are mentioned, not as of particular importance in themselves, but as exceptions of some moment to the usual type of state Constitutions (see United States). The Australian ballot was introduced in 1891. In local government there are no deviations from the usual types that demand notice. In the matter of liquor-laws there is local option, and a considerable proportion of the towns and smaller cities, particularly in the south, adopt prohibition. In most of the rest high licence is more or less strictly enforced.
The total assessed valuation of property grew from $666,399,985 in 1880 to $1,217,648,683 in 1900 and $1,879,728,763 in 1907. In 1904, when the U.S. Census Report showed California to be the twenty-first state of the Union in population but the sixth in wealth, the total estimated true value of all property was $4,115,491,106, of which $2,664,472,025 was the value of real property and improvements thereon. The per capita wealth of the state was then reported as $2582.32, being exceeded only by the three sparsely settled states of Montana, Wyoming and Nevada. In 1898 California had the largest savings-bank deposit per depositor ($637.75) of any state in the Union; the per caput deposit was $110 in 1902, and about one person in seven was a depositor. The state bonded debt in 1907 amounted to three and a half million dollars, of which all but $767,529.03 was represented by bonds purchased by the state and held for the school and university funds; for the common school fund on the 1st of July 1907 there were held bonds for $4,890,950, and $800,000 in cash available for investment; for the university fund there were held $751,000 in state bonds, and a large amount in other securities. The total bonded county indebtedness was $4,879,600 in 1906 (not including that of San Francisco, a consolidated city and county, which was $4,568,600). A homestead, entered upon record and limited to a value of $5000 if held by the head of a family and to a value of $1000 if held by one not the head of a family, is exempt from liability for debts, except for a mortgage, a lien before it was claimed as a homestead or a lien afterward for improvements. A homestead held by a married man cannot be mortgaged without consent of his wife.
Under an act approved on the 25th of March 1903 a state board of charities and corrections,—consisting of six members, not more than three being of the same political party, appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the senate, and holding office for twelve years, two retiring at the end of each quadrennium,—investigates, examines, and makes “reports upon the charitable, correctional and penal institutions of the state,” excepting the Veterans’ Home at Yountville, Napa county, and the Woman’s Relief Corps Home at Evergreen, Santa Clara county. There are state prisons with convicts working under the public account system, at San Quentin, Marin county, and Folsom, Sacramento county. The Preston (Sonoma county) School of Industry, for older boys, and the Whittier (Los Angeles county) State School, for girls and for boys under sixteen, are the state reformatories, each having good industrial and manual training departments. There are state hospitals for the insane at Agnew, Santa Clara county; at Stockton, San Joaquin county; at Napa, Napa county; at Patton, San Bernardino county; and, with a colony of tubercular patients, at Ukiah, Mendocino county. In 1906 the ratio of insane confined to institutions, to the total population, was 1 to every 270. Also under state control are the home for care and training of feeble-minded children, at Eldridge, Sonoma county; the institution for the deaf and the blind at Berkeley, and the home of mechanical trades for the adult blind at Oakland. A Juvenile Court Law was enacted in 1903 and modified in 1905.
The educational system of California is one of the best in the country. The state board of education is composed of the governor of the state, who is its president; the superintendent of public instruction, who is its secretary; the presidents of the five normal schools and of the University of California, and the professor of pedagogy in the university. Sessions are long in primary schools, and attendance was made compulsory in 1874 (and must not be less than two-thirds of all school days). The state controlled the actual preparation and sale of text-books for the common schools from 1885 to 1903, when the Perry amendment to the constitution (ratified by popular vote in 1884) was declared to mean that such text-books must be manufactured within the state, but that the texts need not be prepared in California. The experiment of state-prepared text-books was expensive, and its effect was bad on the public school system, as such text-books were almost without exception poorly written and poorly printed. After 1903 copyrights were leased by the state. Secondary schools are closely affiliated with, and closely inspected by, the state university. All schools are generously supported, salaries are unusually good, and pension funds in all cities are authorized by state laws. The value of school property in 1900 was $19,135,722, and the expenditure for the public schools $6,195,000; in 1906 the value of school property was $29,013,150, and the expenditure for public schools $10,815,857. The average school attendance for all minors of school age (5-20 years) was 59.9%; of those native-born 61.5, of those foreign-born 34.6; of coloured children, including Asiatics and Indians, 35.8, and of white, 60.8%. In 1900, 6.2% of the males of voting age, and 2.4% of the native-born males of voting age, were illiterate (could not write). Some 3% of the total population could not speak English; Chinese and Japanese constituting almost half of the number, foreign-born whites somewhat less, and Indians and native-born whites of foreign parentage together less than a tenth of the total. Of the higher educational institutions of the state the most important are the state university at Berkeley and Leland Stanford Jr. University at Palo Alto. The former is supported with very great liberality by the state; and the latter, the endowment of which is private (the state, however, exempting it from taxation), is one of the richest educational institutions of America. In 1906 there were also five state normal schools (at Chico, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and San José), and a considerable number of denominational colleges. There is also a state polytechnic school at San Luis Obispo (1903).
History.—The name “California” was taken from Ordoñez de Montalvo’s romance of chivalry Las Sergas de Esplandian (Madrid, 1510), in which is told of black Amazons ruling an island of this name “to the right of the Indies, very near the quarter of the terrestrial paradise.” The name was given to the unknown north-west before 1540. It does not show that the namers were prophets or wise judges, for the Spaniards really knew California not at all for more than two centuries, and then only as a genial but rather barren land; but it shows that the conquistadores mixed poetry with business and illustrates the glamour thrown about the “Northern Mystery.” Necessarily the name had for a long time no definite geographical meaning. The lower Colorado river was discovered in 1540, but the explorers did not penetrate California; in 1542–1543 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explored at least the southern coast; in 1579 Sir Francis Drake repaired his ships in some Californian port (almost certainly not San Francisco Bay), and named the land New Albion; two Philippine ships visited the coast in 1584 and 1595, and in 1602 and 1603 Sebastian Vizcaino discovered the sites of San Diego and Monterey. There was apparently no increase of knowledge thereafter for 150 years. Most of this time California was generally supposed to be an island or a group of islands. Jesuit missionaries entered Lower California as early as 1697, maintaining themselves there until Charles III.’s expulsion in 1767 of all Jesuits from his dominions; but not until Russian explorations in Alaska from 1745–1765 did the Spanish government show interest in Upper California. Because of these explorations, and also the long-felt need of a refitting point on the California coast for the galleons from Manila, San Diego was occupied in 1769 and Monterey in 1770 as a result of urgent orders from Charles III. San Francisco Bay was discovered in the former year. Meanwhile the Jesuit property in the Peninsula had been turned over to Franciscan monks, but in 1772 the Dominicans took over the missions, and the Franciscans not unwillingly withdrew to Upper California, where they were to thrive remarkably for some fifty years.
This is the mission period—or from an economic standpoint,
