wall of flames extending for squares in length and utterly impassable.
In their half insane eagerness to escape some of them would have rushed
into fatal danger but for the soldiers, who guarded the fire line
and forced them back. Only those reached the ferry who had come in
precedence of the flames, or who made a long detour to reach that avenue
of flight. When the news came to the camps of refugees that it was safe
to cross the burned area a procession began from the Golden Gate Park
across the city and down Market Street, the thoroughfare which had long
been the pride of the citizens, and a second from the Presidio, along
the curving shore line of the north bay, thence southward along the
water front. Throughout these routes, eight miles long, a continuous
flow of humanity dragged its weary way all day and far into the night
amidst hundreds of vehicles, from the clumsy garbage cart to the modern
automobile. Almost every person and every vehicle carried luggage.
Drivers of vehicles were disregardful of these exhausted, hungry
refugees and drove straight through the crowd. So dazed and deadened to
all feeling were some of them that they were bumped aside by carriage
wheels or bumped out of the way by persons.
SCENES OF HUMOR AND PATHOS.
As already stated, the scene had its humorous as well as its pathetic
side, and various amusing stories are told by those who were in a frame
of mind to notice ludicrous incidents in the horrors of the situation.
Two race track men met in the drive.
“Hello, Bill; where are you living now?” asked one.
“You see that tree over there--that big one?” said Bill. “Well, you
climb that. My room is on the third branch to the left,” and they went
away laughing.
Another observer tells these incidents of the flight: “I saw one big fat
man calmly walking up Market Street, carrying a huge bird cage, and the
cage was empty. He seemed to enjoy looking at the wrecked buildings.
Another man was leading a huge Newfoundland dog and carrying a kitten in
his arms. He kept talking to the kitten. On Fell Street I noticed an old
woman, half dressed, pushing a sewing machine up the hill. A drawer
fell out, and she stopped to gather the fallen spools. Poor little
seamstress, it was now her all.”
A more amusing instance of the spirit of saving is that told by another
narrator, who says that he saw a lone woman patiently pushing an upright
piano along the pavement a few inches at a time. Evidently in this case,
too, it was the poor soul’s one great treasure on earth.
He also tells of a guest berating the proprietor of a hotel, a few
minutes after the shock, because he had not obeyed orders to call him at
five o’clock. He vowed he would never stop at that house again, a vow he
might well keep, as the house is no more.
In one room where two girls were dressing the floor gave way and one of
them disappeared.
“Where are you, Mary?” screamed her companion.
“Oh, I’m in the parlor,” said Mary calmly, as she wriggled out of the
mass of plaster and mortar below.
At the handsome residence of Rudolph Spreckels, the wealthy financier,
the lawn was riven from end to end in great gashes, while the ornamental
Italian rail leading to the imposing entrance was a battered heap. But
the family, with a philosophy notable for the occasion, calmly set up
housekeeping on the sidewalk, the women seated in armchairs taken from
the mansion and wrapped in rugs and coverlets, the silver breakfast
service was laid out on the stone coping and their morning meal spread
out on the sidewalk. This, scene was repeated at other houses of the
wealthy, the families too fearful of another shock to venture within
doors.
Another story of much interest in this connection is told. On Friday
afternoon, two days and some hours after the scene just narrated, Mrs.
Rudolph Spreckels presented her husband with an heir on the lawn in
front of their mansion, while the family were awaiting the coming of the
dynamite squad to blow up their magnificent residence. An Irish woman
who had been called in to play the part of midwife at a birth elsewhere
on Saturday, made a pertinent comment after the wee one’s eyes were
opened to the walls of its tent home.
“God sends earthquakes and babies,” she said, “but He might, in His
mercy, cut out sending them both together.”
There were many pathetic incidents. Families had been sadly separated
in the confusion of the flight. Husbands had lost their wives--wives
had lost their husbands, and anxious mothers sought some word of their
children--the stories were very much the same. One pretty looking woman
in an expensive tailor-made costume badly torn, had lost her little
girl.
“I don’t think anything has happened to her,” said she, hopefully. “She
is almost eleven years old, and some one will be sure to take her in and
care for her; I only want to know where she is. That is all I care about
now.”
A well-known young lady of good social position, when asked where she
had spent the night, replied: “On a grave.”
“I thank God, I thank Uncle Sam and the people of this nation,” said a
woman, clad in a red woolen wrapper, seated in front of a tent at the
Presidio nursing one child and feeding three others from a board propped
on two bricks. “We have lost our home and all we had, but we have never
been hungry nor without shelter.”
The spirit of ‘49 was vital in many of the refugees. One man wanted to
know whether the fire had reached his home. He was informed that there
was not a house standing in that section of the city. He shrugged his
shoulders and whistled.
“There’s lots of others in the same boat,” as he turned away.
“Going to build?” repeated one man, who had lost family and home inside
of two hours. “Of course, I am. They tell me that the money in the banks
is still all right, and I have some insurance. Fifteen years ago I began
with these,” showing his hands, “and I guess I’m game to do it over
again. Build again, well I wonder.”
Among the many pathetic incidents of the disaster was that of a woman
who sat at the foot of Van Ness Avenue on the hot sands on the hillside
overlooking the bay east of Fort Mason, with four little children,
the youngest a girl of three, the eldest a boy of ten years. They were
destitute of water, food and money.
The woman had fled, with her children, from a home in flames in the
Mission Street district, and tramped to the bay in the hope of sighting
the ship which she said was about due, of which her husband was the
captain.
“He would know me anywhere,” she said. And she would not move, although
a young fellow gallantly offered his tent, back on a vacant lot, in
which to shelter her children.
THE GOLDEN GATE CAMP.
In the Golden Gate Park there was the most woefully grotesque camp of
sufferers imaginable. There was no caste, no distinction of rich and
poor, social lines had been obliterated by the common misfortune, and
the late owners of property and wealth were glad to camp by the side of
the day laborer. As for shelter, there were a few army tents and some
others which afforded a fair degree of comfort, but nine out of ten are
the poorest suggestions of tents made out of bedclothes, rugs, raincoats
and in some cases of lace curtains. None of the tents or huts has a
floor, and it is impossible to see how a large number of women and
children can escape the most disastrous physical effects.
The unspeakable chaos that prevailed was apparent in no way more than
in the system, or lack of system, of registration and location. At the
entrance to Golden Gate Park stands a billboard, twenty feet high and
a hundred feet long. Originally it bore the praises of somebody’s beer.
Covering this billboard, to a height of ten or twelve feet, were slips
of paper, business cards, letter heads and other notices, addressed
to “Those interested,” “Friends and relatives,” or to some individual,
telling of the whereabouts of refugees.
One notice read: “Mrs. Rogers will find her husband in Isidora Park,
Oakland. W. H. Rogers.” Another style was this: “Sue, Harry and Will
Sollenberger all safe. Call at No. 250 Twenty-seventh Avenue.”
There were thousands of these dramatic notices on this billboard, and
one larger than the others read: “Death notices can be left here; get as
many as possible.”
Another method of finding friends and relatives was by printing notices
on vehicles. On the side curtains of a buggy being driven to Golden Gate
Park was the following sign: “I am looking for I. E. Hall.”
That searchers for lost ones might have the least trouble, all the
tents, here known as camps, were tagged with the names or numbers. For
instance, one tent of bed quilts carried this sign: “No. 40 Bush Street
camp.”
Most of the tents were merely named for the family name of the
occupants, the former streets number usually being given. But these tent
tags told a wonderful story of human nature. A small army tent bore the
name, “Camp Thankful,” the one next to it was placarded “Camp Glory” and
a few feet farther on an Irishman had posted the sign “Camp Hell.”
The cooking was all done on a dozen bricks for a stove, with such
utensils as may usually be picked up in the ordinary residential alley.
But in all of the camps the badge of the eternal feminine was to be
found in the form of small pieces of broken mirrors, or hand mirrors
fastened to trees or tent walls, in some cases the polished bottom of a
tomato can serving the purposes of the feminine toilet.
One woman, in whose improvised tent screeched a parrot, sat ministering
to the wounds of the other family pet, a badly singed cat. The number of
canaries, parrots, dogs and cats was one of the amusing features of the
disaster.
Among the interesting and thrilling incidents of the disaster is that
connected with the telegraph service. For many hours virtually all the
news from San Francisco came over the wires of the Postal Telegraph
Company. The Postal has about fifteen wires running into San Francisco.
They go under the bay in cables from Oakland, and thence run underground
for several blocks down Market Street to the Postal building. About
forty operators are employed to handle the business, but evidently there
was only about one on duty when the earthquake began.
What became of him nobody knows. But he seems to have sent the first
word of the disaster. It came over the Postal wires about nine o’clock,
just when the day’s business had started in the East. It will long be
preserved in the records of the company. This was the dispatch:
“There was an earthquake hit us at 5.13 this morning, wrecking several
buildings and wrecking our offices. They are carting dead from the
fallen buildings. Fire all over town. There is no water and we lost our
power. I’m going to get out of office, as we have had a little shake
every few minutes, and it’s me for the simple life.”
“R., San Francisco, 5.50 A. M.”
“Mr. R.” evidently got out, for there was nothing doing for a brief
interval after that. The operator in the East pounded and pounded at his
key, but San Francisco was silent. The Postal people were wondering if
it was all the dream of some crazy operator or a calamity, when the wire
woke up again. It was the superintendent of the San Francisco force this
time.
“We’re on the job, and are going to try and stick,” was the way the
first message came from him.
This was what came over the wire a little later:
“Terrific earthquake occurred here at 5.13 this morning. A number of
people were killed in the city. None of the Postal people were killed.
They are now carting the dead from the fallen buildings. There are many
fires, with no one to fight them. Postal building roof wrecked, but not
entire building.”
The fire got nearer and nearer to the Postal building. All of the water
mains had been destroyed around the building, the operators said, and
there was no hope if the fire came on. They also said that they could
hear the sound of dynamite blowing up buildings. All this time the
operators were sticking to their posts and sending and receiving all the
business the wires could stand. At 12.45 the wire began to click again
with a message for the little group of waiting officials.
This message came in jerks: “Fire still coming up Market Street. It’s
one block from the Post Office now; back of the Palace Hotel is a
furnace. I am afraid that the Grand Hotel and the Palace Hotel will get
it soon. The Southern Pacific offices on California Street are safe,
so far, but can’t tell what will happen. California Street is on fire.
Almost everything east of Montgomery Street and north of Market Street
is on fire now.”
There was a pause, then: “We are beginning to pack up our instruments.”
“Instruments are all packed up, and we are ready to run,” was another
message. It was evident that just one instrument had been left connected
with the world outside. In about ten minutes it began to click. Those
who knew the telegraphers’ language caught the word “Good-bye,” and then
the ticks stopped.
At the end of an hour the instrument in the office began to click again.
It was from an electrician by the name of Swain.
“I’m back in the building, but they are dynamiting the building next
door, and I’ve got to get out,” was the way his message was translated.
Dynamite ended the story, and the Postal’s domicile in San Francisco
ceased to exist.
CHAPTER VI.
Facing Famine and Praying for Relief.
