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Some
Miracles of California
By
Paul P. Harris
President Emeritus of Rotary International
“YOU are breakfasting this morning in California.” On each plate
at the tables in the dining‑car of the Union Pacific Railway
train was a little slip of white paper on which were printed
these significant words.
Mrs. Harris and I had enjoyed a very delightful journey across
country from Chicago. The atmosphere was simply charged with
goodwill. Railway officials, conductors, stewards, and porters
vied with each other to make us feel at home; even freight‑train
crews and section‑men waved their hands in salutation as we
dashed past sitting comfortably on the rear end of the
observation‑car. Waving a hearty salutation was not an
occasional performance, it was the order of the day. I noted at
times as many as a score of hands held aloft - every man on the
job - creating goodwill for a great railway system and perhaps
bearing evidence of the fact that we are at the dawn of a bright
new day in the industrial relationship. Rotary will occupy an
honored position in history for the part it has played and for
the part it will yet play in bringing about better understanding
between men who work with their brains and men who toil with
their hands.
We
breakfasted that morning in California as the train moved around
the brinks of stupendous gorges of the mighty Sierras. We saw an
abundance of snow and passed through many snow sheds in those
upper reaches but we were in California and knew that far away,
down in the valley, the warm run shone.
THIRTY‑FOUR years ago, fourteen years before the birth of
Rotary, I drifted into San Francisco in search of adventure. I
found it then ‑ in 1891 - and I again discovered it in 1925,
although the city has undergone great changes and made rapid
strides, especially since the fire and earthquake in 1906.
 San
Francisco was interesting to the voyagers from Rotary club No. 1
in Chicago because of another fact. San Francisco is the home of
Club No. 2. Now that Rotary clubs number more than two thousand,
No. 2 and No. 3 - the latter at Oakland ‑ rank as patriarchs of
the order.
I
wish it were possible for me to mention all the evidences of
hospitality, all the charming friends, the shower of invitations
that combined to make ours such a happy visit. I wish I might
mention the Rotary clubs we visited, the automobile trips we
enjoyed, our visit to Lick Observatory, our mountain trips, the
inspiring church services, the instructive journeys through
great industrial plants, the interesting glimpses of the
fruit‑growing industry and all else that gave us an insight to
the beauty and productivity of California. But space limitations
forbid and I can only repeat what I said to Mrs. Harris as we
gazed at the gorgeous bouquets in our reception-room “Yes,
here's where they say it with flowers!”
To
our good friends, Harvey L. Johnson, of Chicago, and his
splendid wife, Edna, are we deeply indebted. We were their
guests during practically the entire trip and no one could have
wished for more thoughtful hosts, constantly seeing to our
welfare.
I
AM not backward about admitting that I am one of the several
million mid‑Western people to whom California has always been an
object of interest.
We
mid‑Westerners, including a few hundred thousand Iowans, are not
in entire accord as to what constitutes California's most
interesting characteristics. It's a matter wholly of taste.
Climate, mountains, sea, missions, roses, oranges, poppies, ad
infinitum. So far as I am concerned the answer is easy. I am
most deeply interested in California's people. I have enjoyed
the experience of viewing the seething, swirling, surging seas
as they break upon the rocks at Carmel but for sheer unrest,
first honors go to the highly imaginative minds of the human
beings whom we know as Californians.
I
cannot imagine what the people of California would do if
transported bodily to Labrador, but I am fully satisfied that,
the moment of arrival, they would quickly cultivate new fields
for the exercise of their imagination. I presume that Chicago
would be taught miraculous ways of preparing codfish, and that
whale, shark and sea lion would soon assume their rightful
positions as indispensables of the breakfast table.
Saturday morning, October 24th, we found ourselves in company
with two dear friends driving on El Camino Real, reminiscent of
the Franciscan fathers, en route to Palo Alto. A football game
between Stanford and the Oregon Aggies was in prospect but even
more alluring than the prospect of studying sporting California
at a football game was that of seeing the university which
stands in memory of Leland Stanford, Jane Lathrop Stanford, his
wife, and Leland Stanford, Jr., their only child.
I
would that I might describe Stanford; I know that I can not and
I am strongly inclined to believe that no one can. One can feel
Stanford as an artist feels the sky or sea but to attempt to
describe it is another matter.
There is but one Stanford; it stands out unique among
educational institutions. One falls within its bewitching spell
the moment one comes within sight of its quadrangles of soft
buff sandstone.
