California Dreams
A Place, a People, a Dream: The Californian Dream Paradoxes The Californian Dream can be regarded as one of the most paradoxical concept in history. The story and paradoxes written by Rawls is strongly supported by the anonymous accounts in many scenarios. Although the anonymous accounts limit itself to only the gold rush era, it still depicts some of the things mentioned in the story written by Rawls. To the weather of California, the reality of the gold rush, and the population growth of California, Both stories compliment each other as they both accurately describe the lifestyle of California in the 1850’s and beyond. Growth as a situation described in both stories, as both writers talked about California was one of the fastest growing state and the most populous. The present population of the country is set down at 45,000. Some 12,000 more are yet to arrive… ( Anon. 38.) This shows that the population during the Gold Rush was least to say booming, also described by Rawls , After a century of phenomenal growth, California became the nation’s most populous state at the end of 1962.( Rawls 27) The paradox in this situation is that after being proclaimed the fastest growing state and most populous, the state of California began to push towards controlling its growth. Once the proud state of its population now is the state that supports limiting its growth. Another form of growth was the economical growth of California. As Rawls stated, By the end of 1848 some six thousand miners in California had wrested $10 million… four years, the per capita yield of the California mines had been cut in half. ( Rawls 28) Which meant that with the word quickly spreading that easy wealth was achievable in California, more miners came which lessen the odds of striking riches. With the influx of new miners coming in, the prices of goods and services also risen. Many goods that were not worth landing when I wrote you six weeks since, are now in
Cited: Rawls , James J. California: A Place, a People, a Dream Notes of a California Expedition