gs, matters changed. The red-shirted digger of gold had
little idea of the value of money. Many of them knew only the difference
between having money and having none. They had to have credit, which
they promptly wasted. Extending credit to the miners made it necessary
that credit should also be extended to the sellers, and so on back.
Meanwhile the eastern shippers continued to pour goods into the flooded
market. An auction brought such cheap prices that they proved a
temptation even to an overstocked public. The gold to pay for purchases
went east, draining the country of bullion. One or two of the supposedly
respectable and polished citizens such as Talbot Green and "honest Harry
Meiggs" fell by the wayside. The confidence of the new community began
to be shaken. In 1854 came the crisis. Three hundred out of about a
thousand business houses shut down. Seventy-seven filed petitions in
insolvency with liabilities for many millions of dollars. In 1855 one
hundred and ninety-seven additional firms and several banking houses
went under.

There were two immediate results of this state of affairs. In the first
place, every citizen became more intensely interested and occupied with
his own personal business than ever before; he had less time to devote
to the real causes of trouble, that is the public instability; and he
grew rather more selfish and suspicious of his neighbor than ever
before. The second result was to attract the dregs of society. The
pickings incident to demoralized conditions looked rich to these men.
Professional politicians, shyster lawyers, political gangsters, flocked
to the spoil. In 1851 the lawlessness of mere physical violence had come
to a head. By 1855 and 1856 there was added to a recrudescence of this
disorder a lawlessness of graft, of corruption, both political and
financial, and the overbearing arrogance of a self-made aristocracy.
These conditions combined to bring about a second crisis in the
precarious life of this new society.

CHAPTER XIII

THE STORM GATHERS

The foundation of trouble in California at this time was formal
legalism. Legality was made a fetish. The law was a game played by
lawyers and not an attempt to get justice done. The whole of public
prosecution was in the hands of one man, generally poorly paid, with
equally underpaid assistants, while the defense was conducted by the
ablest and most enthusiastic men procurable. It followed that
convictions were very f