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Sexual Violence in Men’s Prisons
Gendered Violence in Conflict Zones
Central and South America: A Case Study
Working to End Violence
New Social Movements
Finding Solutions
12 Sports
Sports and Masculinity
Women Navigating Masculine Athletics
Changing the Field
Bringing Women into Sports
What Continues to Hold Women Back?
Homophobia and Heterosexism in Sports
Assimilation or Reform?
13 Religion
Religion as an Institution
Abrahamic Religions
Catholicism
Islam
Buddhism
Fundamentalism on Gender Relations
Muslim Fundamentalism
Christian Fundamentalism
Fundamentalist Views of Masculinity
Evangelical Feminists
Hindu Fundamentalism
Women in the Pulpit
Religion as a Base of Resistance
Women Activists in Sri Lanka
Religion in the American Civil Rights Movement
Challenging Religions
What Difference Would More Gender-Equal Religions Make?
Feminist Theoretical Models
What If There Were No Religions?
Glossary
Credits
Index
Talking About
BOX 1.1: Hegemonic Masculinity and Supermen
BOX 2.1: The Heterosexual Matrix
BOX 2.2: “Where Do You Fit?”
BOX 2.3: Intersex Activism
BOX 2.4: Commonality
BOX 2.5: Bathroom Politics
BOX 2.6: The International Bill of Gender Rights, Adopted June 17,
1995, Houston, Texas, USA
BOX 2.7: Ancient Beliefs about Human Anatomy
BOX 2.8: Latino, Latina, Latinx, and Rejecting the Binary
BOX 3.1: Asexuality
BOX 3.2: Women’s Liberation
BOX 3.3: The Stonewall Monument
BOX 3.4: Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson
BOX 3.5: Men Who Have Sex with Men
BOX 3.6: Heterosexism and Heterosexual Privilege
BOX 3.7: “Is My Son Gay?”
BOX 4.1: Presenting Gender
BOX 4.2: Hansel and Gretel
BOX 4.3: Tokenism: The Smurfette Syndrome
BOX 4.4: A World Without Gender
BOX 5.1: Addressing Bias in the K–12 Classroom
BOX 5.2: Coed versus Single-Sex Schools and Classrooms
BOX 5.3: What’s Your Major?
BOX 5.4: Student Evaluations
BOX 6.1: Emotional Labor
BOX 6.2: Makeup
BOX 6.3: LGBTQ Rights in the Workplace
BOX 6.4: Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
BOX 6.5: World Poverty
BOX 6.6: Agricultural Workers, Hunger, and Gender
BOX 7.1: Promoting Marriage in Japan and Korea
BOX 7.2: Lesbian Mothers
BOX 7.3: Free Riders
BOX 7.4: Fathers
BOX 7.5: Child Care, Finnish Style
BOX 8.1: Acid Attacks
BOX 8.2: Campus Rape
BOX 8.3: Criminalizing Battered Women
BOX 8.4: Fraternities
BOX 8.5: The Thomas Theorem and Trayvon Martin
BOX 8.6: Tactics in #MeToo
BOX 8.7: Black Lives Matter
BOX 9.1: Danger on the Highways
BOX 9.2: Palm Oil Plantations in Malaysia
BOX 9.3: Cervical Cancer
BOX 9.4: Privatizing Water
BOX 9.5: Pain
BOX 9.6: Bollywood Bodies and Steroids
BOX 9.7: LGBTQ Health and Illness
BOX 9.8: Care Workers Take Action
BOX 9.9: How to Be a Change-Maker
BOX 10.1: Chinese Villages
BOX 10.2: Bystanders
BOX 10.3: Immigrant Women Take the Lead
BOX 10.4: Gender Quotas
BOX 10.5: Pregnant Women, Drugs, and Child Endangerment
BOX 10.6: Women Prisoners
BOX 10.7: Military Training
BOX 10.8: Transgender in the Military
BOX 11.1: YouTube and Children
BOX 11.2: Thin Girls and Fat Boys
BOX 11.3: Diversity Versus Normalizing
BOX 11.4: “Who Tells Us the News?”
