The great body of immigrants to California have been sound and earnest, fit citizens of the young state, but this is rarely true of seekers of the unearned increment.  No one is more greedy for money than the man who can never get much and cannot keep the little he has.  Rumors of golden chances have brought in a steady stream of incompetents from all regions and from all strata of social life.  From the common tramp to the inventor of “perpetual motions” in mechanics or in social science, is a long step in the moral scale, but both are alike in their eagerness to escape from the “competitive social order” of the East, in which their abilities found no recognition.  Whoever has deservedly failed in the older states is sure at least once in his life to think of redeeming his fortunes in California.  Once on the Pacific slope the difficulties in the way of his return seem insurmountable.  The dread of the winter’s cold is in most cases a sufficient reason for never going back.  Thus San Francisco, by force of circumstances, has become the hopper into which fall incompetents from all the world, and from which few escape.  The city contains more than four hundred thousand people.  Of these, a vast number, thirty thousand to fifty thousand, it may be, have no real business in San Francisco.  They live from hand to mouth, by odd jobs that might be better done by better people; and whatever their success in making a living, they swell the army of discontent, and confound all attempts to solve industrial problems.  In this rough estimate I do not count San Francisco’s own poor, of which there are some but not many, but only those who have drifted in from the outside.  I would include, however, not only those who are economically impotent, but also those who follow the weak for predatory ends.  In this last category I place a large number of saloon-keepers, and keepers of establishments far worse, toward which the saloon is only the first step downward; a class of so-called lawyers, politicians and agents of bribery and blackmail; a long line of soothsayers, clairvoyants, lottery agents and joint keepers, besides gamblers, sweaters, promoters of “medical institutes,” magnetic, psychical and magic “healers” and other types of unhanged, but more or less pendable, scoundrels that feed upon the life-blood of the weak and foolish.  The other cities of California have had a similar experience.  Each has its reputation for hospitality, and each has a considerable population which has come in from other regions because incapable of making its own way.  It is not the poor and helpless alone who are the victims of imposition.  There are fools in all walks of life.  Many a well-dressed man or woman can be found in the rooms of the clairvoyant or the Chinese “doctor.”  In matters of health, especially, men grasp at the most unpromising straws.  In certain cities of California there is scarcely a business block that did not contain at least one human leech under the trade name of “healer,” metaphysical, electrical, astral, divine or what not.  And these will thrive so long as men seek health or fortune with closed eyes and open hands.