Turbulent popular feeling is breath in Johnson's nostrils. Twice he
has thoroughly enjoyed its intoxication.
His political life was blank paper when the tumult of popular
indignation swept California at the time Francis J. Heney, who was
prosecuting the San Francisco grafters, was shot in the court room.
He had thought nothing politically, he had felt nothing
politically. He had neither convictions, nor passions, nor morals,
politically speaking. He grew up in soil which does not produce
lofty standards. Something of the mining-camp spirit still hung
over California, which had been settled by adventurers, forty-
niners, gold seekers, men who had left the East to "make a new
start" where there was pay dirt. The State had a wild zest for life
which was untrammeled by Puritanism. San Francisco had its Barbary
Coast and in every restaurant its private dining rooms for women.
Johnson himself was sprung from a father who was a "railroad
lawyer," the agent of privileges in procuring special favors, by
methods once well known, from the state legislature. The atmosphere
of his youth was not one to develop a sensitive conscience or a
high conception of public morals.
Johnson at this time was a practicing attorney, not noted for the
quality of his community service. The administration of San
Francisco had been a scandal for years.
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