“Imagining the City

CHAPTER FOUR170

flirtatious sociability of the promenade created an environment in which the CHAPTER FIVE

Mechanics’ Institute’s vision of harmonious class relations linked to a do mestic ideal might be realized. Just as men were cautioned against being too

Imagining the City: radical, women were warned not to be too smart, too worldly, too domestic, or too desirous of equality with men. If, as a result of courtships begun

The California Midwinteraround the fountain, hard-working men married respectable women, worked in honorable trades, and created stable family units, they laid the International Expositiongroundwork for a society organized around middle-class values and an in dustrializing economy that provided the foundation for making San Fran cisco an American place.

The California Midwinter International Exposition—also known as ffie Mid winter fair—was held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park from January 27to July 4, 1894. Following on the heels of the World’s Columbian Exposition, it showcased selected exhibits from Chicago’s spectacular commemoration ofthe 4ooth anniversary of Columbus’s journey to America as well as an impressive number of new exhibits at its specially constructed fairground, Sunset City. The driving force behind this extravaganza was Michael H. de Young, the publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, who had also been Commissioner of California Exhibits at the Chicago Fair. In Chicago, he determined thatSan Francisco could reap economic and social benefits from hosting a similarfair. The city, like the rest of the nation, was reeling from the effects of theeconomic depression of 1893.1

De Young envisioned staging a publicly funded venture that would rein vigorate the local economy and advertise San Francisco by showcasing California’s temperate winter climate and agricultural bounty to visitors andpotential migrants alike. He called a meeting of the local businessmen with him in Chicago, pitched his idea, and despite some skepticism, he extractedpledges totaling over $%o,ooo—enough to get the enterprise off the ground.Although it had taken seven years to bring the Columbian Exposition to fruition, in eight busy months fair organizers set up a corporate-style administrative structure and ran successful local fund-raising and publicity campaigns.They arranged for many of the exhibits from the Chicago Fair to be carriedby rail to San Francisco, developed an impressive number of new exhibits, anddesigned and built Sunset City. While the rush to completion was evident in

‘7’

172 CI-IAPTER FIVE IMAGINING THE CITY ‘73

areas where landscaping was sparse as well as in the delayed opening of some

exhibits, the Midwinter Fair was nevertheless even more of an economic suc

cess than its promoters had hoped. By the time the fair closed onJuly4, 1894,

nearly two-and-a-half million people had attended (see figure 33).2

As the first American international exposition ever held west of Chicago,

the Midwinter Fair provided San Francisco elites with an opportunity to

present an image of the city to local, national, and international audiences.

While the Mechanics’ Institute fairs were small and local, their long history as

a ritual cultural frontier offered important lessons in how to coordinate an

event like the Midwinter Fair and use it to convey an ordered vision. The

leaders in business, finance, and industry who joined de Young in organizing

the fair pursued their course with the blessings of the mayor, the governor,

and other state and local officials. Although central, northern, and southern

Californians all had their representatives on fair committees, the Midwinter

Fair’s lead.ipg organizers wcpdrawnJrorn San Francis9p]itical,eco-

nomic, and intellectual elite. These men sat at the helm of a city that, al

removed from conquest had become, by 1890, the

largest city on the West Coast and the eighth largest in the country. In plan

nin and desininu Sunset City they created a paean to America’s landed em

pire that showcased San Francisco—the jewel in the crown of western expan

sion and a burgeoning yet still relatively new American place that had its roots

in the formative crucible of the frontier. With the frontier having been

deemed officially closed by the Census Bureau in 1890, many of the fair orga

nizers believed it was time for San Francisco to shake off some of its boom-

town reputation. As banker and civic leader James D. Phelan announced at

the Midwinter Fair’s inaugural ceremonies, “We celebrate to-day this great

fact—a history-making fact in the annals of the world—that the American

people have reached the Pacific Ocean, and that civilization, having sprung in

the remote east and pursued its destined course, has reached the western edge

of the American continent in California . . . ‘The eastern nations sink, their

glory ends, I An empire rises where the sun descends.’ “3

The fair’s displays that exhibited local progress in manufacturing, agricul

ture, industry, and technology captured one component of what the arrival of

civilization meant in California. But another part of what civilization’s pres

ence on the continent’s edge signified were the ways California, and especially

San Francisco, had gone from the social disorder of the gold rush years to a

society organized along lines that were much more in keeping with national

norms. Through this process, this frontier region became recognizable as part of the nation. Through the fair, tijtes fashioned a story about the city as a dis tinctive place—with its own history and vision for the future—jplaced s ihi cQntours of the national story and central to the nation’s development. On this level, the A’lidwinter Fair—as the elaborate fantasy of

--pjpus ye PQ iIirc—served as a cultural frontier that embodied the kind of ordering hierarchies that this elite had imagined, and had to some de gree realized, for the city itself. Despite the fact of continual, stubborn social disorder, San Francisco in 1894 was not the socially fluid place that it had been in 1849. And, at the fair, just as in the city itself the elite ordered vision was at times successful, and at other times disrupted and undermined by peo ple and forces beyond its control. Four aspects of the Midwinter Fair shed particular light on the connections between the sociar hierarchies this extrav aganza represented and the vision of social order it promoted the symbolic

I

figure The California Midwinter International Exposition, 1894—the first inter national exposition held west of Chicago, which hosted the 1893 Columbian Exposi tion. (Robert B. Honevman,Jr. Collection of Early California and Western American Pictorial Material, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)

I 74 C HAPTER fIVE

significance of its Orientalist architecture, the version of history articiilajp

is4imng Cp ikithe gender politics of w omen at the fair as work

ers and as spectacle m the context of commercialized leisure, nd the economic

tensions disclosed at an event promoted as a balm for healing class divisions.

Ka1purpose of nineteenth-cennuy expoiioi was odat

the technological achievements and social hierarchie s that constituted civil

izatic)n. Although Chicago and San Francisco—and the eleven other interna

tional expositions held between 1876 and i9,6—shared a vision of order and

progress grounded in white racial dominance, patriarchal gender relations,

and industrial class relations, they each chose differen t styles of architecture

and design that fit with local and regional conditions. During the planning

stages, San francisco’s Executive Committee operated under the assumption

“that there was time enough, and artistic energy enough , for the development

of a marked individuality” in the Midwinter Fair’s arch itecture. Its members

hoped that the buildings would capture “something o f the characteristics of

the locality and the people in whose midst the Expos ition was to be built.” De

Young, as the fair’s Director-General, had suggested that one way to avoid

“the architectural reminiscences of Chicago” would be to “make their studies

from the Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, Moor ish, and old Mission

buildings.” ‘vVhen the local architects who competed to design the buildings

submitted their creations, it was found that de Young’s su ggestions “had been

kindly received and largely acted upon.” The architecture of the Chicago Fair

was neoclassical; in San Francisco, it was broadly Orien talist.4

The Midwinter Fair’s Orientalist theme was given its mo st spectacular ex

pression in the five main buildings that formed Sunset C itys Grand Court of

Honor: Manufactures and Liberal Arts, Mechanical Art s, Horticulture and

Agriculture, Fine Arts, and Administration. Each of the G rand Court’s build

ings combined a variety of Oriental styles and each posse ssed “an interesting

individuality” and “unconventionality.” As a whole, this t urn toward the Ori

ent presented a marked departure from the emphasi s placed on balance,

order, and architectural uniformity in Chicago’s White City’s expression of a

hierarchically organized society in its imposing, symmetrica l facades. A. Page

Brown, the chief architect of the Midwinter Fair, designed th e Administration

Building using an eclectic mix that included both Moorish an d East Indian in

fluences. He was also the architect for the Manufactures and Liberal Arts

Building, which had “something of the old Mission character in its architec

ture, with Moorish detail” and featured a much-noted turq uoise blue dome

IMAGINING THE CITY i7

and golden cupola. The Horticultural and Agricultural Building, the work of Samuel Newsom, was “distinctively characteristic of the early Spanish period in California.” C. C. McDougaJl Fine Arts Building was described as Egyp tian and “covered with hieroglhs” with “a suggestion of the temples of India in the pyramidal roof.” The Mechanical Arts Building, the creation of Edmund R. Swain, was “East Indian in appearance” and was said to bring to mind “the Jumma Musjid at Delhi” and “the Pearl Mosque at Agra.” Finally, the buildings of Sunset City were not white but painted colors chosen to evoke a sunset over the Pacific. Pink, turquoise gold, vermilion, and greenish gray accents enlivened their creamy ivory facades (see figure 34).5

The literature of promoters and boosters_taken at face value—offers one way of reading the symbolic significance of Sunset City Orientalist architecture. According to The Official History “the marvelous city of towers, minarets, domes and castles” reflected “the spirit of California.” This was de fined as encompassing “the individuality of Californians” as well as their “dash and daring.” This spirit likewise included “the freedom, the liberality, the open-handed hospitali which are proverbially Californian characteris tics.” It also embodied “the strangely beautiful blending of the East and the West.” Taken together, Sunset City exemplified “the most complete expres sion of a new civilization”o

But just below the surface, there were other less sanguine meanings sug gested by the Midwinter Fair Orientalist architecture. Although this particu lar style did not express the mastery of order and balance implied by neoclassi cism, it nevertheless symbolized an ordered VIsi0n• By choosing Orientalist architecture, Sunset City’s planners actively looked to the imaginings of a powerful, imperial Europe to symbolize the new civilization of the United States in th Pifi West. Sunset City embrace of Orientalist styles was undergirded by an understanding of the Orient—kjiown as Orientalism_ that developed as Europe extended its imperial control over parts of Asia, India, and North Africa. Through the selective appropriation of culturalar tifacts as well as styles of architecture and design, Europeans produced what came to be recognized as the authoritative representation of the Orient. In this representation, which was based upn a sense of ownership Europe con structed “the Orient” as inferior to the “Occident.” In doing so, Europe strengthened its own identity and reaffinned its dominance over colonized peo pies and jJaces. Sunset City Orientalism, although founded upon European precedent, was both more broadly and somewhat differently conceptualized as

176 CHAPTER fIVE IMAGINING TI-If CITY

a result of local conditions. In addition to encompassing East Indian, Egyp tian, and Moorish qualities, it also claimed the power to represent Chinese, Japanese,

TiColumbian Exposition’s 1vVhite City hJTfèred Americans a uto pian vision of a well-ordered city. It emphasized the consolidation of the country’s landed empire and displayed the United States as a country ready to dominate the other nations of the world. If some of the first ideological steps toward realizing the nation’s nascent overseas imperial ambitions were taken at Chicago, the second steps were taken at the San Francisco fair. The Orientalist architecture of Sunset City represented San Francisco as “The Imperial City of the vVest” and communicated a more aggressive and tar geted imperial position. Sunset City declared the United States—by way of San Francisco, its far \‘Vestern commercial, financial, and military outpost—

a force actively reaching out toward and desiring dominance over Asia andLatin America. In this sense, Sunset City looked outward, to order placesand people beyond the city. “It is through this ocean gateway,” TaliesinEvans’s popular guide to the fair reminded its readers, “that the commerceof the nation with the Orient, with the lands of the Pacific, with Australasia,the Russian and Asiatic Possessions, British Columbia, the western coasts ofSouth and Central America and the bulk of the commerce of Mexicopasses.” Just four years later in 1898, the United States annexed Hawaiiwhile troops en route to the Spanish American War—which resulted in further overseas imperial acquisitions—were stationed at San Francisco’s Presidio precisely because of its strategic location as a base for American expansion into the Pacific.8 In extending and adapting Orientalism’s formulation, Sunset City wovetogether a web of outward facing positions that expressed the kinds of relationships that the United States in the Pacific West desired with those beyond its borders and inward looking stances that reaffirmed local power relations. Sunset City’s use of Orientalist architecture represented deepdesires and anxieties connected to the local conditions and imperial ambitions of San Francisco and California vis-à-vis the American ‘West, theAmerican nation, and the XVestern Hemisphere. For example, following thelogic of European Orientalism, the fair’s promotional literature’s renditionsof Mission and Spanish Colonial styles created a “mythical architecturalpast” that echoed an equally mythical social history. The fair’s Official Guideblithely suggested to readers that “whatever this Spanish period may havebeen to the people who actually lived in it, to modern Californians it is aheritage of legend and romance.” Accordingly, the period was representedas one of “old grey Mission churches, with their tiled roofs, pillared corridors and high altars, crumbling into rust and dust;” “low, weather stainedranch houses where the haughty Dons lorded it in feudal fashion, and wherethe sound of the guitar and the castanets still seem to linger;” and “ruinedpresidios where swash-buclder soldiers passed their days in rough, carelessgaiety.” Remnants of this not-so-distant past could be seen “in many a suggestive bit of architecture or display of costume, custom or handiworkwithin the walls of the Midwinter Exposition.” Through these kinds of representations of Mission and Colonial styles—that existed more in the imagination of Americans than they ever had in the reality of Mexican California—the Midwinter Fair, echoing mainstream histories of the region,