Frightful was the emergency of the vast host of fugitives who fled
in terror from the blazing city of San Francisco to the open gates of
Golden Gate Park and the military reservation of the Presidio. Food was
wanting, scarcely any water was to be had, death by hunger and thirst
threatened more than a quarter million of souls thus driven without
warning from their comfortable and happy homes and left without food
or shelter. Provisions, shelter tents, means of relief of various kinds
were being hurried forward in all haste, but for several days the host
of fugitives had no beds but the bare ground, no shelter but the open
heavens, scarcely a crumb of bread to eat, scarcely a gill of water to
drink. Those first days that followed the disaster were days of horror
and dread. Rich and poor were mingled together, the delicately reared
with the rough sons of toil to whom privation was no new experience.
Those who had food to sell sought to take advantage of the necessities
of the suffering by charging famine prices for their supplies, but the
soldiers put a quick stop to this. When Thursday morning broke, lines
of buyers formed before the stores whose supplies had not been
commandeered. In one of these, the first man was charged 75 cents for a
loaf of bread. The corporal in charge at that point brought his gun down
with a slam.
“Bread is 10 cents a loaf in this shop,” he said.
It went. The soldier fixed the schedule of prices a little higher than
in ordinary times, and to make up for that he forced the storekeeper to
give free food to several hungry people in line who had no money to pay.
In several other places the soldiers used the same brand of horse sense.
A man with a loaf of bread in his hand ran up to a policeman on
Washington Street. “Here,” he said, “this man is trying to charge me a
dollar for this loaf of bread. Is that fair?”
“Give it to me,” said the policeman. He broke off one end of it and
stuck it in his mouth. “I am hungry myself,” he said when he had his
mouth clear. “Take the rest of it. It’s appropriated.”
As an example of the prices charged for food and service by the
unscrupulous, we may quote the experience of a Los Angeles millionaire
named John Singleton, who had been staying a day or two at the Palace
Hotel. On Wednesday he had to pay $25 for an express wagon to carry
himself, his wife and her sister to the Casino, near Golden Gate Park,
and on Thursday was charged a dollar apiece for eggs and a dollar for a
loaf of bread. Others tell of having to pay $50 for a ride to the ferry.
One of the refugees on the shores of Lake Herced Thursday morning spied
a flock of ducks and swans which the city maintained there for the
decoration of the lake. He plunged into the lake, swam out to them and
captured a fat drake. Other men and boys saw the point and followed. The
municipal ducks were all cooking in five minutes.
The soldiers were prompt to take charge of the famine situation, acting
on their own responsibility in clearing out the supplies of the little
grocery stores left standing and distributing them among the people in
need. The principal food of those who remained in the city was composed
of canned goods and crackers. The refugees who succeeded in getting out
of San Francisco were met as soon as they entered the neighboring towns
by representatives of bakers who had made large supplies of bread, and
who immediately dealt them out to the hungry people.
THE FOOD QUESTION URGENT.
But the needs of the three hundred thousand homeless and hungry people
in the city could not be met in this way, and immediate supplies in
large quantities were necessary to prevent a reign of famine from
succeeding the ravages of the fire. Danger from thirst was still more
insistent than that from hunger. There was some food to be had, bakeries
were quickly built within the military reservation there, and General
Funston announced that rations would soon reach the city and the people
would be supplied from the Presidio. But there was scarcely any water to
relieve the thirst of the suffering. Water became the incessant cry
of firemen and people alike, the one wanting it to fight the fire, the
other to drink, but even for the latter the supply was very scant.
There was water in plenty in the reservoirs, but they were distant and
difficult to reach, and all night of the day succeeding the earth shock
wagons mounted with barrels and guarded by soldiers drove through the
park doling out water. There was a steady crush around these wagons, but
only one drink was allowed to a person.
Toward midnight a black, staggering body of men began to weave through
the entrance. They were volunteer fire-fighters, looking for a place
to throw themselves down and sleep. These men dropped out all along the
line, and were rolled out of the driveways by the troops. There was much
splendid unselfishness here. Women gave up their blankets and sat up or
walked about all night to cover the exhausted men who had fought fire
until there was no more fight in them.
The common destitution and suffering had, as we have said, wiped out all
social, financial and racial distinctions. The man who last Tuesday was
a prosperous merchant was obliged to occupy with his family a little
plot of ground that adjoined the open-air home of a laborer. The
white man of California forgot his antipathy to the Asiatic race,
and maintained friendly relations with his new Chinese and Japanese
neighbors. The society belle who Tuesday night was a butterfly of
fashion at the grand opera performance now assisted some factory girl
in the preparation of humble daily meals. Money had little value. The
family that had had foresight to lay in the largest stock of foodstuffs
on the first day of disaster was rated highest in the scale of wealth.
A few of the families that could secure wagons were possessors of cook
stoves, but over 95 per cent. of the refugees did their cooking on
little campfires made of brick or stone. Battered kitchen utensils that
the week before would have been regarded as useless had become articles
of high value. In fact, man had come back to nature and all lines
of caste had been obliterated, while the very thought of luxury had
disappeared. It was, in the exigency of the moment, considered good
fortune to have a scant supply of the barest necessaries of life.
As for clothing, it was in many cases of the scantiest, while numbers of
the people had brought comfortable clothing and bedding. Many others had
fled in their night garbs, and comparatively few of these had had the
self-possession to return and don their daytime clothes. As a result
there had been much improvisation of garments suitable for life in the
open air, and as the days went on many of the women arrayed themselves
in home-made bloomer costumes, a sensible innovation under the
circumstances and in view of the active outdoor work they were obliged
to perform.
The grave question to be faced at this early stage was: How soon would
an adequate supply of food arrive from outside points to avert famine?
Little remained in San Francisco beyond the area swept by the fire, and
the available supply could not last more than a few days. Fresh meat
disappeared early on Wednesday and only canned foods and breadstuffs
were left. All the foodstuffs coming in on the cars were at once seized
by order of the Mayor and added to the scanty supply, the names of the
consignees being taken that this material might eventually be paid for.
The bakers agreed to work their plants to their utmost capacity and to
send all their surplus output to the relief committee. By working night
and day thousands of loaves could be provided daily. A big bakery in
the saved district started its ovens and arranged to bake 50,000 loaves
before night. The provisions were taken charge of by a committee
and sent to the various depots from which the people were being fed.
Instructions were issued by Mayor Schmitz on Thursday to break open
every store containing provisions and to distribute them to the
thousands under police supervision. A policeman reported that two
grocery stores in the neighborhood were closed, although the clerks were
present. “Smash the stores open,” ordered the Mayor, “and guard them.”
In towns across the bay the master bakers have met and fixed the price
of bread at 5 cents the loaf, with the understanding that they will
refuse to sell to retailers who attempt to charge famine prices. The
committee of citizens in charge of the situation in the stricken city
proposed to use every effort to keep food down to the ordinary price and
check the efforts of speculators, who in one instance charged as much as
$3.50 for two loaves of bread and a can of sardines. Orders were issued
by the War Department to army officers to purchase at Los Angeles
immediately 200,000 rations and at Seattle 300,000 rations and hurry
them to San Francisco. The department was informed that there were
120,000 rations at the Presidio, that thousands of refugees were being
sheltered there and that the army was feeding them. One million rations
already had been started to San Francisco by the department. But in
view of the fact that there were 300,000 fugitives to be fed the supply
available was likely to be soon exhausted.
FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY.
Such was the state of affairs at the end of the second day of the great
disaster. But meanwhile the entire country had been aroused by the
tidings of the awful calamity, the sympathetic instinct of Americans
everywhere was awakened, and it was quickly made evident that the people
of the stricken city would not be allowed to suffer for the necessaries
of life. On all sides money was contributed in large sums, the United
States Government setting the example by an immediate appropriation of
$1,000,000, and in the briefest possible interval relief trains were
speeding toward the stricken city from all quarters, carrying supplies
of food, shelter tents and other necessaries of a kind that could not
await deliberate action.
Shelter was needed almost as badly as food, for a host of the refugees
had nothing but their thin clothing to cover them, and, though the
weather at first was fine and mild, a storm might come at any time.
In fact, a rain did come, a severe one, early in the week after the
disaster, pouring nearly all night long on the shivering campers in
the parks, wetting them to the skin and soaking through the rudely
improvised shelters which many of the refugees had put up. A few days
afterward came a second shower, rendering still more evident the need of
haste in providing suitable shelter.
All this was foreseen by those in charge, and the most strenuous efforts
were made to provide the absolute necessities of life. Huge quantities
of supplies were poured into the city. From all parts of California
trainloads of food were rushed there in all haste. A steamer from the
Orient laden with food reached the city in its hour of need; another was
dispatched in all haste from Tacoma bearing $25,000 worth of food and
medical supplies, ordered by Mayor Weaver, of Philadelphia, as a first
installment of that city’s contribution. Money was telegraphed from
all quarters to the Governor of California, to be expended for food and
other supplies, and so prompt was the response to the insistent demand
that by Saturday all danger of famine was at an end; the people were
being fed.
WATER FOR THE THIRSTY.
The broken waterpipes were also repaired with all possible haste, the
Spring Valley Water Company putting about one thousand men at work upon
their shattered mains, and in a very brief time water began to flow
freely in many parts of the residence section and the great difficulty
of obtaining food and water was practically at an end. Never in
the history of the country has there been a more rapid and complete
demonstration of the resourcefulness of Americans than in the way this
frightful disaster was met.
Food, water and shelter were not the only urgent needs. At first there
was absolutely no sanitary provision, and the danger of an epidemic
was great. This was a peril which the Board of Health addressed itself
vigorously to meet, and steps for improving the sanitary conditions were
hastily taken. Quick provision for sheltering the unfortunates was also
made. Eight temporary structures, 150 feet in length by 28 feet wide
and 13 feet high, were erected in Golden Gate Park, and in these
sheds thousands found reasonably comfortable quarters. This was but a
beginning. More of these buildings were rapidly erected, and by their
aid the question of shelter was in part solved. The buildings were
divided into compartments large enough to house a family, each
compartment having an entrance from the outside. This work was done
under the control of the engineering department of the United States
army, which had taken steps to obtain a full supply of lumber and had
put 135 carpenters to work. Those of the refugees who were without tents
were the first to be provided for in these temporary buildings.
THE CAMPS IN THE PARKS.
To those who made an inspection of the situation a few days after
the earthquake, the hills and beaches of San Francisco looked like an
immense tented city. For miles through the park and along the beaches
from Ingleside to the sea wall at North Beach the homeless were camped
in tents--makeshifts rigged up from a few sticks of wood and a blanket
or sheet. Some few of the more fortunate secured vehicles on which they
loaded regulation tents and were, therefore, more comfortably housed
than the great majority. Golden Gate Park and the Panhandle looked like
one vast campaign ground. It is said that fully 100,000 persons, rich
and poor alike, sought refuge in Golden Gate Park alone, and 200,000
more homeless ones located at the other places of refuge.
At the Presidio military reservation, where probably 50,000 persons
were camped, affairs were conducted with military precision. Water was
plentiful and rations were dealt out all day long. The refugees stood
patiently in line and there was not a murmur. This characteristic was
observable all over the city. The people were brave and patient, and the
wonderful order preserved by them proved of great assistance. In Golden
Gate Park a huge supply station had been established and provisions were
dealt out.
Six hundred men from the Ocean Shore Railway arrived on Saturday night
with wagons and implements to work on the sewer system. Inspectors were
kept going from house to house, examining chimneys and issuing permits
to build fires. In fact, activity manifested itself in all quarters in
the attempt to bring order out of confusion, and in an astonishingly
short time the tented city was converted from a scene of wretched
disorder into one of order and system.
