The Catholic Press as Urban Booster: The Case of Thomas A. Connelly of Sacramento Steven M. Avella S acramento was a city on the move in the final years of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth centuries.1 Prodded occasionally by threats to remove the State Capital to San Jose or Berkeley, competition from a rapidly growing Los Angeles, and the desire to shake off the lethargy of the old “Silurian” Sacramento (a term that Sacramento Bee editor Charles K. McClatchy used to refer to the city’s prehistoric pace of change), the city remade itself and its institutions within a generation.2 In the years between 1895 and 1925, Sacramentans adapted their city charter three times, incrementally producing a more responsive and development -minded city government. In 1895 as well a vigorous Chamber of Commerce replaced a moribund trade association and mobilized the leading business and political figures of the community to pave Sacramento’s dusty city streets, improve its often-tainted water supply, and substantially upgrade the aesthetic appearance of its downtown. Sacramento’s steady growth seemed to be an affirmation of this development program. From a mere 26,286 in 1890, the city grew to 65,000 by 1920. To accommodate this growth, Sacramento annexed a huge tract of land to its south and east in 1911, expanded its public transport system, and substantially improved its electrical power and water utilities. Sacramentans were proud of what they had wrought. Their self-confidence was displayed in their willingness to compete with urban giants like San Francisco and 75 1. See my own Sacramento: Indomitable City (Charleston: Arcadia Press, 2003) for a survey of city history. For a discussion of the changes taking place in Sacramento during the time period covered by this article see, William E. Mahan, “The Political Response to Urban Growth: Sacramento and Mayor Marshall R. Beard, 1863-1914,” California History 69 (Winter 1990/1991): 354-371. 2. McClatchy claimed that a news story, which ran on the front page of the Bee in 1894 gleefully announcing the end of the legislative session and the ensuing threats on the part of angry state law makers to move the capital to San Jose, was the stimulus that “got Sacramento moving.” See 1894 Sacramento County and Its Resources: A Souvenir of the Bee, 2nd ed. (Sacramento: H. S. Crocker Company, 1895). Los Angeles for its share of the growing population that was re-making California in the early years of the twentieth century. In publications, at trade shows, and in displays at public expositions, boosters trumpeted Sacramento’s rising glory. Some effusively extolled its natural advantages: a temperate climate, superior soil, and excellent water resources. Newspapers and city publicists emphasized its man-made advantages, which included good jobs in manufacturing and food processing industries , an enviable location on the national transportation network, up-to-date public facilities, a growing cultural life, good schools, and effective city government. “Sacramento is in an unique position,” wrote one typical booster of the era. “She is a city that all the State is interested in because the State owns a share in her prosperity. As the Capitol [sic], she is a Mecca to which all feet sooner or later are directed.”3 The source of this quote, and many even more effusive, was Thomas Augustus Connelly, the editor and publisher of Sacramento’s first Catholic newspaper, the Catholic Herald. From the time the first issue of the Herald rolled off the press in March 1908 until it abruptly ceased upon Connelly’s death in 1929, the editor not only provided his version of Catholic news, but also ceaselessly promoted his adopted home of Sacramento, California. Connelly was typical of the independent lay Catholic journalists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His interests included not only internal church affairs, but also “secular” issues. But Connelly may stand apart from many of his contemporaries, because he was also an unabashed urban booster. His newspaper, largely written by himself, regularly reported favorably on efforts to improve and upgrade Sacramento, and he often pointed out to his fellow Catholics how these advances redounded to the benefit of the local church. Likewise...
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Oct 1, 2008
Nian Liu + 2
Open Access