I

figure The Manufactures Building. The Midwinter fair’s architecture was broadly Orientalist. This building, one of the five that constituted Sunset City’s grand court of honor, was designed by A. Page Brown to convey both Mission and Moorish influences. (I. W Taber, photographer. Souvenir of the California Midwinter Interna tional Exposition 1894, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)

F

17$ CHAPTER FIVE

presented conquest a s an act of generosity

, in which civilized An glos lifted

the lazy, yet romantic and colorful Californio

s out of the semi-barba ric state

in which they had lan guished. This represen

tation spoke to the po sition of

Mexicans and Calif ornios within the state

’s borders as disposs essed colo

nized peoples and m anifested a powerful i

mage of Latin Americ an nations

as decaying and pri mitive that worked to

justify and encourage the United

States’ increasingly im perial and bellicose po

sture.9

The inward and outw ard looking ordering vi

sions of the Orientalist archi

tecture manifested in t he quadrangle of bui

ldings that formed Sun set City’s

Grand Court were rein forced by a number of

concessional structures and ex

hibits that existed beyo nd the court’s boundar

ies.10 As the Official H istoiy ex

plained, the fair’s overa ll “arrangement assume

d something of the char acter of

an inner circle of purely expositional buildings

with an outer concentr ic circle

of concessional feature s.” It was along this ou

ter ring that a visitor to the fair

would find, among oth er things, the Chinese,

Japanese, Hawaiian, an d Esqui

maux exhibits. Accord ing to the Official Souv

enb; the purpose of th e various

buildings and village s ettings that made up th

ese displays was purely educa

tional. “The villages of Hawaii, Esquimaux, C

hina, Japan and other l ocalities

are perfect reproductio ns of the originals in th

e lands they represent , and the

whole is an object lesso n which no book could

teach. . . . a living and moving

encyclopaedia.” In a se nse, this was true, as th

e reality these exhibi ts repre

sented did have a ped agogical mission. Mor

e often than not, disp lays of

Asians, Native Americ ans, and Pacific Island

ers used Orientalist lo gic to in

struct observers in the racial difference, strang

eness, and barbarism o f the ex

hibited groups. Althou gh some of these exhib

its had appeared at the Colum

bian Exposition, in San Francisco they were ar

rayed against a differe nt local

context. The social mea nings derived from the

exhibition of these peop les and

cultures arose from th e confluence of San Fran

cisco’s relatively high percent

age of residents of Asia n descent; its equally lo

ng history of anti-Asia n racism;

the conquest of the re gion’s Native Americ

an inhabitants; and the nation’s

most recent imperial am bitions that necessitate

d the evaluation of the inhabi

tants of the Pacific as p otential colonial subject

s.12

The Chinese and Japan ese exhibits created rep

resentations of these co un

tries that had relevanc e for how China and Jap

an as distant nations we re ima

gined as well as for the ways Chinese and Jap

anese residents in Cal ifornia

were perceived. The C hinese Building, design

ed by a local architectu ral firm

IMAGINING THE CITY ‘79

and financed by the city’s Chinese merchants, allowed visitors to view and possibly purchase “the deft handiwork of Chinese artisans and the wonderful

products of Chinese ingenuity” and provided “a CUfjOU5 and instructive object-lesson of the architectural ability of the inhabitants of the great Empire of the East.” But the positive associations that could be derived from the Chi nese Building about the achievements of Chinese culture were tempered by negative associations with Chinatown. Since the Chinese Building contained a restaurant tea house, joss house, theater, and bazaar it not only replicated many of the standard sites of Chinatown’s tourist terrain but also the racializ_ ing work done by them.’3 The fair’s promotional literature even told visitors that all of the “attractive features” of Chinatown could be seen at the exposition’s Chinese llage “under much pleasanter conditions”_thus play ing on Prevailing stereoes of the neighbor00 as filthy, malodorous, and teeming and conjuring up unfavorable images of Chinese immigrants Willing to live in such an environment 14

sitors to the fair’s elaborate Japanese Tea Garden were told by Taliesin Evans’s guidebook that with “one step” they would pass from “the grand plaza of this great achievement of Western civilization into a romantic scene faithfully depicting life in the ancient, but still semi-barbaric, ‘Land of the Mikado.” Conceptualized and designed by ardent Orientalist and local purveyor of Japanese goods George Turner Marsh and built by Japanese

craftsmen, the Midwinter fair’s Tea Garden featured an impressive gateway, a thatch and wood tea room, and a three_story theater that hosted the per formances of a troupe of Japanese jugglers. Japanese landscapers filled the grounds around the Tea Garden with various plants and bonsai trees, tran quil ponds, bridges, winding paths, restful benches, and colorful lanterns.

Although Evans had initially described Japanese culture as “semi_barbaric,”

lie also noted that the Japanese exhibit illustrated “the great regard of the Japanese people for cleanliness and fresh air in their homes, and public places, and their instinctive love for art and fine WorlGnanship” The Mon arch Souvenir of Sunset and Sunset Scenes took a less charitable view and emphasized the religious and racial differences of theJapanese that could be inferred from the exhibit. It explained to readers that the “peculiar style of Japanese architecture” was “suggestive of all sorts of mysteries, to say noth ing of idols and heathen rites” that were “a part and parcel of the home life of the ‘little brown men.” Here, even when the grandeur of a distant Asian

iSo CHAPTER fIVE

civilization was invok ed, it was double-edge

d and coupled with demeaning

statements designed to highlight the inferi

or and less than fu lly civilized

status of the Japanese and their culture vis-à

-vis the West.15

The Midwinter fair’ s exhibitions of Haw

aiians and Inuits to ok place

against a backdrop o f heightened anxieties

about the suitability o f these colo

nized peoples for in tegration into the Am

erican nation. The S an Francisco

?vioniing Call describe d the Midwinter Fair’s

Hawaiian Village as di splaying “a

street of ancient Haw aiian straw cottages”

in which “natives” ma de “mats,

manufacture leis and p oi and pursue other v

ocations.” Taliesin Eva ns’s guide

book noted its cycloram a that provided a “reali

stic representation of the burn

ing crater of Kilaue a.” Visitors were also

treated to an exhibiti on of “two

empty ‘throne’ chairs that formerly were ow

ned by Kamehamehali and Kala

kaua, and that a little o ver a year ago were wr

ested from the posse ssion of Li

liukalani by the Prov isional Government o

f Honolulu.” The fac t that the

Monarch Souvenir dee med the Hawaiian V

illage “truly represent ative” was

identified as being p articularly important

because “recent even ts” had

“created a desire in th e public mind for a mo

re intimate knowledge of the Ha

waiian people.” “Recen t events” was a euphem

ism for the United Stat es’ impe

rial maneuvers on the islands. As the reporte

r for the Call explaine d, “in per

mitting the transporta tion of these idle bau

bles of a deposed dy nasty to a

foreign land,” the Am erican sugar plantation

owners who had taken control of

the island “intended to give notice that the

se things would neve r again be

needed at home.” Ho wever, this account al

so noted that the “nati ve islanders

who serve as attendants in the Hawaiian Villa

ge” maintained “a differ ent view.”

Instead of happily acce pting the overthrow

of their queen and agr eeing that

the chairs they were e xhibited with symbolize

d her defeat, they look ed “hope

fully” to the time when she would “be re-enthr

oned” on one of the ch airs. Ha

waiians, seen from this vantage point, did not

appear to be the kind of willing,

passive subjects that w ould be easily assimil

able into the America n national

fold. In fact, the issue o f the desirability of Ha

waiians as American ci tizens hov

ered over the subject o f Hawaiian Annexation,

which was debated at th e inau

gural meeting of the Midwinter Fair Cong

resses, on January 25, 1894, two

days before the fair’s official opening. Altho

ugh the side opposing a nnexation

this—according to the judges—was “de

cided merely on the stre ngth of the arguments

and did not attempt to offer any

suggestion in regard to the solution of the que

stion of annexation.”1 6

IMAGINING THE CITY

Wile the Hawaiian Village represented many of the ambiguities that

surrounded the issue of Alnerican imperial adventures and conveyed an image of Hawajians as possibly unwilling and probably undesirable Alneri

cans, the Inuit exhibits represented “Esquirnauxs” as more thoroug11y con

quered, docile, physicalr weakened, and childlike. The Esqui;naux Village

occupied three acres at the fairgrounds and displayed the “mode of homelife”

of Inuit people from both Labrador and Alaska. The exhibit featured igloos made from plaster staf a lake, canoes, sealsli tents, and sled dogs. It of fered, according to the Mona,-c/j Souvenir an excellent way to learn about In- flits, “whose ways of living are so peculiar and whose iace characteristics are so little known to the civilized nations of the world.” The issue of integration

in the American body politic was not as acute as in the Hawaiian case, in part,

because Inuits at the fair conformed to prevalent understandings of Native

Alnerjcans as, what the hron ic/c termed, a “rapidly diminishing face of peo pie.” This image was reinforced by a tragically high infant mortality rate among the Inuits at both the Chicago Fair and the San Francisco Fair. All five of the children born to Inuits during the tenure of these two fairs died as infants.17 Moreover, because Inuits were also perceived as childlike and thus

naturally dependent and in need of protectioi resistance to American domi

nance was not expected to be forthcoming. This image was reinforced by

hro 11 ic/c reports oflnuits at the fair, who when left to their own devices were

found “dropping dunes into the cocktail and rum slots of the automatic bar” and not attending educational exhibits geared more toward “the elevation of the race.” Accounts in the Chronicle of their shopping trips downtown em

phasized their attraction to shiny, childlike things: “gold watches and toys.”

