THE URBAN FORTY-NINER
In popular estimation the interest and romance of the Forty-niners
center in gold and mines. To the close student, however, the true
significance of their lives is to be found even more in the city of San
Francisco.
At first practically everybody came to California under the excitement
of the gold rush and with the intention of having at least one try at
the mines. But though gold was to be found in unprecedented abundance,
the getting of it was at best extremely hard work. Men fell sick both in
body and spirit. They became discouraged. Extravagance of hope often
resulted, by reaction, in an equal exaggeration of despair. The prices
of everything were very high. The cost of medical attendance was almost
prohibitory. Men sometimes made large daily sums in the placers; but
necessary expenses reduced their net income to small wages. Ryan gives
this account of an interview with a returning miner: "He readily entered
into conversation and informed us that he had passed the summer at the
mines where the excessive heat during the day, and the dampness of the
ground where the gold washing is performed, together with privation and
fatigue, had brought on fever and ague which nearly proved fatal to him.
He had frequently given an ounce of gold for the visit of a medical man,
and on several occasions had paid two and even three ounces for a single
dose of medicine. He showed us a pair of shoes, nearly worn out, for
which he had paid twenty-four dollars." Later Ryan says: "Only such men
as can endure the hardship and privation incidental to life in the mines
are likely to make fortunes by digging for the ore. I am unequal to the
task ... I think I could within an hour assemble in this very place from
twenty to thirty individuals of my own acquaintance who had all told the
same story. They were thoroughly dissatisfied and disgusted with their
experiment in the gold country. The truth of the matter is that only
traders, speculators, and gamblers make large fortunes." Only rarely did
men of cool enough heads and far enough sight eschew from the very
beginning all notion of getting rich quickly in the placers, and
deliberately settle down to make their fortunes in other ways.
This conclusion of Ryan's throws, of course, rather too dark a tone over
the picture. The "hardy miner" was a reality, and the life in the
placers was, to such as he, profitable and pleasant. However, this point
of view had its influence in turning back from the mines a very large
proportion of those who first went in. Many of them drifted into
mercantile pursuits. Harlan tells us: "During my sojourn in Stockton I
mixed freely with the returning and disgusted miners from whom I learned
that they were selling their mining implements at ruinously low prices.
An idea struck me one day which I immediately acted upon for fear that
another might strike in the same place and cause an explosion. The
heaven-born idea that had penetrated my cranium was this: start in the
mercantile line, purchase the kits and implements of the returning
miners at low figures and sell to the greenhorns en route to the mines
at California prices." In this manner innumerable occupations supplying
the obvious needs were taken up by many returned miners. A certain
proportion drifted to crime or shady devices, but the large majority
returned to San Francisco, whence they either went home completely
discouraged, or with renewed energy and better-applied ability took hold
of the destinies of the new city. Thus another sort of Forty-niner
became in his way as significant and strong, as effective and as
romantic as his brother, the red-shirted Forty-niner of the diggings.
But in addition to the miners who had made their stakes, who had given
up the idea of mining, or who were merely waiting for the winter's rains
to be over to go back again to the diggings, an ever increasing
immigration was coming to San Francisco with the sole idea of settling
in that place. All classes of men were represented. Many of the big
mercantile establishments of the East were sending out their agents.
Independent merchants sought the rewards of speculation. Gamblers also
perceived opportunities for big killings. Professional politicians and
cheap lawyers, largely from the Southern States, unfortunately also saw
their chance to obtain standing in a new community, having lost all
standing in their own. The result of the mixing of these various
chemical elements of society was an extraordinary boiling and bubbling.
When Commander Montgomery hoisted the American flag in 1846, the town of
Yerba Buena, as San Francisco was called, had a population of about two
hundred. Before the discovery of gold it developed under the influence
of American enterprise normally and rationally into a prosperous little
town with two hotels, a few private dwellings, and two wharves in the
process of construction. Merchants had established themselves with
connections in the Eastern States, in Great Britain, and South America.
Just before the discovery of gold the population had increased to eight
hundred and twelve.