BOX 11.5: Regulating Advertising
BOX 11.6: Top Ten Films Worldwide (in millions of dollars)
BOX 11.7: North, South, Hegemony, and Resistance
BOX 12.1: Kids at the Pool
BOX 12.2: Taking a Knee
BOX 12.3: Throwing Like a Girl
BOX 12.4: Team USA
BOX 12.5: Professional Cheerleading
BOX 12.6: Olympic Women
BOX 12.7: Black LGBTQ Athletes
BOX 13.1: Sunday School Curricula
BOX 13.2: Hijab and the Government
BOX 13.3: Stay-at-Home Daughters
BOX 13.4: Women Priests
BOX 13.5: Christianity In The White Nationalist Movement
BOX 13.6: Women’s Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement
BOX 13.7: Goddess Worship
Preface
The first edition of this book was a work of faith—faith that we could
grasp the massive wealth of gender scholarship in one brief volume. This
fourth edition is our continued effort to tap into the global discussions on
gender and to introduce our readers to an even broader array of empirical
research and theory-building that increasingly makes feminist scholarship
so crucial today.
This book is our attempt to bring together the multiple strands of
gender studies and related research on everything from the local and
everyday manifestations of masculinities and femininities to the gendered
institutions that undergird today’s global politics and social crises. To
accomplish this objective, each chapter builds on five principles.
First, we weave together theory and empirical data. The book gathers
scholarship—mainly sociological, but also interdisciplinary—that has
accumulated in many substantive areas. For example, readers will learn
about research on the gender of violence and how it affects families, as
well as how gender, together with race/ethnicity, social class, and
sexuality, shapes media, sports, politics, sexual rights, religion, education,
health, and bodies. Theories that have grown out of and alongside this
research provide frameworks for interpreting the issues presented in each
chapter, allowing students to see how theory emerges from and helps to
explain empirical studies.
Second, we connect personal experiences with sociological concepts
by offering both social constructionist and social structural approaches to
gender that explain the production of inequalities in face-to-face
interactions within organizations as well as the gendered character of the
institutions themselves. We ask how the gendered features of our everyday
lives are given life, shape, and meaning by these larger organizations and
institutions; and how we, in turn, act back on these structures to reimagine
social relationships and social structures that could move us toward a
more just world.
Third, this is a book about gender as an inclusive concept. Often,
people conflate gender studies with women’s studies, but men’s lives, too,
are shaped by gender; and the experiences of transgender, gender
nonconforming, and intersex people show how gender enters everyone’s
life. In fact, a discussion of gender that focuses only on cisgender women
and cisgender men reinforces the myth of sex and gender binaries that
research shows are actually socially constructed and exclusionary
patriarchal tools. We invite the reader to join us in our attempt to uncover
and understand how the binary of woman/man is re-created on multiple
levels and how it might be eliminated by thinking and interacting with
each other differently, as well as by reorganizing our social institutions.
Fourth, this book reminds readers that there are differences within
groups. Inter-sectionality is an approach that recognizes that we are never
just gendered and sexed, but that we are all located in what black feminist
theorist Patricia Hill Collins called a “matrix of domination.” There is no
way to understand gender as a phenomenon separate from social class,
race/ethnicity, sexuality, and nation. Women are not a monolithic group;
they experience gender differently based on their race/ethnicity, for
example. This intersectional perspective is a feature of each chapter and is
intended to help readers better understand the complicated character of
power and inequality. Gendered identities are accomplishments, not fixed
states of being, and gender intersects with other social structures to
provide opportunities to some people while creating barriers for others.
Privilege and subordination are dynamic and variable, so that while some
men experience a massive amount of—taken-for-granted—privilege,
others are subordinated along racial/ethnic, national, sexual, and class
lines. In each chapter, we explore these advantages and disadvantages, as
well as how people are sometimes complicit in perpetuating but also often
resisting social inequalities.
Fifth, this book shoulders the enormous task of taking a global view.
Our goal is to help readers gain a sense of how culture, national identities,
and immigration and migration similarly or differently shape gender in
different places. We hope to encourage students to begin asking questions
about the many ways gender structures people’s lives all around the world.
SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS
Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the assumptions we make and the
tools we use throughout this book to introduce the reader to gender. The
chapter explains three basic ground rules for studying gender: life is
socially based and politically structured; gender is part of a larger web of
social inequalities; and scholarship is political. We also introduce the
overarching framework of the text: intersectionality.
