Speculation for land grew wild, as more and more Americans flooded the area, and whites controlled the buying, selling, and ownership of property (39). Despite the treaty, only twenty Mexican men and six Mexican women held property in California by 1860, according to the laws of the United States. The numbers of Mexicans possessing a "personal estate" dropped drastically, even while despised settler groups from the East, such as the Irish, increased their ownership of territory.

The loss of the profits of property ownership in the capitalist American system, which was at its most rapid stage of development during the 19th century in California, reduced non-whites to laborers, not owners. The greater the desire to create a "settler's paradise" the greater the anxiety of the so-called "greasers" in the Anglo's midst. (54) "Hispanics of good character," meant Hispanics willing to toil in the gold, and later when they were driven...
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