113. Inmates of Ingleside Model Camp by conjugal condition and sex 328
114. Conjugal condition of inmates of Ingleside Model Camp,
compared with conjugal condition of inmates of all almshouses
of the United States in 1903-4 and of the general population
of California 15 years of age and over, in 1900 329
115. Age distribution of inmates of Ingleside Model Camp, compared
with age distribution of inmates of San Francisco almshouse
during a ten-year period, and of inmates of all almshouses of
the United States, in 1903-4 330
116. Nativity of inmates of Ingleside Model Camp, compared with
nativity of inmates of San Francisco almshouse during a
ten-year period, and of the general population of the city
and county of San Francisco in 1900 331
117. Occupations of inmates of Ingleside Model Camp 332
118. Family relations of inmates of Ingleside Model Camp 335
119. Inmates of Ingleside Model Camp classified as families and
single and widowed men and women and as applicants to San
Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, applicants to
Associated Charities, and non-applicants 336
120. Single and widowed inmates of Ingleside Model Camp applying
to the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds for
Rehabilitation, by nature of rehabilitation applied for 344
121. Disabled single and widowed inmates of Ingleside Model Camp
who did not apply for rehabilitation, by sex and nature of
disability 353
122. Subsequent history of single and widowed inmates of Ingleside
Model Camp, who did not apply for rehabilitation, by sex 354
123. Proportion of almshouse inmates and of almshouse admissions
to total population, San Francisco, 1890, 1900, 1905, and
1909 356
ORGANIZATION OF THE RELIEF WORK
Showing committees, departments, and bureaus created from April 18,
1906, to February 4, 1909[2]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ARMY, CITIZENS’ COMMITTEE, AMER. NAT. RED
April 18, 1906 April 18, 1906 CROSS, April 23, 1906
+----------+
Under the Division | | Special Representative
Commander | | Seven Civil Chairmen
Inspector General | FINANCE COMMITTEE, of the Civil Sections
Depot Quartermaster | April 18, 1906 Staff at Headquarters
(transportation of | Registration Bureau
supplies) |Committee of Super- Employment Bureau
Depot Commissary (Is-| vising Special Relief and Re-
suance of food) |Purchasing Committee habilitation Bureau
Subordinate Officers |Auditing Committee Transportation Bureau
in Change of Ware- |Committee on Hospitals |
houses | | |
Chief Sanitary | | |
Officer | +-----------+-----------+
Military Chairmen of | |
the Seven Civil | |
Sections | FINANCE COMMITTEE OF RELIEF & RED CROSS
Bureau of Consoli- | FUNDS, April 24, 1906
dated Relief | EXECUTIVE COMMISSION, June 22, 1906
Stations | Seven Civil Chairmen
Hot Food Stations| Committee on Relief Warehouses
Superintendents of | Committee on Camps
Relief Stations | Committee on Complaints
(also called food | Committee on Municipal Departments
stations) | Committee on Sewing Circles
Commander of Official| REHABILITATION COMMITTEE, June 29, 1906
Camps | Seven Civil Section Committees
Commanders of Several| |
Camps | |
| SAN FRANCISCO RELIEF AND RED CROSS FUNDS,
+----------+ A CORPORATION, July 20, 1906
|
| EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
EMERGENCY COMMITTEES
APPOINTED BY THE DEPARTMENT A--FINANCE AND PUBLICITY
CITIZENS’ COMMITTEE, Auditing Department
April 18, 1906 Subscription Department
Transportation of Ledger Department
Refugees Claim Voucher Department
Relief of Hungry Cashier’s Department
Housing the Homeless History Committee
Roofing the Homeless
Drugs and Medical DEPARTMENT B--BILLS AND DEMANDS
Supplies Supervising Committee (superseded by
Relief of Sick and the Judicial Committee, Sept. 9,
Wounded 1906)
Care in Hospitals
Relief of Chinese DEPARTMENT C--CAMPS AND WAREHOUSES (Aug.
1, 1906, Relieved Army of Camps)
Seven Civil Chairmen
Camps
Warehouses
DEPARTMENT D--RELIEF AND REHABILITATION
Rehabilitation Committee
Seven Civil Section Committees,
superseded October 26, 1906, by
Sub-Committees:
I. Temporary Aid and Transporta-
tion
II. Aged and Infirm. Unsupported
Children and Friendless Girls
III. Unsupported or Partially Sup-
ported Families
IV. Occupation for Women and Confi-
dential Cases
V. Housing and Shelter
VI. Business Rehabilitation
VII. Heads of Families Employed but
Unable to Refurnish their
Homes, Jan. 16, 1907
VIII. Committee on Deferred and Ne-
glected Applications, Nov.
17, 1907
Bureau of Hospitals
Industrial Bureau
Bureau of Special Relief
DEPARTMENT E--LANDS AND BUILDINGS
|
|
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF RELIEF AND RED CROSS
FUNDS, Feb. 4, 1909
[2] The committees appointed independently by the Finance Committee
and by the American National Red Cross became practically merged into
the so-called new committees under the Finance Committee of Relief and
Red Cross Funds. The committees under the Finance Committee of Relief
and Red Cross Funds continued their work under the more elaborate
organisation of the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, a
Corporation. The most significant dates of organisation are given.