Chapter 2 begins with the question of biology. Most people believe that
male and female, masculinity and femininity, and heterosexuality are
natural and normal. We discuss how biological, historical, and
anthropological research on intersex and transgender individuals
challenges this “standard story.” We show how not everyone is male or
female and explain that we overlook sex and gender diversity when we
assume that all “normal” males become heterosexually masculine and all
“normal” females become heterosexually feminine.
Chapter 3 focuses on sexuality as a key component of understanding
the relationships among sex, gender, and social power. We open with a
discussion of how the intersecting dimensions of gender, race/ethnicity,
class, and nation have historically shaped sexuality. While, currently, men
and women are often expected to be heterosexual, actual sex practices
offer much more complicated and interesting examples of the ways gender
identities enter into and produce sexual desires, sexual acts, and sexual
identities. Feminist, queer, and antiracist studies of sexuality have exposed
the political character of sexuality. The chapter moves from discussing the
construction of conventional sexualities by means of sexual scripts and
gendered double standards to describing the global politics of sex tourism
and sex trafficking, and exploring organized efforts by LGBTQ
communities to challenge normative sexualities and demand sexual human
rights.
If biology is not the basis of gender, then what is? Chapter 4 reviews
the sociological and social psychological theories scholars have developed
to explain the sources of gender. These theories look at three levels of
social life: socialization, social interaction, and social structure. We both
explain and critique these three theoretical approaches. We also show that,
when taken together, feminist theories on gender spotlight the
constructedness of our gendered worlds and thus open up possibilities for
change toward greater equality.
Chapter 5 makes clear that gender in education is not a simple story. In
some ways and in some places, girls and women are not allowed the same
opportunities in education as boys and men are, but gender in schools
creates problems for boys, too, especially for boys of color. Boys are more
likely to be diagnosed and treated for hyperactivity, for example. They
also have lower graduation rates, and black and Latino boys in the U.S. are
often stereotyped as potentially criminal and tracked out of the classroom
and into disciplinary spaces. Racism and poverty contribute to the
diminished education that many children receive, and when we look at the
intersection of these factors with gender in the global South, unexpected
problems become evident, such as how the lack of access to water and
toilets results in educational inequality.
Chapter 6 turns the lenses of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and nation
on local and global economies and on the gendered and raced character of
work. This chapter is divided into three broad issues: gender inequality in
the paid workforce; gender inequality in unpaid work; and gender
inequality in the global workforce. The chapter covers topics such as how
race/ethnicity intersects with gender to determine who encounters the
glass ceiling or who rides the glass elevator at work.
The family has been a contentious political issue in the United States
for many years, as conservatives hold its so-called decline responsible for
the ills of contemporary life. In Chapter 7, readers will have a chance to
draw their own conclusions about family life today. Does marriage really
prevent poverty? Will allowing same-sex marriage undermine marriage as
an institution, or will it give it new life? What is the purpose of marriage,
and whom does it serve? In addition to marriage, the chapter covers the
family issues of divorce, caregiving, and balancing work and family.
Chapter 8 shows that gender is a central feature of the continuum of
violence that stretches from our most intimate lives to the ongoing global
tragedies of militarism and war. Street harassment, rape, domestic
violence, gendered violence in prisons, militarist masculinity, wartime
rape, the enslavement of women by militias, sex trafficking, and growing
civilian casualties—what can explain such relentless and pervasive
gendered violence? This chapter reviews the complex intersections of
gender, nation, and race/ethnicity as a way of answering this question.
Inequalities of race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality shape our
relationship to violence, both as victims and as perpetrators. Feminist
movements to end violence are sweeping the globe, and so we discuss the
emergence of the #MeToo movement in the United States and Ni Una
Menos in South and Central America, as well as the work on the
International Criminal Court.