At Jefferson Park were camped thousands of people of every class in
life. On the western edge of this park is the old Scott house, where
Mrs. McKinley lay sick for two weeks in 1901. Three times a day the
people all gathered in line before the provision wagons for their little
handouts. “Yesterday,” says an observer, “I saw, in order before the
wagons, a Lascar sailor in his turban, about as low a Chinatown bum as I
ever set eyes on, a woman of refined appearance, a barefooted child, two
Chinamen, and a pretty girl. They were squeezed up together by the line,
which extended for a quarter of a mile. It is civilization in the bare
bones.
“The great and rich are on a level with the poor in the struggle for
bare existence, and over them all is the perfect, unbroken discipline
of the soldiery. They came into the city and took charge on an hour’s
notice, they saved the city from itself in the three days of hell, and
but for them the city, even with enough provisions to feed them in the
stores and warehouses, must have gone hungry for lack of distributive
organization.”
COMEDY AND PATHOS IN THE BREAD LINE.
At one of the parks on Tuesday morning a handsomely dressed woman
with two children at her skirts stood in a line of many hundreds where
supplies were being given out. She took some uncooked bacon, and as she
reached for it jewels sparkled on her fingers. One of the tots took a
can of condensed milk, the other a bag of cakes.
“I have money,” she said, “‘if I could get it and use it. I have
property, if I could realize on it. I have friends, if I could get to
them. Meantime I am going to cook this piece of bacon on bricks and be
happy.”
She was only one of thousands like her.
In a walk through the city this note of cheerfulness of the people in
the face of an almost incredible week of horror was to a correspondent
the mitigating element to the awfulness of disaster.
In the streets of the residential district in the western addition,
which the fire did not reach, women of the houses were cooking meals on
the pavement. In most cases they had moved out the family ranges,
and were preparing the food which they had secured from the Relief
Committee.
Out on Broderick street, near the Panhandle, a piano sounded. It was
nigh ten o’clock and the stars were shining after the rain. Fires
gleamed up and down through the shrubbery and the refugees sat huddled
together about the flames, with their blankets about their heads,
Apache-like, in an effort to dry out after the wetting of the afternoon.
The piano, dripping with moisture, stood on the curb, near the front of
a cottage which had been wrecked by the earthquake.
A youth with a shock of red hair sat on a cracker box and pecked at the
ivories. “Home Ain’t Nothing Like This” was thrummed from the rusting
wires with true vaudeville dash and syncopation. “Bill Bailey,” “Good
Old Summer Time,” “Dixie” and “In Toyland” followed. Three young men
with handkerchiefs wrapped about their throats in lieu of collars stood
near the pianist and with him lifted up their voices in melody. The
harmony was execrable, the time without excuse, but the songs ran
through the trees of the Panhandle, and the crows, forgetting their
misery for a time, joined the strange chorus.
The people had their tales of comedy, one being that on the morning of
the fire a richly dressed woman who lived in one of the aristocratic
Sutter Street apartments came hurrying down the street, faultlessly
gowned as to silks and sables, save that one dainty foot was shod with
a high-heeled French slipper and the other was incased in a laborer’s
brogan. They say that as she walked she careened like a bark-rigged ship
before a typhoon.
An hour spent behind the counter of the food supply depot in the park
tennis court yielded rich reward to the seeker after the outlandish. The
tennis court was piled high with the plunder of several grocery stores
and the cargoes of many relief cars. A square cut in the wire screen
permitted of the insertion of a counter, behind which stood members
of the militia acting as food dispensers. Before the improvised window
passed the line of refugees, a line which stretched back fully 300 yards
to Speedway track.
“I want a can of condensed cream, so I can feed my baby and my dog,”
said a large, florid-faced woman in a gaudy kimono, “and I don’t care
for crackers, but you can throw in some potted chicken if you have it.”
“What’s in that bottle over there?” queried the next applicant. “Tomato
ketchup? Well, of all the luck! Say, young man, just give me three.”
A little gray-haired woman in an India shawl peered timorously through
the window. “Just a little bit of anything you may have handy, please,”
she whispered, and she cast a careful eye about to see of any of her
neighbors had recognized her standing there in the “bread line.”
“Yesterday, at the Western Union office,” says one writer, “I saw a
woman drive up in a large motor car and beg that the telegram on which a
boy had asked a delivery fee of twenty-five cents be handed to her. She
said she had not a penny and did not know when she would have any money,
but that as soon as she had any she would pay for the message. It
was given to her, and the manager told me that there were hundreds of
similar cases.”
Many weddings resulted from the disaster. Women driven out of their
homes and left destitute, appealed to the men to whom they were engaged,
and immediate marriages took place. After the first day of the disaster
an increase in the marriage licenses issued was noticed by County Clerk
Cook. This increase grew until seven marriage licenses were issued in an
hour.
“I don’t live anywhere,” was the answer given in many cases when the
applicant for a license was asked the locality of his residence. “I used
to live in San Francisco.”
Births seem to have been about as common as marriages, in one night
five children being born in Golden Gate Park. In Buena Vista Park eight
births were recorded and others elsewhere, the population being thus
increased at a rate hardly in accordance with the exigencies of the
situation.
THE EXODUS FROM SAN FRANCISCO.
We have spoken only of the camps of refugees within the municipal
limits of San Francisco. But in addition to these was the multitude of
fugitives who made all haste to escape from that city. This was with the
full consent of the authorities, who felt that every one gone lessened
the immediate weight upon themselves, and who issued a strict edict that
those who went must stay, that there could be no return until a counter
edict should be made public.
From the start this was one of the features of the situation. Down
Market Street, once San Francisco’s pride, now leading through piles of
tottering walls, piles of still hot bricks and twisted iron and heaps
of smouldering debris, poured a huge stream of pedestrians. Men bending
under the weight of great bundles pushed baby carriages loaded with
bric-a-brac and children. Women toiled along with their arms full, but
a large proportion were able to ride, for the relief corps had been
thoroughly organized and wagons were being pressed into service from all
sides.
In constant procession they moved toward the ferry, whence the Southern
Pacific was transporting them with baggage free wherever they wished to
go. Automobiles meanwhile shot in all directions, carrying the Red Cross
flag and usually with a soldier carrying a rifle in the front seat. They
had the right of way everywhere, carrying messages and transporting the
ill to temporary hospitals and bearing succor to those in distress.
Oakland, the nearest place of resort, on the bay shore opposite San
Francisco, soon became a great city of refuge, fugitives gathering there
until 50,000 or more were sheltered within its charitable limits. Having
suffered very slightly from the earthquake that had wrecked the great
city across the bay, it was in condition to offer shelter to the
unfortunate. All day Wednesday and Thursday a stream of humanity poured
from the ferries, every one carrying personal baggage and articles saved
from the conflagration. Hundreds of Chinese men, women and children, all
carrying baggage to the limit of their strength, made their way into the
limited Chinatown of Oakland.
Multitudes of persons besieged the telegraph offices, and the crush
became so great that soldiers were stationed at the doors to keep them
in line and allow as many as possible to find standing room at the
counters. Messages were stacked yards high in the offices waiting to
be sent throughout the world. Every boat from San Francisco brought
hundreds of refugees, carrying luggage and bedding in large quantities.
Many women were bareheaded and all showed fatigue as the result of
sleeplessness and exposure to the chill air. Hundreds of these persons
lined the streets of Oakland, waiting for some one to provide them with
shelter, for which the utmost possible provision was quickly made. No
one was allowed to go hungry in Oakland and few lacked shelter. At the
Oakland First Presbyterian Church 1,800 were fed and 1,000 people were
provided with sleeping accommodations. Pews were turned into beds. Cots
stood in the aisles, in the gallery and in the Sunday school room. Every
available inch of space was occupied by some substitute for a bed.
As the days wore on the number of refugees somewhat decreased. Although
they still came in large numbers, many left on every train for different
points. Requests for free transportation were investigated as closely
as possible and all the deserving were sent away. Women and children and
married men who wished to join their families in different parts of the
State were given preference. The transportation bureau was on a street
corner, where a man stood on a box and called the names of those
entitled to passes.
Along the principal streets of Oakland there was a picturesque
pilgrimage of former householders, who dragged or carried the meagre
effects they had been able to save. The refugees who could not be cared
for in Oakland made an exodus to Berkeley and other surrounding cities,
where relief committees were actively at work. Utter despair was
pictured on many faces, which showed the effects of sleepless days and
nights, and the want of proper food.
Oakland was only one of the outside camps of refuge. At Berkeley
over 6,000 refugees sought quarters, the big gymnasium of the State
University being turned into a lodging house, while hundreds were
provided with blankets to sleep in the open air under the University
oaks. The students and professors of the University did all they could
for their relief, and the Citizens’ Relief Committee supplied them with
food.
The same benevolent sympathy was manifested at all the places near the
ruined city which had escaped disaster, this aid materially reducing
that needed within San Francisco itself.
WORSHIP IN THE OPEN AIR.
Sunday dawned in San Francisco; Sunday in the camp of the refugees. On a
green knoll in Golden Gate Park, between the conservatory and the tennis
courts, a white-haired minister of the Gospel gathered his flock. It was
the Sabbath day and in the turmoil and confusion the minister did not
forget his duty. Two upright stakes and a cross-piece gave him a rude
pulpit, and beside him stood a young man with a battered brass cornet.
Far over the park stole a melody that drew hundreds of men and women
from their tents. Of all denominations and all creeds, they gathered on
that green knoll, and the men uncovered while the solemn voice repeated
the words of a grand old hymn, known wherever men and women meet to
worship the Lord:
“Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on Thee; Leave, oh,
leave me not alone, still support and comfort me!”
A moment before there had been shouting and confusion in the
driveway where some red-striped artillerymen were herding a squad of
gesticulating Chinamen as men herd sheep. The shouting died away as the
minister’s voice rose and fell and out of the stillness came the sobs of
women. One little woman in blue was making no sound, but the tears were
streaming down her cheeks. Her husband, a sturdy young fellow in his
shirt sleeves, put his arm about her shoulders and tried to comfort her
as the reading went on.
“All my trust on Thee is stayed; all my help from Thee I bring; Cover my
defenseless head with the shadow of Thy wing.”
Then the cornet took up the air again and those helpless persons
followed it in quivering tones, the white-haired man of God leading them
with closed eyes. When the last verse was over, the minister raised his
hands.
“Let us pray,” said he, and his congregation sank down in the grass
before him. It was a simple prayer, such a prayer as might be offered by
a man without a home or a shelter over his head--and nothing left to him
but an unshaken faith in his Creator.
“Oh, Lord, Thy ways are past finding out, but we still have faith in
Thee. We know not why Thou hast visited these people and left them
homeless. Thou knowest the reason of this desolation and of our utter
helplessness. We call on Thee for help in the hour of our great need.
Bless the people of this city, the sorrowing ones, the bereaved, gather
them under Thy mighty wing and soothe aching hearts this day.”
The women were crying again, and one big man dug his knuckles into his
eyes without shame. The man who could have listened to such a prayer
unmoved was not in Golden Gate Park that day.
CHAPTER VII.
The Frightful Loss of Life and Wealth.
While multitudes escaped from toppling buildings and crashing walls in
the dread disaster of that fatal Wednesday morning of April 18th in San
Francisco, hundreds of the less fortunate met their death in the ruins,
and horrifying scenes were witnessed by the survivors. Many of those who
escaped had tales of terror to tell. Mr. J. P. Anthony, as he fled from
the Ramona Hotel, saw a score or more of people crushed to death, and
as he walked the streets at a later hour saw bodies of the dead being
carried in garbage wagons and all kinds of vehicles to the improvised
morgues, while hospitals and storerooms were already filled with the
injured. Mr. G. A. Raymond, of Tomales, Cal., gives evidence to the same
effect. As he rushed into the street, he says that the air was filled
with falling stones and people around him were crushed to death on all
sides.