PART I
ORGANIZING THE FORCE AND
EMERGENCY METHODS
PART I
ORGANIZING THE FORCE AND EMERGENCY METHODS
PAGE
I. ORGANIZING A RELIEF FORCE 3
1. The Disaster 3
2. Tentative Organization 8
3. Uniting of Relief Forces 11
4. Beginnings of Rehabilitation Work 13
5. An Interlude 19
6. Incorporation of the Funds 25
II. METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION 30
1. Sources of Contributions 30
2. Distribution of Food 36
3. Distribution of Clothing 55
4. Furnishing Transportation 58
5. Providing Shelter 69
6. Safeguarding Health 89
7. Relieving the Japanese and Chinese 94
III. QUESTIONS OF FINANCE 96
1. Claims 96
2. System of Accounting--A Note 98
3. The Control of Donations 99
[Illustration: MAP OF
SAN FRANCISCO]
I
ORGANIZING A RELIEF FORCE
1. THE DISASTER
San Francisco is at the head of one of two narrow peninsulas which, held
apart by the Golden Gate, landlock a fifty-mile length of harbor. To the
west of the city is the Pacific Ocean itself and to the east, beyond the
six to eight-mile reach of San Francisco Bay, such residence towns as
Alameda, Oakland, and Berkeley, which merge almost into one another.
Many thousands of people who use San Francisco as the center for their
business, travel daily along the city’s principal thoroughfare, Market
Street, to take at its foot one of the ferries which make frequent runs
to the east shore and to Sausalito and Tiburon on the north beyond the
Golden Gate. A smaller number go by rail to San José and other residence
towns on the peninsula, and each stream is met morning and evening by
one of less volume of those who reverse the process to find residence in
the large city and employment beyond its boundaries.
On Wednesday morning, April 18, 1906, at twelve minutes past five
o’clock, San Francisco, this city of wonderful setting, suffered an
earthquake whose sensible duration was about one minute. The shock left
her powerless to supply light, heat, water, drainage, to convey her
people or to carry their messages; but it would not have paralyzed her
activities had it not been that because of the breaking of the main
water conduits, the fires, thirty of which were said to have started
immediately, could not be controlled.
The fires started on both sides of Market Street, and within three hours
after the earthquake, made a continuous line of flame from north of
Market Street, along the water front, past the Ferry Building, south of
Market Street, and along Mission Street to beyond Third Street, where
was the main station of the only railroad that ran out of the city. As
the fire spread to the southwest and the north, the whole population
seemed cut off from escape except by going west and south within the
city. Comparatively few knew during the first two days that there was a
narrow but safe way around the fire to the Ferry Building from which
the boats were running. Many of those who did learn of this opportunity,
or who wished to hazard a chance, reached the ferry and crossed the bay,
but many more failed to use this means of reaching their friends and
acquaintances without the city. On the second and third days small
supplies of water were brought to play upon the fire, but not until the
morning of Saturday the twenty-first, by the use of dynamite, was the
advance of the flames stopped.
Along the general line of the city’s own growth in wealth and breadth
the fire moved, destroying the larger part of the wholesale district,
practically all of the retail and the shopping section, the chief
financial centers, the leading hotels, and some of the public buildings.
Large portions of the most expensive residence sections and multitudes
of small hotels and lodging houses, together with great numbers of less
expensive residences and quarters for working people, were devastated.
Thickly populated districts, such as the “Latin Quarter,” Chinatown, and
the section largely inhabited by the Irish, were entirely burned out.
The burned area, the very heart and vitals of the city, covered 4.7[3]
square miles, on which were located 521 blocks, 13 of which were saved,
508 burned. The number of buildings destroyed was 28,188,[4] the number
of persons made homeless about 200,000[5] of San Francisco’s estimated
population of 450,000.
[3] Report of the sub-committee on statistics to the chairman and
Committee on the Reconstruction of San Francisco (see page 10), April
24, 1907.
[4] The classification and count were made from the block books of the
Norwich Union Insurance Company. Each separate building with an
independent entrance was estimated as a building. The number and
character of buildings destroyed were:
==============================+===================
Character of buildings |Buildings destroyed
------------------------------+-------------------
Wooden framed buildings | 24,671
Brick--Classes B and C | 3,168
Brick and wood (unclassified) | 259
Fireproof--Class A | 42
Stone | 15
Corrugated iron (wooden frame)| 33
------------------------------+-------------------
Total | 28,188
------------------------------+-------------------
[5] General Greely quoted the chief of the Census Bureau as giving
185,000 as the population of the burned area in 1900.
[Illustration: Striving to reach the Ferry Building
In Union Square, soon to be swept by flames
THE MORNING OF THE DISASTER]
The burned area[6] had a land front of 49,305 feet, or 9.34 miles, and a
water front of 9,510 feet, or 1.80 miles, the total being 58,815 feet,
or 11.14 miles. Facing this line on the unburned side were 527
buildings, of which 506 were wood, 18 brick, one stone, one adobe, and
one corrugated iron. Thus the fire was stopped against a wall of
buildings, 96 per cent of which were wood. About 20 per cent of the
frontage was on wide streets, and the remainder, 80 per cent, on streets
of ordinary width.
[6] See map opposite p. 3.
Apart from the larger business houses, the public buildings, and some of
the residences of the wealthier citizens, the burned buildings,
including the smaller hotels and lodging houses, were built of wood.
Their destruction was complete. There was practically no salvage of
value from the small wooden dwellings, destroyed as they were by the
fire and not by the earthquake.
The loss of real and personal property has been estimated at
$500,000,000,--about $1,100 per capita of the city’s population. As only
$200,000,000 of insurance money is estimated to have been collected,
there was a net loss of over $650 per capita. The great loss of income
from non-employment, from unrentable property, and from the general
cessation of business, cannot be estimated. There was quick compensation
for the day laborers and other workmen connected with the building
trades, but the recovery for most of the business men was to be slow and
is not yet complete.
