For instance, there are frequently large bars in the rivers which tend to obstruct the flow of the water, and when the waters rise do obstruct the free flow of the water for miles in extent above the bar, and thereby assist in forcing the waters over the levees at or near them, and thus destroy the levees in that vicinity. The importance of the removal of these bars will be more fully understood when it is stated that a bar projecting four feet above the bottom of the river, with a fall of three inches to the mile, will be felt in its influence for sixteen miles. Under proper surveys and a proper head, these bars would all be known and removed, thereby lessening the probabilities of an overflow and largely lessening the expense of the levee works. Again, every reclamation district is organized to protect itself, with its individual interests alone to consult, and not being a part of a whole system those interested seek present salvation at the expense of others, and frequently levees are cut for the purpose of saving themselves to the detriment of all other interests. There is, therefore, no safety or remedy for this in individual or separate enterprise. The end must be reached by embodying the whole valley in a single district, working to a single end, and governed and controlled by a single head. It is, therefore, respectfully submitted that the only sure way to reach the great end of absolute reclamation, and to place it upon such a basis as to involve perfect safety-under which the citizen will be justified in believing that he shall reap if he sows-is in the establishment of some system involving absolute authority over the whole inundated valley, coupled with the highest scientific knowledge that can be had on the subject. This system can be best organized here under the control of the Federal Government, as it is sought to be done in the Mississippi Valley, and as it will involve the navigable streams it is believed the Federal will coöperate with the State Government in carrying forward this great work. The reclamation of these lands, under such a system, would not only have the effect of reclaiming them from these annual overflows, but would, at the same time, so improve and build up the navigation of these streams as to furnish those who live adjacent thereto an outlet by water transportation for their grain and other produce for all time, at such figures for transportation as would leave them the whole profit of their crop, and to that extent tend to regulate the rate of fares and freights in a manner unapproachable in any other PETITION OF JOHN MULLAN FOR HIMSELF AND OTHER CITIZENS OF SAN FRANCISCO. HENRY M. NAGLEE. PETITION. THE FIFTEEN MILLION SAN FRANCISCO WATER JOB, NIGHT, UNDER DISGUISE. SACRAMENTO, March 30th, 1878. To the President of the Senate and Senators of the Legislature of California, now in session : GENTLEMEN: It is not to be expected that at the heels of a long and exciting Legislative Session, that your attention can be carefully given to every bill upon which your vote is expected, and particularly in the case of those bills by you classified as local. But while this may be true generally, I very respectfully memorialize and petition you, that this shall not prove the case in relation to a bill which passed the Assembly last night near midnight, with scarcely a quorum of its members present, and when even some of the San Francisco Assembly delegation, after adjournment, knew not either the merits or provisions of the bill as passed. This bill-Assembly Bill No. 850-introduced by Mr. Gildea, is, when unmasked and stripped of its harmless disguise, nothing more nor less than the fifteen and more million San Francisco water job, which the people of San Francisco have so recently and unanimously repudiated, protested and petitioned against, and upon which the people, press, and local legislature of San Francisco have expressed themselves in a manner that should be entitled to the respectful consideration of your honorable body. This bill is none the less infamous, even though Mr. Gildea introduced it, and even though it was acted upon when there was not a full meeting of the Assembly delegation, but was squeezed through that committee by that ominous vote of eight to seven. Mr. Gildea, not being a taxpayer in San Francisco, and being a resident only for a very short time in that city, and now but very temporarily and in part representing her people, cannot, of course, be expected to know the true and permanent interests of the people of that city; and I make this statement of fact in order that no improper motives might be by suspicious persons deduced from the foregoing. This bill seeks to do, indirectly and under the form and cover of apparently harmless amendments to an old law, that which previous introducers and advocates of similar bills have before your Legisla ture been baffled, foiled, and defeated in, whenever their attempts have been open and above board, or where time was given to its opponents to be respectfully heard. Having thus far failed to fasten upon the people of San Francisco a fifteen million bill, introduced at midday in the Senate, and early in your session, the advocates of this special jobbery have sought the closing days of a remarkable session, and the midnight hours even of those days, and by a bill introduced one day and doubtfully passed the next, with neither time or notice given the public or its well recognized opponents to