interior had lessened temporarily the number of unemployed, led to the reorganization of a Committee of Safety, which enrolled a good many names and spent some money in paying the militia to guard their arsenals, but