The loss of life as a result of both earthquake and fire was reported by
General Greely, after careful inquiry, to be: known dead, 304; unknown
dead, 194; total, 498; number seriously injured, 415. All persons within
the fire zone who were lying sick either in hospitals or in their own
homes were carried to places of safety. There were, of course, many
unwarranted reports of tragic deaths, such as for instance that numerous
men had been shot for looting and that physicians had put their patients
to death rather than let them die in the flames. The federal troops
arrived so promptly, and with the aid of the militia and the police
patrolled the city so thoroughly, that there were few opportunities to
loot. To the end of June there were but nine deaths by violence in the
whole city, three of which appear to have been brought upon unoffending
men by over-zealous patrols.
It can never be reckoned what it meant to the devastated city that its
own people as a welded body should have manifested under the shock of
the great disaster that quality of the hero which lifts him, the psychic
man, above the physical and leaves him freed from himself to be
spiritually at one with his community. A witness who lives in Berkeley
came to the city early on the morning of the earthquake and spent that
and the following day in the thick of the refugees. Nowhere along the
fire lines was to be seen the least sign of panic. Women and children
without a tear and with scarcely a murmur trudged weary miles, carrying
handfuls of possessions, or stood silent to watch their homes destroyed.
The chief signs of excitement were shown by those who were fighting the
fire or who were hurrying from one place to another on official
business. At the end of the second day he saw tears for the first time,
the tears of a woman who may have been worn out by long tramping and by
loss of sleep.
How the great deep of the common human heart was broken up when that
sudden disaster came unawares on the people is borne witness to by many
who had their portion of loss and by many others who came from the
outside to help carry the load. One of the latter wrote to _Charities
and the Commons_[7] a month afterwards:
“All the fountains of good fellowship, of generosity, of sympathy, of
good cheer, pluck, and determination have been opened wide by the
common downfall. The spirit of all is a marvelous revelation of the
good and fine in humanity, intermittent or dormant under ordinary
conditions, perhaps, but dominant and all-pervading in the shadow of
disaster.
“Recently I formed the acquaintance of a man who now drives an
automobile. He had a large machine shop and was a rich man before the
fire. The other day he was working about the automobile while his
passengers were attending a committee meeting at army headquarters.
Presently there approached a man who had purchased $20,000 worth of
machinery at his shops just before the fire.
“The customer said to my friend, ‘Hello R----, what are you doing
here?’
“‘Driving this automobile,’ said R----. ‘What are you doing?’
“‘I’m driving that automobile over there,’ said the customer, and the
two shook hands and laughed heartily at the grim humor of the
situation.
“The prevailing sentiment could hardly be better shown than by a motto
chalked on one of the little temporary street kitchens. It is: ‘Make
the best of it, forget the rest of it.’”
[7] Bicknell, Ernest P.: In the Thick of the Relief Work of San
Francisco. _Charities and the Commons_, XVI: 299 (June, 1906).
The even temperature of the San Francisco region which assures mild
winters and cool summers and the cessation of rains from March to
October, made climatic conditions that were peculiarly favorable. There
was on April 22 and again in June some inconvenience from unseasonable
rain, but there was no complaint of serious discomfort by those living
in the temporary shelters. The health of the refugees in general, it was
frequently stated, was improved by the outdoor life. Probably thousands
lived during the summer of 1906 under improved physical conditions; and
even during the rains of the following winter thousands were better off
in the refugee shacks than they had previously been in the poorer grade
of tenements. A winter that brings but little frost and ice and that
accustoms people to live with open doors and to do without artificial
heat is one that simplifies the task of providing shelter for the
homeless, lessens the cost, and causes but few serious delays to
building work. The even temperature is also favorable for the handling
of perishable food supplies, which do not need to be kept on ice.
San Francisco had an additional advantage in being an important military
and naval center. As the headquarters of the department of California
and of the Pacific Division of the army, it has within its boundaries
three garrison posts with their reservations,--the Presidio, Fort Mason,
and Fort Miley; and without, Fort Baker opposite the Presidio on the
north side of the Golden Gate, Alcatraz Island facing the Golden Gate,
Fort McDowell within the bay on Angel Island, and Benicia Barracks at
the head of the bay. The United States Navy Department has Mare Island
Navy Yard at the north end of the bay and the Naval Training Station on
Yerba Buena Island. At the time of the disaster the war ships in the
harbor as well as the naval stations were able to render prompt and
valuable service. The army’s immediate part in fighting the fire and in
guarding property, and its later part in providing food, clothing, and
shelter was, as is shown in the following pages, of outstanding
importance.
As the people in brave and solemn silence moved out of the shattered and
fire-swept centers of the city, relief societies were being formed
within the city itself and in suburban towns, and citizens of places as
distant as Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, hurried from the south and
the north to distribute money and supplies. Many agencies, with fervor
but with no concerted plan, helped to carry the relief work for the
first week, converting churches into hospitals, and preparing and
distributing food in unlikely but convenient places. But while sporadic
groups of people worked to provide immediate aid in ignorance of one
another’s efforts, the organization of the Citizens’ Committee grew.
2. TENTATIVE ORGANIZATION
At a quarter before seven o’clock on that morning of April 18, the
mayor, Eugene E. Schmitz, with a small group of citizens met in the Hall
of Justice, a building shattered by the earthquake and nearly surrounded
by fire. As he hurried to the center of the city he overtook the federal
troops which had been summoned from Fort Mason and the Presidio by
General Funston, who was in command of the Pacific Division of the army
during the temporary absence of General Greely.[8] The troops had been
told to take orders from the mayor. Under authority from him they served
as police to guard property, not to enforce a military rule. The mayor
assumed almost absolute control of the city government for a time,
superseding all departments and commissions. His first order was to
shoot, not arrest, the looters; his second, to close the places that
sold liquor. The latter wise measure was for two months strictly
enforced.