Within three years, the ondike gold rush would send Americans Pouring into Alaska and thus add a new dimension to the conquest of the ‘units al ready well under way (see figure 35).18

Although the representations ofAjans Pacific Islanders and Native Amer icans that emanated from these concessions were frequently negative, this did not stop exhibited peopled from partang of aspects of some of these same

Oentalist displays and Participating in both the elaboration and disruption of the fair ordered vision• On Stmdays when the Esquiinanx Village was closed,

Inuit men explored the fairgrounds tang in all the other shows, and both men and womei traveled downto on shopping expeditions Special celebration

days, like Chinese Day on June 17 andJapanese Day onJune 9’ complete with

parades and pageants, drew large numbers of Asian patrons to the Midwinter

Fair even though—or perhaps because—people of Asian descent had to stnig

gle harder than other ethnic and fraternal groups to have these days set aside

for them.’9 Numerous accounts drew attention to the wide-ranging participa

tion of Chinese at the Midwinter Fair. The Official History remarked upon the

“liberal patronage accorded the general features of the Exposition by the large

Chinese population of San Francisco.” The Chronicle reported that the young

actors from the Chinese theater roamed the fairgrounds when not working

and were apparently very fond of “the nickel-in-the-slot contrivance in Ma

chinery Hall.” During the fair’s run, Chinese fair-goers regularly attended the

Chinese theater, thoroughly enjoying an experience that many white patrons

found educational but distasteful. On the day that the Chinese Building

opened, a Chronicle report related, “The Chinese themselves took a huge

IMAGINING THE CITY 183

interest in the exhibit and the place was thronged all day.” This account noted that the merchants and tourist entrepreneurs “in charge” were “mightily proud of their building.” They “conducted visitors to the joss house,” while in the “reception room” a “cultured Chinese. . . explained the hidden meaning of the wondrous works of art which adorned the walls.” These men aided and abetted the Midwinter Fair’s Orientalist fantasy by presenting an image of the Orient that, to non-Asian visitors, likely came across as reinforcing the differ ence, strangeness, and barbarism of people of Asian descent. However they also created a space that San Franciscos Chinese could participate in and suc ceeded in representing Chinese culture in ways that this local community could respond to with enthusiasm and pride.20

The story of the jinrikishas at Sunset City, however, attests to the fact that there were limits beyond which people of Asian descent refused to go in the creation of an Orientalist version of their heritage. In the context of the Midwinter Fair, a “jirinkisha [sic]” was, according to Taliesin Evans’s guide book, “a conveyance used for the rapid transportation of visitors around the Fair grounds.” It was “drawn by a human beast of burden at a fixed rate per trip or by the hour, at the pleasure of the person hiring the conveyance.” The jinrikishas at Sunset City were acquired from Japan by George Marsh, the same Australian Orientalist who commissioned the Japanese Tea Garden. Mr. Marsh and others had hoped that jinrikishas would be pulled by Asian men and thus provide a form of transportation for fair-goers that would fit nicely with the Sunset Cityis Orientalist theme. To their dismay, they discov ered that the jinrikisha was, as Evans related, “very unpopular with the na tives of Japan” because it was “regarded as a dreadful degradation to be im pelled to haul one.” In fact, the Examiner published a portion of a petition that publicly articulated the extent of the Japanese communityis opposition to the use of jinrikishas at the Fair. It had been “sent to the Midwinter Fair Executive Committee, the Supervisors and the Park Commissioners, signed by the Japanese residents of San Francisco and by M. C. Harris and E. A. Strong, in charge of the local Japanese missions.” It read:

Gentlemen: We, the undersigned, desire respectfully to call your atten tion to a minor incident in connection with the Exposition, which is, how ever, of very considerable interest to the Japanese residents of San Fran cisco, and is also calculated to excite more or less discussion in Japan. .‘Ve allude to the contemplated use of the jinrikisha.

182 CHAPTER fIVE I

figure The Esquimaux Village. The Midwinter Fair’s exhibits of Inuits and Hawai

ians occurred in the context of debates about whether or not such newly colonized

peoples would make suitable citizens. (I. W Taber, photographer. Souvenir of the Cal

ifornia Midwinter International Exposition 1894, Bancroft Library, University of Cal

ifornia, Berkeley)

184 CHAPTER fIVE IMAGINING THE CITY i85

There can be no valid objection urged to the mere exhibition of the jinrildsha at the Midwinter fair, but there are other circumstances in this coimection of which in all probability you are not advised.

The custom of requiring the jinrildsha to be drawn by men instead of animals is degrading and should not be encouraged in a civilized Christian country like America.

Ve, consequently, respectfully and earnestly protest against its use in this manner in the Park or upon public streets during the F air.

“The petition,” the Examiner continued, “then gives as reasons the fact that the practice is injurious to the health of the men who draw the vehicles; that it is a disgraceful and inhuman custom; that it is incompatible with the grand aims of the Midwinter Fair as an elevator of humanity.” for Japanese immigrants, making such a statement was certainly a bold move. They had only recently begun to come to the mainland United States, settling primarily in California. As a group they possessed more education and were better-off financially than most European immigrants. Perhaps with guidance from their missionary friends, their use of the petition showed that they were not only unafraid to register their grievances but that they were politically savvy enough to do so in a form that smacked of Western traditions and played on notions of who, the Japanese or the Americans, was truly civilized.11

The petition, combined with the opinion of the Japanese community that it expressed, succeeded in keeping Japanese from manning the jinrikishas at Sunset City. It did not, however, dissuade Midwinter fair officials from de ploying jinrikishas at the Fair. Perhaps this was because jinrildshas were such a part of their Orientalist fantasy that exposition officials could not part with them. Maybe it had something to do with the contractual arrangements al ready made with Mr. Marsh. In any event, Sunset City had its fleet of jinriki shas and they were pulled by white men of various nationalities costumed in face-paint and Japanese garb. As the Monarch Souvenir explained, “The feeling of opposition to the introduction of man-power from Japan was so great that none except white men could be induced to do the work.” An article in the Overland Monthly intimated that this was less than effective in achieving its de sired objective, “At a distance of a half a mile a jinrikisha runner might be taken, possibly, for a Japanese, but at nearer view disenchantment must fol low. The broad Hibernian face and the characteristic roll of the large figure are rendered grotesque by the tiny cap and skin-tight suit.” The decision to

employ white men as jinrikisha drivers also had some unintended conse quences. On Japanese Day many Japanese women rode in jinrikishas as did both men and women of Chinese descent on Chinese Day. It “increased the standing of a swell Mongol,” the Chronicle reported, “to be seen scudding along through the rain in the vehicle, smoking an Early Grave five-cent cigar.” Despite the derogatory language, it probably did increase the standing of Asian men and women—or at least temporarily disrupt the racial hierar chy—to be pulled along in a hired jinrikisha by a white man dressed like ajap anese (see figure 36).22

Existing literally and symbolically outside of the Orientalist theme of Sun set City, the i19 Mining Camp was one of the most popular exhibits at the i’viidwinter fair. ‘While Sunset City’s Orientalist architecture expressed dreams of a future filled with imperial grandeur grounded in white racial dominance, the i Mining Camp transformed thbi t.QLthdisordered g94,,ushyears into a nostalgic ftas of past.23 The concession sought to create a replica of a mining camp against a “well constructed and artistically painted” panorama of Mount Shasta. It fea tured a gambling saloon, hotel, restaurant, “charming senoritas” dancing the fandango, old cabins literally hauled down from the Gold Country, stage coach rides, periodic gunfights, and a frontier press—the Midwinter Appeal and Journal of y—to name just a few of its attractions. The ip Mining Camp sat at the far western end of the exposition grounds at the base of Strawberry Hill. Occupying i 5o,ooo square feet, it was the largest single concession at the fair. To reach it, visitors could either walk by way of North Drive, or “if desiring to enter in the proper pioneer frame of mind,” they could travel by a stagecoach—purportedly the same one ridden in by Horace Greeley on his visit to the West—which took hourly trips from the Administration Building (see figure 37).24

A group of journalists and entertainment entrepreneurs created the iç Mining Camp. A mining mogul provided most of its financing. Together, these men, along with a few other investors, formed an incorporated company “to establish the concession on business principles.” One of the journalists was Sam Davis, the editor of the Carson, Nevada, Appeal. His participation explained both the name and the existence of the camp’s frontier press. The “well known theatrical manager and newspaper man” James H. Love, Esq., served as the i9 Mining Camp’s manager and another journalist, Eugene Hahn, assumed the duties of assistant manager and press agent. The president

I86 CHAPTER fIVE

IMAGINING THE CITY

of the p Mining Camp was F rank McLaughlin, a noted en

gineer who made

“a fortune” pioneering the d evelopment of hydraulic mini

ng techniques. He

entered into the Mining Ca mp project “with his whole he

art and soul, and

with the full power of his purs e.”25

At the ç Mining Camp , promoters, performers, and

visitors mobilized

the refrain from a popular s ong—”The days of old, I The

days of gold, /

The days of 9”—as a memo rable, catchy slogan. These li

nes, taken from

The Days of 9, published by F. Zimmer fl 1876, were repea

ted in associa

tion with the Mining Cam p in numerous guidebooks

, souvenirs, and

newspaper articles. “A jolly lot of seasoned miners and gentl

emen of fortune

in woolen shirts and slouch hat s crowded the swaying coach

inside and out,”

wrote one journalist in his de scription of the 9 Mining Ca

mp. “There was

1

an adventurer with a banjo on the coach top, and whenever the procession halted he struck up a ditty on ‘the days of old and the days of gold, the days of .‘ Miners, gamblers, and the laughing throng joined in the chorus.”

The song looked back with longing to the gold rush years. It was narrated by an old pioneer, Tom Moore, who mourned the loss of that earlier time: “d I often grieve and pine, /“ he confessed “For the days of old, the days of gold, / The days of i.” The song took the listener through his fond memories. Part of what “old Tom Moore” missed from his Younger days were his “comrades. . . a saucy set” who were rough but also “staunch and brave, as true as steel.” nong the men he identified were the typical gold rush figures: gamblers, miners, and hard drinkers. “There was Kentuck Bill, one of the boys, / Who was always in for a game” and “New York Jake, the butcher boy, / So fond of getting tight.” But another part of what Tom Moore lamented were social changes that he believed threatened both the nerican nation and his place in it as a white man. He made his sentiments clear in the song’s final verse:

187

f,

Figure 36. White man pulli ng a jinrikisha at the Midw

inter fair. Despite fair

organizers’ hopes, Japanese m en refused to pull jinrikishas

at the fair because of the

degrading nature of the work. White men in Japanese garb

were employed to take on

the task instead. (I. W Taber photographer. Souvenir of th

e California Midwinter

International Exposition 1894, Bancroft Library, Universit

y of California, Berkeley)

figure “Hold up” of the stage. The Mining Camp was one of the most popu lar exhibits at the Midwinter fair. Its stagecoach was one of the features noted for making Visitors feel that they had aveled tir years back in time. (I. W Taber, photographer Souvenir of the California Midwinter International Exposition 1894, Bancroft Librai- University of California, Berkeley)

I$8 CHAPTER fIVE

IMAGINING THE CITy

Since that time how things have ch anged

In this land of liberty.

Darkies didn’t vote nor plead in cou rt

Nor nile this country;

But the Chinese question, the worst of all,

In those days did not shine,

For the country was right and the boy s all white.