The buildings are of the mission architecture of the padres and
are capped by red tile roofs all blending harmoniously with the
purple mountains in the background and the profusion of flowers
near at hand. The approach to the university is along an avenue
of palms.
The church was Mrs. Stanford's special contribution and, in
compliance with her wish, constitutes the central figure of the
group. The art centers of Europe have been levied upon to
perfect this wonderful edifice. It is particularly famous for
its mosaics, the most important collection in America. Many
pilgrimages are made to Stanford for special study of its
beautiful mosaic masterpieces. Two deserve special mention, the
"Sermon on the Mount" on the facade and the "Last Supper" by
Cosimo Roselli, in the chancel. The latter is the only copy
permitted to be made of the masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel at
Rome.
Stanford University was fortunate in the beginning in the
enjoyment of freedom from hampering traditions and sectarian
standards. The institution still radiates the personality and
genius of David Starr Jordan, its first president.
I
have seen in the Campo Santo at Genoa magnificent groupings of
statuary carved of flawless Carrara marble, each figure carved
in the likeness of a member of a family ‑ the living in postures
of grief, and the dead in process of flight from this to another
world. It was in this way that people gifted in imagery honored
their dead and gave lasting expression of their grief.
When I think of Stanford University I have a vision of a
bereaved father and mother, standing together, reaching God
ward. I also see an assemblage of men skilled in the arts and
craftsmanship gathered together on the plains beneath the
foothills which lead back into the majestic Sierra Moreno
Mountains, there to rear a great university in honor of Leland
Stanford Jr., and as a lasting and fitting expression of
parental love.
We
frequently hear of the remarkable athletic achievements of men
from California and sometimes wonder at them. I think that there
are two easily recognizable reasons for their supremacy in some
departments of athletics, the first and the lesser reason being
the climate which permits of all‑year participation in
athletics. An all‑year season which permits geraniums to grow
thirty feet high ought to be good for men. The other, the more
important, being the extremely vigorous competitive spirit which
exists in all activities throughout the state. Incidentally,
Comptroller
Al Roth informed me that ninety‑three per cent of the
student body at Leland Stanford are participants in athletics.
Californians scorn the negative, tolerate the comparative, and
worship the superlative. This holds true in athletics,
education, religion, art, music, in all of life's refinements,
and well may it be so. What force plays a more important part in
the march of civilization than the competitive spirit?
OUR party enjoyed the rare good fortune of a luncheon at the
University of California. Afterward, under the guidance of
Comptroller Bob Sproul and Dean Deutsch we visited some of the
principal points of interest. The grounds of the State
University are not merely near the foothills, they are in them.
The most imposing figure on the university grounds is the
Campanile, which, extending as it does literally into the
clouds, is discernible at great distances. The beautiful chimes
located in the tower, send out their sweet melody over the
entire city.
In
the background the Greek theater nestles in the hills. It is
glistening white and the effects of the moonlight as it sifts
down through the branches of the stately trees and plays upon
the alabaster surface is indeed a scene of rare beauty.
The stadium is a serviceable structure, seating seventy‑five
thousand people, nearly one‑half the number which apply for
tickets of admission to the annual football game with Stanford.
When one who has seen Stanford begins to envisage the University
of California he finds himself drawing comparisons but he soon
abandons the practice and settles down to seeing California for
its own sake.
The University of California is no more like Stanford than a sun
flower is like a violet; the one expresses vigor and utility,
the other, sentiment and beauty. If I had a boy about to enter
college, I would want him to set aside at least one year for
attendance in one of the great California universities and I
would be satisfied to let him look them all over and then take
his pick. It seems to me that there is one thing that a boy
might acquire in the California universities, to better
advantage than elsewhere, and that is intensity of idealism. It
seems to me that California occupies a unique position in its
newness and in its freedom from tradition.
Only one American university, Columbia, rivals the University of
California in the number of enrollments. Does it seem incredible
when I state that this year's enrollment at the University of
California exceeds twenty-six thousand, exclusive of extension
courses? What a commentary on the cultural life of the State in
the years to come. As one glances over the registration, he is
impressed with the large percentage of American names. The
university stresses the practical sciences, chemistry,
agriculture, commerce, law, medicine, dentistry, and mining. The
principal seat is at Berkeley but a branch which has been
established in Los Angeles gives promise of great growth. The
Southern branch is sometimes confused with the University of
Southern California which is located in the same city.