Chapter 9 recounts the many ways that health and illness are raced and
gendered around the globe. Everything we have explored up to this point
impacts the distribution of health and illness, including the sexual division
of paid and unpaid labor, the political economies and ruling orders of the
nations in which people live, and membership in particular sexual
communities. For example, how are men and women who work on Nestle-
and Kellogg-owned palm oil plantations in the global South facing risks
particular to local labor laws? This chapter also describes feminist and
antiracist social movements involving reproductive rights, including the
right to abortion. It also reviews the debate over how best to address the
HIV/AIDS pandemic. In addition, we discuss how local actions can grow
into transnational movements linking reproductive and general health to a
wide range of rights to housing, education, employment, and freedom
from violence.
Is changing the gender of officeholders sufficient to make positive
political change? According to studies we discuss in Chapter 10, the
evidence is mixed. This is because men dominate all channels of
contemporary politics around the world: electoral politics, the news
media, and the metaphors of political discourse—war and sports. These
issues are examined across nations, challenging the common belief among
Americans that the United States is a model of democracy by exploring
data on the participation of U.S. women in legislative and executive
positions compared to other nations. Policies that have made other nations
more gender equal in political representation are discussed, and readers
are asked to consider their efficacy and the barriers they might confront if
we were to attempt to implement them in the United States. Politics is not
just about elections and offices, however. Other political issues that are
also shaped by gender as well as race/ethnicity and class are reviewed in
this chapter, as are the prison system and the military. The chapter
concludes with a discussion of the conceptualization of power.
Our daily lives are saturated with media. The thousands of images and
messages we receive in these ways exhort us overtly or subtly to view,
experience, and act on the world in prescribed ways. Chapter 11 explores
how these messages are simultaneously gendered and raced, and often
sexualized. Some progress has been made, but gender stereotypes continue
to abound in all media forms. Women are still missing as subjects of
media stories and behind the scenes as reporters, writers, and producers.
While representations vary across borders and by race/ethnicity and age,
some factors are consistent, especially the underrepresentation of
transgender, queer individuals, and people of color. The chapter describes
these problems and discusses the notion of normalizing the diversity that
is our real social experience by emphasizing inclusion and rejecting
marginalization in media representations.
Chapter 12 covers the topic of sports. Historically, women have largely
been excluded from athletics, based on the widespread idea that femininity
does not include athletic ability or athletic experience. In contrast, being a
successful athlete and being a “real man” are closely related. Critics of
organized sports cite normalized violence, the weaponization of male
bodies, and excessive competitiveness as both physically and
psychologically damaging for men. For women, however, athletics can be
a space to challenge gender divisions and sexual barriers that have forced
queer athletes to hide their sexual identities and women athletes to
suppress their athletic performance and potential. Studying gender and
sports forces comparisons between the highly organized and competitive
fan-supported sports that have become big business and participation
sports that are more loosely and democratically organized activities.
In Chapter 13, we focus on gender and religion, one of the most loaded
topics of debate today, as we have seen the rise of religious
fundamentalism and the rise in hate crimes against religious minorities.
Ironically, although fundamentalist religions subordinate women in many
ways, more women than men are fundamentalists. But religious
communities, regardless of doctrine, can also be places where women find
support and space for some freedom of expression in otherwise restrictive
societies. Religion has played an important positive role in the civil rights,
peace, and antiwar movements, for example. Not all forms of spirituality
and religious organization constrain women; Ecofeminism has even
centered around the worship of goddesses. Ancient and indigenous
societies provide examples of forms of worship that were egalitarian and
that revered women’s bodies for their lifegiving abilities. Activists also
often resist constraints imposed on women within religions. Some
Catholics, for example, are calling for an end to the ban on women priests.
Our world is filled with injustice, inequality, and pain. It is also filled
with hope and promise that grow from the many people who resist
injustices and promote potential and pleasure. We dedicate this book to
furthering those ends.
Acknowledgments
Writing this book required the authors to learn new areas of research about
which they may initially have known little. Judy Aulette thanks Anna
Aulette-Root, Elizabeth Aulette-Root, and Albert Aulette for their help
with this work through their careful reading and essential feedback on
many drafts of chapters. In addition, she thanks them for living with this
project for so many years. She also thanks her most recent coauthor,
Kristen Barber, for bringing to the text greater awareness of sexuality as a
critical component of gender and the value of queer theory in
understanding the links among sex, gender, and sexuality. In addition,
Barber’s insights into how to transform the book into a teaching tool were
invaluable. Most importantly, Judy Aulette thanks her coauthor, Judith
Wittner, for her knowledge, creativity, tenacity, and especially her
friendship.