In the days of9.”26

On February 17, 1894, The Mi dwinter Appeal and Jowfrnl of forty

-nine

published an illustration that echo ed the views expressed by Tom Mo

ore in

“The Days of .“ It featured Ch inese miners working side-by-side

with what

looked like an Anglo miner. The Chi nese appeared to have quite a bit of

gold

and a more sophisticated sifting syst em while the white miner panned

for gold

without, it seemed, much luck. Th e caption read: “Before Dennis Ke

arney’s

time.” In the late 187os, Dennis Kea rney, a leader of the Workingman’

s Party;

fomented support for violence aga inst San Francisco’s Chinese, and ad

vocated

policies prohibiting Chinese imm igration. This illustration and its ca

ption

symbolized the belief held by some w hites that before immigratntrictio

n

and restrictive mining laws, Chines e miners were getting more than th

eir fair

share. It also is suggestive of ways in which Chinese immigrants disrupt

ed the

nostalgic image of California as a white Jacksonian’s paradise. The Ch

inese

enjoyed, like other 9ers, a brief peri od in the earliest days of the gold ru

sh in

which it was possible for them to profitably work for themselves. But

many

also quickly and quite visibly beca me wage workers in the increasingly

indus

trial enterprises of mining and rail road building in the West. In this c

apacity,

the Chinese came to symbolize ind ustrial capitalism—a system antitheti

cal to

an economy of small producers— and provided an easy scapegoat for w

hat

many men like Kearney believed the y had lost.27

In a similar vein but with a differen t target, the Midwinter Appeal, in on

e

of its typical pieces in which one of S an Francisco’s preeminent capital

ists,

sugar magnate Claus Spreckels, wa s spoofed as a Wild V/est Sher

iff re

ported that “Deputy Sheriff Sprec kels went into Buckskin’s saloon las

t eve

ning and attempted to arrest Johnn y Smoker while he was killing a M

exi

can.” This action was not greeted w ith popular approval. Instead, the sh

eriff

“was promptly thrown out and seve ral citizens are talking of a mass me

eting

189

to ask him to resign his office.” The problem, according to the Midwinte, Appea4 was that Sheriff Spreckels had “a large idea of his duties, and when he enters a saloon without being invited and interferes with an nerican who is putting the quietus on a greaser it’s time to inquire where our boasted land of freedom is tilting to.” Here the category of American excluded peo ple of Mexican descent and freedom meant white men’s ability to guard their position atop the racial hierarchy without interference and with vio lent means if necessary. On one hand, in its rebuke of the sherif this histor ical vignette spoke nostalgically about non-elite whites’ entitlement to democratic, egalitarian processes_even those that veered toward the ex treme of vigilante justice. On the other, given the fact that the local citi zenry meted out punishment to the sheriff for attempting to protect “a Mexican,” this story, like Torn Moore’s song, promoted the notion of a “her renvolk democracy”_a society born out of fear from labor competition from below and loss of control from above in which democracy prevails for the dominant racial group while tyranny and inequality are the order of the day for subordinate groups.28

these examples reveal, the basic story about the origins of the state of California that the Mining Camp told is a finiliar one. The primary pur pose of the Mining Camp was to provide profitable amusement. In con junction with that, however, it was also in the business of proffering potent lessons about history, memoi and identity. At its core, the version of history presented in the i9 Mining Camp took the form of a creation myth that told a story about the origins of the state of California and its inhabitants that was as much about the present and the future as it was about the past. This creation myth was constructed through two distinct yet interwoven and overlapping stories. The first was a tale of nostalgia for a lost whitç public that contained within it lessons about race relations in the West. The second was a story that celebrated the ideals of the independent, self-made man and rugged mascu linity in the wake of the increasing dominance of bureaucracy and corpora tions in everyday life. Thus, although the fair as a whole was a celebration of the coming of civilization to the American West that contrasted San Francisco’s disordered past to its current civilized state as an urban, industria] metropolis, the Mining Camp looked back with longing to a romanticized notion of a less civilized time in California’s history to construct meaningful identities for the present.

190 CHAPTER FIVE

At the heart of this creation m yth were the hardy pioneer m

iners, gener

ally represented as young, wh ite Anglo-Saxon Protestant m

en. The majority,

as the Midwinter fair’s Offic ial Guide told its readers, were

“possessed of nei

ther astonishing virtues or astonishing vices; they were sim

ply honest, earnest

men who in their own strong , rough way gradually curbed

the vicious propen

sities of the criminal minor ity, forced law and order ou

t of the turbulent

chaos, and laid the foundatio ns of the future State.” These

men were part of a

larger contingent of ninetee nth-century American expansio

nism embodied in

sturdy, purified yeomanry spreading out over the access

ible, undeveloped

land of the frontier, supplantin g savagery with civilization

and blazing a fresh

trail for egalitarian democracy and individual freedom along

the way. One of

the most coherent expression s of this ideology had occurred

less than a year

before at the Columbian E xposition. It was there that F

rederick Jackson

Turner articulated his theory of the formative role of the W

estern frontier on

Americas character and deve lopment and effectively marke

d this version of

its history as integral to Americ a’s national identity29

Despite the complicated mu lticultural terrain of many

actual mining

camps, this exhibit of Californ ia’s founding moment made

the white, Ameri

can conquerors—otherwise k nown as pioneers—the centra

l actors in its tri

umphal, progressive story. Ot her racial groups, when incl

uded, were rele

gated to the margins. This tac tic of inclusion at the margins

resonated in both

the past and the present bec ause it provided a way to incorp

orate yet simulta

neously subordinate nonwhite groups in the historical record

and, by exten

sion, in California society. Th is story about California’s origi

ns offered solace

to white Americans looking f or order in the face of the rac

ialized anxieties of

the 189os. Although the conq uest of the Californios, India

n genocide, and

Chinese exclusion were already history, in the 189os issues of

mixture and in

clusion remained fractious in San Francisco—a city with th

e largest propor

tion of foreign-born residents in the United States.3°

Although the Midwinter Appe al did not accord people of Me

xican descent

a place in the American body politic, an appropriated version

of Mexican cul

ture lived on in the dance hall— a telling indicator of the sym

bolic centrality

of socially peripheral, racially subordinate groups to the

Mining Camp’s

representational goals.31 The dance hail was a place, for bo

th the miner of

yore and the fair-going spect ator of the 189os, where gend

er and race came

together in powerful ways. A visit to the dance hail, accordin

g to the IVlonarch

Soirvenh; provided an opport unity for “the unhappy lot of

the argonautic

IMAGINING THE CITY ‘9’

goidseekers” to have some much-needed fun, providing “a ray of bright sun shine athwart the gloom of an existence devoted to hard work, fiapjacks, beans and bacon.” Its promotional literature was laden with the language of con quest and dominance. The Official Guide feminized and infantilized Mexicans as “dark-eyed, soft-voiced children of the South” and contrasted them to “a tribe of men only, bearded, rough of speech and manner, mighty in strength and endurance.” A large part of the appeal and popularity of the dance hail re volved around the prospect of the contact with “charming senoritas.” The fe male dancers at the i9 Mining Camp allowed white American men to partake of an exoticized sensuality and to indulge in fantasies of more “primitive” styles of masculinity Such fantasies permitted white men to both transgress the constraints of allowable expression of middle_class masculinity and to re amrm their own sense of gender and racial superiority Some of the dancers, howeve were men. Desczptions such as— “The pretty Spaniards, girls and men, were at the prettiest part of one of their graceful dances”_in which men were described as pretty and thus feminized bolstered the sense of superior masculinity of the white male spectators. In keeping with the nostalgic thread present in Tom Moor&s song, here again the Mining Camp represented a thoroughly conquered California in which white mens dominant racial posi tion was unquestionably secure (see figure 38).32

Although Native Americans were marginal to the performance of the white man 4st enacted at the Mining Camp—included only as local color or as a component of the landscape_they were featured at vo conces

sions located on the same side of the fairgrounds approximately the equiva lent of a city block away. “One of these,” the Official Histoy explained, “was an encampment of Sioux Indians, where characteristic dances were given every day and evening.” The other “was at the Arizona Indian Village, where a company of Yaqui Indians lived in huts similar to those they occupy at home, and made baskets and potte” At the Sioux Village, which had also been exhibited at the Chicago Fair, a report in the Chronicle disclosed that the Native Americans “live just as they do in their native wilds where Govern ment rations are given out.” If one got to the fair early enough, the account

continued, one could “gather in the rear of the Southern California Build ing and watch the whole tribe garnering in oranges which went wrong in the citrus display the night before.” Descriptions of the Arizona Indian Vil lage tended to stress its inhabitants’ barbarism, particularly evident in the descriptions of their dancing and the assumptions made about their gender

192 CHAPTER fIVE

relations that, according to observers, positioned wom en as drudges and men

as loafers. “Three Indians sit cross-legged inside the dance ring,” an article in

the Overland Monthly related, “their rude voices keepi ng time to the rubbing

together of sticks and drumming on gourds.. . the b arbaric play ends with...

a general hubbub of cries and drumming.” In genera l, when Native Americans

were presented as active, their activities were scripted by negative stereotypes:

dependent, barbaric, and drunk. When they served as part of the landscape or

local color, Native Americans were represented as bot h passive and pacified, no

longer part of the “wild” West. Tellingly, such represen tations were in keeping

with the recent end of Native American resistance in the West, symbolized by

the horrific massacre of Sioux men, women, and ch ildren by the U.S. Army

four years earlier at Wounded Knee. Although these kin ds of ethnographic

IMAGINING THE CITY 193

representations of Native Americans obscured this recent history they nev ertheless succeeded in reinforcing the image of domesticated dependent Native ericans that spoke to the kind of subordinate staws that govern ment policies frequently now relegated them.33

While the first part of the story of California origins represented by the if9 Mining Camp offered lessons about race relations in the West told through the lens of nostalgia for a iost white republic, the second component told a story that celebrated the ideals of the self-made man and independent, rugged masculini At first glance, these o gender identities might appear to be a swdy in contrasts: the hard-scrabble life of pioneer miner as the epit olne of independent, rugged masculinj versus the economic and political success and elite social standing that marked the self-made man. At the Mining Camp, however, the o were interrelated. Independence and rugged masculinity were represented as preconditions for self-made manhood and self-made manhood often had its roots in independent, rugged masculini These gender identities, moreove undergirded the racial ideoloj at the heart of the other strand of the Mining Camps creation m—the nostal gia for a lost white republic. Reinvigorated for the T$90s, they Continued to link white male power to white racial superiority. In addition, in the figure of the pioneer miner, Americans found a masculine image that was especially ap pealing in the wake of the increasing dominance of wage work, bureaucracies, and corporatiOns_all of which could easily lead to a sense of compromised independence in everyday life.34

In the T89os, middle_class Americans_especiallr those who were white and male—began to react against the constraints of both ctorian and indus trial America: time discipline, carefully controlled emotions, parlor culwre, urban lhng, and sewal restraint. One outcome of this reaction was the devel opment of a new gender ideoloa rugged masculinity oriented around the ideal of the “strenuous life.” This was set in contrast to what some viewed as the artificiality and effeteness of a different gender ideolomanljness_ that had held sway since mid-cenmry Manliness was associated with posses sion of a solid character and exercising masterful control over one interior and exterior self. The emergence of rugged masculinity was accompanied by an increased interest in sports and wilderness experiences; the elevation ofsci ence, business, and realism; and a desire for “authentic” experiences that sometimes drew upon premodern symbols such as the medieval craftsman,

Figure 38. The dance hail at the Mining Camp. Here, in the dancing of the fan

dango, argonauts mingled with charming sefiorit as, and an appropriated, racialized

version of Mexican culture thrived. (I. W Taber, photo grapher. Souvenir of the Cali

fornia Midwinter International Exposition 1894, Ba ncroft Library, University of Cali

fornia, Berkeley)

