of Los Angeles.  I should have to write a little essay to make clear the sociological significance of that function; explaining first, a nation-wide organization which has been proven by congressional investigation and by the publication of its secret documents to be a machine for the corruption of our political life; and then exhibiting our “City of the Angels”, from which all Angels have long since fled; a city in the first crude stage of land speculation, without order, dignity or charm; a city of real estate agents, who exist by selling climate to new arrivals from the East; a city whose intellectual life is “boosting”, whose standards of truth are those of the horse-trade.  Its newspapers publish a table of temperatures, showing the daily contrast between Southern California and the East.  This device is effective in the winter-time; but last June, when for five days the temperature went to over 110, and several times 114—­the Los Angeles space was left empty!

In the same way, there is a rule that our earth-quake shocks are never mentioned, unless they destroy whole towns.  On the afternoon of Jan. 26th, 1918, a cyclone hit Pasadena, of violence sufficient to lift a barn over a church-steeple and deposit it in the pastor’s front yard.  That evening a friend of mine in Los Angeles called up the office of the “Times” to make inquiry; and although they are only thirteen miles away, and have a branch office and a special correspondent in Pasadena, the answer was that they had heard nothing about the cyclone!  And next morning I made a careful, search of their columns.  On the front page I read:  “Fourth Blizzard of Season Raging in East”; also:  “Another Earthquake in Guatemala”.  But not a line about the Pasadena cyclone.  That there was plenty of space in that issue, you may judge from the fact that there were twenty headlines like the following—­many of them representing full page and half page illustrated “write-ups”: 

     Where Spring is January; Wealth Waits in California; The
     Bright Side of Sunshine Land; Come to California: 
     Southland’s Arms Outstretched in Cordial Invitation to the
     East; Flower Stands Make Gay City Streets; Southland Climate
     Big Manufacturing Factor; Joy of Life Demonstrated in Los
     Angeles’ Beautiful Homes; Nymphs Knit and Bathe at Ocean’s
     Sunny Beach; etc.

Now we are in the War and our business is booming, we are making money hand over fist.  It is all the more delightful, because we are putting our souls into it, we are lending our money to the government and saving the world for Democracy!  Our labor unionists have been driven to other cities, and our Mexican agitators and I.W.W.’s are in jail; so, in the gilt ball-room of our palatial six-dollar-a-day hotel the four hundred masters of our prosperity meet to pat themselves on the back, and they invite the new Catholic bishop to come and confer the grace of God upon their eating.