[8] For a condensed account of the part taken by the army in the
emergency relief work, see Appendix I, p. 381; extracts from article
on The Army in the San Francisco Disaster, by Major (now Brigadier
General) C. A. Devol. Journal United States Infantry Association,
July, 1907, pp. 59-87.
[Illustration: The fire is approaching at the right
THE HALL OF JUSTICE]
The mayor named a Citizens’ Committee[9] of more than 50 persons, 25 of
whom came together at three o’clock in the Hall of Justice, close to
the edge of the roaring tempest of flame. It was difficult to conduct
business, with dynamite explosions shaking the meeting place, so in an
hour’s time the mayor moved across the street to Portsmouth Square where
amid boxes of dynamite and in the shadow of the monument to Robert Louis
Stevenson, the transaction of business continued. The memorial, a
drinking fountain in a granite base with a Spanish galleon at full sail
on its summit, stood untouched. The gilt of the hardy vessel still
glittered and, untarnished beneath, Stevenson’s lines: “To be honest, to
be kind ... to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be
embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation--above
all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself--here is a
task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.”
[9] For list of members of the Citizens’ Committee, popularly called
the Committee of Fifty, and its sub-committees, see Sixth Annual
Report of the American National Red Cross, 1910, pp. 153-155.
Two hours later the mayor and his assistants moved five blocks up the
steep side of Nob Hill to the Fairmont Hotel only to be dislodged the
next morning from what must at first have seemed an impregnable
position. Their retreat carried them eight blocks farther west to the
North End Police Station, and by noon still westward to Franklin Hall on
the corner of Fillmore and Bush Streets, where they could finally halt.
While the citizens were holding their first meetings and the army was
helping to fight the fire, the American National Red Cross was sending
across the continent its representative, Dr. Edward T. Devine, who
reached San Francisco April 23 with Ernest P. Bicknell. Mr. Bicknell was
sent by the committee formed in Chicago for the relief of San
Franciscans.
At its first meeting in the Hall of Justice the Citizens’ Committee,
which was recognized immediately as a representative body, authorized
the mayor to issue orders for food and other supplies. The mayor did
not, however, make much use of this authority but left the conduct of
the relief work to the Finance Committee, which was appointed at the
first meeting, and to the other sub-committees which were formed at the
following meetings. The chairman of each of these was given power to
complete the membership of his committee. From the first the Finance
Committee of the Citizens’ Committee, with James D. Phelan elected to be
its chairman, stands out as a directing agent of relief.
Interesting items in the minutes of the second meeting of the Citizens’
Committee are the announcements that there would be water in the Western
Addition by one o’clock of that day, April 19, and in the Mission the
following day, and that there was press boat service at the foot of Van
Ness Avenue.[10]
[10] See map opposite p. 3. Fort Mason, at the foot of the avenue,
overlooks the Golden Gate.
The Citizens’ Committee continued for over two weeks to hold daily
meetings, to which were submitted the Finance Committee’s reports of
contributions, as well as its methods of relief expenditures. Its only
function in relation to the relief work came to be to confer in order to
exchange information. It was but natural, therefore, for the mayor to
determine to dissolve the larger committee and leave the control of the
relief work, as far as he had power to determine it, in the hands of the
Finance Committee, which as is shown below had on April 25 come into
effective co-operation with the army and the American National Red
Cross. At the meeting on May 5, the mayor notified Mr. Phelan that the
work of all the relief sub-committees but his was done, and that he
should make his financial statement to the Committee on the
Reconstruction of San Francisco.[11]
[11] Superseded on May 5 the Committee of Fifty. This new committee of
40 members, composed largely of the men who served on the Committee of
Fifty, had no part in the subsequent relief work.
The Citizens’ Committee with its list of sub-committees, hurriedly
created, quickly to die, gives an excellent illustration of the futility
of trying to effect an elaborate organization before the measure of a
disaster has been taken or the extent of the means for recovery learned.
The Finance Committee represented the citizens’ choice to which had been
entrusted the local subscription of over $400,000 and the contribution
from the state at large of $250,000. Its authority had been recognized
by the California branch of the Red Cross, by the Massachusetts
Association for Relief of California, by the New York Chamber of
Commerce, and by many other relief organizations and individuals
throughout the country, as well as by the President of the United States
who made public his recognition of the Finance Committee as official
agent of relief. The relation of the American National Red Cross to the
Finance Committee was not defined during the week following the
disaster.
3. UNITING OF RELIEF FORCES
On April 24, before the dissolution of the Citizens’ Committee, a
momentous conference was held at Fort Mason which was attended by
General Greely and General Funston representing the army; by the mayor,
Mr. Phelan, Mr. de Young, and Mr. E. H. Harriman representing the
citizens; and by Dr. Devine, representing the American National Red
Cross and Judge W. W. Morrow representing the California Branch of the
Red Cross. That a meeting was to be held to determine the jurisdiction
of the Finance Committee and the best method of employing the funds, had
been reported earlier in the same day to the Citizens’ Committee. At
this conference, after a heated argument it was decided that the
military authorities should have entire charge[12] of the relief
stations and the shelters for the homeless, two divisions of work that
previously had been partially carried by sub-committees of the Citizens’
Committee. It was further decided to unite the Red Cross with the
Finance Committee of the Citizens’ Committee under a new title: Finance
Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds. This consolidation was
immediately approved by the American National Red Cross which soon
afterwards remitted $400,000 to the new committee.[13]
[12] For a copy of General Orders No. 18, see Appendix I, p. 379.