Others gave testimony to the same effect. Samuel Wolf, of Salt Lake
City, tells us that he saved one woman from death in the hotel. She was
rushing blindly toward an open window, from which she would have fallen
fifty feet to the stone pavement below. “On my way down Market Street,”
he says, “the whole side of a building fell out and came so near me that
I was covered and blinded by the dust. Then I saw the first dead come
by. They were piled up in an automobile like carcasses in a butcher’s
wagon, all bloody, with crushed skulls, broken limbs and bloody faces.”
These are frightful stories, exaggerated probably from the nervous
excitement of those terrible moments, as are also the following
statements, which form part of the early accounts of the disaster. Thus
we are told that “from a three-story lodging house at Fifth and Minna
Streets, which collapsed Wednesday morning, more than seventy-five
bodies were taken to-day. There are fifty other bodies in sight in the
ruins. This building was one of the first to take fire on Fifth Street.
At least 100 persons are said to have been killed in the Cosmopolitan,
on Fourth Street. More than 150 persons are reported dead in the
Brunswick Hotel, at Seventh and Mission Streets.”
Another statement is to the effect that “at Seventh and Howard Streets
a great lodging house took fire after the first shock, before the guests
had escaped. There were few exits and nearly all the lodgers perished.
Mrs. J. J. Munson, one of those in the building, leaped with her child
in her arms from the second floor to the pavement below and escaped
unhurt. She says she was the only one who escaped from the house. Such
horrors as this were repeated at many points. B. Baker was killed while
trying to get a body from the ruins. Other rescuers heard the pitiful
wail of a little child, but were unable to get near the point from which
the cry issued. Soon the onrushing fire ended the cry and the men turned
to other tasks.”
ESTIMATES OF THE DEATH LIST.
The questionable point in those statements is that the numbers of dead
spoken of in these few instances exceed the whole number given in the
official records issued two weeks after the disaster. Yet they go to
illustrate the actual horrors of the case, and are of importance for
this reason. As regards the whole number killed, in fact, there is not,
and probably never will be, a full and accurate statement. While about
350 bodies had been recovered at the end of the second week, it was
impossible to estimate how many lay buried under the ruins, to be
discovered only as the work of excavation went on, and how many more
had been utterly consumed by the flames, leaving no trace of their
existence. The estimates of the probable loss of life ran up to 1,500
and more, while the injured were very numerous.
The shock of the earthquake, the pulse of deep horror to which it gave
rise, the first wild impulse to flee for life, gave way in the minds of
many to a feeling of intense sympathy as agonized cries came from those
pinned down to the ruins of buildings or felled by falling bricks or
stones, and as the sight of dead bodies incrimsoned with blood met the
eyes of the survivors in the streets. From wandering aimlessly about,
many of these went earnestly to work to rescue the wounded and recover
the bodies of the slain. In this merciful work the police and the
soldiers lent their aid, and soon there was a large corps of rescuers
actively engaged.
BURYING THE DEAD.
Soon numbers were taken, alive or dead, from the ruins, passing vehicles
were pressed into the service, and the labor of mercy went on rapidly,
several buildings being quickly converted into temporary hospitals,
while the dead were conveyed to the Mechanics’ Pavilion and other
available places. Portsmouth Square became for a time a public morgue.
Between twenty and thirty corpses were laid side by side upon the
trodden grass in the absence of more suitable accommodations. It is said
that when the flames threatened to reach the square, the dead, mostly
unknown, were removed to Columbia Square, where they were buried when
danger threatened that quarter. Others were taken to the Presidio, and
here the soldiers pressed into service all men who came near and forced
them to labor at burying the dead, a temporary cemetery being opened
there. So thick were the corpses piled up that they were becoming a
menace, and early in the day the order was issued to bury them at any
cost. The soldiers were needed for other work, so, at the point of
rifles, the citizens were compelled to take to the work of burying. Some
objected at first, but the troops stood no trifling, and every man
who came within reach was forced to work. Rich men, unused to physical
exertion, labored by the side of the workingmen digging trenches in
which to bury the dead. The able-bodied being engaged in fighting the
flames, General Funston ordered that the old men and the weaklings
should take the work in hand. They did it willingly enough, but had they
refused the troops on guard would have forced them. It was ruled that
every man physically capable of handling a spade or a pick should dig
for an hour. When the first shallow graves were ready the men, under the
direction of the troops, lowered the bodies, several in a grave, and
a strange burial began. The women gathered about crying. Many of them
knelt while a Catholic priest read the burial service and pronounced
absolution. All Thursday afternoon this went on.
In this connection the following stories are told:
Dr. George V. Schramm, a young medical graduate, said:
“As I was passing down Market Street with a new-found friend, an
automobile came rushing along with two soldiers in it. My doctor’s badge
protected me, but the soldiers invited my companion, a husky six-footer,
to get into the automobile. He said:
“‘I don’t want to ride, and have plenty of business to attend to.’
“Once more they invited him, and he refused. One of the soldiers pointed
a gun at him and said:
“‘We need such men as you to save women and children and to help fight
the fire.’
“The man was on his way to find his sister, but he yielded to the
inevitable. He worked all day with the soldiers, and when released to
get lunch he felt that he could conscientiously desert to go and find
his own loved ones.”
“Half a block down the street the soldiers were stopping all pedestrians
without the official pass which showed that they were on relief
business, and putting them to work heaving bricks off the pavement. Two
dapper men with canes, the only clean people I saw, were caught at the
corner by a sergeant, who showed great joy as he said:
“‘I give you time to git off those kid gloves, and then hustle, damn
you, hustle!’ The soldiers took delight in picking out the best dressed
men and keeping them at the brick piles for long terms. I passed them
in the shelter of a provision wagon, afraid that even my pass would not
save me. Two men are reported shot because they refused to turn in and
help.”
Many of the dead, of course, will never be identified, though the names
were taken of all who were known and descriptions written of the others.
A story comes to us of one young girl who had followed for two days the
body of her father, her only relative. It had been taken from a house
on Mission Street to an undertaker’s shop just after the quake. The fire
drove her out with her charge, and it was placed in Mechanics’ Pavilion.
That went, and the body rested for a day at the Presidio, waiting
burial. With many others, she wept on the border of the burned area,
while the women cared for her.
VICTIMS TAKEN FROM THE RUINS.
On Friday eleven postal clerks, all alive, were taken from the debris of
the Post Office. All at first were thought to be dead, but it was found
that, although they were buried under the stone and timber, every one
was alive. They had been for three days without food or water.
Two theatrical people were in a hotel in Santa Rosa when the shock came.
The room was on the fourth floor. The roof collapsed. One of them was
thrown from the bed and both were caught by the descending timbers and
pinned helplessly beneath the debris. They could speak to each other and
could touch one another’s hands, but the weight was so great that they
could do nothing to liberate themselves. After three hours rescuers
came, cut a hole in the roof and both were released uninjured.
Even the docks were converted into hospitals in the stringent exigency
of the occasion, about 100 patients being stretched on Folsom street
dock at one time. In the evening tugs conveyed them to Goat Island,
where they were lodged in the hospital. The docks from Howard Street to
Folsom Street had been saved, the fire at this point not being permitted
to creep farther east than Main Street. Another series of fatalities
occurred, caused by the stampeding of a herd of cattle at Sixth and
Folsom Streets. Three hundred of the panic-stricken animals ran amuck
when they saw and felt the flames and charged wildly down the street,
trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through
and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons’, it is said,
were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells
us that “the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his
wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the
floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the
janitor of a big building. The first he knew of the catastrophe he found
himself in the basement, his dead wife beside him. The building had
simply split in two, and thrown them down.”
In the camps of refuge the deaths came frequently. Physicians were
everywhere in evidence, but, without medicine or instruments, were
fearfully handicapped. Men staggered in from their herculean efforts at
the fire lines, only to fall gasping on the grass. There was nothing to
be done. Injured lay groaning. Tender hands were willing, but of water
there was none. “Water, water, for God’s sake get me some water,” was
the cry that struck into thousands of souls of San Francisco.
The list of dead was not confined to San Francisco, but extended to many
of the neighboring towns, especially to Santa Rosa, where sixty were
reported dead and a large number missing, and to the insane asylum in
its vicinity, from the ruins of which a hundred or more of dead bodies
were taken.
THE FREE USE OF RIFLES.
A citizen tells us that “in the early part of the evening, and while
the twilight lasts, there is a good deal of trafficking up and down
the sidewalks. Having finished their dinners of government provisions,
cooked on the street or in the parks, the people promenade for half an
hour or so. By half-past eight the town is closed tight. A rat scurrying
in the street will bring a soldier’s rifle to his shoulder. Any one not
wearing a uniform or a Red Cross badge is a suspicious character and may
be shot unless he halts at command. Even the men in uniform do well to
stop still, for it is hard to tell a uniform in the half light thrown up
by the burning town and the great shadows.
“Last night two of us ventured out on Van Ness Avenue a little late.
There came up the noise of some kind of a shooting scrape far down
the street. We hurried in that direction to see what was doing. An
eighteen-year-old boy in a uniform barred the way, levelled his rifle
and said in a peremptory way:
“‘Go home.’
“We took a course down the block, where an older soldier, more
communicative but equally peremptory, informed us that we were trifling
with our lives, news or no news.
“‘We’ve shot about 300 people for one thing or another,’ he said. ‘Now,
dodge trouble. Git!’ That ended the expedition.”
THE LOSS IN WEALTH.
If we pass now from the record of the loss of lives to that of the
destruction of wealth, the estimates exceed by far any fire losses
recorded in history.
The truth is that when flames eat out the heart of a great city, devour
its vast business establishments, storehouses and warehouses, sweep
through its centres of opulence, destroy its wharves with their
accumulation of goods, spread ruin and havoc everywhere, it is
impossible at first to estimate the loss. Only gradually, as time goes
on, is the true loss discovered, and never perhaps very accurately,
since the owners and the records of riches often disappear with the
wealth itself. In regard to San Francisco, the early estimate was that
three-fourths of the city, valued at $500,000,000, was destroyed.
But early estimates are apt to be exaggerated, and on Friday, two days
after the disaster, we find this estimate reduced to $250,000,000. A few
more days passed and these figures shrunk still further, though it was
still largely conjectural, the means of making a trustworthy estimate
being very restricted. Later on the pendulum swung upward again, and two
weeks after the fire the closest estimates that could be made fixed the
property loss at close to $350,000,000, or double that of the Chicago
fire. But as the actual loss in the latter case proved considerably
below the early estimates, the same may prove to be the case with San
Francisco.
Special personal losses were in many cases great. Thus the Palace Hotel
was built at a cost of $6,000,000, and the St. Francis, which originally
cost $4,000,000, was being enlarged at great expense. Several of the
great mansions on Nob’s Hill cost a million or more, the City Hall was
built at a cost of $7,000,000, the new Post Office was injured to the
extent of half a million, while a large number of other buildings might
be named whose value, with their contents, was measured in the millions.
