Emigrants Crossing the Plains<\/em>. Drawn by F.O.C. Darley, engraved by Henry Bryan Hall.<\/p>\n\u201cYou have no idea how few women we have here, a San Francisco lawyer writes to his sister back home in 1849,\u201d and if one makes her appearance in the street, all stop, stand, and look. The latest fashion is to carry them in their arms (the streets are incredibly muddy). This we see every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The gender imbalance is a subject of marvel to every observer then and since. The world\u2019s oldest profession thrives in this hormonal tsunami. In the course of 1849, the hamlet of San Francisco\u2019s bolts to 20,000, of which it is estimated 1000 are women – and two-thirds of those work in or manage brothels. Most men pouring into the city are in their raging testosterone twenties and have been deprived of traditional sex for at least six months.<\/p>\n
Some of the most successful and powerful women in mid-nineteenth century America live in the frontier where they are vastly outnumbered by men and subject to a more primitive, unfiltered form of masculinity. Madams, in particular, parlay their business into fortune and influence. \u201cThe only aristocracy we had here at the time,\u201d remarks Caleb T. Fay, a leading San Francisco politician during the Gold Rush, \u201cwere the gamblers and prostitutes.\u201d A brothel proprietress made her money off patriarchy, but that success is a challenge to it as much as an accommodation. <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Exporting Virtue<\/strong><\/p>\nIt was a simple proposition. Plenty of California men – most believed rich or soon to be so – without women. Ladies possessing the adventure and pluck to travel to that far-off land might find an ideal situation. \u201cEvery man thought every woman in that day a beauty,\u201d a Sacramento woman confesses to her diary. \u201cEven I have had men come forty miles over the mountains, just to look at me, and I was never called a handsome woman, in the best day, even by most ardent admirers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The men needed both the carnal and the cultural. Females would deliver a healthy dose of virtue to tame the savage beast. \u201cWe do not wish to say, or even imply, that San Francisco is the wickedest and most immoral city in the world,\u201d historian Benjamin E. Lloyd mused in 1876, \u201cbut it has not yet overcome the immoral habits contracted in the days when the inhabitants were nearly all males, and had nothing to restrain them from engaging in the most vicious practices; when there were no mothers to chide their waywardness and say in winning tones: \u201cMy son go not in the way of evil\u201d and fewer virtuous sisters to welcome brothers home, and by their loving kindness and noble lives, to teach them to cease from sinning.\u201d Readers applauded the sentiment of James Wyld in his 1849 <\/strong>Guide to the Gold Country of California<\/em>: \u201cSociety without woman is like an edifice built on sand. Woman, to society, is like the cement to the stone. The society has no such cement; its elements float to and fro on the excited, turbulent, hurried life of California immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\nThere are formal schemes to fill this moral vacuum. The most celebrated is hatched in 1849 by Eliza Farnham, author and former matron of the female section of Sing Sing Prison. She has skin in the California game. Her late husband leaves a large tract of land near Santa Cruz that she is keen to develop. Farnham concocts an ambitious plan: organize a group of well-recommended marriageable women that would \u201cbring their refinement and kindly cares and powers\u201d to the rough-hewn society of male fortune seekers. Ideologically, Farnham goes farther than most feminists of the age, advocating the natural superiority of women. She is prominent, and so are her public supporters, the likes of Horace Greeley and William Cullen Bryant, editors of The<\/em> New-York Tribune<\/em> and The<\/em> New York Evening Post<\/em>, and Henry Ward Beecher, the renowned clergyman and abolitionist.<\/p>\nFarnham shuttles between cities on the Atlantic coast, addressing meetings, examining applicants, and giving press interviews. Soon, she could announce that more than 130 women had \u201csignified\u201d a desire to join up. The New York Tribune<\/em> praises her and the \u201cprecious cargo . . . on an errand of mercy to the golden land.\u201d Editors on both coasts are captivated by the notion. In California, there is joy. One local mining newspaper reports that \u201csmiles of anticipation wreathed the countenance of every bachelor in town.\u201d However, Farnham is having difficulty finding suitable clients and then closing a deal that yanks young ladies from the comforts of family and friends to trek halfway around the world on a wild speculation, and for a big fee – payable in advance, thank you. No refunds. The ballyhooed April launch is postponed. By June, she is ready to give up the plan and sail with a scant three prospects. Disappointed supporters complain that her personal standards for recruits may have been too high, along with the price tag. TheAlta California <\/em>accepts the news graciously: \u201cThe will is always taken for the deed, and bachelors will unquestionably cherish the liveliest of feelings of regard for the lady who so warmly exerted herself to bring a few spareribs to the market.\u201d Farnham expresses no regrets. After experiencing \u201cthe moral and social poverty\u201d of California for six years, she is \u201cgrateful that my endeavors failed.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
More women<\/strong><\/p>\nThere are other grand plans to civilize the Wild West by estrogen. A few years later, Sarah Pellet, a noted advocate of temperance, <\/em>abolition, and woman\u2019s rights <\/em>pursues a scheme for \u201camelioration of the condition of Californians.\u201d Again, the plan looks solid on paper: export 5,000 \u201crespectable, marriageable New England girls\u201d to be recommended by the Sons of Temperance as \u201cworthy girls.\u201d The Sons of Temperance in California agrees to serve as guardians upon their arrival. If this initiative works, there are plans to up the contingent to 10,000. Unfortunately, too few worthy girls are willing to be shipped and the plan is abandoned, again breaking miners\u2019 hearts.<\/p>\nThe gradual but relentless march of progress will eventually balance the genders in California. 50-50 is the order of nature.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The site has been offering a wide variety of high-quality, free history content for over 12 years. If you\u2019d like to say \u2018thank you\u2019 and help us with site running costs, please consider <\/em><\/strong>donating here<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emigrants Crossing the Plains. Drawn by F.O.C. Darley, engraved by Henry Bryan Hall. \u201cYou have no idea how few women we have here, a San Francisco lawyer writes to his sister back home in 1849,\u201d and if one makes her appearance in the street, all stop, stand, and look. The latest fashion is to carry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[3767,1752,15594,3734,2083,6247,7513,3924,1762,5701,313],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-62893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-history","tag-blog","tag-books","tag-gender","tag-history","tag-magazine","tag-podcasts","tag-sex","tag-society","tag-west","tag-wild","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n
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