[13] For list of members of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red
Cross Funds and its permanent Committees, see Appendix I, p. 377.
There were nice questions of policy involved in the determining of the
relation between the army, the civil and state authorities, and the
voluntary relief agencies. Tact was required and a faithful compliance
with the law. April 21, at a conference of the mayor, the chief of
police, General Koster, then in command of the National Guard, and
General Funston, the question of the effective policing of the city had
been considered.
It was agreed that the northern part of the city should be assigned to
the federal troops, the central part to the National Guard, and the
southern to the municipal police. The northern part was divided into six
military districts. On May 2 military control was extended to the whole
city, which was now divided into eight military districts, with only
slight changes in their boundaries; and on May 8 there was a general
re-districting that resulted in six districts. These military districts
have special significance for this Relief Survey because they later
served as the basis for the seven geographical divisions known as civil
or relief sections, which played a very important part in the relief
work. These were formed on April 29 and coincided practically with the
six military districts of May 8, except that military district six
included civil sections VII and VIII. The civil sections were later used
by the American National Red Cross, by the Executive Commission, and by
the departments of Camps and Warehouses and of Relief and
Rehabilitation.
The boundaries of the sections, the number of refugees registered in
each, the extent of the burned district, and the location of the more
important camps, are given in the map.[14] The burned district was
included almost entirely in Sections IV and V. Sections I, II,[15] and
III contained the largest camps. Section VI had only one official camp,
and Section VII none, but there were many unsupervised tents and shacks,
isolated and in groups, scattered through these two sections. In extent
of territory they more than equalled the other five sections. They
contained before the fire a large wage-earning population, living in
small homes. This population was much increased after the fire by an
influx from the burned-out part of the city.
[14] See map opposite p. 3. For number of refugees registered in the
seven Sections in May, 1906, see also Part I, p. 45.
[15] The number of refugees registered for Section II is very
inadequate. It included Golden Gate Park, with its three large camps,
where a different registration system was instituted before the
general registration was begun. These camps, with a population in the
middle of May of nearly 5,000, were therefore excluded from the
general registration, which consequently represented only the
scattered refugees throughout the section outside the Park.
An irresistible force had pushed relief through four broad channels.
Food had first to be supplied; then clothing along with bedding and
common household necessities; then shelter; and last, the means to make
one’s own provision for the future. The order of relief could not be
altered by any committee planning. The great primary needs had first to
be met. The amounts that could be held in reserve for the purpose of
essential importance, rehabilitation, depended on the sum of donations
being enough to leave a surplus after the cost of food, clothing, and
temporary shelter had been met. In the early days the number of persons
that were in the bread line and that lacked shelter was so great that it
looked as if the demands for food, clothing, and other primary
necessities would exhaust any possible relief fund.
The method of distribution of emergency relief is described in the
following chapter, but in order to understand the animus that underlay
the efforts to form an organization that should meet with public
recognition, it must be borne in mind that two strong currents,
representing distinct conceptions of principles of relief, flowed
beneath the surface of the relief administration, sometimes the one and
sometimes the other directing the general course or impeding an even
progress. Such conflict between the conceptions of the relief task was
as inevitable as was the demand for relief itself, and furnished
probably the amount of friction necessary to wear a deep bed along which
later moved a great stream of rehabilitation. The story of the first
efforts to form a compact, working relief body falls almost into
dramatic form. The voice of authority one day is the civic servant’s,
another day the people’s, a third the military commander’s, a fourth the
expert charity worker’s. The stage in turn seems held by each. But the
significant fact is that underlying the methods of each is the need,
recognized at different periods of time in varying degree, of meeting
the demands of the situation by a grasp of rehabilitation as the
definitive aim.
4. BEGINNINGS OF REHABILITATION WORK
There was no monopoly of the conception of rehabilitation as an
essential part of the relief work. Before the end of April the Finance
Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds had been asked to supply tools
to bricklayers and to make loans to individuals. Individual members had
discussed the outstanding importance of rehousing the people. Agencies
and individuals acting independently of one another had likewise been
making tentative efforts to restore people to self-support.
But there was one group of workers that had been free from the first to
base its initial efforts on the need to measure the disaster in terms of
future rehabilitation. This group, representing the American National
Red Cross, reinforced by the Associated Charities, had been free to do
so because the responsibility of meeting the emergency was being carried
by the army and by the Citizens’ Committee. Before any distinctive
rehabilitation committee was appointed the office of the Red Cross was
besieged by applicants who in person and by letter begged for aid to
remove their families from the camp life. To some tools were supplied;
to others, transportation. Until May 9, when the Finance Committee made
its first appropriation of $10,000 for special relief, Dr. Devine drew
on a private fund at his disposal to meet rehabilitation expenditures.
For these early expenditures he was reimbursed from the first
appropriation.
May 5 is a noteworthy date. The representative of the American National
Red Cross then began to form a staff of rehabilitation workers, who put
the date May 5 at the head of the first case record. The secretary of
the Boston Associated Charities, Alice L. Higgins, was appointed
secretary to Dr. Devine. Lee K. Frankel of New York became chairman of a
tentative bureau of special relief.
On May 18, when the Red Cross had formulated its plans for a
registration bureau and for co-operating with the army at the seven
civil sections, the Special Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, or
Bureau, as it was ordinarily called, got well under way, with Oscar K.
Cushing as chairman. In a separate section in the next chapter the
relation of this Bureau to the transportation work is told.
The Bureau started with a force of seven field agents. The Associated
Charities provided the investigators, reinforced at once by local
volunteer and paid relief workers and, after July 2, by a number of
workers sent from east of the Sierras by the charity organization and
kindred societies that had trained them. The force as a whole
represented, without discrimination, various races and creeds. The
Finance Committee after July 2 made an appropriation to the Associated
Charities to cover the cost of administration.
