Plague Years

My Republican colleagues are refusing to renominate me for governor of California. All because the newspapers say I covered up the bubonic plague that hit San Francisco in 1900. "Governor Gage," my colleagues said, "we agree with what you did, but the truth is out and you've become an embarrassment to the party."

I was only trying to protect the financial future of  San Francisco and the State of California. If I had allowed the quarantine to go ahead like those fool doctors wanted, it would have been terrible for business. The trouble started on this day in 1900 when Wing Chung Ging or Wong Chut King or whatever his name was died in San Francisco's Chinatown. Even the Chinese doctors said it was probably typhus or gonorrhea.

It should have ended there, but the doctors over at the  Marine Hospital Service stuck their oar in and made a big fuss. They wanted to quarantine all the ships coming into the harbor to look for plague. I knew the plague was a big problem over in Asia. The Chinese were always dying off in the thousands. But that's because they're  rice eaters which makes them weak. We Americans are meat eaters. We can fight off the plague, if there was any plague.

The doctors took some of the dead man's blood and injected it into guinea pigs. It would supposedly take four days for the disease to show up. Meanwhile the doctors threw up a quarantine around Chinatown. They wanted to innoculate all the Chinese with some newfangled medicine. Of course the Chinese weren't happy about this and sued. The judge, who had never found in favor of Chinese in the past, agreed with them now, and the quarantine was lifted.

The animals who had been injected came down with plague symptoms a couple of days later. That's according to the doctors. These doctors were Federal employees telling us Californians how to run our state. I got in touch with friends back in Washington. I said I'd cooperate with measures to stop the spread of the plague if they'd get rid of the head doctor at the Marine Health Service. Once the doctor was gone, I continued to do nothing.

I don't know how it happened, but by 1902, 119 people had died from the so-called plague. A few years back scientists over in China said the plague was spread by rats. Before then everyone said the plague was spread by infected bodies. It was only in 1898 that a French scientist in India discovered that it was the fleas on rats that spread the disease. The European scientists scoffed at that theory and it was many years before the flea theory was accepted.

If all the European bigwigs couldn't agree, I don't see why I should be criticized for saying there was never any plague in California. After my term, I went back to practicing law in Los Angeles. In 1909 President Taft appointed me ambassador to Portugal. Right after I got there a revolution broke out. It wasn't a pleasant place to be. I would have stuck it out but my wife Frances got sick (no, not with the plague) and I resigned my position and we returned to California.

I'm not dead yet.