A land of wild adventure, of unrighted wrongs. A land of sad histories, of many shattered hopes. Fierce waves of adventurers swept away the simple early folk. Lawless license, flaunting vice, and social disorganization made its early life as a State, one mad chaos.
The Indians have perished, rudely despoiled. The old Dons have faded into the gray mists of a dead past. The early Argonauts have lived out the fierce fever of their wild lives. To the old individual freebooters, a new order of great corporate monopolies and gigantic rough-hewn millionaires succeeds. There is always some hand on the people's throat in California. Yet the star of hope glitters.
Slowly, through all the foamy restless waves of transient adventurers the work of the homebuilders is showing the dry land decked with the olive branches of peace.
The native sons and daughters of the Golden West, bright, strong, self-reliant and full of promise, are the glittering-eyed young guardians of the Golden Gate. Born of the soil, with life's battle to fight on their native hills, may they build around the slopes of the Pacific, a State great in its hearths and homes. The future shines out. The gloomy past recedes. The sunlight of freedom sparkles on the dreamy lake of Lagunitas!