Judith Wittner thanks the members of her writing group, Susan Stall
and Martha Thompson, for their encouragement and support. Her thanks
also go to Judy Aulette for her handholding and great patience and to
Kristin Blakely for the intelligence and energy she brought to our project.
Special thanks to Jenny Wittner, Jorge, Nathaniel, and Alex Pinheiro, Liz
Wittner, and John, Mollie, Mario, and Lily Pepper.
Kristen Barber thanks Judy Aulette, Judith Wittner, and Sherith
Pankratz for bringing her on board as a coauthor. She is honored to be part
of such a comprehensive feminist project. She is also grateful to Annie
Johnson, who helped dig up new statistics and images to update the text,
and to Damien Ricklis, who is a pillar of support and provided input on
many of the chapters. While working on this book, Oliver Beau Barber-
Ricklis was born, joining his sibling, Beatrice Rose Barber-Ricklis.
Together, this voyager and peacemaker have made Kristen even more
dedicated to the feminist mission of inclusion, equity, and justice—a
mission guiding this book.
We all thank Sherith Pankratz from Oxford University Press for
choosing to continue the project and inviting us to write a fourth edition.
And we thank Grace Li and William Murray for their careful attention to
all of the details in the final stages. Special thanks to the terrific
copyeditor, Betty Pessagno. Also special thanks to Soma Chaudhuri for
reviewing the chapter on violence and to Michael Messner for providing
exceptionally thoughtful suggestions on the sports chapter. We also are
grateful to additional reviewers who provided vital and supportive
suggestions that helped make this text something we are very proud of:
Nancy Provolt, Eastern Michigan University
Lisa DiDonato, David & Elkins College
Annamaria Formichella Elsden, Buena Vista University
Melissa M. Gosdin, Albany State University
Nancy Porter, Chestnut Hill College
Amy Sorenson, Radford University
Nivedita Vaidya, California State University, Los Angeles
2 anonymous reviewers
GENDERED WORLDS
1 CHAPTER
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organized; and Judge Norton finding that Mr. Leavenworth still made no
reply to his note, after waiting a reasonable time, issued a writ of replevin,
and gave it into the hands of the sheriff, who called upon Mr. Leavenworth
at his office, presented it, and demanded the surrender of the town records.
Mr. Leavenworth refused to deliver them, and the sheriff, calling to his
assistance a number of the citizens, seized the records, and deposited them
in the court-house. Mr. Leavenworth started for Monterey the same
evening, to consult with General Riley upon future proceedings. In the
mean time, the Legislative Assembly issued an address to the people of
California, earnestly calling upon them to assemble in convention, and
organize a provisional government for the territory, prior to an immediate
application to Congress for admission as a state.
This was in the early part of the month of June, and was the first
concerted movement coming from any authorized body to recommend the
formation of a state government for California. Mr. Leavenworth returned
from Monterey, and, acting in the double capacity of a “returned officer”
and a bearer of despatches, brought with him two proclamations issued by
Gen. Riley, which were dated, one the 3d, and the other the 4th of June, and
were found posted up in several parts of the town the morning after Mr.
Leavenworth’s arrival. The streets of San Francisco, on the morning of the
10th of June, presented a most exciting scene. Little knots were gathered
around the streets engaged in loud discussion, and crowds were collected in
the vicinity of the proclamations reading them. The first was a long one,
and commenced by stating that as Congress had failed to extend a
government over California, it became the duty of the people to organize
one; that he, (Gen. Riley) “in accordance with instructions from the
Secretary of War,” had assumed, for the present, the civil government of the
territory, and that he conceived it his duty to organize the old Mexican
system, and put it in active operation until such time as a constitution and
laws should have been created. The document was one of the most
inconsistent and contradictory nature, assuming, firstly, that the territory of
California was, and must of necessity, as a conquered territory, continue to
be under the laws and usages of Mexico, until Congress should extend over
it those of the United States; and at the same time calling upon the people to
assemble and organize a government for themselves. The whole broad
ground which had been taken by the Legislative Assembly of San
Francisco, which was that, in the absence of a government extended over us
by Congress, we had the inherent right to establish one for ourselves,
although denied by Gen. Riley in the first part of his proclamation, was
essentially admitted and urged in the latter portion.
