I. The Setting for Jonathan's Journey to California
Piecing together a picture of my namesake then has some holes. Many of California’s civic records were destroyed either by floods in Sacramento or by the earthquake and fire in San Francisco. His letters seem to have been sent back to New York after he arrived in California.
The story of the California Gold Rush needs to be put into perspective; the news cycle in the mid-nineteenth century was slow, very slow. One wag at the time described the Post Office as “a shadow of an apology for transmission of letters or news.” In 1846 California had about 10,000 Spanish-speaking residents and perhaps another 2,000 immigrants of European heritage. That changed quickly when James Marshall discovered the gold flecks in Coloma on January 24, 1848. News of the discovery did not reach the San Francisco papers for another two months. By the end of that year, about 6,000 Forty-eighters (the early gold seekers) were in the state, and they were mostly from nearby states. Newspapers in New York did not have a story about the discovery until August 19,1848, with the breathless announcement that “gold was for the taking.”
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Two other events may have precipitated Jonathan’s desire to venture west. During the fall of 1848, mentions of gold in newspapers began to grow in frequency and excitement. In August the Commandant of Monterey, who is a distant relative on my mother’s side (Colonel Richard Barnes Mason, grandson of George Mason), wrote a lengthy report to President Polk about his trip to the gold fields. Two snippets from the report give you an idea of his excitement;
We started on the 12th of June last to make a tour through the northern part of California. We reached San Francisco on the 20th, and found that all, or nearly all, its male inhabitants had gone to the mines. The town, which a few months before was so busy and thriving, was then almost deserted
Mr. Marshall was living near the mill, and informed me that many persons were employed above and below him; that they used the same machines as at the lower washings, and that their success was about the same—ranging from one to three ounces of gold per man daily.
Polk also received a report of gold diggings from Kit Carson, the legendary scout. In his 1848 State of the Union, (delivered in December of that year), he used the gold discovery as a justification for the recently concluded war by arguing that
Recent discoveries render it probable that these mines are more extensive and valuable than was anticipated. The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service who have visited the mineral district and derived the facts which they detail from personal observation.
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The effects produced by the discovery of these rich mineral deposits and the success that has attended the labors of those who have resorted to them, have produced a surprising change in the state of affairs in California. Labor commands a most exorbitant price, and all other pursuits, but that of searching for the precious metals, are abandoned. Nearly the whole of the male population of the country has gone to the gold districts. Ships arriving on the coast are deserted by their crews and voyages were suspended for want of sailors. Our commanding officer entertains apprehensions that soldiers can not be kept in the public service without a large increase of pay. Desertions in his command have become frequent, and he recommends that those who shall withstand the strong temptation and remain faithful should be rewarded. This abundance of gold and the all-engrossing pursuit of it have already caused in California an unprecedented rise in the price of all the necessaries of life.
There may have been one more motivator for Jonathan to undertake the journey. In mid-December of 1848, a packet ship named the New York arrived with seventeen passengers who, according to one news account at the time, were infected with “Asiatic Cholera.” So his choice between staying home or risking a four-to-five-month sea voyage may well have appeared as filled with equal perils.
About a month after the outbreak, Jonathan began his trip, following several months of gold fever discussion in the media. The papers for the last few months of 1848 were filled with ads about ways to get to California. So, in 1849, Jonathan joined an estimated 90,000 forty-niners looking for gold. About half of the miners came to the state by sea.
Jonathan's Passage Receipt to California
Jonathan's Younger Brother in New Jersey
II. From Fleeting Encounters with Fleeting Fame....
In my many roles during my career I had the opportunity to meet and work with a wide range of famous people—they included three presidents, five governors, the president of Mexico, and four governors of Mexican states, two major religious figures, and a few public policy idiots. What follows are some anecdotes about each of those encounters.
U.S. Presidents
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Noted in another chapter is my first encounter with President Nixon, then running for Governor of California. But this story is about a time near the end of his presidency. My last job in Washington was helping to create the Federal Energy Office, which ultimately became the Department of Energy. While working in FEO, I was in two presidential press conferences.
The President Then and Now—My first chance to meet a sitting US president came about on a family vacation. Our family was in Monterey and heard on the news that President Eisenhower would be attending church the next day in Monterey. We showed up and found about twenty other people waiting for services to finish. The president and the first lady walked out of the church, and then patiently shook hands with everyone there, got into the presidential limo and drove off.