[Illustration: Watching the fire
The fire draws near
REFUGEES IN JEFFERSON SQUARE]
During the early period of the alliance between the Associated Charities
and the Rehabilitation Bureau there was difficulty in the adjustment
of work, but the friction was soon overcome and until July, 1907, under
the various régimes, the Associated Charities continued to be an
effective part of the general rehabilitation machinery. The work of the
Bureau grew fast, but it grew naturally as an outcome of the demands of
the situation itself, and when on June 29, as is stated on page 21, the
Finance Committee appointed its own Rehabilitation Committee,[16] the
new committee was able to take over the work of the Bureau without any
waste of effort.
[16] Two weeks later, when the funds were incorporated, July 16, 1906,
five departments were formed (see p. 26) of which one, the Department
of Relief and Rehabilitation, included the Rehabilitation Committee,
the Bureau of Hospitals, the Industrial Bureau, and the Bureau of
Special Relief. (See Diagram of Organization, p. xxv.)
Early in May, when the Red Cross Rehabilitation Bureau was being
organized, the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds,
stimulated by insistent requests that it should state its plans, called
on Dr. Devine, one of its members, to make recommendations for future
work. The New York Chamber of Commerce, through its representative,
James D. Hague, and the Massachusetts Association for the Relief of
California through its representative Jacob Furth, were urging that
their funds be used as far as possible to provide permanent relief.
Dr. Devine, who already had carefully considered with his staff of Red
Cross workers the general question of rehabilitation, in a report
submitted on May 4 made seven recommendations, which were considered by
a special committee consisting of the governor, Archbishop Riordan,
Rabbi Voorsanger, E. H. Harriman, and Dr. Devine. The first six
recommendations were accepted by the Finance Committee; the last was
rejected. They read:
1. That the opening of cheap restaurants be encouraged and facilitated
by the sale to responsible persons at army contract prices of any
surplus stores now in hand or en route, the proceeds to be turned into
the relief fund to be expended in the purchase of the same or other
supplies as the Finance Committee or its purchasing agents may direct.
2. That definite provision be made for the maintenance of the
permanent private hospitals which are in position to care for free
patients, by the payment at the rate of $10 per week for the care of
patients who are unable to pay, and that after an accurate estimate
has been made of the number of beds in each hospital, a sufficient sum
be appropriated for this purpose.
3. That provision be made on some carefully devised plan for the care
during the coming year of convalescent patients, and for the care of
aged and infirm persons for whom there is not already sufficient
provision.
4. That on the basis of the registration now in progress and
subsequent inquiry into the facts in such cases, special relief in the
form of tools, implements, household furniture, and sewing machines,
or in any other form which may be approved by the committee, be
supplied to individuals and families found to be in need of such
relief.
5. That the administration of this special relief fund be entrusted to
a committee of seven with such paid service at its disposal as the
special relief committee may find necessary.
6. That as soon as practicable a definite date be fixed after which
applications for aid from the Relief and Red Cross Funds cannot be
considered.
7. That a sum not to exceed $100,000 be set aside to be expended by
the said committee for the immediate employment of both men and women
in some necessary work which is in the public interest but which
cannot be undertaken by the municipality and is not properly a charge
on any private corporation or individual.
In making its own report this special committee said it assumed “that
the supply of food and clothing will be continued until the absolute
need in these directions is met.” It was not prepared to take action on
the seventh recommendation.
At the end of May, no action as a result of the recommendations having
been taken, Dr. Devine urged the Finance Committee to appoint the
committee of seven suggested in the fifth recommendation, which had been
authorized the first of the month, so that the work of providing shelter
more adequate than that provided by the tents should be begun. For
consideration of more permanent forms of rehabilitation, he thought it
might be necessary to have still another committee.
His advice to the Finance Committee was supplemented on June 4 by a
letter to the chairman, in which he drew a general outline of the relief
course that should be taken. It reiterates in more specific form the
advice given in May. The points emphasized were:
1. The general distribution of uncooked food and of clothing should be
discontinued by June 30, the date the army proposed to withdraw. The
bread line, the clothing line, and the relief stations, should then be
abandoned.
2. The established charities of the city should, as far as possible,
on that date resume the discharge of their normal functions.
3. The clothing and provisions, tools, sewing machines, and household
furniture remaining on June 30 in the relief stores should be placed
at the disposal of a special relief committee and a central warehouse
should be designated to hold them. Appropriations should be made to
the suggested committee for its administrative expenses, and as its
plans developed, for additional relief.
4. Housing, loans, and other plans for rehabilitation should be taken
up by a legally incorporated body to be formed to administer the
relief funds; one which should be ready to deal in the broadest
possible way with all problems relating to the rehabilitation of
families and of individuals. The hot meal kitchens, it was
conjectured, would by the end of June be on a business basis.
5. The most important task remaining would be to supervise permanent
camps and barracks.[17]
[17] See Providing Shelter, Part I, p. 69 ff.
6. The Police Department should give general protection, and the
Health Commission should guard the public health.[18]
[18] See Safeguarding Health, Part I, p. 89 ff.
To quote the letter:
“What will be needed in each permanent camp after June 30 will be (1)
a business agent authorized by the Finance Committee, and in the case
of public parks by the municipal authorities, to assign tents or rooms
in barracks to particular persons, to collect rents, if rental is
charged, to evict tenants when necessary, and to call upon the police
authorities in the name of this committee, when necessary for the
maintenance of order; (2) a sanitary officer responsible to the health
commission; and (3) a police guard responsible to the police
department. The general business agents should all be responsible to
one general superintendent of permanent camps. The general
superintendent of business agents, in the case of the larger camps,
will require a certain number of clerical and administrative
assistants corresponding to the military officers who are now serving
in similar capacities under the military supervision of camps and the
commanding officers of the several camps. Neither the business agent
nor the sanitary superintendent need have anything to do with relief,
except to report cases of destitution which come to their attention to
the Special Relief Committee.”
