of people elsewhere. Unlike those who buy Government securities, or railroad stocks, they are subject to frequent and heavy assessments, and besides they have heretofore been denied that full information relative to developments in the mines for which they pay, and the financial statements, showing how their money has been disbursed, to which they are entitled. There is no reason why the mining corporations should not be placed under State supervision as fully as the insurance companies. Honest mining corporations cannot be injured by it, while stockholders will be benefited by the exposure of dishonest transactions. We believe this bill will be the means of saving millions of dollars a year to the stockholders in the mining companies, besides adding perhaps a million of dollars to the public funds, thus lightening the burden of taxation upon other industries. The contracts to buy and sell stocks are made here and they are enforced in our Courts, largely occupying their time. The cost of such litigation has heretofore been in great part a burden upon other industries the merchant, the mechanic, or the farmer. Why should we discriminate against them to favor stock speculations?

SUMMARY.

In conclusion, we would briefly summarize the objects of the bill, as follows:

1. To encourage the mining industry, by putting the mining corporations in which the public are most interested, which collect more than nine-tenths of all the assessments paid to mining corporations in this State, and through which nearly all the abuses and frauds that have injured the reputation of the mining industry have been perpetrated, under State supervision, upon a plan similar to that in operation upon the insurance companies. It requires full and frequent reports of developments in the mines, and of financial transactions to be made, with a view to putting all stockholders upon an equal footing, and thus rendering investments in mining properties less hazardous. Those who are willing to risk their capital in the development of the mines are certainly entitled to the fullest protection the law can give them.

2. To suppress stock gambling by breaking up the practice, on the part of mining officials, of keeping secret information about the mines for stock-jobbing purposes, and by requiring dealers in stocks to pay a license upon all purchases and sales of stock, which, it is believed, will operate as a check upon "wash" or fictitious purchases and sales, by which mainly the disastrous stock operations are carried out. This plan will tend to confine the stock market to its legitimate functions as a convenient medium of exchange through which to make investments in the shares of mining corporations. It will not prevent wholesome speculation, while it will check the practice of stock gambling, which has so long been the bane of society in this State. The license will yield a revenue not out of proportion to the money invested in the stock business, and which has heretofore escaped taxation, while it will materially help to reduce taxation upon other industries.

Your committee are of the opinion that this measure will, if successfully carried out, save stockholders one-half of the twelve million dollars now collected annually in assessments, and perhaps

SAN LEANDRO, Cal., January 25th, 1878.

To the Honorably Body, the Legislature of the State of California: WHEREAS, The influx of a Chinese population into this State has, with other evils, brought, as the climax of all those evils, the most degrading form of female prostitution; and whereas, said prostitutes have solicited, enticed, corrupted, and infected with the most loathsome form of venereal disease a large number of little boys, sons of citizens of the City and County of San Francisco (Doctor Toland testifying before the "Chinese Commission" to his medical treatment of a half dozen boys daily, from seven to ten years of age, who had been infected by said Chinese prostitutes, and other eminent physicians giving corroborative testimony to the same fact); and whereas, it is authoritatively reported that the majority of all girls and boys now admitted to the Industrial School of said city are found to be infected by said loathsome disease; and whereas, this most degrading and vile disease, unless checked at once by the strong arm of the law, will soon inevitably spread its worse than leprous infection to all classes of the citizens of the State of California-the innocent as well as guilty; and whereas, a petition for the establishment of a Free State Venereal Hospital, with a corps of Medical Police Examiners for the same, was duly presented both to the Board of Health and the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco on the eighteenth day of August, eighteen hundred and seventy-six, by a medical class of said city, as herein certified to by Doctor A. P. Truesdell, the President of said medical class, and as published by the city papers at the time of said presentation; and whereas, the said Boards declared themselves powerless to act in the matter, and referred the Chairman of said petitioners to the Legislature of this State; now, therefore, we, the undersigned, for the protection of the health and morals of the people of California, respectfully and earnestly petition your honorable bodies, the Assembly and Senate of the State of California, to pass, at your earliest convenience, a law authorizing and commanding the Supervisors of the City of San Francisco to build a Free State Venereal Hospital, and to appoint a Medical Police, whose duty it shall be to

seek out all cases and reported cases of venereal disease in the City of San Francisco with the same diligence, power, and authority with which the Board of Health is empowered in the ferreting out of small-pox cases; and to compel all of those infected with said diseases to go to the said Hospital for medical treatment until they are free from all danger of communicating said loathsome disease to other persons.

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