be heard, by a bill never printed-by a bill sent to your honorable body forthwith, without engrossment, and which bill you are now asked to act upon, and thereby fasten upon the people of San Francisco, without their consent, a bonded debt of unknown millions of dollars. This bill seeks to amend the Rogers' Water Act of eighteen hundred and seventy-six out of which all the troubles in San Francisco, so far as water is concerned, have largely grown. Mr. Burnett, City and County Attorney of San Francisco, has given it as his opinion that the law is not only unconstitutional in points other than in those clumsily sought to be cured by this bill, but that this bill limits and restricts San Francisco to the purchase of the Spring Valley Waterworks, as they are the only constructed works on the San Francisco Peninsula. This bill is unconstitutional, special legislation, partial in its intentions, unjust in its provisions, onerous upon the taxpayers of San Francisco, not solicited or even asked for, but on the contrary, in direct violation of the tenor of the remonstrances, protests and petitions of the entire people of that city as heretofore by them respectfully submitted to you through their immediate representatives, and ought not to be enacted into a law. If the old law be defective, let it stand as it is, marred with its defects -to serve not only as a monument of those who heretofore have sought to impose upon a legislative body, and to deal unjustly with their fellow-citizens, but as a warning to those who hereafter might attempt to ape the ass by donning the lion's skin when framing crude legislative bills. I, therefore, in the name of myself and other citizens of San Francisco, respectfully petition your honorable body that this bill be not acted upon by you until it shall have been first referred to the appropriate committee of the Senate, and ample time be granted me by it to be properly heard in opposition to its further passage. If this be granted me, I will undertake to adduce such facts and arguments as should convince said committee that this bill should not receive their sanction or the majority vote of your honorable Senate. Wherefore, and in order that your Senate may be timely, properly, and fully informed, and in order that even-handed justice may be openly dealt out to all the people of San Francisco, I respectfully petition that due reference of this bill to the appropriate committee may be by you had, so that the said facts and arguments may be by me furnished in detail, which it would be out of place and unexpected for me to lay before your honorable body in any other way. Respectfully, JOHN MULLAN, PETITION IN RELATION TO THE HARBOR FRONT, SAN FRANCISCO. PETITION. SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., February 1st, 1878. To the Honorable the San Francisco Delegation, State Legislature: GENTLEMEN: Your petitioners respectfully show that they believe that the time has arrived when some consideration ought to be paid to the wants of the northern portion of the city, which, for a quarter of a century, have been neglected and thrust out in the cold, and, as a last resort, appeal to you; and also, further show that that portion of the city's front, from Chesnut Street westward, should be fitted for the landing of lumber, coal, wood, grain, stone, etc., meeting the wants of that part north of Washington Street, from the ocean to the bay, and referring you to the history of North Beach, from the time the wharf yet remaining was built, where ships of the largest size entering the harbor, rode at ease, and also referring you to pilots and master mariners, unanimous in their opinion that that portion of the city's front is as safe and far better than many others, and not presuming to dictate your duties or any portion of them, ask you to investigate that area, and if, within your discretion, a wooden bulkhead or wharf covering Meiggs' wharf, say five hundred feet, the centre of the cove, with a slip for the landing of the Saucelito boats, and the accommodation of the North Pacific Coast Railroad and for general uses, can be built, that it may be begun as soon as necessary arrangements can be made. The Harbor Commissioners state that one hundred and fifty thousand dollars is needed for the improvement of China Basin, for accommodation of lumber, wood, bricks, and hay; half that amount expended at North Beach would, in the opinion of your petitioners, be sufficient to procure a clean revenue of one per cent. per month. And your petitioners believe that it is good and wholesome to leave something to be done by posterity and not bankrupt the State by a stone bulkhead, which, if begun, the child, in the opinion of your petitioners, is not born that will see it finished. And your petitioners believe it unnecessary to call your attention to public works in different cities, where the outlay in the hands of Commissioners has been a millstone around their necks, exceeding in costs ten times the original estimates. And your petitioners believe that such a wharf or bulkhead, as above, would stimulate and prompt the filling in of the whole cove, and would lead to the opening of a broad causeway around North Point to the Western Addition. And your petitioners respectfully ask that a committee may be directed to investigate the premises and project such improvements as are within the province of the Harbor Commissioners to carry out. And your petitioners will ever, etc. |