194 CHAPTER fIVE IMAGINING THE CITY

warrior and saint. Theodore Roosevelt—the im perialist, capitalist, cowboy,

athlete, and politician who feared “race suicide ”—became the embodiment of

this new construction of powerful white mascu linity via the strenuous life.35

Displays at the r9 Mining Camp venera ted the independent, rugged mas

culinity of the heroic pioneer miner. Its exhibits s ought to capture “the rough-

and-ready scenes when men were reckless and d aring.” Visitors to the office

of the Midwinter Appeal and the Journal of w ere “invited to come into the

sanctum, make free use of our corncob pipe, spit o n the floor, and utilize the

copy hook as they see fit.” “If the gatekeeper gi ves you any palaver,” they were

told, “knock him down and walk in.” At the barb ershop customers could “in

dulge their inclination or have their whiskers e ither shot off or shaved off,”

and the saloons were “fitted up as saloons were when men were as likely to

shoot the bartender as to take a drink.” Even the fo od was tough. “After look

ing at the food of the ancients,” wrote one ac count, “one need be told no

more that the Argonauts were hardy people; the flap jacks show j.”36

These miners were not only ruggedly masculine, t hey were also indepen

dent—free from wage work, bureaucracy, and the corporation. By choosing to

represent a mining camp in the earliest days of the gold rush, the 9 Mining

Camp focused its exhibit of life in the diggings on the very short span of time

in which placer rather than hydraulic mining p redominated. The exhibit

proudly showcased “a placer mine showing the me thod of washing gold from

gravel with sluice boxes, rockers, and all the prim itive paraphernalia of the

early prospector. . . in hill operation.” During the placer mining period, men

could and did work independently, as the image o f the lone miner with pan,

pick, and shovel would suggest. For many of the m en who flocked to Califor

nia after gold was found at Sutter’s Mill, mining o ffered a chance to return to

an economy of small producers. It presented an o pportunity to escape wage

work in the industrial Northeast or farm work on t he prairie. The halcyon

days of placer mining, however, were quickly supe rseded by hydraulic mining,

which came with a very different set of relations of production. Using the

force of water to get at the gold deposits that the pa n, pick, and shovel method

could not reach, hydraulic mining required a large a mount of start-up capital

and large numbers of wage workers. It also conc entrated the profits in the

hands of the few and wreaked havoc on the natur al environment. Ironically,

the capital behind the representation of placer min ing at the 9 Mining Camp

came from Frank McLaughlin, renowned for de veloping the techniques of

hydraulic mining on the feather River.37

T 95

The i Mining Camp also mobilized the rugged masculine histories of numerous self-made men to challenge the commonplace associations of wealth and elite status with effeminacy and overcivjljzatjon these men had become increasingly successful_often amassing fortunes, political powe and social Position_they also became increasingly removed from their roots in rugged masculinity. By emphasizing rugged pasts of these elites, the right ness and desirability of their economic, political, and social Position_increas ingly challenged not only by their effeteness but also by their capitalistic ex cesses_could be reaffirmed. One way rugged masculinity and self-made manhood were idealized and linked was through the displays of a number of cabins which “had actually been occupied in those ‘days of gold” by men “who, years ago, were unknown and poo but who to-day are rich and power- hi from their success in the mines.” One was the cabin John W Mackay had used “for six years as a home at Mlegheny, Sierra Coun in his huthbje min ing days” long “before he became a bonanza ng.” iotlier cabin was that in which the U.S. senator from California, George C. Perns, had been able “to make himself comfortable nearly forty years before he represented the State at 4shington.” The cabin of Major Downie, the founder of Downieville whose name, one account declared, was “familiar in eve ning camp on the Pacific Coast from the lower California line to Bering Strait” stood “in a re cess in the hillside.” The Mining Camp also exhibited the cabins of some other men who had become “more than locally prominent”_ Senator James G. faifl SenatorJ P Jones of Nevada, Mvinza Haard, and the early homes of writers Mark Twain and Bret Harte and John W Marshall, the discoverer of gold at Sutrer Mill. Through these displays, the i Mining Camp pro vided a way for these elites to frame their biographies within California crea tion myth.38

The Mining Camp also functioned as a playground for numerous prominent men to indulge in fantasies of participation in the mythic Wild West. The Midwinte- Appeal and the Journal of filled its pages with jovial yet fantastic spoofs on their supposed frontier antics. For example, not only did the paper report on Claus Spreckels as a racially misguided sugar mag nate, it also reported thatJames G. fair was the new Presbyterian minister at Jackass Hill, minerJohn Mackay wandered into Grizzly Gulch “half staed” and “dead broke,” and “Adolph Sutro, a boy from gel Camp was in town Yesterday on a big jag with Billy Sharon, one of the boys from Bobtail Can yon.” In reality, James G. Fair was a railroad tycoon and a Comstock Lode

196 CHAPTER fIVE IMAGINING THE CITY

millionaire. John Mackay was also a Comstock Lode millionaire. William

Sharon was a banker, the owner of the Palace Hotel, and the U.S. senator

from Nevada. Adolph Sutro was a mining engineer o n the Comstock Lode

who built Sutro baths in 1893 and would be elected m ayor of San Francisco

later in I894.3 Self-made men—many of them the epitome of corpo

rate, elite man

hood—also readily partook of the 9 Mining Camp ex hibit. At one o’clock on

the exhibit’s opening day, Director General de Young, t he members of the Ex

ecutive Committee, and a few invited guests boarded the old stagecoach at the

Administration Building. “There was little ceremony abo ut it,” the Chronicle

reported, “as they have none in connection with the camp . The driver cracked

his whip and the coach was off to the camp. It rumble d down the street and

stopped at the dance hail.” In early February, the Chro nicle reported another

visit: “Notice having been given that the pack train had go t in, forty-two days

from ‘frisco, and that there was plenty of grub in the cam p, the Director-

General, the executive committee and members of the p ress responded yes

terday to an invitation to take lunch with Old Man Peake s at the Forty-nine

Mining Camp.” They dined at the Rest for the Weary Hotel, where “Papa

Peakes and his assistants dispensed beans and other thin gs.” “Everything con

nected with the banquet,” the reporter assured his readers, “was conducted in

the spirit which prevailed in the days of 9.” Interestin gly, much of what

passed for authenticity involved flagrant disregard for nineteenth-century

middle-class notions of proper etiquette and good manne rs—to some, sure-

fire markers of feminization and overcivilization. “The g uests kept their hats

on at table and the waiters wore pistols with which to res ent criticisms on the

menu. Brown paper served as table-cloths and all the pl ate and china was of

tin” (see figure 39).40

A reporter for the Chronicle made clear the didactic inte nt of these dis

plays. “The child of an investigating mind,” he wrote, “w ill take much inter

est in the old cabins of the men who, since they lived in them, have become

famous.” He explained that “these gentlemen attended strictly to business

when they went to sleep forty years ago” and “did not care whether the pil

low had been aired or the mattress had been turned.” I nstead, “they went

right to off to sleep, as soon as they laid down.” The re sult, he told readers,

was that “to-day they are rich and famous.” The report er further advised

good conduct and a little endurance at home as a recipe for prosperity in the

future: “Let little boys learn a moral from this and go to sl eep just as soon as

they get into bed. If they do, they will live long and prosper. There can be no hope, though, for the boy or girl who rolls around and always wants a drink of water. The Argonauts never asked for water. See the result—most of them are rich to-day and able to vote at the annual election of the Society of Cali fornia Pioneers “4

While the didacticism presented above may appear a little silly, chuldren_ “the rising generations of the ‘\st”—were some of the primary consumers of the vision of social order served up at the Mining Camp. The Midwinter Fair hosted a number of Chuldren Days on which youngsters were admitted without charge. On Febma 2, 1894, the Examiner reported, “Good news from the Mining Camp. They cannot do enough for the children there! They were the first to throw open their concession to the children and they

‘97

Figure 39. The Mining Camp with the Rest for the ar Hotel and Restaurant onthe left. \sitors, including elite businessmen and journalists, partook of flapjac1, beans, and bad manners herein order to capmre the experience of the wild west. (I.Tabe photographer. Souvenir of the California Midwinter Internadonal fxposion 1894, Bancroft Library University of California, Berkeley)

198 CHA PTER FIVE

seem to have spent every minute since try ing to think up new kinds of fun.”

On one such special day at the 9 Mining C amp, children were given “a bag

of candy and an orange apiece.” In late Ma rch, “the sixty girls of the Maria

Kip Orphanage were special guests of th e Forty-nine Mining Camp.” They

“were conveyed to the fair Grounds and b ack in the old-fashioned coaches”

that were a “feature of the camp” and wh ile there, a “nice repast was spread

for them in the big private dining room of th e manager.” Moreover, it was the

belief of one journalist that: “A child can lea rn more about the. . . magnificent

life of the Argonauts by visiting this camp th an his father, provided he is a pio

neer, would ever tell him.” In many respect s, the 9 Mining Camp spoke for

itself but on these special days, children an d the adults that accompanied

them were “shown around by guides who wi ll tell the ‘tales of old, the days of

gold, the days of 9.’ “ 42

Another audience viewed as particularly sui ted to visit the çi Mining

Camp were the old pioneer miners themse lves. “For the old pioneer who

spent a good portion of his life in just such a scene as this depicts, the camp

will arouse stirring memories,” declared th e Official Guide. “It is the Mecca

toward which every man who has at any tim e in his life been engaged in the

seductive occupation of gold-mining turns hi s footsteps,” announced Taliesin

Evans’s guide to the fair. With even greater c larity of the kind of memories the

9 Mining Camp sought t o evoke, it continued, “Here, the visitor fin

ds him

self in reality transported to a scene so re alistic that, if he has at any time

mined, he lives over again the experiences of the free and independent life of

the past, all its trials and triumphs, all its h opes and pleasures being arrayed

before his mental vision.”

Visitors from the East or from abroad were als o target audiences of the 9

Mining Camp. One of the camps self-proc laimed goals was “to show visitors

from the East and elsewhere how the hardy C alifornia miner worked and lived.”

The managers of the Mining Camp hosted out-of-town journalists, many of

them from Chicago, and arranged special fest ivities for their benefit. “The life

of the camp was at its height when the guests o f the day arrived in the old stage

coach,” one account reported. “The keno gam e was in progress and the dance

ball presented its customary scene of rough gay ety with its pretty girls, miners,

gamblers, and Spaniards all in the hearty enjo yment of the fandango. . . . The

newspapermen enjoyed it all immensely. It wa s all new and strange to them.”14 A

writer for the Chronicle delineated at length the k ind of coverage the Mining

Camp was getting across the country and arou nd the world:

iMAGINING THE CITY ‘99

The leading dailies, weeklies and monthly magazines in every country have for months past published extensive and profusely illustrated ac counts of the quaint, unique, and realistic representations of early life in the mines to be found in the Midwinter Fair Forty-nine Mining Camp. Harpers Weekly, Frank Leslie, the New York Sun, the New York Herald, the Chicago Record, the Chicago Herald, and papers of Cincin nati, New Orleans, St. Louis, Omaha, Philadelphia and of nearly every other Eastern city of note have printed columns after columns about the forty-nine Mining Camp, and the English, French and German ex changes, in mentioning the Midwinter fa1i never fail to speak of this spe cial feature To a Californian, this universal approval of a novel enterprise is more than a passing significance It shows the great and mighty interest the people abroad take in the land of gold, immortalized by Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and Joaquin Miller and many others.45

In the literature generated to promote and commemorate the Midwinter Fai the Mining Camp was repeatedly praised for faithfully and literally capturing historical reality. Visitors, informed the IVlonarch Souveni,; “see pre sented the real life as it was in the first days of gold feve and an exact repro duction of the surroundings of a pioneer mining camp.” “The picture will be realistic to the last degree,” the Chronicle assured its readers, “The life of al most years ago will be lived again.”46 This notion of reconstituted reality persisted even as promotional material explicitly acknowledged that the exhibit was shaping its representation of history to mesh with literary fiction. Like the writer for the Chronicle quoted above, the Official Guide blatantly told its read ers that the exhibition would be of particular interest to those “who have in imagination lost themselves in the Sierras with Bret Harte, crossed the Plains with Joaquin Miller or roughed it on the Comstock with Mark Twain.”47

Joaquin MiJlei Bret Harte, and Mark Twain were some of the most popu lar nineteenth_century ‘nh-makers of the American West. Their stories brought to life by the p Mining Camp_told the familiar tale of Ca1ifornja origins that revolved around nostalgia for a lost white republic and indepen dent, rugged masdulini48 the Popularity of the p Mining Camp exhibit attested its version of history_ that echoed the mythological fiction of Mille Harte, and Twain_possessed the cultural power it did because it represented the “reality” of a past that had incredible resonance in the present. In fact, in the 1890s, the relevance of this history had begun to take on a new intensi It

200 CHAPTER fIVE

was during this decade that children of Califo rnia pioneers—often organized

in chapters of the Native Sons and Daughters o f the Golden West, often hav

ing grown up on the work of Twain, Harte, and Miller, and often fearing that

their forebears’ history would be lost as the re maining material artifacts disap

peared with time—began serious efforts to both revisit and preserve places as

sociated with the California Gold Rush.49

While rugged, independent, white manhood w as literally and symboli

cally displayed at the g Mining Camp, wom en workers constituted a signifi

cant part of the overall spectacle presented at the Midwinter Fair. As writer

Elisabeth Bates put it in an article for the Ov erland Monthly, “Two distinct

streams of people flow side by side at the fair, n amely, those who go to spend

money and those who go to earn it.”50 Thousan ds of women in San Francisco

faced unemployment and “destitute circumstanc es” during the five-year eco

nomic depression precipitated by the Panic of 1893. Nationally, this financial

crisis devastated broad sectors of the economy a nd an unprecedented 15,252

American businesses went into receivership. B y the winter of 1893, approxi

mately i8 percent of the national workforce wa s without work while those

who remained employed found their wages cut by an average of nearly io per

cent. The economic crisis hit the western Un ited States especially hard. As

eastern money receded, the already cash-star ved banks of the debtor West

collapsed. Of the national bank failures in 1893, o nly three institutions in the

Northeast suspended operations while i 15 ban ks went into receivership in

the West. Of these, sixty-six were in the Pacifi c states and western territories.