I remember it there were a couple of local policy and one or two secret service vehicles. It was very low key. But it made a real impression on this ten year only boy.
The first was to introduce my boss—William Simon (1927–2000). The Nixon White House was a formal place. On the day that Bill was introduced, the President gave a short statement and then allowed Bill to come up to the podium. The press room was built on top of the former White House swimming pool, so I always thought its ceilings were a bit low. In the mid-1970s, TV cameras needed a lot of light—so right above the podium was a series of klieg lights. It was intense under those lights. Bill, stepping up and opening his folder with the remarks we had written for him, looked out at the crowd and said, “Christ, it is hot in here.”
He took off his jacket, handed it back to his deputy, grabbed a glass, and poured himself some
water. Then he looked out at the press people and said, “I assume many of you can read, so I will skip my statement—just have at me.” It was typical Simon—brash and
candid. I looked back at the President, who was standing behind him, and he looked apoplectic.
One of the perks of being a congressional staffer was the opportunity to see the President up close. The picture is one I took at a White House welcoming ceremony.
Photo by the author.
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The more telling photo is of the pass I used to go to the welcoming ceremony in 1971. The last time I was in the White House, the clearance procedure for going to a reception with Laura Bush was complicated, including submitting various documents well in advance and
rechecking them when you got to the East Gate. That is not surprising, but it is a real difference between the first White House reception— where there was no clearance procedure—and the more elaborate one thirty years later.
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During the George W. Bush Presidency I was invited to a national meeting on higher education. The US Department of Education devised the guest list. I think I was there either as the long time leader of AICCU or because of my work on the National Commission on College costs. Regardless, the list of participants had been extensively vetted. At the end of the day we were invited to a White House reception. The clearance procedures for that event, even though presumably security had a very good idea of who I was, was elaborate. I was required to fill out a questionnaire several weeks before the event. Upon entering the East Gate, I was required to submit both a couple of pieces of identification. Each of the participants were offered the chance to have their picture taken with the First Lady, who I found very gracious and with Margaret Spellings (the Secretary of Education) who I had clashed with publicly several times, including at this “summit”. The First Lady asked me if I had ever been in the White House, and I replied yes but during the Nixon Administration. She responded, “you should come here more often.”
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After the first Simon press conference we had a second, and because Simon was a popular quantity, the President was there. This was when Watergate was heating up. I was in Gerry Warren’s office (Nixon’s press secretary) about twenty minutes before the scheduled time. The President came in, and everyone naturally stood up. He said hello to each of us and shook hands with Bill. I looked at the President and was amazed at his appearance. This was perhaps six or seven months before he resigned. But Nixon had on a noticeable layer of pancake makeup. His hair was slicked back. And when you looked at his eyes, the pupils were very small—it looked like he was taking uppers. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, later describing the last couple of days of the Nixon Administration, said that the President would talk to the presidential portraits late at night. Based on my observation, that could well have been true. I worked with two future Presidents. Gerald Ford was the minority leader of the House when I worked for Marvin Esch, but he was also the leader of the Michigan delegation. Ford was a nice guy. He treated staff well. In the delegation meetings he ran a crisp meeting, but he always seemed willing to listen to both members and staff—he did not have a lot of pretense.
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One of the oddities about working for Bill Simon was how things would come up at the last moment. Once, I was asked to go to dinner with the Vice President. It would be a working dinner to brief the veep (Ford) on the energy issue. That was the experience of working on something that was consistently in the national news. My assumptions about what would happen next were constantly adjusted. I had planned to pick up Quinlan at GW, where she was taking a class, that afternoon. But, obviously, now I could not do that. Quinlan called my office and asked whether I was going to pick her up. My secretary said, “I don’t think so—he is having dinner with the Vice President.” The one thing I remember about the dinner, which was held in a dining room in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, was when Ford entered the room. I think there were three people from Energy at the meeting, all senior to me, but Ford came in and said hello to me— we chatted briefly about Congressman Esch. My two colleagues were impressed. But I have no memory about the substance of the discussions we had that night.