It was not until May 3d that news came over the wires of another serious
item of loss. The merchants had waited until then for their fire-proof
safes and vaults to cool off before attempting to open them. When this
was at length done the results proved disheartening. Out of 576 vaults
and safes opened in the district east of Powell and north of Market
Street, where the flames had raged with the greatest fury, it was found
that fully forty per cent. had not performed their duty. When opened
they were found to contain nothing but heaps of ashes. The valuable
account books, papers and in some cases large sums of money had
vanished, the loss of the accounts being a severe calamity in a business
sense. As all the banks were equipped with the best fire-proof vaults,
no fear was felt for the safety of their contents.
LOOTERS IN CHINATOWN.
Chinatown suffered severely, the merchants of that locality possessing
large stocks of valuable goods, many of which were looted by seemingly
respectable sightseers after the ruins had cooled off, bronze, porcelain
and other valuable goods being taken from the ruins. One example
consisted in a mass of gold and silver valued at $2,500, which had been
melted by the fire in the store of Tai Sing, a Chinese merchant. This
was found by the police on May 3d in a place where it had been hidden by
looters.
But with all its losses San Francisco does not despair. The spirit of
its citizens is heroic, and there are some hopeful signs in the air. The
insurances due are estimated to approximate $175,000,000, and there
are other moneys likely to be spent on building during the coming year,
making a total of over $200,000,000. Eastern capitalists also talk of
investing $100,000,000 of new capital in the rebuilding of the
city, while the San Francisco authorities have a project of issuing
$200,000,000 of municipal bonds, the payment to be guaranteed by the
United States Government. Thus, two weeks after the earthquake, daylight
was already showing strongly ahead and hope was fast beginning to
replace despair.
CHAPTER VIII.
Wonderful Record of Thrilling Escapes.
Shuddering under the memories of what seems more like a nightmare than
actual reality to the survivors of this frightful calamity, they have
tried to picture in words far from adequate the days of terror and the
nights of horror that fell to the lot of the people of the Golden Gate
city and their guests.
They recount the roar of falling structures and the groans and pitiful
cries of those pinned beneath the timbers of collapsing buildings. They
speak of their climbing over dead bodies heaped in the streets, and of
following tortuous ways to find the only avenue of escape--the ferry,
where men and women fought like infuriated animals, bent on escape from
a fiery furnace.
These refugees tell of the great caravan composed of homeless persons
in its wild flight to the hills for safety, and in that great procession
women, harnessed to vehicles, trudging along and tugging at the shafts,
hauling all that was left of their earthly belongings, and a little food
that foresight told them would be necessary to stay the pangs of hunger
in the hours of misery that must follow.
We give below an especially accurate picture from the description of the
well-known writer, Jane Tingley, who, an eye-witness of it all, did so
much to help the sufferers, and who, with all the unselfishness of true
American womanhood, sacrificed her own comfort and needs for those of
others.
“May God be merciful to the women and children in this land of
desolation and despair!” she wrote on April 21st.
“Men have done, are doing such deeds of sublime self-sacrifice, of
magnificent heroism, that deserve to make the title of American manhood
immortal in the pages of history. The rest lies with the Almighty.
“I spent all of last night and to-day in that horror city across the
bay. I went from this unharmed city of plenty, blooming with abounding
health, thronged with happy mothers and joyous children, and spent hours
among the blackened ruins and out on the windswept slopes of the sand
hills by the sea, and I heard the voice of Rachel weeping for her
children in the wilderness and mourning because she found them not.
“I climbed to the top of Strawberry Hill, in Golden Gate Park, and saw
a woman, half naked, almost starving, her hair dishevelled and an
unnatural lustre in her eyes, her gaze fixed upon the waters in the
distance, and her voice repeating over and over again: ‘Here I am, my
pretties; come here, come here.’
“I took her by the hand and led her down to the grass at the foot of the
hill. A man--her husband--received her from me and wept as he said: ‘She
is calling our three little children. She thinks the sounds of the ocean
waves are the voices of our lost darlings.’
“Ever since they became separated from their children in that first
terrific onrush of the multitude when the fire swept along Mission
Street these two had been tramping over the hills and parks without food
or rest, searching for their little ones. To all whom they have met they
have addressed the same pitiful question: ‘Have you seen anything of our
lost babies?’ They will not know what has become of them until order has
been brought out of chaos; until the registration headquarters of the
military authorities has secured the names of all who are among the
straggling wanderers around the camps of the homeless. Perhaps then it
will be found that these children are in a trench among the corpses of
the weaklings who have succumbed to the frightful rigors of the last
three days.
“Last night a soldier seized me by the arm and cried: ‘If you are a
woman with a woman’s heart, go in there and do whatever you can.’
“‘In there’ meant behind a barricade of brush, covered with a blanket
that had been hastily thrown together to form a rude shelter. I went in
and saw one of my own sex lying on the bare grass naked, her clothing
torn to shreds; scattered over the green beside her. She was moaning
pitifully, and it needed no words to tell a woman what the matter was,
I bade my man escort to find a doctor, or at least send more women
at once. He ran off and soon two sympathetic ladies hastened into the
shelter. In an hour my escort returned with a young medical student.
Under the best ministrations we could find, a new life was ushered into
this hell, which, a few hours before, was the fairest among cities.
“‘There have been many such cases,’ said the medical student. ‘Many of
the mothers have died--few of the babies have lived. I, personally, know
of nine babies that have been born in the park to-day. There must have
been many others here, among the sand hills, and at the Presidio.’”
“Think of it, you happy women who have become mothers in comfortable
homes, attended with every care that loving hands can bestow. Think of
the dreadful plight of these poor members of your sex. The very thought
of it is enough to make the hearts of women burst with pity.
“To-day I walked among the people crowded on the Panhandle. Opposite
the Lyon Street entrance, on the north side, I saw a young woman sitting
tailor-fashion in the roadway, which, in happier days, was the carriage
boulevard. She held a dishpan and was looking at her reflection in the
polished bottom, while another girl was arranging her hair. I recognized
a young wife, whose marriage to a prominent young lawyer eight months
ago was a gala event among that little handful of people who clung to
the old-time fashionable district of Valencia Street, like the Phelan
and Dent families, and refused to move from that aristocratic section
when the new-made, millionaires began to build their palaces on Nob Hill
and Pacific Heights. I spoke to the young woman about the disadvantages
of making her toilet under such untoward circumstances.
“‘Ah, Julia, dear, you must stay to luncheon,’ she said, extending her
fingers just as though she stood in her own drawing-room.”
MISERY DRIVES SOME INSANE.
“I looked at the maid in astonishment, for I had never met the young
society woman before. The maid shook her head and whispered when she got
the chance:
“‘My mistress is not in her right mind.’
“‘Where is her husband?’ I asked.
“‘He has gone to try to get some food,’ said the girl. ‘She imagines
that she is in her own home, before her dressing table, and is having me
do up her hair against some of her friends dropping in.’
“‘She must have suffered,’ I said, ‘to cause such a mental derangement.’
“The girl’s eyes filled with tears. She told me that her mistress had
seen her brother killed by falling timbers while they were hurrying to
a place of safety. A little farther on I saw two women concealed as best
they might be behind a tuft of sand brush, one lying face down on the
ground, while the other vigorously massaged her bare back. I asked if
I might help, and learned that the ministering angel was the unmarried
daughter of one of the city’s richest merchants, and that the girl whom
she succored had been employed as a servant in her father’s household.
The girl’s back had been injured by a fall, and her mistress’ fair hands
were trying to make her well again.
“Thus has this overwhelming common woe levelled all barriers of caste
and placed the suffering multitude on a basis of democracy. On a rock
behind a manzanita bush near the edge of Stow Lake I saw a Chinaman
making a pile of broken twigs in the early morning. The man felt inside
his blouse and swore a gibbering, unintelligible Asiatic oath as his
hand came forth empty. Observing my escort, the Chinaman approached and
said:
“‘Bosse, alle same, catchee match?’
“My escort gave him the desired article, and the Chinaman made a fire of
his pile of twigs. ‘Why are you making a fire, John?’ I asked.
“‘Bleakfast,’ he replied laconically.
“I asked him where his food might be, and he gave us a quick glance of
suspicion as he said briefly, ‘No sabbe.’
“We stood watching him, evidently to his great distress, and finally he
made bold to say, ‘You no stand lound, bosse. You go ‘way.’
“We left him, but after making the tour around the lake came back to
the same place. There sat four people on the ground eating fried pork,
potatoes and Chinese cakes. In a young woman of the group I recognized
one whom I had seen dancing at one of Mr. Greenway’s Friday Night
Cotillion balls in the Palace Hotel’s maple room during the winter. They
offered to share their meal with us, but we told them that we had just
come from breakfast in Oakland. I told them about the strange conduct
of their Chinaman, who was traveling back and forth from his fire to the
‘table’ with the food as it became ready to serve.
“The father of the family laughed.”
SOCIETY FOLKS COMPELLED TO CAMP.
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is Charlie’s way. He has been with us many years,
and when our home was destroyed he came out here with us in preference
to seeking refuge among his countrymen in Chinatown. Yesterday we were
without food, and Charlie disappeared. I thought he had deserted us,
but toward dark he came back with a bamboo pole over his shoulder and
a Chinese market gardener’s basket suspended from either end. In one of
the baskets he had a pile of blankets and a lot of canvas. In the other
was an assortment of pork, flour, Chinese cakes and vegetables, besides
a half-dozen chickens and a couple of bagfuls of rice.’
“‘Charlie had been foraging in Chinatown for us before the fire reached
that quarter. He made a tent and improvised beds for us, and he has the
food concealed somewhere in the vicinity, but where he will not tell
us, for fear that we will give some of it to others and reduce our own
supply. Charlie boils rice for himself. He will not touch the other
food. Without him we should have been starving.’”
G. A. Raymond, who was in the Palace Hotel when the earthquake occurred,
says:
“I had $600 in gold under my pillow. I awoke as I was thrown out of
bed. Attempting to walk, the floor shook so that I fell. I grabbed my
clothing and rushed down into the office, where dozens were already
congregated. Suddenly the lights went out, and every one rushed for the
door.
“Outside I witnessed a sight I never want to see again. It was dawn
and light. I looked up. The air was filled with falling stones. People
around me were crushed to death on all sides. All around the huge
buildings were shaking and waving. Every moment there were reports like
100 cannon going off at one time. Then streams of fire would shoot out,
and other reports followed.
“I asked a man standing by me what had happened. Before he could answer
a thousand bricks fell on him and he was killed. A woman threw her arms
around my neck. I pushed her away and fled. All around me buildings were
rocking and flames shooting. As I ran people on all sides were crying,
praying and calling for help. I thought the end of the world had come.
“I met a Catholic priest, and he said: ‘We must get to the ferry.’ He
knew the way, and we rushed down Market Street. Men, women and children
were crawling from the debris. Hundreds were rushing down the street,
and every minute people were felled by falling debris.
“At places the streets had cracked and opened. Chasms extended in all
directions. I saw a drove of cattle, wild with fright, rushing up Market
Street. I crouched beside a swaying building. As they came nearer they
disappeared, seeming to drop into the earth. When the last had gone I
went nearer and found they had indeed been precipitated into the earth,
a wide fissure having swallowed them. I worked my way around them and
ran out to the ferry. I was crazy with fear and the horrible sights.