Since private charities and relief efforts largely ig nored the plight of working

women, many “suffered severely for food and clo thing” during these years.51

Within this context, many women hoped that e mployment at the Midwinter

Fair would at least temporarily cure their econo mic troubles. The Examiner

reported that “in every department” of the fair there was “the same story to

tell.” There was “a constant stream of applican ts for work” with “girls not

over twenty-two” making up “four out of every te n applicants.” They seemed

“to be pouring into the city from all over the coast” as well as “from the East.”

This, according to the journalist, was “a terrib le mistake” as the city was

“overrun with women and girls looking for work .”52

The luclw few who found jobs at the Midwint er fair formed a workforce

of women that spread all over the fairgrounds. Gum g irls, dressed in blue uni

forms with scandalously short skirts, traversed the g rounds—smiling, singing,

and selling chewing gum. Exposition cash-girls co llected the admission fees

IMAGINING THE CITY 201

for various concessions and young women staffed booths in the fair five main buildings. Other women found emplonent in the fair management systemof “paternal espionage” in which “real nice girls, with a kiowledge of business methods” were “sent among the different concessions to keep tabs on the cash taken in.” Mmost all the exhibits of foreign nations and people of color em ployed women. Native American Hawaiian Samoan, and Dahomean women staffed living dioramas. At the Japanese Tea Garden, “Japanese maidens in their kimonos” served visitors “tea and sweetmeats” At the Vienna Prater, waiter girls served liquor and Austrian dishes. In the German Village, visitors found “a concert hail, a dancing hall, a restaurant, and, of course, Culmbacher and kVurzburger and other ‘braus’ and Proper German girls to curtsy and serve it.” At the Hungarian Csarda, one encountered “other girls and other beer and other things to eat,” giving the impressions that all Austro_Hungary was “a vast eating place with feminine and drinkable incidents and an occa sional park to give you exercise when you want to change your beer.” Womenof Mexican as well as Euro_American descent worked as dancers at the Mining Camp while the Oriental Village maintained a troupe of young women as muscle-dancing Turkish Dancers. At the Tamale Cottage, the Offi cial Catalogue informed its readers that “handsome, dark-eyed senoritas” could “be seen busily engaged in the manufacture of the delicious tamale” while “other equally charming beauties” worked “as serving maids.”53

Since the Midwinter Fair brought men and women together in novel, sometimes promiscuous ways, it—like the promenades of the Mechanics’ Institutes fairs_provided an arena in which emerging gender identities could be expressed and critiqued. Working women at the fair became vehicles through which various observers registered anxieties about womnen more public roles and the fairs working women experienced for themselves both the perils and the pleasures of increased leisure time and new work-based peer groups. Nationally, during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, in creasing numbers of middle-class women pushed into the public sphere and against the constraints of Victorian cul Wre dominant gender ideolo7 that prescribed pie puri submissiveness and domesticity At the same time, many young workingclass women shifted from working at various es of piecework in their own homes, in domestic service in other people homes,or in small, paternalistic factories to working in the more anonymous settingsof large factories, offices, and retail stores. With a littie money in their pockets in good economic times and new places to go for n, some of these young

I

202 CHAPTER FIVE

IMAGINING THE CITY

women began to rebel against the gender ideologies of parents and soci

ety

and to explore new identities and for ms of sexual expression in part made

pos

sible by new, unchaperoned commer cial spaces for heterosocial encount

ers.

The turn of a significant propor tion of middle-class men away from

effete

Victorian culture and their embrace of a new rugged masculinity—as see

n in

the Mining Camp—was, in part, a response to anxiety aroused by wome

n’s

more public identities.54

All women who worked at the fair we re essentially on display and avail

able for appraisal, fantasy, and flirta tion in the exposition’s climate of pr

o

miscuous mingling. As some of the stories that circulated around the fair

’s

gum girls reveal, this public, sexuali zed persona treaded a thin line betw

een

representing a welcome freedom fro m social constraints and confirming

a

subordinate position vis-ã-vis men fo r the women involved. That the f

air

was a place where men could gaze u pon an international array of women

was

made clear from numerous articles t hat related the pleasant sights that o

ther

men had seen. Some of these even p rovided details of heterosocial encou

n

ters that perhaps their readers could h ope for as well. An article published

in

the Examiner titled “Flirtations at th e Fair: How Love Is Made and Unm

ade

at Sunset City” advised male fair-g oers that “for really enjoyable and p

ro

miscuous flirtations . . . the gum gir ls, so called, are better equipped tha

n

any other class of individuals as re gards their duties, their skirts and t

heir

generally genial disposition.” Not on ly could they roam the fairgrounds a

t

will but “they may stop and talk pret ty things with anybody under the p

re

text of vending gum.”55

Sometimes flirtations were a source o f heterosocial fun for the gum girls

and their patrons. But with this kind o f fun also came a certain amount of s

ex

ual danger. Giving one possible expla nation for why they traveled in pairs

,

one gum girl said, “You see, there are two of us, and if you get badly gone on

me and I don’t want you to get too a ffectionate, Sally here stays close aroun

d

all the time, and you don’t have a show to tell a girl how much you love her or

any of that sort of nonsense. But t hen, of course, if I give her a wink

she

understands and goes off to sell some gum.” Sometimes, however, flirtations

were anything but fun. One gum girl, Miss Violet Filids, warded off the ad

vances of a souvenir-machine man by deploying “her fists in a scientific man

ner.” After he “sought to toy familiarl y with Miss Eilids’s necktie” while she

was trying to sell him some gum, she p unched him squarely in the nose, leav

lug him with “a barked proboscis.” Th e paper that covered the story reported

203

that, “She as well as the rest of the girls have to stand a great deal of guying from a class of men who think that because a girl peddles chewing gum she can endure all sorts of nonsense.” Violet had learned bong from her brother and after seeing how well it seed liefl the rest of the gum girls were “think ing of taking an immediate course in the manly art as a means of self pfOtection.”56

Although ostensibly from Algeria, Morocco, Persia, and Et, the so- called Tursh Dancing Girls at the Midwinter Fair’s Oriental Village pre sented even more of a sexually charged sensation than the gum girls. ‘Vhile undoubtedly alluring in their own right, the press definitely had a hand in the construction of the dancers’ highly sexualized image that was based, in part, on notions of the heightened sensual appetites and sexual availability of colo nized women of color that were part and parcel of Orientalist thinking. The Examiner described “the Oriental dames and damsels” as a “desperate class of flirts . . . who cast reciprocally amorous glances through ebony lashes” and make “callow youths feel the fire of those langorous looks and brag to one an other about their conquests.” These dancers had performed at the Chicago Fair to rave reviews. There they faced fewer questions about the morality of their dancing than in San Francisco where they were besieged by the Society for the Suppression of Vice as early as mid-December 1893. On January

,

1894, the Examiner reported that “Catherina Dhaved and Marietta, the two dark-eyed daughters of Turkey who were compelled to desist from giving public dancing performances on Market street a few weeks ago by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, visited the officers of the society yesterday “57

Secretary Kane, who had witnessed the women’s dancing, had no doubt of its “rank immorality.” Nevertheless, the dancers had to endure a wait of several days before the society’s directors could manage to convene for a viewing of their dances to determine if they were in fact immoral. The “sam ple dances” were performed in one of the rooms occupied by the women in the Ahlborn House on Grant Avenue The “all-male audience,” according to the Exarniimer “was small, compact but interested from the start.” It consisted of the five directors and Secretary Kane of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, two members of the Society for the Prevention of the Cruelty to Chil dren and Animals, and Captain Holland of the Police Department “We can judge better the morality or immorality of the dance by seeing it all, I think,” said Director Morris, with no recognition that such private viewings might raise questions about the prurient interests of the audience. “The Directors,”

204 CHAPTER FIV E IAIAGINING THE CITY

reported the Examinei; “leaned forward and watched the excited dancer with

scrupulous interest. Unconscious of them the beautiful Catherina pirouetted

in a dizzy circle, and falling to her knees bent far bac kwards half a dozen

times. Her whole form quivered with the excitement of t he moment.” Direc

tor Goodkind concluded that the dance was “very pic turesque but. . . hardly

the thing for ladies and children to see,” leaving unre marked upon the effect

of such a performance on male audience members or the fact that such a

spectacle may have been designed to be more appealing to male viewers to

begin with.58

An earnest desire to rid the city of indecency—which in cluded safeguard

ing the ordered environment created by Midwinter Fair o rganizers and crack

ing down on the Barbary Coast—motivated the Society for the Suppression

of Vice. For the Turkish dancers, however, the Society’s decree that deemed

their dances to be beyond the bounds of respectability an d prohibited their

performance meant a disruption in their capacity to earn a living. “In Chicago

everybody liked us,” Catherina Dhaved told the Examinei ; “We made a big hit

in the Midway Plaisance; thirty-five an’ forty dollar week; plenty to eat, plenty

sleep, plenty everything—plenty money.” Since coming to San Francisco,

however, the girls had experienced “perilous times.” By early January they had

earned about $i,ooo ill the employ of two different leisure entrepreneurs in

the weeks before the fair opened but had not “received a cent of it.” “First an

Armenian man hired us,” Catherina continued, “Twenty- five dollars a week,

on Market street. We work one, two three weeks, no money . Then an Ameri

can man, Crosby, hired us. We work one, two, or three weeks more, no

money. We owe plenty money at the hotel, and now we cann ot dance and can

not pay what we owe.” During the time they waited for th e directors to con

vene in early January, the women lived on “short rations.” W hen the dancers

finally performed for the Society for the Suppression of V ice, the proprietor

of their hotel was also present as “an interested witness.” A ccording to the Ex

aminel; “He told the Directors that the girls owed him abo ut $ioo for back

board and he did not propose to keep them any longer unle ss he was assured

that they wollld be allowed to dance and make some money .”59

Several days later after the “sample dances” at the Alhorn H otel, on Janu

ary 7, 1894, the Society for the Suppression of Vice pa id a visit to the Turkish