The second proclamation was addressed merely to the citizens of San
Francisco, in relation to the seizure of the town records by order of Judge
Norton, and called upon all good citizens to assist in restoring them to the
“proper authorities.”
Various were the feelings excited, and as various the opinions expressed
in regard to these proclamations, but a large majority of the people of San
Francisco were fully decided in the idea that Gen. Riley had assumed an
authority, which, even if it was “in accordance with the instructions of the
Secretary of War,” was one which he had no right to assume, and was in
fact nothing more nor less than an unjust usurpation of power.
Trouble was again anticipated, and it was understood that, backed by
Gen. Riley’s proclamation, the former alcalde, Mr. Leavenworth, would
attempt the re-seizure of the town records. A few days after the publication
of this document, a writ was served upon the town Register, calling for their
delivery; he refused to give them up, and when an attempt was made to
seize them, a force of about fifty of the most respectable citizens, gathered
at the court-house, determined, if necessary, to resist vi et armis. The
alcalde’s sheriff presented his writ, and was replied to by Wm. M. Stewart,
presiding judge, that the records could not be removed, and seeing that a
strong party was arrayed against him, he left without making any forcible
attempt to take them. Gen. Riley refused to lend the alcalde the assistance
of any military force, and matters were soon progressing again as before.
On the 12th of June, a large meeting was held in Portsmouth Square, for
the purpose of taking steps towards the establishment of a state government
for California. The call for this meeting had been signed by a large number
of respectable citizens, and was issued before Gen. Riley’s proclamations
were published, and could therefore have no connexion with them. This
meeting was addressed by Hon. T. Butler King, Hon. Wm. M. Gwin,
William A. Buffum, Esq., and other speakers, all of whom urged the
propriety of the immediate formation of a state government for California.
In reply to the proclamations of Gen. Riley, an address was issued by the
Legislative Assembly of San Francisco, written by Peter H. Burnett, the
present governor of California, setting forth in a clear and succinct manner,
the right of the people, in the absence of a territorial government established
by Congress, to legislate for themselves, and justifying, in a masterly way,
the course which had been pursued by the Legislative Assembly.
In order to avoid all difficulty and confusion, and arrive, by the shortest
and most practicable mode, at the “consummation devoutly to be wished,”
the establishment of a state government for California, the Assembly and
their supporters united cordially with the other citizens of California, and on
the first day of August an election was held in accordance with the
proclamation of Gen. Riley, at which were chosen the various local officers,
and members of convention, to meet at Monterey, on the first of September,
for the purpose of forming a constitution.
The convention met, and a more sensible and dignified body of men
never assembled in any portion of the world. After six weeks’ severe
labour, a constitution was prepared and laid before the people of California
for their ratification or rejection. It was a constitution of the most radically
democratic character, and most admirably adapted to the wishes and wants
of the people over whom it was to be extended.
On the 13th day of November an election was held, at which the state
constitution received an almost unanimous ratification, and at the same time
a governor, and the necessary state officers, members of the state
legislature, and two members of Congress, were chosen. The choice for
governor fell upon Peter H. Burnett, Esq., one of the early emigrants to
Oregon, and who there received the appointment as judge of the Supreme
Court, an enterprising citizen of California, and one of the first to declare
the rights of her people. John M’Dougal, Esq., formerly of Kentucky, was
elected lieutenant-governor, and George W. Wright, and Edward Gilbert,
representatives to Congress. The first State Legislature met at the capital,
the Pueblo de San José, on the 15th of December, and elected Hon. John C.
Fremont, and Wm. M. Gwin, Senators to the Congress of the United States.
The action of Congress is thus alone necessary to constitute California one
of the sovereign states of the American Union, and it is earnestly to be
hoped that that august body will no longer trifle with the interests or the
demands of so great and powerful a people. The struggles of California
have been arduous, her trials severe; she has been taxed for the support of
the general government, while not even a shadow of protection has been
extended over her; and has been ruled by a military power against her own
wishes, till her people have risen in their might and demanded that they
should have a voice and a representation in the councils of the nation.
