The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
law, leaving Lane determined to increase his efficiency by earning
his way through college and the Hastings Law School.
The first letters of this volume follow the theme of the political
interests of the two young men.
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Oakland, February 27, 1888
MY DEAR WIGMORE,--I am thinking of getting back in your part of
the world myself, and this is what I especially wanted to write
you about. I desire to see the world, to rub off some of my
provincialisms, to broaden a little before I settle down to a
prosaic existence. So, as I say, I want to live in Boston awhile
and my only possibility of so doing is to get a position on some
Boston paper, something that will afford me a living and allow
some little time for social and literary life. However I don't
care much what the billet is. I can bring letters of
recommendation from all the good newspaper men in San Francisco,
both as to my ability at editorial work (I have done considerable
for the San Francisco NEWS LETTER and EXAMINER), and at all kinds
of reportorial work. ...
I passed the law examination before the Supreme Court last month,
so I am now a full-fledged--but not a flying, attorney. I have not
determined definitely on going into law. ...
Politically speaking we Mugwumps out here are happy. ...
California has been opposed to Cleveland on every one of his great
proposals (civil service reform, silver question, tariff reform),
and yet the Republicans must nominate a very strong man to get
this State this year. The people admire old Grover's strength so
much, he is a positive man and an honest man, and when the people
see these two exceptional virtues mixed happily in a candidate
they grow to love and admire him out of the very idealism of their
natures.
But I must not bother the Boston attorney any longer. Write me all
you know of opportunities there and believe me always your friend,
FRANK K. LANE
TO JOHN B. WIGMORE
Oakland, May 9, 1888
MY DEAR WIGMORE,--Of course I would have to stand my chances in
getting a position. Newspaper men, perhaps more than any other
class, are rated by ability. Civil Service Reform principles rule
in every good newspaper office to their fullest extent. When I
wrote you, I was unsettled as to my plans for the coming year. My
brother desired to spend a year or so in Boston and I thought of
accompanying him. He has changed his plans and so have I. ... I am
regularly on the Chronicle staff, chiefly writing sensational
stories. I get a regular salary of twenty-five dollars a week
besides some extras, and have as easy and pleasant a billet as
there is on the paper, though editorial work would be more to my
liking.
These arrangements do not interfere, however, with my Boston plan,
for sooner or later I shall breathe its intellectual atmosphere,
that I may outgrow provincialism and become intellectual by force
of habit rather than will. How long it will be before the wish can
be gratified I cannot tell. Probably next year. You see the law is
not altogether after my taste. I feel it a waste of time to spend
days quarreling like school-boys over a few hundred dollars. I
feel all the time as if I must be engaged in some life work which
will make more directly for the good of my fellows. I feel the
need which the world manifests for broader ideas in economics,
politics, the philosophy of life, and all social questions.
Feeling so, I cannot coop myself in a law library behind a pile of
briefs, spending my days and nights in search of some authority
which will save my client's dollar. I am unsettled, however, as to
my permanent work. ...
Oakland, September 20, 1888
... The copies of the Massachusetts law have been duly received
and put to the best of use. On my motion our Young Men's League
appointed a Committee to draft a law for presentation to the
Legislature. Judge Maguire, Ferd, [Footnote: Ferdinand Vassault, a
college friend. ] and two others, with myself, are on that
Committee and we are hard at work. I send to-day a copy of the
Examiner containing a ballot reform bill just introduced by the
Federated Trades. It is based on the New York law but is very
faulty. We are working with that bill as a basis, proposing
various and very necessary amendments. We hope to get our bill
adopted in Committee as a substitute for the one introduced, and
believe that the Federated Trades will be perfectly willing to
adopt our measure. ...
Tell me, please, how you select your election officials in your
large cities. Our mode of selection is really the weak point with
us, for no matter how good a law we might procure, its enforcement
would be left to "boss" tools--corruptionists of the worst
class. ...
Oakland, December 2, 1888
... Your letter breathes the sentiments of thousands of
Republicans who voted against Cleveland. They are now "just a
little" sorry that so good a man is beaten. I never quite
understood your political position. Your letter to Ferd giving
your reason was, I must say, not conclusive, for I cannot believe
that you can find a greater field of usefulness or power in the
Republican than in the Democratic party, surely not now that the
new Democracy--a party aggressive, filled with the reform spirit,
and right in the direction it takes, now that such a party is in
the field.
You surely ought to join us on the tariff fight, but then I wish
you the best of fortune whatever your choice. Ferd and several
others with myself are now organizing what will some day be a
great state, if not a great national institution. We call it the
Young Men's Democratic League [Footnote: This plan seems to have
been to enlarge the influence of the League mentioned in a former
letter.]--it is to be made up of young men from twenty-one to
forty-five; its scope--national politics, election of President
and Congressmen, and its immediate purpose to inform the people on
the tariff question. When our Constitution is published you shall
have one. We expect to organize branches all over the State and in
a year or two will be strong in the thousands.