Dancing Girls performing at the Midwinter Fair. Although the fair did not of

ficially open until later in the month, by early January so ma ny concessions

were open that thousands of people were paying to pass within its gates. Once

205

again Secretary Kane expressed displeasure at what he sa especially since “the dancers had received strict instructions to tone down their performance to suit Western audiences.” A “sample” of the entire dance was again presented that same day for “the edification of the secretair.” To guard against errors in either leniency or severi two other agents of the society accompanied Secre tary Kane as well as “a newspaperman or two, a company of Turks, and a few chosen friends.” The Examiner reported Kane findings onJanuaiy 10, “In the muscular contortions of the majority of the ladies he found nothing to object to seriously; but in the Closing measures of the danse dii ventiv, as rendered by the dus Egyptian Hamede, he found grievous cause for complaint.” Kane re mained steadfast in his judgment even though the press cited the chief of the Midwinter Fair police as one among many admirers of the dance who did not object to it. The Evamine, reporter captured the way that Hamede ations left Kane unnened to the point of scrambling for words to describe what he had seen. “The muscular dances and the spinning exercises of the majori7 of the ladies can go on,” he was reported as saying, “but the -er-er-er- the eccen tflc Convolutions of the little brown lady must be curtailed.”60

Three months latei on April , 1894, the Tur1sh Dancing Girls had

their day in court. As the Call reported, “Under the glare of the gaslights and in the suffocating heat ofJudge Conlan courtroom the muscle-dancers of the Cairo village last night illustrated their peculiar dance for the benefit of the jury impaneled Friday last.” Secretary Kane testimony about the dance demonstrated that he “had studied it pretty thoroughly” and the de scription provided by Frank D. Gibson, a hardware clerk, likewise “showed keen powers of obsen’ation and perception, and that he had the dance down finer than even Secretary Kane.” Nevertheless, despite the fact that the dance had been made familiar to officials through two sample performances as well as shows on Market Street and at the fair, the dancers’ attorney re quested that one of the dancers, Belle Baya, “give a representation of the dance.” She agreed to perform to the packed courtroom despite the fact that she was not outfitted in her dancing costume but in a “lilac silk dress, lace fichu and white straw hat with green and white ostrich feathers.” As the Call described, “Belle Baya followed in her dance, talng a silk handkerchief in each hand and the castanets on her fingers. The Solitary fiddler mangled ‘La Palorna’ with frightful barbarity as an accompaniment As the handsome Baya went through her dance the auditors went wild with excitement and a clapping of hands was sternly rebuked by the court.” Order was restored in

206 CHAPTER fIVE

the court in the wake of Belle Ba ya’s dancing and proceedings in th

e

dancers’ case came to a close soon after. Her performance had apparently

satisfied the jury that there was truly nothing immoral in her dance. “The

case was submitted without argument ,” reported the Call, “and the jury r

e

tired at seven minutes past i i, retur ning five minutes later with a verdict

of

‘not guilty.” The jury, it seems, had a much different opinion than the Soci

ety of what constituted the kind of indecency that would mar the cit

y’s

image or detract from the glory of th e fair.6’

The Society for the Suppression of V ice’s policing—combined with the

dishonesty of a couple of leisure entre preneurs—was more successful in im

peding the Turkish dancers’ ability to e arn a living than in protecting them or

their audiences from danger or immor ality. Clearly, however, both the Tu

rk

ish dancers and the gum girls were vul nerable to various forms of harassment

as women working in the world of co mmercialized leisure. In July’, the socie

ty

turned its attention to another Midwin ter fair scandal that involved a woman

worker who was so egregiously exploi ted by her male employers that she w

as

actually in need of their efforts. On Jul y 9, the &aminer reported that “th

e in

decency of the danse du ventre and the grossness of the hula-hula were

eclipsed last evening by an exhibition a t the close of the Midwinter fair which

it is not permitted in the columns of a daily newspaper to describe further

than by saying that the dancer was a nude woman.”62

More than five hundred men had witness ed two such performances at Al

exander Badlam’s Aquarium on the M idway. The first evening the admission

price was set at twenty-five cents “but there wasn’t room in the Badlam build

ing for the crowd that was willing to pay that price.” As a result, the price on

the second night was doubled “but th e four-bit rate made little difference

in

the patronage.” Spielers on the Midwa y had openly announced the upcoming

events and apparently fair officials not o nly knew about the performances, but

a number of them, including Colonel T. P. Robinson, the director of amuse

ments, were in attendance. In fact, at th e performances, “every class was rep

resented. The majority of those on th e benches were well-dressed attorneys,

merchants and clerks.” Also present we re “concessionaires, sports, hoodlums,

and men about town.” While the press reported that the “room was dirty and

the atmosphere stifling,” the arena wa s also strategically equipped with an

emergency door and a number of porth oles that allowed for all but a few of

the men present to escape arrest when th e show was raided.63

IMAGINING THE CITY 207

Moreover the Exam iner account ofJennjeJolinson dance and her subse quent arrest suggests that she was not operating under her own free will but was coerced by the manager of the event, Al Morris. “The somd of a violin drew attention. . . to the curtain which at the same moment was pulled aside revealing a woman seated in a chair enveloped in a dark cloak,” the newspaper explained. “At the Sound of the music she sprang to her feet revealing herself perfectiy nude. Her head and face were veiled in a black scarf. She thus dis played herself for a few moments. Suddenly the sound of the violin ceased and the ‘dancer’ sank into her chair.” As this account suggested and the press later confirmed,JeflflieJohnson was not a professional dancer. Her performance did not even involve anything that could really be considered dancing. That she veiled her head and face with a dark scarf suggests she was ashamed enough of what she was doing that she did not want to be recognized It is likely that she was also fearful of the arrest that might follow if she revealed her identi64

Soon after Jennie Johnson returned to her chai she was arrested by an of ficer of the Society for the Suppression of Vice who “sprang upon the stage.” Although initially quite calm, Soon, amid a flood of tears, she exclaimed, “i was forced into it. The man said I would be arrested if I did not give this dance.” Apparently, the manager of the show’, Al Morris, had convinced Jen nie Johnson that if she did not perform she would be arrested for breach of contract. He had also “made her drink a liquor” before her performance Morris also had refused to be specific about how much he would pay her, promising only “to make it all right with her” after she “danced.”Jeflniejohn son was about twenty years old and a resident of the Tenderloin district, one of San Francisco rougher and poorer neighborli005 It is possible that she was one of the many workingclass and poor women facing exceptionally dire straits as a result of the economic depression. In such circumstances, the threat of a lawsuit might have been especially terriring to her and maybe whatever Morris was willing to pay her was better than nothing. It is also pos sible than Jennie Johnson worked as a prostitute and perhaps she felt that dis playing herself nude was a better job than having sex for money. Whatever the answers to these questions might have been, Jennie Johnson confessed that she had been “duped by an enterprising spieler that his Promise was as de ceptive as any fake on the Midway.”65

The same confluence of economic conditions that paved the way for JennieJohnso plight and sent women flocking to the fair to find work also

208 CHAPTER FIVE I

MAGINING THE CITY

affected men. The financial panic of 1893 and the economic upheav

al that

followed had made it clear that th e economy of ruggedly masculin

e small

producers idealized in the ij M ining Camp was truly a thing of

the past.

The rampant economic ruin, un employment, and class conflict tha

t ravaged

the city and the nation presented a n ironic, mocking contrast to the

celebra

tions of capitalist progress and im perial grandiosity at the center of b

oth the

Columbian Exposition and the M idwinter fair. Cognizant of this th

e Exam

iner had noted that “starvation w ould not be an agreeable Midw

inter fair

exhibit.” Yet at the same time, the economic crisis emphasized the ce

ntrality

of manufacturing, finance cap italism, and business consolidati

on to the

American economy. These devel opments—part of the transition f

rom an

agricultural to an industrial econ omy—had far-reaching conseque

nces for

the growing number of America ns—male and female—who made

a living

working for wages. By the end o f the nineteenth centuiw, the Unite

d States

may have been the world’s leading industrial power as well as its riche

st, but

it was also a place where a few be nefited from the labor of many. As

corpo

rate strength grew through cons olidation and novel managerial tec

hniques,

not only did worker control over p roduction decrease but workers, bu

ffeted

along by the ebb and flow of the industrial business cycle, found the

mselves

in increasingly insecure economi c straits. The panic’s impact in San

Fran

cisco signaled the city’s ties to the national economy. Its effects force

d resi

dents to confront conditions at ho me. While the Midwinter Fair put

forth a

carefully constructed image of San Francisco suitable for outside cons

ump

tion, the fair itself had been launc hed, in part, to generate jobs and

revenue

for a city in economic trouble.66

Organizers heralded San Francisco’s Midwinter Fair as an event that

would revive the local economy by creating jobs and heal growing class

divi

sions by providing a unifying civic p roject for all of the city’s residents. “

These

were hard times,” WH.L. Barnes told the crowd that packed Metro

politan

Hall at a “monster mass-meeting” held to promote the fair on July 27,

1893.

‘We shall build no souphouses,” he declared, “no beggars shall be drive

n from

house to house. But out on the silve r sands fringing the Pacific will be

built at

a cost, I believe, of over a million d ollars, buildings that will be the de

posito

ries of the hope of the world.” The fair did provide work for some, altho

ugh

as was the case for many women, th e number of male applicants quickly

over

ran the available jobs. Promoters were faced with the fact that the mig

ration

of the unemployed from other are as would on1y aggravate the condit

ion of

209

the thousands of worklngmen Iooklng for emploneit in San Francisco. Many unemployed men did flock to Golden Gate Park but not always in search of work at the fair. Not far from the Midwinter Fair, a coalition of workiugmen, merchants ministers and rabbis_sown as the Citizens’ Ex ecutive Committee for the Relief of the Unemp1oyedl launched a huge, city-wide relief project that raised money to pay out-of-work men to labor in the park. Just as this visible reminder of economic upheaval existed in the same geographic space as the Midwinter Fair’s celebration of economic prog ress, coverage of this story in the press was often placed adjacent to coverage of the fair. Moreove while the community support necessary for both of these efforts_the Midwinter Fair and the Citizens’ Executive Committee was the result of cross_class alliances, at the same time these projects actually made class divisions more visible. Coverage in local newspapers of how the fair and the relief committee fared in face of the social fallout of the economic crisis provided a vehicle for the representation of class identities that stood in stark contrast to the images of independent self-made men depicted at the Mining Camp and served to highlight how far the nation had moved from that ideal by Presenting images that graphically showcased the conditions of everyday life in the nation’s new industrial economy.67

One of the ways both the Midwinter Fair and The Citizens’ Executive Committee for the Relief of the Unemployed generated representations of the working classes was by requiring the registration and enumeration of local unemployed. These people, dependent upon employers and wages, were the antithesis ofJackionian producers. At the Midwinter Faii this deplo)ent of scrutinizing practices_akin to those associated with new scientific manage ment techniques used by employers to keep a watchful eye over employees_ was ostensibly instituted to insure that unemployed residents of the city were given work before outsiders.68 It is likely that it was also used as a way to exert some control over large numbers of disgruntled and desperate men. “for the protection of the unemployed among the inhabitants of San Francisco, their names are being registered in the order in which they make application for work,” the Call announced “Only those mechanics and laborers who now re side here will be given emploent in connection with the exposition.” But press coverage of the numbers and characteristics of the unemployed seeking work at the Midwinter Fair that reporters garnered from registration rosters also disclosed infoation about the composition and condition of the work ing classes to a city-wide readership. By Aust 2, 1893, the press reported

210 CHAPTER FIVE

that from 300 to oo employment applications w ere being received daily at

the Midwinter Fair’s headquarters and the total had already reached 4,ooo.

