Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems: Expanded Edition

Provincialism: Based Upon a Study of Early Conditions in California

provincialism Based upon a Study of Early Conditions in California  I Iam a native of California, and the first ten years of my life were passed in a mining town in the Sierra Nevada—a town which was six years older than myself, having been founded in 1849. My earliest recollections, therefore, are of a community that had no history behind it, except the history of the individual fortunes of its members and of their families. And so if any child in an American community could be brought up without being influenced by any definite provincial traditions, I, as a child, was at first in that position. As a fact, the young Californian of my generation was naturally trained to a sort of individualism that might be good or bad in its results, but that at any rate involved little tendency to be the slave of merely local prejudices of any sort. It was indeed not true in that community that every man This essay appeared in Putnam’s Magazine 7 (1909): 232–40. {  }  provincialism did merely that which was right in his own eyes. There was a prevailingly wholesome public opinion. There was generally good order in the community. And there was a lively play of social forces. But it was true that this play of social forces was uninfluenced by any historic local memories. It was true that nobody’s costumes or speech or religion or ideals could as yet stand for anything like a finished provincial consciousness of just that community. Provincialism was in the making . It was not yet made. And so, in childhood, I unconsciously learned what it was not to be provincial. For as yet I had no province. I had my home. But home meant my father and mother and sisters. So far as what lay outside of the household was concerned, we had only a dwelling-place,—a dwelling-place where nature had made the beautiful abound, and where man was busy, in the main, in the reckless defacing of nature ,—a dwelling-place where vast natural wealth was stored up, and where man was devoted to the recklessly wasteful plundering of that wealth. In my environment the men were indeed numerous, interesting , various in type, intelligent, eager, adventurous, and, like all men, intensely social. But there was as yet little social memory in the community . The community, as an organized body, was as unable to form an idea of a past that it could call its own, as I, the unconscious child, was unable to know whence I had come when I entered the world. Since that time I have had numerous reasons to think over what that whole social situation really meant. In later years I was once moved to attempt a sketch of early California history. When I wrote the volume which contained this sketch, I, of course, could not trust any of my early childhood impressions. I spent a good while working over the records of early California, studying old newspaper files, and manuscript statements of pioneers, and contemporary magazine literature ,—trying as I could to catch the very elusive social spirit of the years which preceded my own memories. I found the study very instructive regarding both the good and the evil consequences of that lack of provincialism which was inevitable in the first mining period of California. provincialism  And what was the social lesson thus to be learned? In what condition is a large and fairly prosperous community of civilized men when it possesses a local habitation, but has as yet no provincial consciousness? Bret Harte’s Misleading Tales The difficulty of answering these questions may be indicated by reminding you of the so famous pictures that Bret Harte drew, in his stories of the early California days. As a Californian, I can say that not one childhood memory of mine suggests any social incident or situation that in the faintest degree gives meaning or confirmation to Bret Harte’s stories. It is true that, when I came to consciousness, in the early sixties of the last century, the earlier California of Bret Harte’s stories had, of course, passed away. But it is also true that Bret Harte himself never saw the mines in ’49 and ’50, and that, years later, he collected the chance materials of his stories from hearsay. It is also true that the social...