“How I reached the ferry I cannot say. It was bedlam, pandemonium and
hell rolled into one. There must have been 10,000 people trying to get
on that boat. Men and women fought like wild cats to push their way
aboard. Clothes were torn from the backs of men and women and children
indiscriminately. Women fainted, and there was no water at hand with
which to revive them. Men lost their reason at those awful moments. One
big, strong man, beat his head against one of the iron pillars on the
dock, and cried out in a loud voice: ‘This fire must be put out! The
city must be saved!’ It was awful.”
TERRIBLE SCENE AT THE FERRY.
“When the gates were opened the mad rush began. All were swept aboard in
an irresistible tide. We were jammed on the deck like sardines in a
box. No one cared. At last the boat pulled out. Men and women were still
jumping for it, only to fall into the water and probably drown.”
The members of the Metropolitan Opera Company, of New York, were in San
Francisco at this time, and nearly all of these famous singers, known
all over the world, suffered from the great disaster.
All of the splendid scenery, stage fittings, costumes and musical
instruments were lost in the fire, which destroyed the Grand Opera
House, where the season had just opened to splendid audiences.
Many of the operatic stars have given very interesting accounts of their
experiences. Signor Caruso, the famous tenor and one of the principals
of the company, had one of the most thrilling experiences. He and Signor
Rossi, a favorite basso, and his inseparable companion, had a suite
on the seventh floor and were awakened by the terrific shaking of the
building. The shock nearly threw Caruso out of bed. He said:
“I threw open the window, and I think I let out the grandest notes I
ever hit in all my life. I do not know why I did this. I presume I was
too excited to do anything else.”
GREAT SINGERS ESCAPE.
“Looking out of the window, I saw buildings all around rocking like the
devil had hold of them. I wondered what was going on. Then I heard Rossi
come scampering into my room. ‘My God, it’s an earthquake!’ he yelled.
‘Get your things and run!’ I grabbed what I could lay my hands on and
raced like a madman for the office. On the way down I shouted as loud as
I could so the others would wake up.
“When I got to the office I thought of my costumes and sent my valet,
Martino, back after them. He packed things up and carried the trunks
down on his back. I helped him take them to Union Square.”
It is said that ten minutes later he was seen seated on his valise in
the middle of the street. But to continue his story:
“I walked a few feet away to see how to get out, and when I came back
four Chinamen were lugging my trunks away. I grabbed one of them by the
ears, and the others jumped on me. I took out my revolver and pointed
it at them. They spit at me. I was mad, but I hated to kill them, so I
found a soldier, and he made them give up the trunks.
“Ah, that soldier was a fine fellow. He went up to the Chinamen and
slapped them upon the face, once, twice, three times. They all howled
like the devil and ran away. I put my revolver back into my pocket, and
then I thanked the soldier. He said: ‘Don’t mention it. Them Chinks
would steal the money off a dead man’s eyes.’”
They say that Rossi, though almost in tears, was heard trying his voice
at a corner near the Palace Hotel.
TEDDY’S PICTURE PROVES “OPEN SESAME.”
“I went to Lafayette Square and slept on the grass. When I tried to get
into the square the soldiers pushed me back. I pleaded with them, but
they would not listen. I had under my arm a large photograph of Theodore
Roosevelt, upon which was written: ‘With kindest regards from Theodore
Roosevelt.’ I showed them this, and one of them said: ‘If you are a
friend of Teddy, come in and make yourself at home.’
“I put my trunks in the cellar of the Hotel St. Francis and thought they
would be safe. The hotel caught fire, and my trunks were all burned up.
To think I took so much trouble to save them!”
In spite of the news of all the woe and suffering which we hear, it is
cheering to learn also of the many thousands of heroic deeds by brave
men during the terrible scenes enacted through the four days passing
since the eventful morning when the earth began to demolish splendid
buildings of business and residence and fire sprang up to complete the
city’s destruction. The Mayor and his forces of police, the troops
under command of General Funston, volunteer aids to all these, and the
husbands of terrified wives, and the sons, brothers and other relatives
who toiled for many consecutive hours through smoke and falling walls
and an inferno of flames and explosions and traps of danger of all
kinds, often without food or water--toiling as men never toiled before
to save life and relieve distress of all kinds--all these were examples
of heroism and devotion to duty seldom witnessed in any scenes of terror
in all time. There are brave, unselfish men and heroic women yet in the
world, and all of the best of human nature has been exhibited in large
dimensions in the terrible disaster at San Francisco.
CHAPTER IX.
Disaster Spreads Over the Golden State
The first news that the world received of the earthquake came direct
from San Francisco and was confined largely to descriptions of
the disaster which had overwhelmed that city. It was so sudden, so
appalling, so tragic in its nature, that for the time being it
quite overshadowed the havoc and misery wrought in a number of other
California towns of lesser note.
As the truth, however, became gradually sifted out of the tangle of
rumors, the horror, instead of being diminished, was vastly increased.
It became evident that instead of this being a local catastrophe, the
full force of the seismic waves had travelled from Ukiah in the north
to Monterey in the south, a distance of about 180 miles, and had made
itself felt for a considerable distance from the Pacific westward,
wrecking the larger buildings of every town in its path, rending and
ruining as it went, and doing millions of dollars worth of damage.
THE DESTRUCTION OF SANTA ROSA.
In Santa Rosa, sixty miles to the north of San Francisco, and one of
the most beautiful towns of California, practically every building
was destroyed or badly damaged. The brick and stone business blocks,
together with the public buildings, were thrown down. The Court House,
Hall of Records, the Occidental and Santa Rosa Hotels, the Athenaeum
Theatre, the new Masonic Temple, Odd Fellows’ Block, all the banks,
everything went, and in all the city not one brick or stone building was
left standing, except the California Northwestern Depot.
In the residential portion of the city the foundations receded from
under the houses, badly wrecking about twenty of the largest and
damaging every one more or less; and here, as in San Francisco, flames
followed the earthquake, breaking out in a dozen different places at
once and completing the work of devastation. From the ruins of the
fallen houses fifty-eight bodies were taken out and interred during
the first few days, and the total of dead and injured was close to a
hundred. The money loss at this small city is estimated at $3,000,000.
The destruction of Santa Rosa gave rise to general sorrow among the
residents of the interior of the State. It was one of the show towns of
California, and not only one of the most prosperous cities in the
fine county of Sonoma, but one of the most picturesque in the State.
Surrounding it there were miles of orchards, vineyards and corn fields.
The beautiful drives of the city were adorned with bowers of roses,
which everywhere were seen growing about the homes of the people. In
its vicinity are the famous gardens of Luther Burbank, the “California
wizard,” but these fortunately escaped injury.
At San Jose, another very beautiful city of over 20,000 population,
not a single brick or stone building of two stories or over was left
standing. Among those wrecked were the Hall of justice, just completed
at a cost of $300,000; the new High School, the Presbyterian Church and
St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Numbers of people were caught in the ruins and
maimed or killed. The death list appears to have been small, but the
property damage was not less than $5,000,000. The Agnew State Insane
Asylum, in the vicinity of San Jose, was entirely destroyed, more than
half the inmates being killed or injured.
THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
The Leland Stanford, Jr., University, at Palo Alto (about thirty miles
south of San Francisco), felt the full force of the earthquake and was
badly wrecked. Only two lives were lost as a result of the earthquake,
one of a student, the other of a fireman, but eight students were
injured more or less seriously. The damage to the buildings is estimated
by President Jordan to amount to about $4,000,000.
The memorial church, with its twelve marble figures of the apostles,
each weighing two tons, was badly injured by the fall of its Gothic
spire, which crashed through the roof and demolished much of the
interior; the great entrance archway was split in twain and wrecked; so,
too, were the library, the gymnasium and the power house. A number of
other buildings in the outer quadrangle and some of the small workshops
were seriously damaged.
Encina Hall and the inner quadrangle were practically uninjured, and the
bulk of the books, collections and apparatus escaped damage.
Sacramento, together with all the smaller cities and towns that dot the
great Sacramento Valley for a distance fifty miles south and 150 miles
north of the capital, escaped without injury, not a single pane of glass
being broken or a brick displaced in Sacramento and no injury done in
the other places, they lying eastward of the seat of serious earthquake
activity.
Los Angeles and Santa Barbara escaped with a slight trembling; Stockton,
103 miles north of San Francisco, felt a severe shock and the Santa Fe
bridge over the San Joaquin River at this point settled several inches.
The only place in Southern California that suffered was Brawley, a small
town lying 120 miles south of Los Angeles, about 100 buildings in the
town and the surrounding valley being injured, though none of them were
destroyed.
THE EARTHQUAKE AT OTHER CITIES.
At Alameda, on the bay opposite San Francisco, a score of chimneys were
shaken down and other injuries done. Railroad tracks were twisted, and
over 600 feet of track of the Oakland Transit Company’s railway sank
four feet. The total damage done amounted to probably $200,000, but no
lives were lost. Tomales, a place of 350 inhabitants, was left a pile of
ruins.
At Los Panos several buildings were wrecked, causing damage to the
extent of $75,000, but no lives were lost.
At Loma Prieta the earthquake caused a mine house to slip down the side
of a mountain, ten men being buried in the ruins.
Fort Bragg, one of the principal lumbering towns in Mendocino County,
was practically wiped out by fire following the earthquake, but out of a
population of 5,000 only one was killed, though scores were injured.
The town of Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco, suffered
considerable damage from twisted structures, fallen walls and broken
chimneys, the greatest injury being in the collapse of the town hall
and the ruin of the deaf and dumb asylum. The University of California,
situated here, was fortunate in escaping injury, it being reported
that not a building was harmed in the slightest degree. Another public
edifice of importance and interest, in a different section of the State,
the famous Lick Astronomical Observatory, was equally fortunate, no
damage being done to the buildings or the instruments.
AT THE STATE UNIVERSITY.
Salinas, a town down the coast near Monterey, suffered severely, the
place being to a large extent destroyed, with an estimated loss of over
$1,000,000. The Spreckels’ sugar factory and a score of other buildings
were reported ruined and a number of lives lost. During the succeeding
week several other shocks of some strength were reported from this town.
Thus the ruinous work of the earthquake stretched over a broad track
of prosperous, peaceful and happy country, embracing one of the best
sections of California, laying waste not only the towns in its path,
but doing much damage to ranch houses and country residences. Strange
manifestations of nature were reported from the interior, where the
ground was opened in many places like a ploughed field. Great rents
in the earth were reported, and for many miles north from Los Angeles
miniature geysers are said to have spouted volcano-like streams of hot
mud.
Railroad tracks in some localities were badly injured, sinking or
lifting, and being put out of service until repaired. In fact, the
ruinous effects of the earthquake immensely exceeded those of any
similar catastrophe ever before known in the United States, and when
the destruction done by the succeeding conflagration in San Francisco is
taken into account the California earthquake of 1906 takes rank with the
most destructive of those recorded in history.
CHAPTER X.
All America and Canada to the Rescue
During the first three days after the terrible news had been flashed
over the world the relief fund from the nation had leaped beyond the
$5,000,000 mark. New York took the lead in the most generous giving that
the world has ever seen. From every town and country village the people
hastened to the Town Halls, the newspaper offices and wherever help was
to be found most quickly, to add their savings and to sacrifice all but
necessities for their stricken fellow-countrymen. Never has there been
such a practical illustration of brotherly love. A perfect shower of
gold and food was poured out to the sufferers to give them immediate
assistance and to help them to a new start in life. All relief records
were broken within two days of the disaster, but still the purses of the
rich and poor alike continued to add to the huge contributions. Though
the relief records were broken, every succeeding dispatch from the West
told too plainly the terrible fact that all records of necessity were
also broken.
