[Group of Twelve Handbills Defending Legislative Expenditures in California Before the 1890 Election]

[San Francisco, 1890. Good.. Twelve handbills, each approximately 9 x 6 inches, plus 7pp. pamphlet and three small promotional cards. Mounted to card backings. Several chips and short closed tears at edges. Tanned. An interesting series of twelve small broadsides or handbills relating to the 1890 California state elections, in which the Democrats attempt to remind various county residents of expenditures made on their behalf in the last legislature and the party's role in those outlays. The particular problem that these flyers attempt to dispute is the increase in state taxes, which they argue is vastly offset by the benefits that these counties received. A typical broadside, addressed, "To the Voters of Mendocino County," reads thus:

"Your State taxes for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1889, were $78,285.70. The next year they were $85,076,91. The difference -- $6,791.21 -- represents your payments on account of the 'extravagance of the last legislature.' That extravagance consisted of appropriations for public institutions, of which Mendocino's share is $350,000 for the new Insane Asylum at Ukiah. Your Democratic Senator and Assemblymen secured that institution for you, and to obtain it they had to consent to similar expenditures in other parts of the state. This cost you $6,791.21 the first year, and it brings you $350,000 at the start, and the prospect of regular appropriations of about $100,000 a year hereafter. If Senator Yell, Assemblyman Seawell and the Democratic Legislature did wrong in imposing this burden on the State for the benefit of Mendocino county, vote against the Democratic ticket."

Handbills with similar language addressed to the voters of Sacramento, Napa, Marin, San Joaquin, Amador, Sonoma, Butte, Santa Clara, Alameda, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange Counties are also included in this group, as are a pamphlet and three cards from the Young Men's Democratic League in San Francisco regarding more national issues. Despite, or perhaps because of, this innovative strategy to challenge voters to support the other party, Democrats were not generally successful in the 1890 election in California.