Great institutions are said to be but the lengthened shadow of
one man. The name Benjamin Ide Wheeler will always be associated
with the University of California as the name of David Starr
Jordan will always be associated with Stanford.
Sunday we attended church services at San Jose and met many
Rotarians. At the close of the services, J. C. Elder, dean of
the Teachers' College, took us to see his institution where the
Rotary district conference convened two years ago.
There are seven splendid teachers' schools in the State. It
would be difficult to overstate California's progressiveness in
educational matters. It is said to he literally true that no boy
or girl under the age of eighteen can by any possibility escape
education. Even the itinerant camps to be found at the walnut
and prune harvests, and automobile camps have their schools. As
much pains is taken in the education of the migratory Mexican as
in the education of native Americans.
Two hundred dollars per month is the lowest salary paid
teachers. At least two years' special training for teaching is
required and it is expected that within five years, none without
college education will be permitted to teach.
We
also visited the Santa Clara University, one of the foremost
Jesuit universities of the country. It was founded in 1851 and
its doors have been continuously open. For seventy‑five years
prior to the founding of the university, the site had been
occupied by the adobe buildings of a mission established by two
Franciscan padres. Some of the original mission walls still
stand on the university grounds.
Santa Clara University, while retaining the Catholic form of
religious worship, is open to representatives of all
denominations. The university includes departments of philosophy
and letters, law, general science, medicine, engineering,
commerce and seismology and meteorology, the latter being under
the direction of Rev. Jerome Sixtus Ricard widely known as
"Padre of the Rains."
IN
Bakersfield we were given our first opportunity to obtain
first‑hand knowledge of California's wonderful system of public
schools. We found fourteen grammar schools in this city of
thirty thousand inhabitants and a high school which almost
approached the dimensions of a university, composed as it was of
ten dignified structures (exclusive of the stadium) occupying
fifteen acres of ground.
Fifteen busses transport students thirty miles in all
directions, and dormitories are provided for students coming
from greater distances. The courses include vocational training,
domestic science, and art. A system of student government
similar to that which obtains in the university, is in vogue.
An
Eastern educator recently stated that California's system of
public schools is ten years in advance of the general average
throughout the United States. The writer of this article heard
of a California town of six thousand inhabitants having a
splendid high school whose properties include a group of
buildings which serve fifteen hundred students, one hundred
being housed in dormitories. The town in question is located in
a desert.
The Bakersfield schools were erected through taxation and
without bonded indebtedness; on the other hand, bonds in the
amount of thirty‑four million dollars have been issued by
Hollywood in the interests of its system of public schools.
From a somewhat superficial examination of the question, the
writer is disposed to believe that taxes are rather high in
California towns and cities but that complaints are not more
common there than elsewhere. How could they be when there are so
many evidences of honest and capable administration. No other
investment is comparable, in promise of rich returns, with
investment in the education of our boys and girls.
THIRTY‑FOUR years ago I spent four months in Los Angeles paying
my expenses by teaching in a business college. What a different
city today.
In
1892, they were wont to say that Los Angeles had been absurdly
overextended. There were approximately sixty thousand people
there then. What shall we say of Los Angeles of today with
twenty times that number?
What about Los Angeles with its Hollywood and the other suburban
communities which surround it as minor celestial bodies surround
the sun? Has the fervor of the enthusiasm and optimism of Los
Angeles and its stellar system begun to subside, even as the
heat of the sun and planets subsides? Not that I have been able
to discover. At least if the optimism of Los Angeles has
diminished to any appreciable extent, I am glad that I was not
present during the period of its greatest intensity. I saw all
that I could assimilate.
We
did no slumming but interested ourselves in constructive things
only. What is California doing in education, art, religion,
agriculture, and commerce?
In
the newly organized Artland club I see an eventual assembling of
artists and connoisseurs of art in the metropolis of the
Southwest, comparable with the best in the East, and it makes
one tremble to think of the possibilities of both good and evil
in that other form of art which centers in Hollywood.
Through the efforts of Martin Hauser of the Los Angeles Rotary
Club, we in company with International Director T. C. Thomsen of
Denmark, saw Colleen Moore and Blanche Sweet in the "Making of
Pictures." We also saw the home of Mary and Doug and of other
idols of the screen.
Modern invention has placed upon the shoulders of young people
not only the responsibility of interpreting the spirit of
America throughout the world but also the responsibility of
leadership in one of the most effective forms of education.