The news of the placers practically emptied the town. It would be
curious to know exactly how many human souls and chickens remained after
Brannan's _California Star_ published the authentic news. The commonest
necessary activities were utterly neglected, shops were closed and
barricaded, merchandise was left rotting on the wharves and the beaches,
and the prices of necessities rose to tremendous altitudes. The place
looked as a deserted mining-camp does now. The few men left who would
work wanted ten or even twenty dollars a day for the commonest labor.
However, the early pioneers were hard-headed citizens. Many of the
shopkeepers and merchants, after a short experience of the mines,
hurried back to make the inevitable fortune that must come to the
middleman in these extraordinary times. Within the first eight weeks of
the gold excitement two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold dust
reached San Francisco, and within: the following eight weeks six hundred
thousand dollars more came in. All of this was to purchase supplies at
any price for the miners.
This was in the latter days of 1848. In the first part of 1849 the
immigrants began to arrive. They had to have places to sleep, things to
eat, transportation to the diggings, outfits of various sorts. In the
first six months of 1849 ten thousand people piled down upon the little
city built to accommodate eight hundred. And the last six months of the
year were still more extraordinary, as some thirty thousand more dumped
themselves on the chaos of the first immigration. The result can be
imagined. The city was mainly of canvas either in the form of tents or
of crude canvas and wooden houses. The few substantial buildings stood
like rocks in a tossing sea. No attempt, of course, had been made as
yet toward public improvements. The streets were ankle-deep in dust or
neck-deep in mud. A great smoke of dust hung perpetually over the city,
raised by the trade winds of the afternoon. Hundreds of ships lay at
anchor in the harbor. They had been deserted by their crews, and, before
they could be re-manned, the faster clipper ships, built to control the
fluctuating western trade, had displaced them, so that the majority were
fated never again to put to sea.
Newcomers landed at first on a flat beach of deep black sand, where they
generally left their personal effects for lack of means of
transportation. They climbed to a ragged thoroughfare of open sheds and
ramshackle buildings, most of them in the course of construction.
Beneath crude shelters of all sorts and in great quantities were goods
brought in hastily by eager speculators on the high prices. The four
hundred deserted ships lying at anchor in the harbor had dumped down on
the new community the most ridiculous assortment of necessities and
luxuries, such as calico, silk, rich furniture, mirrors, knock-down
houses, cases and cases of tobacco, clothing, statuary,
mining-implements, provisions, and the like.
The hotels and lodging houses immediately became very numerous. Though
they were in reality only overcrowded bunk-houses, the most enormous
prices were charged for beds in them. People lay ten or twenty in a
single room--in row after row of cots, in bunks, or on the floor.
Between the discomfort of hard beds, fleas, and overcrowding, the entire
populace spent most of its time on the street or in the saloons and
gambling-houses. As some one has pointed out, this custom added greatly
to the apparent population of the place. Gambling was the gaudiest, the
best-paying, and the most patronized industry. It occupied the largest
structures, and it probably imported and installed the first luxuries.
Of these resorts the El Dorado became the most famous. It occupied at
first a large tent but soon found itself forced to move to better
quarters. The rents paid for buildings were enormous. Three thousand
dollars a month in advance was charged for a single small store made of
rough boards. A two-story frame building on Kearny Street near the Plaza
paid its owners a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year rent. The
tent containing the El Dorado gambling saloon was rented for forty
thousand dollars a year. The prices sky-rocketed still higher. Miners
paid as high as two hundred dollars for an ordinary gold rocker, fifteen
or twenty dollars for a pick, the same for a shovel, and so forth. A
copper coin was considered a curiosity, a half-dollar was the minimum
tip for any small service, twenty-five cents was the smallest coin in
circulation, and the least price for which anything could be sold. Bread
came to fifty cents a loaf. Good boots were a hundred dollars.
Affairs moved very swiftly. A month was the unit of time. Nobody made
bargains for more than a month in advance. Interest was charged on money
by the month. Indeed, conditions changed so fast that no man pretended
to estimate them beyond thirty days ahead, and to do even that was
considered rather a gamble. Real estate joined the parade of advance.