Over the entire globe Americans wherever they were hastened to cable or
telegraph their bankers to add their share to the great work. A large
fund was at once started in London, and with contributions of from
$2,000 to $12,000 the sum was soon raised to hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
Individual contributions of $100,000 were common. In addition to John
D. Rockefeller’s gift of this sum, his company, the Standard Oil, gave
another $100,000. The Steel Corporation and Andrew Carnegie each
gave $100,000. From London William Waldorf Astor cabled his American
representative, Charles A. Peabody, to place $100,000 at once at
the disposal of Mayor Schmitz, of San Francisco, which was done. The
Dominion Government of Canada made a special appropriation of $100,000
and the Canadian Bank of Commerce, at Toronto, gave $10,000. And two of
the great steamship companies owned in Germany sent $25,000 each.
RIGHT OF WAY FOR FOOD TRAINS.
On nearly a dozen roads, two days before the fire was over, great trains
of freight cars loaded with foodstuffs were hastening at express
speed to San Francisco. They had the right of way on every line. E. H.
Harriman, in addition to giving $200,000 for the Union Pacific, Southern
Pacific and other Harriman roads, issued orders that all relief trains
bound for the desolated city should have Precedence over all other
business of the roads.
Advices from many points indicated that at least 150 freight cars loaded
with the necessaries so eagerly awaited in San Francisco were speeding
there as fast as steam could drive them. In addition, several steamers
from other Pacific coast points, all food-laden, were rushing toward the
stricken city.
The rapidity with which the various relief funds in every city grew was
almost magical.
From corporations, firms, labor unions, religious societies,
individuals, rich and poor, money flowed. Even the children in the
schools gave their pennies. Every grade of society, every branch of
trade and commerce seemed inspired by a spirit of emulation in giving.
The United States Government at once voted a contribution of $1,000,000,
and government supplies were rushed from every post in the West.
The $1,000,000 government gift, which formed the nucleus of the relief
fund, was doubled on Saturday by a resolution appropriating another, and
a vote was taken on Monday to increase this sum to $1,500,000, making a
total government contribution of $2,500,000. This was largely expended
in supplies of absolute necessaries, furnished from the stores of the
War Department, and those first sent being five carloads of army medical
supplies from St. Louis. A cargo of evaporated cream was also sent to
use in the care of little children, while the Red Cross Society shipped
a carload of eggs from Chicago. Dr. Edward Devine, special Red Cross
agent in San Francisco, was appointed to distribute these supplies.
CARGOES OF SUPPLIES.
Trainloads of other supplies were dispatched in all haste from various
points in the West and East, carrying provisions of all kinds, tents,
cots, clothing, bedding and a great variety of other articles. A special
train of twenty-six cars was dispatched from Portland, Oregon, on
Thursday night, conveying ten doctors, twenty trained nurses and 800,000
pounds of provisions. Chicago sent meat. Minneapolis sent flour, and,
in fact, every part of the country moved in the greatest haste for the
relief of the stricken city.
There was urgent need of haste. On Friday, while the flames were still
making their way onward, General Funston telegraphed: “Famine seems
inevitable.” The people of the country took a more hopeful view of it,
and by Saturday night the spectre of famine was definitely driven from
the field and food for all the fugitives was within reach.
THE SYMPATHY OF THE PEOPLE AWAKES.
On all sides the people were awake and doing. In all the great
cities agencies to receive contributions were opened, and many of the
newspapers undertook the task of collecting and forwarding supplies. The
smaller towns were equally alert in furnishing their quota to the good
work, and from countryside and village contributions were forwarded
until the fund accumulated to an unprecedented amount. Collections were
made in factories, in stores, in offices, in the public schools; cash
boxes or globes stood in all frequented places and were rapidly filled
with bank notes; theatrical and musical entertainments were given for
the benefit of the earthquake sufferers; never had there been such an
awakening. As an instance of the spirit displayed, one man came running
into a banking house and threw a thousand dollar bill on the counter.
“For San Francisco,” he said, as he turned toward the door.
“What name?” asked the teller.
“Put it down to ‘cash,’” he answered, as he vanished.
Rapidly the fund accumulated. A few days brought it up to the $5,000,000
mark. Then it grew to $10,000,000. Within ten days’ time the relief fund
was estimated at $18,000,000, and the good work was still going on--in
less profusion, it is true, but still the spirit was alive.
FOREIGN OFFERS OF AID.
The generous impulse was not confined to the United States. From all
countries came offers of aid. Canada was promptly in the field, and
the chief nations of Europe were quick to follow, while Japan made a
generous offer, and in far Australia funds were started at the various
cities for the sufferers. No doubt a large sum from foreign lands would
have been available had not President Roosevelt declined to accept
contributions from abroad, as not needed in view of America’s abundant
response. To the Hamburg-Line which offered $25,000, the following
letter was sent:
“The President deeply appreciates your message of sympathy, and desires
me to thank you heartily for the kind offer of outside aid. Although
declining, the President earnestly wishes you to understand how much he
appreciates your cordial and generous sympathy.”
All other offerings from abroad were in the same thankful spirit
declined, even those from our immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
Some feeling was aroused by this, especially in the relief committee at
San Francisco, which felt that the need of that city was so great and
urgent that no offer of relief should have been declined. In response
the President explained that he only spoke for the government, in his
official capacity, and that San Francisco was in no sense debarred from
accepting any contributions made directly to it.
It may justly be said for the people of this country that their
spontaneous generosity in the presence of a great calamity, either at
home or abroad, is always magnificent. It never waits for solicitation.
It does not delay even until the necessity is demonstrated, but it
assumes that where there is great destruction of property and homes are
swept away there must be distress which calls for immediate relief.
There is one ray of light in the gloom caused by the calamity at San
Francisco. A truly splendid display of brotherly love and sympathy has
been shown by the people of this country, and a similar display was
ready to be shown by the people of the civilized world had it been felt
that the occasion demanded it and that the exigency surpassed the power
of our people to meet it.
ENTERPRISE IN SAN FRANCISCO.
In the face of an appalling and death-dealing disaster, rendering an
entire community dependent for the bare necessities of life and putting
it in imminent danger of greater horrors, the nation has been stirred
as it has rarely been before, and there have been awakened those deeper
feelings of brotherhood which are referred to in the oft-quoted passage
that “one touch of nature makes the whole world akin.”
The nature indicated in this instance is human nature in its highest
manifestation, the sympathetic sentiment that stirs deeply in all our
hearts and needs but the occasion to make itself warmly manifested.
There is something incomparably splendid in the spectacle of an entire
nation straining every nerve to send succor to the helpless and the
suffering, and this spectacle has warmed the hearts of our people to the
uttermost and inspired them to make the most strenuous efforts to drive
away the gaunt wolf of famine from the ruined homes of our far Pacific
brethren.
It may be said that San Francisco will be willing to accept this relief
only so long as stern necessity demands it. At this writing only two
weeks have passed since the dread calamity, and already active steps
are being taken to provide for themselves. As an example of their
enterprise, it may be said that their newspapers hardly suspended at
all, the Evening Post alone suspending publication for a time from
being unable to acquire a plant in the vicinity of the city. When the
conflagration made it apparent that all plants would be destroyed, the
Bulletin put at work a force in its composing rooms, a hand-bill was
set and some hundreds of copies run off on the proof-press, giving the
salient features of the day’s news.
The morning papers, the Call, Chronicle and Examiner, retired to
Oakland, on the other side of the bay, and there, on Thursday morning,
issued a joint paper from the office of the Oakland Tribune. On Friday
morning they split forces again, the Examiner retaining the use of the
Tribune plant and the Call and Chronicle issuing from the office of
the Oakland Herald. Two days later the Call secured the service of
the Oakland Enquirer plant. Meantime, on Friday, the Bulletin, after a
suspension of one day, made arrangements for the use in the afternoon
of the Oakland Herald equipment, and from these sources and under such
circumstances the San Francisco papers have been issuing.
Offices were hurriedly opened on Fillmore Street, which today is the
main thoroughfare of San Francisco, and from these headquarters the news
of the day as it is gathered is transmitted by means of automobiles and
ferry service to the Oakland shore.
There also were accepted such advertisements as had been offered. The
number of these was, perhaps, the best visual sign of the resurrection
of the new city. It was noted that in a fourteen-page paper printed
within two weeks after the fire by the Examiner there were over nine
pages of advertisements, and in a sixteen-page paper published by the
Chronicle at least fifty per cent. of its space was devoted to the same
end.
Many of the larger factories left unharmed were also quick to start
work. At the Union Iron Works 2,300 men were promptly employed, and the
management expected within a fortnight to have the full complement of
its force, nearly 4,000 men, engaged. No damage was done to the three
new warships being built at these works for the government, the cruisers
California and Milwaukee and the battleship South Dakota. The steamer
City of Puebla, which was sunk in the bay, has been raised and is being
repaired. Workmen are also engaged fixing the steamship Columbia, which
was turned on her side. The hulls of the new Hawaiian-American Steamship
Company’s liners were pitched about four feet to the south, but were
uninjured and only need to be replaced in position.
As for the working people at large, those without funds for their own
support, abundant employment will quickly be provided for them in the
necessary work of clearing away the debris, thus opening the way to a
resumption of business and reducing the number requiring relief. The
ukase has already been issued that all able-bodied men needing aid must
go to work or leave the city.
This dictum of Chief of Police Dinan’s will be strictly enforced. The
relief work and distribution of food and clothing are attracting a
certain element to the city which does not desire to labor, while some
already here prefer to live on the generosity of others. Chief Dinan has
determined that those who apply for relief and refuse work when it
is offered them shall leave the city or be arrested for vagrancy. The
police judges have suggested establishing a chain gang and putting all
vagrants and petty offenders at work clearing up the ruins.
Perhaps never in the history of the city has there been so little crime
in San Francisco. With the saloons closed, Chinatown, the Barbary Coast,
and other haunts of criminals wiped out, and soldiers and marines on
almost every block in the residence districts, there have been few
crimes of any kind. It is the opinion of the police that most of the
criminal element has left the city. The saloons, in all probability will
remain closed for two more months.
THE PROBLEM OF THE CHINESE.
In conclusion of this chapter it is advisable to refer to the situation
of one of the elements of San Francisco’s population, the people of
Chinatown. One of the problems facing the relief committees on both
sides of the bay is the sheltering of the Chinese. Many of them are
destitute. It has long been a question in San Francisco what should be
done with Chinatown, and moving the Chinese in the direction of Colma
has been agitated. Now they are without homes and without prospects of
procuring any. They can get no land. The limits of Oakland’s Chinatown
have already been extended, and the strictest police regulations are in
force to prevent further enlargement. On this side of the bay they are
camping in open lots. Unless the government undertakes their relief,
they are in grave danger. Those who have money cannot purchase property,
as no one will sell to them. Few, however, even of the wealthiest
merchants in Chinatown, saved anything of value, for their wealth was
invested in the Oriental village which had sprung up in the heart of the
area burned.
Yet it is the desire of the municipality not to harass this portion of
its foreign population, and the vexatious problem of placing the new
Chinatown will probably be settled to the satisfaction of the Chinese
colony. This colony diverts an important part of the trade of San
Francisco to that city, and if its members are dealt with unjustly there
is danger of losing this trade. The question is one that must be left
for the future to decide, but no doubt care will be taken that a new
Chinatown with the unsavory conditions of the old shall not arise.