Whatever we may be disposed to think of the influence of the
movies as they now are, we who believe in the inherent virtue of
mankind must have faith in their future.
Hollywood is thought of primarily as the motion picture capital
of the world and the fact that fifty picture companies with
annual payrolls aggregating forty millions of dollars are
located there affords ample justification for the conception.
But Hollywood is also a city of exquisitely beautiful homes,
schools, and churches. Moreover, in Hollywood is located the
famous bowl with capacity for fifty thousand seats where one of
America's best symphony orchestras gives its concerts, and the
El Camino Real theater in the foothills where the Annual Passion
Play is given. I am convinced that a deep love of music is being
developed in California as a result of the bowl concerts, but
the bowl is not the only means for the accomplishment of the
desired result. Music is given every encouragement, in the grade
schools through music‑memory contests and the provision of
excellent facilities for the study of music. California has
scrapped time‑honored precedents and is struggling for the
establishment of a civilization higher than has been attained
thus far.
Our visit to the University of Southern California was
necessarily brief but it was apparent to all that a great
university is in the making. The growth since its inception has
been marvelous. The University of Southern California not only
looks to the needs of its regular students but it also projects
itself out into the life of the city and in fact into the life
of the entire State. More than four thousand adult students were
enrolled last year. It is the aim of the university to raise
standards of trade throughout the State. Courses in real‑estate
practice have been installed. Licensed real‑estate operators
have been reduced from six thousand to three thousand in number
as the result of a state law by virtue of which no person who
has not first passed the examination prescribed by the
University of Southern California is permitted a license. As
rapidly as new textbooks can be written other trades are to be
added to the curriculum. Can any foresee the limit of the good
to be accomplished in this manner?
God works in wondrous ways, His miracles to perform. Is it too
much to expect that His purpose will be brought to light even
from beneath the debris and wreckage of what once was a
beautiful city?
Of
one thing we may be sure, and that is that the
Santa Barbara
which is rising and which will continue to rise will be even
fairer than the Santa Barbara of old. Here is a community
composed of strong men and women whose souls are possessed by a
passion for the beautiful, whose principal buildings have been
destroyed, who are now free to build entirely anew. They are
building anew and they are raising there, between the turquoise
sea and the purple mountains, a city of surpassing beauty, and
Santa Barbara's accomplishment in city building will serve as an
example to students of art until long after the memory of the
terrible disaster of 1925 shall have faded.
 WE
drove to Santa Rosa where a meeting had been arranged with a man
whom I have for years longed to meet, the great Luther
Burbank. Mr. Burbank entertained us for an hour or more in
his country home.
He
looks just as a man of his long record of valuable service to
humanity would be most easily pictured. I knew him the first
moment I set my eyes upon him.
Of
course, we asked him many questions and he answered them
graciously, once however ejaculating: "Why here I am talking
about myself all of the time, but (pointing his finger at me)
you are to blame for it. You keep asking me questions."
It
was true, I asked him many questions relating to his study of
plant life. I remember I asked his opinion as to the probable
effect of immigration, past and present, upon the American
people. He answered that in his opinion it would in course of
time prove to be beneficial; that the strong men of history were
all "hybrids"; that the European races were "hybrids." He then
went on to cite several instances in substantiation of his
anthropological conclusions.
I
made a curious study in statistics. ‑ If all of the Burbank
potatoes thus far grown were to be loaded upon one freight
train, the train would have to be more than sixteen thousand
miles long. And the Burbank potato is only one of the many
horticultural discoveries that he has given to us.
Men have become millionaires capitalizing the accomplishments of
Luther Burbank while the "wizard of pollens" has no great wealth
to show for it. He fed the cow while others milked it. but it
would be impossible for statisticians or accountants to estimate
the value of his life.
During our five weeks' ramble, we saw much of interest, much of
wonder, but as we retraced our course from Santa Rosa it seemed
to me that the best had been reserved for the last; that on that
final day we had visited the highest mountain peak of which
California can boast, Mount Burbank.
That night four people, at least two of whom were in low
spirits, stood together at the Key Street ferry where our
trustworthy car had brought us. The turn‑stile turned, clicking
twice lugubriously. Our two friends were on the outside. We were
within. There was a huskiness of voice as we said adieus. . . .
There was a masculine waving of hands and a feminine throwing of
kisses. We were on our way - home. |