In tracing the causes which have created California a state, it will be
seen that that little body of men, the Legislative Assembly of San
Francisco, were the first to set the ball in motion, and I cannot refrain from
giving them the credit which is their due. The proclamation of General
Riley would probably not have been issued to this day, had not the body of
which I have spoken taken the preliminary steps, and although General
Riley deserves gratitude from the people for what he did, and as a man, is
one of “nature’s noblemen,” I shall ever look upon his assumption of power
as Civil Governor of California as unwarranted and unjust.
CHAPTER X.
Growth of San Francisco—Number of Houses erected—Prices of Real Estate—Rents—
Wages of Mechanics and Labourers—Gambling—Prices Current—Climate—Churches
—Steamboats—Statistics of Shipping, &c., &c., &c.
Within the past six months, the growth of San Francisco has been
enormous. During that time, at least a thousand houses have been erected,
of all sizes and forms. The hills around the town are now covered with
buildings, and every spot of ground near the centre is occupied. When it is
taken into consideration, that lumber during this time has never been lower
than two hundred and fifty, and often as high as four hundred dollars per
thousand, and carpenters’ wages have been at from twelve to twenty dollars
a day, it must be conceded on all hands, that the Californians are at least an
enterprising people. During this time the price of real estate has risen in
proportion with the growth of the town, property being now fifty per cent.
higher than it was six months since. A lot on Portsmouth Square, which was
purchased some three years ago for fifteen dollars, and sold last May for six
thousand, was purchased a few days since for forty thousand dollars! The
mere ground-rent of a little piece of land of sufficient size to erect a house
upon, in any of the public streets, varies from one hundred to five hundred
dollars per month. Rents of houses are, of course, in proportion to the price
of real estate. A common-sized lodging-room, anywhere near the centre of
the town, rents for one hundred dollars per month; an office on a lower
floor, from two hundred to five hundred. The “Parker House,” a hotel upon
the Square, is leased for two hundred thousand dollars per annum, and
under-leased in small portions, at a profit of fifty thousand more. In the “El
Dorado,” a large building next to the Parker House, a single room on the
lower floor is rented for gambling purposes, for one hundred and eighty
dollars a day, or five thousand four hundred dollars a month—nearly sixty-
five thousand dollars per annum. Most of the large rooms in the hotels are
rented to gamblers, each table where a game is played paying thirty dollars
a day. A man who erects a house in San Francisco usually intends that the
rent should cover all expenses of the building in three or four months, and
in this he generally succeeds. Mechanics command enormous wages.
Carpenters are now getting from twelve to twenty dollars a day, and tin-
smiths, brick-layers, paper-hangers, and others employed in the
construction of buildings, the same; while common day-labourers engaged
in discharging vessels, digging cellars, &c., command eight dollars a day
for their services. Board varies from sixteen to forty dollars per week, and
washing costs eight dollars per dozen. A bewildered stranger, in search of a
night’s lodging, may procure one by sleeping upon a narrow shelf called a
“bunk,” at the moderate charge of two dollars, and get his breakfast at an
eating-house in the morning for a dollar and a half. Many of the common
articles of trade, such as clothing, can be obtained here almost at New York
prices.
