"Officialdom": California state government, 1849-1879

California History, Wntr, 2003 by Judson A. Grenier

To be sure, behavior in the capitol was not formal. While debating, members could be found whittling, smoking, and toying with guns amid what an observer considered "a turbulent dinning colloquy." During the first session, as the time of adjournment drew near each day, the genial chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, Thomas Green, would proclaim, "Well, boys, let us go take a thousand drinks." The invitation would be accepted by most, for camaraderie relieved the tension of the day's work. As a result, the body was dubbed the "Legislature of a Thousand Drinks," a reputation it could not shake. The milieu did not significantly change during the second session. According to an English visitor, "It is of the style of rump parliament, with very little dignity, very little sense, and still less honesty, judging from the imputations of the members against each other." Clearly, too, these men were racially prejudiced, as indicated by their passage of a foreign miners' tax and their readiness to mount military ca mpaigns against Native Americans in the mining regions. However, their deliberations were not marked by the anti-Chinese fervor of subsequent legislatures, and they rejected the governor's plea to restrict immigration of free blacks into the state. In retrospect, they accomplished as much as could have been expected of that time and place. Many years later (1883), in a dialogue with former governor Frederick F. Low, the historian Hubert Howe Bancroft suggested that the first legislature may have been the purest and best. Low responded, "Very likely it was. It was a small body and ... they had no money to spend and no schemes to pay money for. It is the conjuring up of these things that corrupts the legislature. It really was self denial in one sense to leave their diggings, where they could make $10 or $15 a day." Of the year 1851, another scholar, Josiah Royce, commented, "[It] is the manly year, the year of clearer self-consciousness, of lost illusions, of bitter struggles, of tried heroism, of great crimes and blunders indeed, and of great calamities, but also of the salvation of the new state." The second legislature played a role in his assessment. (10)

Subsequent California legislatures were less creditable (except for those of 186264, when the Civil War provided a focus). Reasons for the decline in their reputation and accomplishments are these: (1) The rise of political parties created extreme partisanship and diverted interest from legislating to campaigning. (2) Legislators devoted excessive attention to one of their roles to the exclusion of others, namely, the election of United States senators, which was also a contest for federal patronage (jobs, contracts), thus corrupting the process. (3) The personal feud between two powerful Democrats, David Broderick and William Gwin, further eroded compatibility and introduced a system of payoffs for support, so that thereafter many legislators were in the pockets of political factions. (4) The rise of corporations and special interests, such as Comstock Lode tycoons, agricultural monopolists, railroads, and banks, led to increasingly intensive lobbying in the capitol. Lobbyists often had a hand in drafting le gislation and in rewarding those who voted in their favor. "Conflict of interest" was not a commonplace concept. Instead, the line between what was public welfare and what was private gain was nearly everywhere blurred.