“About io per cent are carpenters,” the Call in formed its readers, “as many

more are other mechanics, including engineers , gardeners, teamsters, paint

ers, watchmen and timekeepers. The majority are laborers, although a num

ber are clerks and salesmen out of work and willin g to take a pick and shovel

and commence grading for the buildings.” By Aug ust 9, 1893, the registration

of applicants for work at the Midwinter fair ground s was closed. Within five

weeks, 5,ooo men had registered their applicat ions for employment. “The

committee will not be able to use the services of h alf that number,” the same

paper disclosed, “and it was decided that it would be unfair to the applicants

to still further increase their number.” Press cover age of the registration pro

cess at the Midwinter Fair had made it unquestio nably clear to city residents

that ordinary men, many from respectable trades , were out of work in stag

gering numbers.69

The Citizens’ Executive Committee for the Reli ef of the Unemployed en

gaged in similar registration practices when it b egan putting men to work in

Golden Gate Park on January 4, i8ç. At a meeting held in the rooms of the

Merchants’ Club on January 2, “It was unanim ously agreed that the funds

raised by the citizens for the aid of the unemployed sh ould be used to improve

and beautify Golden Gate Park.” “vVhile trees will be put out, plants placed in

beds, lawns spaded up and sown, no experience in ga rdening will be needed by

the unemployed,” an article in the Examiner infor med its readers, “as most of

them will be given work in grading and preparing n ew grounds.” Although

Park Commissioner Stow initially assured the comm ittee that “there was vir

tually no limit to the work to be done in the Park and that he would put to

work all the men the committee would send to him” by the end of the month

the number of men had to be pared back from a h igh of 2,800 to between

1,200 and 1,400. In part this was due to the rapid dep letion of funds needed to

pay so many workers, but it was also motivated by t he concern that the park

was becoming crowded with “more men than cou ld be made useful by the

Park Commission.” Each employed man was assigned a ticket that entitled

him to ten days of work for which he was paid one doll ar per day. Throughout

the period of relief, men who had worked more than t en days were often re

quired to relinquish their jobs so that other unemp loyed men could work.7°

Registration of the unemployed for park work wa s systematic and in

volved careful examination and evaluation of the men w ho applied. The relief

IMAGINING THE CITY 211

committee scrutinized men to screen out “the burn element” and to make sure employment was given “only to those considered worthy.” Married men withwives and families were also generally given preference over single men without dependents was the case with workers at the Midwinter faifl SanFrancisco residents were given priority over the unemployed from outside thecity. In fact, enough people in search of work were arriving in the city thatafter January 10, work tickets were only given to men who presented “lettersfrom former employers or from business men stating that the applicant isknown to be deserving and has resided in this city for some time.” OnJanuary

4, 1894, the Examiner described the registration process for the 1,100 unemployed men who had gathered on Leidesdorif Street on the morning of theprevious day. In groups they were “escorted by a special Policeman throughthe side entrance of the Merchants’ Exchange to be examined as to their eligibility for employment” “Detachments of fourteen men each were broughtup the stairs and one by one examined by the selecting committee consistingof Father Montgomery and M. P Jones, while a third member of the executive committee kept a list and a fourth made out the employment cards.” Therecipient of the first work ticket was Jerry Sullivan, a San Francisco residentfor twenty_one years who “had a wife and six children” and was described as“utterly without means and hungry.”71 The press, in its coverage of the Citizens’ Executive Committee activities, also described and ran stories about the Unemployed men. Most often, itrepresented the Unemployed as ordinary but hardworking and dutiful menfacing Poverty despite their best efforts. Reports also tended to stress the diversity of the wororce in the Parkshong like the Midwinter Fair coverage, that economic hard times did not discriminate when it can to age, ethnic_or the respectability or sll level of one occupation. “Jewelers,piano-makers, cooks, drug clerl, book canvassers and sewing machine agentswork side by side with the commonest of laborers glad to get an Opportunityto earn Si a day,” one account in the Chronicle reported. “The men were of a]lnationalities ages and physical conditions Some were mere youths, whileothers were gray and bent with age,” informed another. 72

Some newspaper accounts profiled individual members of the unemployed. One of these related the story of a man “who asked that his name beWithheld” because lie did not “want all his rnends to know that he has becomeone of the eat army of unemployed.” The abstract for the Story read: “Aman who had been standing in Pauper alley all night waiting for a chance for

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214 CHAPTER fIVE

donations from these grou ps had slowed, the relief fu

nd for the unemployed

was being “rapidly exhaus ted,” and the committee’s r

esolution suggested that

they did not believe it wou ld quicken without conside

rable prodding.77 Ferdi

nand Haber, head of the Viticulture Department at t

he Midwinter Fair told

the Call that “the real sup ports of the exhibition are

the middle classes—retail

merchants, mechanics, and laboring classes.” “The ca

pitalists and large real

estate owners have done co mparatively nothing. Some

of these big men don’t

look beyond the threshold of their own doors.”78

Within this context of eco nomic crisis and disparate d

onation, the charita

ble acts of the poorest me mbers of society were deeme

d especially impressive.

The generosity of newsbo ys—working children ofte

n described as “ragged

urchins”—received particu lar attention. On Februa

ry , the Chronic le re

ported that Jimmy Colli ns, a newsboy, had paid a

visit to treasurer Daniel

Meyer’s office shortly befo re two o’clock. He “saunte

red into the place” and

shouted, “Hey, dere, there ’s dat dime.” Ever since

the Citizen’s Executive

Committee had begun co llecting subscriptions, Jimm

y Collins had made it a

practice to contribute ten cents a day, and usually h

e was accompanied by

three other newsboys who did the same. He’d confid

ed to one of the clerks

who worked in the office that the reason he made

this donation was that

“when he was a few years younger his father was out

of work for a long time

and consequently he knew just what it was to be hard

up.” Also newsworthy

were the charitable efforts of the citys newsboys on b

ehalf of the Midwinter

Fair. Abe Bienkowski—” a plain everyday newsboy

, cast upon the world

alone”—put out a call to “ every newsboy in San Fran

cisco” that several fund-

raising meetings for the M idwinter Fair were to be held

at the Irish-American

Hall. He was also “furnishe d with a subscription pape

r and authorized to col

lect from all newsboys w ho desired to contribute.”

Donations ranged from

five to fifty cents. By Augus t 9, the contribu

tion of the newsboys was nearly

$12 and on August io th e subscription list publish

ed in the Call indicated

“newsboys subscribed (ad ditional) $3.70.” One exp

lanation offered for the

charitable acts of the poor was that they gave because

they knew what it was

like to be in want while the elite and the middle classe

s needed to be educated

about the poor in order to be motivated to generosity

.79

In fact, as a form of exposé j ournalism, the press covera

ge of these two fund-

raising efforts did a consid erable amount of public ed

ucation and service in a

time of crisis. In its routine chastisement of capitalists fo

r their stinginess, it not

only presented a stark contr ast to the virtue of capitalis

t entrepreneurs lauded at

I

IMAGINING THE CITY 215

the Mining Camp, but also safely channeled and gave voice to local anger at owing social inequities Its depictions of the worthy poor may very well have been a way to molli readers who could identi with such a plight at the same time that they sened to educate the middle and Upper classes about the less for umate. Through its coverage, local newspapers allowed middle_class readers to “how” the poor. The press also reported stories of middle_class “discovery” of the poor. kile these generally occurred in “real life” and were reported in the pages of the press, they mirrored the nd of experien5 and charitable actions such stories were desigued to inspire in their readers.

The Examiner generated this nd of tale in its coverage of the Lincoln School boys who Provided lunches for over 2,300 men in the park in mid- January. “A lady who noticed the scene from a carriage beckoned to one of the boys. ‘I’ll make up a box of lunches for to-morrow’ she said. ‘I never dreamed such things could est here in San Francisco . I have been driving around after these wagons all morning and I have seen these men eating like stanring animals To-morrow i shall do what little I can to help.” The idea of having the children from various schools rotate the responsibility for Providing lunches to the men in the park actually originated with one middle_class fifteen-yearold girl from Golden Gate Avenue, Lillie Meye in a moment of middlecjass “discovery” of the poor. Upon their return from a buggy ride in Golden Gate Park, Lillie older sister and little brother related that in the course of their ride they had came upon some of the park workers toiling on the roadways. It was lunch time but the men had nothing to eat. Well-Stocked with cooes, the two Meyer children offered them to the men and they were gratefully received er hearing this stoi Liflie Meyer had an idea that “solved a question that had puzzled a lot of older heads.” She said, “I’ll speak to Miss Strauss, our teache and ask her to speak to all the scholars and we’ll each one of us bring a lunch and send them out to the poor men in the Park.” 4Thile this episode conveniently confornied to images of children that stressed their innocence and viewed them as especially appropriate vehicles of chari it also launched a huge community effort to help the less fortunate. The Chroizicle even went so far as to encourage its readers to go out to the park and see the work of the unemployed men rst hand, “If the hundreds who drive out to the Park to-day, before or after visiting the Midwinter Faii will Continue their journey a few yards beyond the fenced inclosure either on the north or the south, they will obtain some idea of the extent and value of the work which the dollaraday men are doing.”SO

216 CHAPTER F IVE

But even as the depictions of the poor in the press ma de them visible and

constructed them as worthy, hardworking, appropriat ely grateful, and honor

able, this ostensibly favorable image designed to pro voke charity also con

tained within it less savory elements. The poor did no t represent themselves

and stepping outside the image constructed for them meant risking being la

beled unworthy and therefore undeserving of charity. Throughout the fund-

raising effort, concerns were raised about “bummers” an d “loafers” receiving

aid, that the poor would become dependent upon relief and that the wage of

one dollar a day was too much of a luxury for some. Mo reover, a flyer circu

lated by the United Brotherhood of Labor in early Se ptember 1893 titled

“facts Concerning the Midwinter fair” urged the public to refuse to fund the

Midwinter Fair because it had failed to uphold its promise t o give work to the

unemployed. This flyer also made reference to the fact t hat the unemployed

had “camped upon the Postoffice site nearly two month s, and have had nu

merous street parades” yet were still waiting for their situa tion to be openly

discussed in the Chronicle, Michael de Young’s newspaper. These rumblings of

discontent suggest that the citys widespread efforts to aid the unemployed

emerged, in part, from the need for some gesture of app easement to keep an

increasingly volatile situation under control. Through the provision of

work and a little direct aid, combined with press coverag e that channeled

working-class anger and taught middle-class San Francisc ans about the less

fortunate in their midst at the same time that it moved them to charity, elites

successfully weathered a crisis that had the potential to disrupt order not only

at the fair but in the city at large.

In July 1893, when the Midwinter fair was still just a spar kle in de Young’s

eye, Clara S. Fefiz had told a crowd assembled at a mass m eeting to generate

enthusiasm for the exposition that it would “attract the atte ntion of the civil

ized world.” After such a display, she explained “people e lsewhere” would

“not look at you as if you carried a pistol in your belt and a bowie-knife in

your boot when you tell them you come from California.”82 For its six-month

duration, the Midwinter fair served as a cultural frontier on which San Fran

cisco elites presented an image of the city to “the civilized world” that re

vealed a carefully ordered vision. Fair organizers packaged m any of the these

things that made San Francisco its own unique place—its gold rush history, its

disorderly Wild West legacy, its diversity, and its position on the Pacific

Rim—within an overarching framework that stressed the c ontainment of

class, race, and gender-based disorder in the city and the asc endance of locally

IMAGINING THE CITY 217

inflected forms of nationally dominant social hierarchies. Sunset City offered to the world a picture of San Francisco as a civilized, conquered, and thus hilly erican place. Claiming this mantle reflected the city position as a far- western urban center that, having gotten its own house in order, was not only ready for incorporation into the fabric of the nation, but was poised to be in strumental in furthering the nation’s growing imperial goals.