Your election article was of a singular kind but VERY good. I have
loaned it out among the old crowd. I spoke of it to Judge
Sullivan, who is compiling authorities on the "intention of the
voter" as governing, where the spelling is wrong on a ballot.
Sullivan ran for Supreme Justice and ran thousands ahead of his
ticket (the Democratic) but thinks that he was defeated by votes
thrown out in Alameda and Los Angeles counties because of
irregularities in the ballot--in one case his initials were
printed "J. D." instead of "J, F."--in another instance, his name
was printed a little below the title of the office, because of the
narrowness of the ticket. If these ballots were counted for him he
thinks he would have won. ...
Fourteen years later, when the electoral count was made of
Franklin K. Lane's ballots for Governor of the State of
California, between eight and ten thousand ballots were thrown out
on similar ground of "irregularities," and he was counted out,
"the intention of the voter" being again frustrated.
To John H. Wigmore
San Francisco, California, January 29, 1889
My dear Wigmore,-- ... I want to report progress. We now have our
bill complete. ... The bill I send has been adopted by the
Federated Trades and will be substituted by them for their bill
now before the House. ...
On Saturday evening there will be one of those huge "spontaneous"
mass meetings (which require so much preparation) in support and
endorsement of the bill. The most prominent men in both Houses of
the Legislature will speak. ...
San Francisco, February 17, 1889
... I never have been busier in my life than in the last two
weeks. Ballot Reform has taken up a very great portion of my time.
I have just returned from a lobbying trip to Sacramento. The bill
will not pass, though the best men in both Houses favor it. I went
up on the invitation of the chairman of the Assembly Committee to
address the Committee. I spoke for an hour and a half. At the end
of that time only one man in the group openly opposed the scheme,
and he confessed that the bill would do just what I claimed for
it, and made this confession to the Committee. "But," said he, "it
tends to the disintegration of political parties and as they are
essential to our life we must not help on their destruction." ...
The Committee of the Senate decided without any debate on the bill
to report adversely to it. I got them to reconsider their vote,
and we will have a hearing at any rate before the bill is killed.
The Legislature is altogether for boodle. ...
Your book has been of the greatest assistance to me. I virtually
made my speech from it and left the book with the chairman of the
Committee at his special request. ... If it had come out a month
sooner we would have stood fifty per cent better chance of getting
the bill through, because the papers would have come to the front
so much sooner and we would have been thirty days ahead with our
bill. I tell you I felt quite proud in addressing the
distinguished legislature to refer to "my friend Wigmore's book."
...
San Francisco, May 10, 1889
... I am coming nearer to you. On Monday I leave to take up my
residence in New York, as correspondent for the San Francisco
Chronicle. I do not know where I will be located, but mail
addressed to me at the Hoffman House will reach me when I arrive,
which will be in about ten days.
My purpose is to breathe a new atmosphere for a while so that I
may broaden. We must make arrangements soon to meet. I want to
know your New York reform friends. ...
New York, June 21, 1889
... This lapse of a couple of weeks means that I have been
enjoying the delights of a New York summer, in which only slaves
work and many of these find refuge in suicide. ...
Not a single reformer, big or little, have I yet met. Your friend
Bishop [Footnote: Joseph Bucklin Bishop, editor of Theodore
Roosevelt and His Time.] I have not called on, though I have twice
started to do so, and have been switched off. ... I will go within
a couple of days for the spirit must be revived. One day early in
this week I had an intense desire to visit you immediately and was
almost on the verge of letting things go and rush off, but duty
held me. ...
I see that Bellamy has captured Higginson, Savage, and others and
that they are going to work over the Kinsley-Maurice business.
Well, I would to God it would work. Something to make life happier
and steadier for these poor women and men who toil and never get
beyond a piece of meat and a cot! There is justification here for
a social-economic revolution and it will come, too, if things are
not bettered.
If you have a stray thought let me know it and soon.
Your friend,
F. K. L.
Lane's desire for stimulating companionship in New York was
quickly gratified. A spontaneous association of friendships, based
upon a young delight in life and a vast curiosity of the mind,
sprang up among a little group of men of very diverse types. All
were strangers in New York with no immediate home ties. "Women
played no part in our lives," one of them recalls. "We came
together to discuss plays, poetry, politics, anything and
everything--the great actors, comic operas, the songs of the
streets, science, politics." John Crawford Burns, Lane, Brydon
Lamb, Curt Pfeiffer formed the nucleus of what spread out
irregularly into larger groupings.
John Crawford Burns, who was slightly older than the rest, a
purist, and something of a "dour Scot," was a man of conservative
and cultivated tastes and the dean of the group. He was in a
business house that imported linens, and lived in a "glorious room
with two outside windows, and ample seating capacity," so the