The mayor, who was futilely trying to determine relief policies, in a
conference with Mr. Phelan a few days later suggested the importance of
appointing the committee urged by Dr. Devine. He said that he might ask
the municipal board of supervisors to appoint a committee on relief and
rehabilitation. This action, however, he did not take.
General Greely at this time also expressed his appreciation of the need
of a change of relief policy.[19] He and Dr. Devine agreed as to the
next steps to be taken, his point of view concurring with that expressed
in the letter just quoted. He counseled specifically a separation of
questions of administration, sanitation, and relief, and a thorough
co-operation with the municipality in all matters affecting the
administrative policy and sanitation of the camps. He said further that
as an army officer was familiar with but two aspects of the relief
problem,--the distribution of supplies and the care of camps,--the
Finance Committee of the Relief and Red Cross Funds should appoint an
executive committee, which should be prepared after July 1 to relieve
the army of responsibility.
[19] For letter written on June 15 by General Greely to the chairman
of the Finance Committee, see Appendix I, p. 387.
He asked three of his officers who had been carrying on the relief work
to submit a plan for its further conduct. The resultant plan, submitted
by General Greely to the Finance Committee, was necessarily a reflex of
the military experience of its framers. Though it was incited by an
appreciation of the fact that the emergency relief period must be
superseded by the period for permanent adjustment, the plan provided for
yet further distribution of necessities rather than in any comprehensive
way for housing and rehabilitation. It called for the organizing of a
bureau with a paid personnel. The chief of the bureau was to be
accountable to the mayor, and was to have under him four sub-chiefs,
three of whom should be army officers, each in charge of a
department,--the departments of distribution and supply, administration,
general superintendence, and finance.
General Greely, realizing the difficulty of having a suitable man
appointed as chief, made later the substitute suggestion of a commission
of three. The mayor and General Greely were present by invitation at a
meeting of the Finance Committee when the substitute plan was
considered. The attitude of the mayor during this month of June was one
of serious interference. The Finance Committee naturally did not wish to
have any public disagreement with him, and with the knowledge that the
army was shortly to be withdrawn from control of relief work it seemed
wise as a compromise to accept General Greely’s suggestion of a
commission rather than a chief who should be responsible solely to the
mayor. The decision was reached, therefore, for the Finance Committee to
appoint an Executive Commission of three members, one member to
represent the mayor, a second, the American National Red Cross, and a
third, the Finance Committee itself.
5. AN INTERLUDE
On June 22, at a meeting of the Finance Committee at which 11 of the 21
members were present, announcement was made that the mayor had appointed
a political friend as his representative on the Executive Commission,
and the American National Red Cross, Dr. Devine. Dr. Devine at the time
of the meeting was absent in the East. The Committee had therefore to
make its appointment. After a discussion, which later became public,
several men were nominated for appointment, two of whom possessed the
confidence of the community on account of their honorable standing,
native ability, readiness freely to serve the public, and knowledge
gained of the relief situation through arduous volunteer work. The man
elected, by a vote of six to four, was a politician with no previous
experience in the relief work. A scrutiny of the records shows on the
part of these local members of the Executive Commission no indication of
effort to use their positions to further political ends, and one of the
two returned to the Finance Committee the salary of $500 to which he was
entitled as a member of the Commission. There is no record of lack of
harmony, merely the indication of an ineptitude on their part to meet
the needs of the distressed community.
The attitude of the Finance Committee was one of detachment from, or
one might say, suspicion of the Executive Commission. It refused to
define the scope of the Commission’s work, but directed it to organize
and submit a plan of work for approval, and, for confirmation, the names
of the employes it wished to appoint. The members who had forced the
election of a feeble representative, realizing the mistake of their
policy, agreed to restrict the powers of the Commission, and were ready
to vote to abolish it at the end of the month.
The irony of the situation lay in the fact that the chairman of the
Commission, Dr. Devine (who accepted no salary), and its secretary,
Ernest P. Bicknell (who likewise received no salary), presented for
consideration a plan of work which in substance was the same as that
submitted by the chairman early in June to the Finance Committee and to
General Greely.
The plan[20] called again for a regulation of camps, warehouses, the hot
meal kitchens, the care of the sick in hospitals, and for making
provision for housing, loans, and special relief. Unlike a rolling
stone, however, to reiterate plans meant to gather moss, so a new
suggestion may be noted. It was, that the civilian chairmen of the seven
sections should be men on salary, giving their entire time, and
responsible to the Commission until relieved. Their duties should
include distribution of clothing, meal tickets, and other relief, and
the carrying out of the second registration[21] then in progress.
[20] For plan of the Executive Commission, see Appendix I, p. 391.
[21] See Part I, p. 49, and Part II, p. 115. The first registration
was begun during the week following the disaster.
Recommendation was made by the Commission that all executive work should
devolve on it, and that it should be held responsible for initiating
relief measures.
The Finance Committee approved the plan in general, with the exception
that the question of special relief be left for future decision and that
no action be taken on housing until further information had been
collected. It did decide, specifically, that the rehabilitation work
should continue in charge of Dr. Devine as representative of the Red
Cross, and should not be transferred to the Executive Commission while
final decision was pending.
