Alameda County
Biographies
HON. GEORGE C. PARDEE
HON. GEORGE C. PARDEE.
_ For the second time California has a Governor who is
a graduate of the university, and, for the first time he is a native son. It
has taken a little more than half a century for California to become
self-governing in the sense that her own sons, educated in her own schools, are
found worthy to hold the chief elective offices. A poll of the legislature
would probably show that almost, if not quite, a majority of the members are,
like the Governor, a home product. The day of the immigrant has passed in
California politics, and nothing is more significant of it than the fact that
in the late election the circumstance that the Republican candidate for
Governor was a native son appeared to be of no special advantage to him. It
seemed so much like the thing naturally to be expected.
The first native-son Governor is a San Franciscan. He was born in
our largest city about forty-eight years ago and came of very sturdy pioneer
stock. His father was a mechanic who had the courage and industry to make
himself master of a difficult specialty in the field of medicine and who
practiced with great success, taking at the same time such intense interest in
politics that he became one of the leaders of the young Republican party in
California, and was elected to the state assembly and senate twice, to the
mayoralty of the City of Oakland and to several other services. He was
ambitious for his son, and the latter was reared in an atmosphere of political
talk and action which made the career he has followed a natural, almost a
necessary, sequence.
The Pardees, it may be said in passing, are an American family of
nearly two hundred years' standing, and they trace back their descent to one
George (or Georges) Pardee, a young French Huguenot, who landed in the good old
colony of Connecticut in 1715. Some of the early ones spelled the name Pardie and others wrote it Pardy;
the family genealogist gives the explanation (which may be taken for what it is
worth) that the original form was Pardieu. In the
Revolutionary war the Pardees did valiant service, no
less than twenty-nine of them fighting in the ranks of the Connecticut
volunteers. During the era of westward expansion which followed close upon the
achievement of independence, representatives of the family migrated to New York
and Ohio, and the name is now common in several of the western states. The governor
is a Pardee of the Pardees, his mother as well as his father having borne that
name and descended from the first George Pardee.
In the early'60's, when George C. Pardee was a boy in San Francisco,
schools were not numerous, and quite naturally he attended the one which was
frequented by the sons of the most well-to-do citizens, the old City College,
so-called. A number of the now prominent men of San Francisco were his
classmates. The family having removed to the Oakland side of the bay, he next became
a pupil in McClure's Academy, and later went to the College school, which had
been established as a feeder to the College of California. Subsequently he took
a three years' course in the Oakland high school. In the University of
California he spent five years in all, having first entered the fifth class,
which was then, and for some time afterward, maintained as a useful adjunct to
the new institution of learning. His
regular university course was taken during the years 1875-1879. The class which
has given the state a governor, a justice of the supreme court, a professor in
the university and other more or less distinguished citizens, was much more
numerous than any which had entered up to that time, and it was some years
before any other of equal numbers followed it. Its members felt very proud when
they graduated sixty-eight out of one-hundred and fifty-nine who entered. It
was a class which carried everything there before it from the outset, for the
seniors, juniors, and sophomores were so much weaker in numbers that it was
hardly worth while for them to attempt to withstand
'79. In those days baseball was the principal athletic sport at the university.
Rugby football was also played, but there were no track athletics. Young Pardee
was a baseball player of some reputation and retains to this day a fondness for
the game. Charter day and class day were then celebrated with as much spirit as
they are today. The governor recalls with pride that he was president on the
day of the junior exhibition and was the prophet on class day. But the office
which he was called upon to fill as often as there was a meeting of the class
was the less dignified one of sergeant-at-arms. The vote by which he was chosen
to that position was unanimous. As a student he stood neither very high nor
very low, his rank being near the middle, and that this is the very best rank
to occupy in a college class is a proposition which Governor
Pardee would at any time drop the cares of state to maintain by
arguments quite satisfactory to himself, even if not convincing to others.
Professional study in Europe was one of the objects which the young man
had long had in mind and so, after two years of preliminary work in Cooper
College, he went to Germany, and entered the University of Leipzig, from which
he was graduated after three years. He is fond of talking of the eminent men
whom he met during his university life in Germany, the great Virchow, Ludwig, Coccius, Cohnheim, Wagner, Thiersch and others. During his stay in Europe the governor
proved that he could write readable newspaper letters. A series of seventy-five
or more of these letters appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, and their freshness and interest, which last even to this
day, were due to the point of view of the writer, who looked into everything
established or ancient with the audacious irreverence of a California Boy who
had no idea of being overawed by anything because it had stood unquestioned for
centuries.
Returning
to his home in 1885, Dr. Pardee began the practice of his profession in San
Francisco and Oakland, married and established a home. It was not over two years, however, before he was led into politics, a not
altogether unwilling victim of the men who had discovered that he had natural
talents for that sort of thing and wanted to make use of them. Once in, he
could never thereafter keep out, which is the case with all who have a gift for
leadership. In a short time he became a member of the Oakland city board of
health and made a strenuous campaign for purification of the water supply. A
popular demand was thus created that he should be a councilman, and the people
liked his service in the latter office so well that they insisted he should be
mayor. He was, and a stormy time he had of it, with Coxey armies, A. R. U.
strikes, Walter Front Company suits, injunctions, and several other stirring
incidents. At the end of his two years he was willing to retire from the
turmoil and try a rest, although about all the difference it seemed to make was
that he was fighting other people's political battles when he had none of his
own.
In 1898 Dr. Pardee, who had long since learned the lesson that knowing what you
want and asking for it are the first requisites to success, became a candidate
for governor, and although he was defeated for the time being, he made a
distinct impression on the party politicians and prepared the way for what
followed four years later, when he was nominated and elected. The occurrences
of that political campaign are so recent as not to need reviving. But it may be
said in passing that few candidates for governor have ever been in a position so embarrassing as Dr. Pardee. The head of a party which had
a vast majority of votes and was certain to elect all its other candidates, he
was for weeks near defeat and knew it well. Day by day he could watch the
progress of the work which threatened to be his undoing. One of those class
movements which are as irresistible as they are unlooked for, was sweeping away
thousands of votes on which he had a right to count, and at the same time he
was confronted by dissensions among the politicians of his own party serious
enough to wreck the fortunes of almost any candidate. Worst of all, the
conditions were such that it was impossible to make an open fight on secret
enemies. The only thing which could be done as to many of these proceedings was
that which is the hardest of all things to a naturally pugnacious man, viz: To do nothing.. Dr. Pardee
made his campaign under circumstances which called for extraordinary
self-restraint, and the manner in which he made it excited the greatest
admiration in those who knew most about it. In spite of everything he was
elected by a small majority, and he has been in office long enough to permit
the state to form some idea of the kind of governor he will make. In his
inaugural and biennial message to the legislature he took sufficiently high
ground to show that he intended to stand for the things which are of good repute
and make for progress, for better schools, for sufficient appropriation
for the university, for educational progress in every direction, for reform of
political abuses in the state institutions, for the beginning of a state civil
service system, for more enlightened methods of taxation and far-sighted
conservation of the natural resources of California. If the policy outlined in
those messages he actually carried out, it will mean a new era for this state
and for the whole Pacific coast. [By A. B. NYE]
Transcribed by
Sally Kaleta.
Source: “History of the State of
California and Biographical Record of the Sacramento Valley,
California” by J. M. Guinn. Pages
252-254. Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1906.
© 2014 Sally Kaleta.
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