CHAPTER XI.
San Francisco of the Past
The story of San Francisco’s history and tragedy appeal with
extraordinary force to the imagination of all civilized men. For several
generations the city was looked upon as an Arabian Night’s dream--a
place where gold lay in the streets and joy and happiness were
unlimited. Its settlement, or, rather, its real rise as a city, was as
by magic. It was first a city of tents, of shanties, of “shacks,” lying
on the rim of a great, spacious bay. Ships of all sizes and rigs brought
gold-seekers and provisions from the East, all the way round Cape Horn,
after voyages of weary months, and at San Francisco their crews deserted
and hundreds of these craft were left at their moorings to rot. Ashore
was a riot of money, prodigious extravagance, mean, shabby appointments,
sudden riches, great disappointment, revelry, improvidence and suicide.
The streets that now lay squares from the water were then at the water’s
edge and batteaus brought cargoes ashore. Long wharves--one was for
years called the Long Wharf even after there were others built much
longer--led out over the shallow water. These shallows were later filled
and streets built upon them, and upon them arose warehouses, hotels,
factories, lodging houses and business places.
The city grew rapidly in the direction away from the bay. But in its
early days it was a city with no confidence in its own stability, and
its buildings were accordingly unstable. A few minor earthquakes shook
some of these down years ago and established in the minds of the people
a horror of earthquakes. Frame houses became the rule.
In its ensuing life San Francisco developed the attributes of a city of
gayety tempered by business. The population, for the most part, affected
light-hearted scorn of money, or, rather, of saving money. It made
mirth of life, habituated itself to expect windfalls such as miners
and prospectors dream of, developed a moderate amount of business, and
enjoyed the day while there was sunlight and the night when there was
artificial light. The windfalls grew less frequent, mining became a
costly and scientific process, and agriculture succeeded it. But, though
it was only necessary to tickle the land with a hoe and pour water upon
the tickled spot, to have it laugh with two, three or even four harvests
a year, agriculturists continued scarce. The Chinese truck farms, some
of which lay within the city’s lines, supplied the small fruits and
vegetables. Across the bay white men farmed, and grapes, fruits,
vegetables and flowers of prodigious variety and monstrous dimensions
were grown. But Eastern men came to do the farming. The Californian who
himself was an “Argonaut,” or whose father was an Argonaut, found no
attractions in the steady labor of farming.
There followed a period of depression, ascribed by many to the influx of
the Chinese and their effect upon the labor market, though the army of
the unemployed were as a rule unwilling to do the work their Celestial
rivals engaged in, that of truck farming, fruit raising, manual
household labor, wood cutting and the like. A heavy weight settled on
the city; business grew slack; the army of the unemployed, of ruined
speculators and moneyless newcomers grew steadily greater, and for an
era San Francisco saw its dark side.
But this was not a long duration. There was fast developing a new and
important business, resulting from the development of the real resources
of the State--the fruits, particularly the citrous fruits that grew
abundantly in the warm valley. Fortunes were made in oranges, lemons,
limes, grapes, almonds and pears. Raisins, whose size defied anything
heretofore known, were made from the huge grapes that grew in the San
Joaquin Valley. Sonoma sent its grapes to be made into wine. Capital
flowed in from every side. Eastern men in search of health, others in
search of wealth, came to the Golden State. No matter who came, where
they came from, or where they were going, they spent a few days, or
many, and some money, or much, in “‘Frisco.” The enterprise of the
second edition pioneers quickly transformed the State and city.
AGRICULTURE BRINGS NEW WEALTH.
Luxury was startling. San Francisco’s mercantile community equaled the
best, the stores and shops were as beautiful as anywhere in the
world and proportionately as well patronized. Theatres, music halls,
restaurants, hotel bars and the like were ablaze with lights at night,
and patronized by a gay throng. Sutro’s bath, near the Cliff House, was
a species of entertainment unequaled anywhere. The Presidio, as the army
post is still known, as in the Spanish nomenclature, gave its drills,
regarded as free exhibitions for the people. Golden Gate Park was an
endless daily picnic ground.
The crowds in the streets of San Francisco were noticeably well dressed
and usually gay, without that fixed, drawn, saturnine look noticeable
among the people of the East. It is doubtful whether, upon the whole,
the earnings of the San Francisco man equaled those of his Eastern
brother, but his holidays were frequent and his joys greater. The grind
of life was not yet steady--men had not become mere machines.
The climate of California is peculiar; it is hard to give an impression
of it. In the first place, all the forces of nature work on laws of
their own in that part of California. There is no thunder or lightning;
there is no snow, except a flurry once in five or six years; there are
perhaps half a dozen nights in the winter when the thermometer drops
low enough so that there is a little film of ice on exposed water in the
morning. Neither is there any hot weather. Yet most Easterners remaining
in San Francisco for a few days remember that they were always chilly.
A PECULIAR YET DELIGHTFUL CLIMATE.
For the Gate is a big funnel, drawing in the winds and the mists which
cool off the great, hot interior valley of San Joaquin and Sacramento.
So the west wind blows steadily ten months of the year and almost all
the mornings are foggy. This keeps the temperature steady at about 55
degrees--a little cool for comfort of an unacclimated person, especially
indoors. Californians, used to it, hardly ever think of making fires in
their houses except in the few exceptional days of the winter season,
and then they rely mainly upon fireplaces. This is like the custom of
the Venetians and the Florentines.
But give an Easterner six months of it, and he, too, learns to exist
without a chill in a steady temperature a little lower than that to
which he is accustomed at home. After that one goes about with perfect
indifference to the temperature. Summer and winter San Francisco women
wear light tailor-made clothes, and men wear the same fall-weight suits
all the year around.
Except for the modern buildings, the fruit of the last ten years, the
town presented at first sight to the newcomer a disreputable appearance.
Most of the buildings were low and of wood. In the middle period of the
70’s, when a great part of San Francisco was building, there was some
atrocious architecture perpetrated. In that time, too, every one put
bow windows on his house, to catch all of the morning sunlight that was
coming through the fog, and those little houses, with bow windows and
fancy work all down their fronts, were characteristic of the middle
class residence districts.
Then the Italians, who tumbled over Telegraph Hill, had built as they
listed and with little regard for streets, and their houses hung crazily
on a side hill which was little less than a precipice. For the most part
the Chinese, although they occupied an abandoned business district, had
remade the houses Chinese fashion, and the Mexicans and Spaniards had
added to their houses those little balconies without which life is not
life to a Spaniard.
The hills are steep beyond conception. Where Vallejo Street ran up
Russian Hill it progressed for four blocks by regular steps like a
flight of stairs.
With these hills, with the strangeness of the architecture, and with the
green gray tinge over everything, the city fell always into vistas and
pictures, a setting for the romance which hung over everything, which
has always hung over life in San Francisco since the padres came and
gathered the Indians about Mission Dolores.
And it was a city of romance and a gateway to adventure. It opened out
on the mysterious Pacific, the untamed ocean, and most of China, Japan,
the South Sea Islands, Lower California, the west coast of Central
America, Australia that came to this country passed in through the
Golden Gate. There was a sprinkling, too, of Alaska and Siberia.
From his windows on Russian Hill one saw always something strange and
suggestive creeping through the mists of the bay. It would be a South
Sea Island brig, bringing in copra, to take out cottons and idols; a
Chinese junk with fan-like sails, back from an expedition after sharks’
livers; an old whaler, which seemed to drip oil, back from a year of
cruising in the Arctic. Even, the tramp windjammers were deep-chested
craft, capable of rounding the Horn or of circumnavigating the globe;
and they came in streaked and picturesque from their long voyaging.
A MIXTURE OF RACES.
In the orange colored dawn which always comes through the mists of that
bay, the fishing fleet would crawl in under triangular lateen sails, for
the fishermen of San Francisco Bay are all Neapolitans, who have brought
their costumes and sail with lateen rigs shaped like the ear of a horse
when the wind fills them and stained an orange brown.
The “smelting pot of the races” Stevenson called the region along the
water front, for here the people of all these craft met, Italians,
Greeks, Russians, Lascars, Kanakas, Alaska Indians, black Gilbert
Islanders, Spanish-Americans, wanderers and sailors from all the world,
who came in and out from among the queer craft to lose themselves in the
disreputable shanties and saloons. The Barbary Coast was a veritable bit
of Satan’s realm. The place was made up of three solid blocks of dance
halls, for the delectation of the sailors of the world. Within those
streets of peril the respectable never set foot; behind the swinging
doors of those saloons anything might be happening, crime was as common
here as drink, and much went on of which the law was blankly ignorant.
Not far removed from this haunt of crime was the world-famous Chinatown,
a district six blocks long and two wide, and housing when at its fullest
some 30,000 Chinese. Old business houses at first, the new inmates added
to them, rebuilt them, ran out their own balconies and entrances, and
gave them that feeling of huddled irregularity which makes all Chinese
built dwellings fall naturally into pictures. Not only this, they
burrowed to a depth equal to three stories under the ground, and through
this ran passages in which the Chinese transacted their dark and devious
affairs--as the smuggling of opium, the traffic in slave girls and the
settlement of their difficulties, by murder if they saw fit. The law was
powerless to prevent or discover and convict the murderers.
Chinatown is gone; the Barbary Coast is gone; the haunts of crime have
been swept by the devouring flames, and if the citizens can prevent
they will never be restored. The old San Francisco is dead. The gayest,
lightest-hearted, most pleasure-loving city of this continent, and
in many ways the most interesting and romantic, is a horde of huddled
refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will; but those
who have known that peculiar city by the Golden Gate and have caught its
flavor of the Arabian Nights feel that it can never be the same. When it
rises out of its ashes it will probably doubtless resemble other modern
cities and have lost its old strange flavor.
CHAPTER XII.
Life in the Metropolis of the Pacific
Brought up in a bountiful country, where no one really has to work very
hard to live, nurtured on adventure, scion of a free and merry stock,
the real, native Californian is a distinctive type; as far from the
Easterner in psychology as the extreme Southern is from the Yankee. He
is easy going, witty, hospitable, lovable, inclined to be unmoral rather
than immoral in his personal habits, and above all easy to meet and to
know.
Above all there is an art sense all through the populace which sets it
off from any other part of the country. This sense is almost Latin in
its strength, and the Californian owes it to the leaven of Latin blood.
THE ‘FRISCO RESTAURANTS.
With such a people life was always gay. If they did not show it on the
streets, as do the people of Paris, it was because the winds made
open cafes disagreeable at all seasons of the year. The gayety went on
indoors or out on the hundreds of estates that fringed the city. It was
noted for its restaurants. Perhaps people who cared not how they spent
their money could get the best they wished, but for a dollar down to as
low as fifteen cents the restaurants furnished the best fare to be had
anywhere at the price.
The country all about produced everything that a cook needs, and that
in abundance--the bay was an almost untapped fish-pond, the fruit
farms came up to the very edge of the town, and the surrounding country
produced in abundance fine meats, all cereals and all vegetables.
But the chefs who came from France in the early days and liked this land
of plenty were the head and front of it. They passed their art to other
Frenchmen or to the clever Chinese. Most of the French chefs at the
biggest restaurants were born in Canton, China. Later the Italians,
learning of this country where good food is appreciated, came and
brought their own style. Householders always dined out one or two
nights of the week, and boarding houses were scarce, for the unattached
preferred the restaurants. The eating was usually better than the
surroundings.
THE FAMOUS POODLE DOG.