Little holes in sand-hills sold for fabulous prices. The sick,
destitute, and discouraged were submerged beneath the mounting tide of
vigorous optimism that bore on its crest the strong and able members of
the community. Every one either was rich or expected soon to be so.
Opportunity awaited every man at every corner. Men who knew how to take
advantage of fortune's gifts were assured of immediate high returns.
Those with capital were, of course, enabled to take advantage of the
opportunities more quickly; but the ingenious mind saw its chances even
with nothing to start on.
One man, who landed broke but who possessed two or three dozen old
newspapers used as packing, sold them at a dollar and two dollars apiece
and so made his start. Another immigrant with a few packages of ordinary
tin tacks exchanged them with a man engaged in putting up a canvas house
for their exact weight in gold dust. Harlan tells of walking along the
shore of Happy Valley and finding it lined with discarded pickle jars
and bottles. Remembering the high price of pickles in San Francisco, he
gathered up several hundred of them, bought a barrel of cider vinegar
from a newly-arrived vessel, collected a lot of cucumbers, and started a
bottling works. Before night, he said, he had cleared over three hundred
dollars. With this he made a corner in tobacco pipes by which he
realized one hundred and fifty dollars in twenty-four hours.
Mail was distributed soon after the arrival of the mail-steamer. The
indigent would often sit up a day or so before the expected arrival of
the mail-steamer holding places in line at the post-office. They
expected no letters but could sell the advantageous positions for high
prices when the mail actually arrived. He was a poor-spirited man indeed
who by these and many other equally picturesque means could not raise
his gold slug in a reasonable time; and, possessed of fifty dollars, he
was an independent citizen. He could increase his capital by interest
compounded every day, provided he used his wits; or for a brief span of
glory he could live with the best of them. A story is told of a new-come
traveler offering a small boy fifty cents to carry his valise to the
hotel. The urchin looked with contempt at the coin, fished out two
fifty-cent pieces, handed them to the owner of the valise, saying
"Here's a dollar; carry it yourself."
One John A. McGlynn arrived without assets. He appreciated the
opportunity for ordinary teaming, and hitching California mules to the
only and exceedingly decrepit wagon to be found he started in business.
Possessing a monopoly, he charged what he pleased, so that within a
short time he had driving for him a New York lawyer, whom he paid a
hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. His outfit was magnificent.
When somebody joked with him about his legal talent, he replied, "The
whole business of a lawyer is to know how to manage mules and asses so
as to make them pay." When within a month plenty of wagons were
imported, McGlynn had so well established himself and possessed so much
character that he became _ex officio_ the head of the industry. He was
evidently a man of great and solid sense and was looked up to as one of
the leading citizens.
Every human necessity was crying out for its ordinary conveniences.
There were no streets, there were no hotels, there were no
lodging-houses, there were no warehouses, there were no stores, there
was no water, there was no fuel. Any one who could improvise anything,
even a bare substitute, to satisfy any of these needs, was sure of
immense returns. In addition, the populace was so busy--so
overwhelmingly busy--with its own affairs that it literally could not
spare a moment to govern itself. The professional and daring politicians
never had a clearer field. They went to extraordinary lengths in all
sorts of grafting, in the sale of public real estate, in every
"shenanigan" known to skillful low-grade politicians. Only occasionally
did they go too far, as when, in addition to voting themselves salaries
of six thousand dollars apiece as aldermen, they coolly voted
themselves also gold medals to the value of one hundred and fifty
dollars apiece "for public and extra services." Then the determined
citizens took an hour off for the council chambers. The medals were cast
into the melting-pot.
