"The Long Beach earthquake," photographer unknown, 1933. Larger.
The 1933 Long Beach Earthquake caused 120 deaths, over $50 million dollars in property damage, and spawned no end of improbable tales.
Measuring 6.4 on the Richter Scale, the March 20th Long Beach temblor wasn't the largest ever seen in the Golden State, but it did more than enough harm to get everyone's attention. Carey McWilliams wrote down some of what was said.
. . . the range of popular fancy is not limited to any particular set of superstitions. After the recent temblor that caused such heavy damage at Long Beach and surrounding towns, I was able to cull the following yarns from the local press and from conversations overheard during the next few days. It seems that a hen laid three eggs a few moments after the first shock was felt; that woman who had been suffering from paralysis for years was cured by the vibrations of the quake and walked forth from an invalid's room without assistance; that the quake was predicted by "scientists" weeks before it occurred, but that the information was suppressed by certain sinister interests variously known as the big men, the bankers, and university presidents; . . . that the earthquake, followed by the appearance of a mighty meteor on March 24, presages the beginning of the end.
Carey McWilliams wrote "The Folklore of Earthquakes" for the American Mercury magazine in 1933.
American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams, biography by Peter Richardson, bookjacket.
Natural disasters in California—wild fires, mudslides, and especially earthquakes—convince many of us that ours is a land of apocalypse. And what better way to cope with certain doom than to check in with the future.
In 1947, Carey McWilliams wrote "Mecca of the Miraculous," which among other things, speculates on the connection between "a land haunted by earthquakes" and those "Jeremiahs of the highway," Los Angeles astrologers.
It is one of the paradoxes of Los Angeles that here, where it is almost as difficult to see the stars as it is to see the sun in Pittsburgh, should be located the international headquarters of astrology. For most of the year, the stars are lost in the soft mist of the night skies. Yet crystal-ball gazers, horoscope readers, and other magicians specializing in predicting the future have long flourished. Perhaps the at-times-uncertain future of Southern California contributed to their prevalence. To be assured that Southern California did have a future—even by an astrologer—must have been comforting. The practice reached such peaks of extravagance that, some years ago, the City of Los Angeles adopted an ordinance making the prediction of the future for a fee a misdemeanor.
Long-time editor of The Nation, Carey McWilliams wrote ground-breaking social histories, including such books as Factories in the Field and Brothers under the Skin.
"Thomas Lake Harris," photographer, date unknown. Larger.
To much of the nation, California's collection of offbeat cults and unconventional religions are simply inexplicable. But to writer and social critic Carey McWilliams, they're really rooted in a larger American movement.
In 1947, McWilliams wrote "Mecca of the Miraculous," a meditation on how California stimulates the quest for Utopia, the common theme of many of the cults that flourish here.
Sociologically they are to be explained as phenomena of migration. Two out of every three citizens of California were born outside the state. Migration severs old ties, undermines ancient allegiances. It creates the social fluidity out of which new cultic movements arise. But migration does not provide the complete answer.
In part the cults of California, with their emphasis on sun worship, vegetarianism, and apocalyptic visions of an ever-impending doom, are an oblique response to the physical environment. Social panaceas flourish in this empire of prodigious crops, Brobdignagian vegetables, and rose bushes with 200,000 blossoms, because here natural abundance stimulates dreams of plenty. Since 1875, when the mystic Thomas Lake Harris established the Brotherhood of the New Light colony at Santa Rosa, California has pulsed with vibrations of the otherworldly and trembled under prophecies of doom. It is a land of Visions, Dreams, Exaltations, and New Harmonies, this beautiful, sensuous Land of Mu by the Western Sea.
Editor of The Nation, Carey McWilliams was a long-time student of all things Californian; he was an influential writer, historian, and activist, as adept at exposing injustice as he was skewering cultural pretensions.
"The old fashioned Rocker and a '49er," stereo photograph by Eadweard Muybridge, c. 1864. Larger.
It's often said—notably by outsiders—that Californians have little appreciation of our history. Maybe that's true, or maybe it's not—because our history is a little different from the rest of America's.
Carey McWilliams had a thorough understanding of California's unique history, which helps us to understand the exceptional nature of our state
The "past" means to Californians not the Pilgrim fathers, or William Penn and the Indians, or George Washington crossing the Delaware; it means miners, and vigilantes, pan and rocker, the topsy-turvy of the gold camps, and San Francisco. The historically-minded Californian of today is oriented with reference to a set of meanings and significances quite unlike those by which the historically-minded in other areas, even in the West, guide their research and historical explorations. It is this circumstance which has made collecting of Californiana a literary gold rush.
Carey McWilliams' California: The Great Exception was published in 1949.
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