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I think Ford got a bad rap about his intelligence. In 1976, I was in DC to do some meetings, and a friend who worked for the President invited me to watch Ford present his budget proposal. Ford came out in the press room and gave a broad overview of the budget, then invited questions. The first came from Sarah McClendon, who ran her own news agency and was a fixture of the DC press corps. She asked about funding for some minor agency and Ford gave her a substantive response. I thought that was smart. McClendon had a couple of favorite issues, so the President was prepared. But then Ford stepped from behind the podium and began to answer questions without notes. He did that through about an hour’s worth of questions. That was amazing, I thought—no President ever knew his budget to that level of detail. But, evidently, the DC press corps was not impressed and made no mention of that extraordinary feat. The news coverage that night simply said that the Administration had presented its budget proposal.
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While I worked in the House, I also had the occasion to work with George H. W. Bush, who was then chair of the Republican National Committee. The RNC had built a new private club called the Capitol Hill Club. The Club offered a special rate for people under thirty, and I quickly joined. I went to many events there and used it for lunches where I wanted to control the check. Bush held a couple of events for the younger members. Like Ford, he was gracious and relaxed.
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During that time I was also president of the Ripon Society, a group of Republican intellectuals. The largest chapters were in Boston and Washington. We had scheduled a fundraiser at the Capitol Hill Club for October 1973. The Saturday before our event, President Nixon tried unsuccessfully to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Through a series of maneuvers, first Elliot Richardson and then Bill Ruckelshaus were fired for being unwilling to fire Cox. Finally, future Supreme Court nominee and then Solicitor General, Robert Bork, did the deed.
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Among the items we had for auction for the fundraiser were some personal memorabilia from Bush and a doodle from Elliot Richardson. The Bush thing had been autographed and I thought it would go for a high price; it may have gone for $100. In the end, the highest-grossing item was the Richardson doodle on a scrap of legal paper—that went for more than $5,000.
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Ripon eventually fell apart. You can find all sorts of former Ripon alums across the political spectrum. George Gilder had been an active member who, a few years after the fundraiser after the Saturday Night Massacre (described above), wrote a series of influential books on economics and on technology issues. A couple of former Ripon members became Democrats, and many became the core of libertarian and neoconservative movements.
When I was on the board of the National Association of
Independent Colleges and Universities, I had the chance
to meet both Bill Clinton and Al Gore. The contrasts
between the two could not have been more stark (more
on that below). When I received the notice that the
President would be meeting privately with the NAICU
board, I called David Warren, the president of the Association, and offered to give up my space to someone who was more sympathetic to Clinton. Warren told me no, I should be there. The thirty-plus board members were then vetted and on the day of the event were ushered into a private room. We spent a short time with the President, who then went out to give the speech to the assembled NAICU members. I thought it was one of the best extemporaneous speeches I had ever heard. Clinton seemed to have prepared well for the occasion. He hit some key issues for the independent sector and then, about halfway through, raised a couple of issues that were uncomfortable for colleges. At the end of the speech we were given the opportunity to speak directly to the President—each member got about thirty seconds. Clinton had a firm handshake. I mentioned that I was bringing greetings from one of his law school classmates, Nancy Bekavac, and his face lit up with that. Then he continued to work his way down the line. I thought it was an amazing performance.
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The next year, the same drill was conducted with the Vice President. Compared to Clinton’s extemporaneous remarks, Gore read his speech and read it poorly— it was almost as if he had not thought about the group he would be speaking to before he got up to speak.
When he went through the line, Gore had one of the
weakest handshakes I have ever encountered. I think I have a good understanding of the charisma of politicians. The contrast between Gore and Clinton could not have been more distinct.
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California governors
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In California I worked in varying degrees of closeness with every governor from Ronald Reagan to Jerry Brown in his second administration. George Deukmejian was a truly genuine person. Quinlan and I often saw him and his wife, Gloria, at a local ice cream shop on Friday nights. Gray Davis was one of the most colorless figures I ever encountered. At one point, before he was governor, I went to talk to him about an issue and was asked to come back at lunchtime. He was sitting at this desk with a plate of cottage cheese and ketchup.
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MORE ON THE NEXT SEVERAL CALIFORNIA GOVERNORS and other prominent people I worked with....
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In 2001 ,I lead a session with the senior officials of the newly elected officials of the Fox Administration at Claremont Granduate University. You'll find out more in the second stave...
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III. The Glass is Refillable