All writers agree, in their memoirs, that the great impression left on
the mind by San Francisco was its extreme busyness. The streets were
always crammed full of people running and darting in all directions. It
was, indeed, a heterogeneous mixture. Not only did the Caucasian show
himself in every extreme of costume, from the most exquisite top-hatted
dandy to the red-shirted miner, but there were also to be found all the
picturesque and unknown races of the earth, the Chinese, the Chileño,
the Moor, the Turk, the Mexican, the Spanish, the Islander, not to speak
of ordinary foreigners from Russia, England, France, Belgium, Germany,
Italy, and the out-of-the-way corners of Europe. All these people had
tremendous affairs to finish in the least possible time. And every once
in a while some individual on horseback would sail down the street at
full speed, scattering the crowd left and right. If any one remarked
that the marauding individual should be shot, the excuse was always
offered, "Oh, well, don't mind him. He's only drunk," as if that
excused everything. Many of the activities of the day also were
picturesque. As there were no warehouses in which to store goods, and as
the few structures of the sort charged enormous rentals, it was cheaper
to auction off immediately all consignments. These auctions were then,
and remained for some years, one of the features of the place. The more
pretentious dealers kept brass bands to attract the crowd. The returning
miners were numerous enough to patronize both these men and the cheap
clothing stores, and having bought themselves new outfits, generally
cast the old ones into the middle of the street. Water was exceedingly
scarce and in general demand, so that laundry work was high. It was the
fashion of these gentry to wear their hair and beards long. They sported
red shirts, flashy Chinese scarves around their waists, black belts with
silver buckles, six-shooters and bowie-knives, and wide floppy hats.
The business of the day over, the evening was open for relaxation. As
the hotels and lodging-houses were nothing but kennels, and very crowded
kennels, it followed that the entire population gravitated to the
saloons and gambling places. Some of these were established on a very
extensive scale. They had not yet attained the magnificence of the
Fifties, but it is extraordinary to realize that within so few months
and at such a great distance from civilization, the early and
enterprising managed to take on the trappings of luxury. Even thus
early, plate-glass mirrors, expensive furniture, the gaudy, tremendous
oil paintings peculiar to such dives, prism chandeliers, and the like,
had made their appearance. Later, as will be seen, these gambling dens
presented an aspect of barbaric magnificence, unique and peculiar to the
time and place. In 1849, however gorgeous the trappings might have
appeared to men long deprived of such things, they were of small
importance compared with the games themselves. At times the bets were
enormous. Soulé tells us that as high as twenty thousand dollars were
risked on the turn of one card. The ordinary stake, however, was not so
large, from fifty cents to five dollars being about the usual amount.
Even at this the gamblers were well able to pay the high rents. Quick
action was the word. The tables were always crowded and bystanders many
deep waited to lay their stakes. Within a year or so the gambling
resorts assumed rather the nature of club-rooms, frequented by every
class, many of whom had no intention of gambling. Men met to talk, read
the newspapers, write letters, or perhaps take a turn at the tables. But
in 1849 the fever of speculation held every man in its grip.
Again it must be noted how wide an epoch can be spanned by a month or
two. The year 1849 was but three hundred and sixty-five days long, and
yet in that space the community of San Francisco passed through several
distinct phases. It grew visibly like the stalk of a century plant.
Of public improvements there were almost none. The few that were
undertaken sprang from absolute necessity. The town got through the
summer season fairly well, but, as the winter that year proved to be an
unusually rainy time, it soon became evident that something must be
done. The streets became bottomless pits of mud. It is stated, as plain
and sober fact, that in some of the main thoroughfares teams of mules
and horses sank actually out of sight and were suffocated. Foot travel
was almost impossible unless across some sort of causeway. Lumber was so
expensive that it was impossible to use it for the purpose. Fabulous
quantities of goods sent in by speculators loaded the market and would
sell so low that it was actually cheaper to use bales of them than to
use planks. Thus one muddy stretch was paved with bags of Chilean flour,
another with tierces of tobacco, while over still another the wayfarers
proceeded on the tops of cook stoves. These sank gradually in the soft
soil until the tops were almost level with the mud. Of course one of the
first acts of the merry jester was to shy the stove lids off into space.
The footing especially after dark can be imagined. Crossing a street on
these things was a perilous traverse watched with great interest by
spectators on either side. Often the hardy adventurer, after teetering
for some time, would with a descriptive oath sink to his waist in the
slimy mud. If the wayfarer was drunk enough, he then proceeded to pelt
his tormentors with missiles of the sticky slime. The good humor of the
community saved it from absolute despair. Looked at with cold appraising
eye, the conditions were decidedly uncomfortable. In addition there was
a grimmer side to the picture. Cholera and intermittent fever came,
brought in by ships as well as by overland immigrants, and the
death-rate rose by leaps and bounds.