San Francisco possesses one of the most capacious and magnificent
harbours in the world; one in which the navies of all the maritime powers
could ride at anchor in perfect safety. From its entrance to its head is a
distance of about twenty miles, and branching from it are two other large
bays—San Pablo, and Suisun. The entrance to the harbour is guarded by
lofty hills, about five thousand feet apart, and could be protected with the
greatest ease. But the town of San Francisco itself is not fitted by nature as
a pleasant residence. During the spring, summer, and autumn, cold
northwest winds are continually blowing, sometimes with such severity as
to destroy buildings, and always filling the streets with a dense cloud of
dust. From December to March, during the continuance of the rainy season,
the streets, which have been filled with dust in the summer, become perfect
pools of mud and mire, so that in some of them it is almost impossible to
travel. The climate is one of the most peculiar in the world. During the
summer the weather is so cold that a fire is always needed, and the
surrounding hills are dry and burned up; while in the winter, in the
intermissions between the rains, the weather is delightfully warm and May-
like, and the hills become clothed with a lovely verdure. Among the
improvements in the town are several wharves, which have been completed
within a short time past. The principal of these, the central wharf, built by a
joint-stock company, extends into the harbour a distance of two hundred
and ninety-two feet, and will, when completed, be twenty-one hundred feet
in length, enabling vessels to lie abreast, and discharge their cargoes
directly upon it. Several churches have also been erected; and there are now
in the town seven, of the following denominations, viz.: Catholic, 1;
Episcopalian, 2; Baptist, 1; Presbyterian, 2; Methodist, 1. There are also
two public schools in operation. Some ten or twelve steamboats are plying
on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and the bay of San Francisco; so
that travelling has ceased to be so disagreeable as it was when I went up the
Sacramento in a little open boat. These steamboats run to Benicia,
Sacramento City, Stockton, and San Josè; while several smaller ones ply up
and down the Sacramento River, to and from the various little towns upon
it. The passage from San Francisco to Sacramento City, a distance of one
hundred and eighty miles, is performed in nine hours; the price of passage
being twenty-five dollars.
The following table, kindly furnished me by the Collector of the port,
exhibits the amount of tonnage in San Francisco on the 10th of November,
1849, together with the number and national character of the vessels in the
harbour.
American tonnage, 87,494
Foreign do. 32,823
Total amount of tonnage, 120,317
MONTEREY.
The town of Monterey is situated upon the large bay of that name,
formed by the curve of land between Point Año Nuevo on the north, and
Point Pinos on the south. Until the adoption of the present constitution for
California, Monterey was always the seat of government of the territory,
and the residence of her military governors and other officers. The town
presents a very neat and pretty appearance, with its houses of white-
plastered adobes and its surrounding hills covered with lofty pine trees. It
retains its old Spanish peculiarities, and Yankee innovations have as yet
made but little progress there. The Spanish don, clothed in his serape and
calcineros, still walks through the streets with his lordly air, and the pretty
señorita, her dark eyes peering through the folds of her reboso, skips lightly
along the footpath. The ancient customs are still continued here, and the
sound of the guitar and the light shuffling of pretty feet are heard nightly in
the casas. I saw here a few weeks since a funeral celebrated in the old style,
which, although by no means new to me, exceedingly astonished some
Yankee friends who had but just arrived. A procession of some hundred
people, men, women, and children, were straggling along the street,
preceded by six little girls, dressed in white, bearing upon their shoulders
the coffin of an infant. Upon one side of this were two musicians, with a
guitar and violin, playing such tunes as are heard at the country dances in
the United States, while upon the other were two tall fellows with muskets,
which they were continually loading and firing. By the sides of the
procession was a troop of boys, all armed with Chinese fire-crackers, which
they exploded by the pack, keeping up a most infernal racket. In this
manner the procession marched to the church, where the coffin was opened,
and the little body strewn with wild flowers. After some Catholic ceremony
the body was committed to the grave, when the whole posse adjourned to
the residence of the parents, where a grand fandango and feast were given,
which lasted throughout the whole night.
About six miles from Monterey lie the mission and valley of Carmel,
one of the prettiest spots in all Upper California, and one of the most
favourable for agricultural pursuits; and twenty-five miles distant is the
great valley of San Juan, ten miles in width, and thirty miles in length. This
valley possesses a climate peculiar to itself, and a soil of exceeding
richness. The winds from the ocean are mellowed before they reach here,
and fall with a delicious coolness upon this beautiful vale. The agricultural
products are principally corn, wheat, and potatoes, which are taken to
Monterey and sold at good prices.
The bay of Monterey abounds in fish of every variety, but particularly
mackerel, which can be caught in great quantities with a hook and line
directly in the harbour. The town contains about one thousand inhabitants,
and its climate is superior to that of any other locality on the coast, although
during the summer a dense fog usually rises for a few hours in the morning.
A fort has been built upon a hill overlooking the town and harbour, and a
military force is stationed there. There are several American residents in
Monterey at the present time, engaged in mercantile pursuits; but very little
building is in progress, and the town bids fair to remain for a long time a
representative of California as she was before the indomitable Yankee
introduced his “notions” into her territory.
SANTA BARBARA.