The greater the hardships and obstacles, the higher the spirit of the
community rose to meet them. In that winter was born the spirit that has
animated San Francisco ever since, and that so nobly and cheerfully met
the final great trial of the earthquake and fire of 1906.
About this time an undesirable lot of immigrants began to arrive,
especially from the penal colonies of New South Wales. The criminals of
the latter class soon became known to the populace as "Sydney Ducks."
They formed a nucleus for an adventurous, idle, pleasure-loving,
dissipated set of young sports, who organized themselves into a loose
band very much on the order of the East Side gangs in New York or the
"hoodlums" in later San Francisco, with the exception, however, that
these young men affected the most meticulous nicety in dress. They
perfected in the spring of 1849 an organization called the Regulators,
announcing that, as there was no regular police force, they would take
it upon themselves to protect the weak against the strong and the
newcomer against the bunco man. Every Sunday they paraded the streets
with bands and banners. Having no business in the world to occupy them,
and holding a position unique in the community, the Regulators soon
developed into practically a band of cut-throats and robbers, with the
object of relieving those too weak to bear alone the weight of wealth.
The Regulators, or Hounds, as they soon came to be called, had the great
wisdom to avoid the belligerent and resourceful pioneer. They issued
from their headquarters, a large tent near the Plaza, every night. Armed
with clubs and pistols, they descended upon the settlements of harmless
foreigners living near the outskirts, relieved them of what gold dust
they possessed, beat them up by way of warning, and returned to
headquarters with the consciousness of a duty well done. The victims
found it of little use to appeal to the _alcalde_, for with the best
disposition in the world the latter could do nothing without an adequate
police force. The ordinary citizen, much too interested in his own
affairs, merely took precautions to preserve his own skin, avoided dark
and unfrequented alleyways, barricaded his doors and windows, and took
the rest out in contemptuous cursing.
Encouraged by this indifference, the Hounds naturally grew bolder and
bolder. They considered they had terrorized the rest of the community,
and they began to put on airs and swagger in the usual manner of bullies
everywhere. On Sunday afternoon of July 15, they made a raid on some
California ranchos across the bay, ostensibly as a picnic expedition,
returning triumphant and very drunk. For the rest of the afternoon with
streaming banners they paraded the streets, discharging firearms and
generally shooting up the town. At dark they descended upon the Chilean
quarters, tore down the tents, robbed the Chileans, beat many of the men
to insensibility, ousted the women, killed a number who had not already
fled, and returned to town only the following morning.
This proved to be the last straw. The busy citizens dropped their own
affairs for a day and got together in a mass meeting at the Plaza. All
work was suspended and all business houses were closed. Probably all the
inhabitants in the city with the exception of the Hounds had gathered
together. Our old friend, Sam Brannan, possessing the gift of a fiery
spirit and an arousing tongue, addressed the meeting. A sum of money was
raised for the despoiled foreigners. An organization was effected, and
armed _posses_ were sent out to arrest the ringleaders. They had little
difficulty. Many left town for foreign parts or for the mines, where
they met an end easily predicted. Others were condemned to various
punishments. The Hounds were thoroughly broken up in an astonishingly
brief time. The real significance of their great career is that they
called to the attention of the better class of citizens the necessity
for at least a sketchy form of government and a framework of law. Such
matters as city revenue were brought up for practically the first time.
Gambling-houses were made to pay a license. Real estate, auction sales,
and other licenses were also taxed. One of the ships in the harbor was
drawn up on shore and was converted into a jail. A district-attorney was
elected, with an associate. The whole municipal structure was still
about as rudimentary as the streets into which had been thrown armfuls
of brush in a rather hopeless attempt to furnish an artificial bottom.
It was a beginning, however, and men had at last turned their eyes even
momentarily from their private affairs to consider the welfare of this
unique society which was in the making.