[Illustration: The first bakery rebuilt
A cheerful kitchen
SUPPLYING FOOD UNDER DIFFICULTIES]
The Executive Commission got rather beaten round the bush. It was
permitted to expend certain appropriations for sanitation, the care of
camps, and the distribution of food, clothing, and other supplies, under
direction of its chairman and a group of army officers. The relation of
the army to the new Commission was practically what it had before been
to the Red Cross representative. Under the military régime Major A. J.
Gaston was commanding officer of permanent camps; under the new régime
he was general superintendent of camps with authority to appoint all
camp employes.
In the latter part of June Mr. Phelan, acting on Dr. Devine’s suggestion
that the Finance Committee should appoint a Rehabilitation Committee of
its own to supersede the work of the special Rehabilitation Bureau, did
appoint such a committee with Dr. Devine as chairman and Archbishop
Riordan,[22] Bishop Nichols,[23] Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, O. K. Cushing,
F. W. Dohrmann, and Dr. John Gallwey as members. Its scope was defined
as including “all aid” to be given to individuals or families other than
food or ordinary clothing. It superseded, as has been already
stated,[24] the Red Cross Rehabilitation Bureau and took over the
latter’s unexpended balance. The Bureau had expended $18,599.70 for 840
applicants.
[22] Delegated his position to Rev. D. O. Crowley.
[23] Delegated his position to Archdeacon J. A. Emery.
[24] See Part I, p. 15.
The Rehabilitation Committee met in Hamilton School July 2, two and a
half months after the beginning of the relief work in San Francisco. Mr.
Bicknell was elected secretary, Mr. Cushing, treasurer, the latter, with
the chairman, having authority to sign checks in the name of the
Committee. When Dr. Devine returned to New York, August 1, Mr. Bicknell
was appointed a member of the Committee and Mr. Dohrmann then became
chairman, a position he was to hold from the first of August, 1906,
until the close of the rehabilitation work.
During June and July, to repeat, the pressure to give food and temporary
shelter was yielding to the pressure to furnish permanent shelter and
other means of rehabilitation. The problem of housing was very
complicated. No one knew how far shelter would be provided by private
enterprise; no one knew whether manufacturing plants and wholesale and
retail business would seek old locations; no one knew where the shifting
population would settle. There was delay in collecting insurance,
uncertainty as to the land, labor, and materials available and as to the
future street car service and water and sewer connections. There was
difference of opinion as to whether the subsidized building should be of
a permanent or temporary character, of scattered individual dwellings or
large blocks, as to whether financial aid should be in the form of
bonuses or of loans.
One of the minor notes of irony in this mid-summer situation lies in the
fact that the Finance Committee referred to its own Rehabilitation
Committee for consideration and report the housing suggestion of one of
its members, M. H. de Young, and that the report that followed, July 10,
was signed by Dr. Devine as chairman both of the Rehabilitation
Committee and of the Executive Commission.[25]
[25] See Original Housing Plan, Appendix I, p. 393. See also Part IV,
Housing Rehabilitation, p. 212 ff.
Mr. de Young’s suggestion was that a donation, or as it was commonly
called, a bonus, of not more than $500[26] in any case, be made in
behalf of any resident whose house had been destroyed, provided that the
$500 represented not more than one-third of the value of the house to be
built, and that it be paid to the contractor after the house was
completed and was clear of liens.
[26] For class of people who benefited by the bonus plan, see Part IV,
pp. 218, 239.
The resultant report as submitted stated that the Executive Commission
had, with the approval of the Finance Committee, appointed a board of
consulting architects and builders who offered their services as expert
counsel on general plans and on designs for suitable dwellings. It also
stated that the matter had been carefully considered by the
Rehabilitation Committee and the Executive Commission, and that the
bonus plan was recommended for such workingmen as could not secure
sufficient funds from banks, building and loan associations, or from
other business or private sources.
Attention was called to the fact that the Rehabilitation Committee was
already studying the general situation so as to estimate how many
loans[27] were likely to be called for. It was further stated that
there was no anticipation that the bonus plan would carry far in
providing shelter for the families living in tents, and that no
inclusive plan could be framed to provide housing for all the homeless.
[27] For method of carrying out the loan plan, see Part IV, p. 253 ff.
It was recognized, moreover, that first in order of importance came
provision of shelter for the aged, the infirm, the invalided, and the
other adult dependents who had become permanent city charges. For these
the recommendation was to erect permanent buildings on the cottage
pavilion plan to house 1,000 persons; the cost of building to be met
from the fund, the maintenance to be left to the city. It was recognized
that there were two possible alternate plans; namely, to care for the
dependent group in existing private institutions, or to board its
members in private families. A marked advantage of the first plan was
that it provided a permanent addition to the city’s charitable
institutions. The suggestion was intended to supplement what was already
being done in the way of giving care to the sick in hospitals.
It was further recognized that there should be quick effort made to
supply dwellings for the 5,000 persons who before the disaster had paid
moderate rentals, but who were housed in tents or other temporary
shelters. It was also necessary to make provision for a possible 5,000
persons who were out of the city. No accurate estimate had been or could
be made of those who, independent of aid, had readjusted themselves.
The proposal made in behalf of the possible 10,000, a proposal that
touched the kernel of the big relief problem, was to use money lying
idle to build houses which should be sold on the instalment plan, or
rented to families that had been living in San Francisco on April 17.
Shelter had to be provided against the rainy season in order that there
might be held in San Francisco a population of working people. The
proposal was intended also to carry to a workingman the opportunity to
own a house of such character as should serve to set a standard for
sanitary and attractive dwellings. Through the carrying out of this
scheme there were to be brought into happy co-operation the architects,
the builders, the municipality, and the Finance Committee itself. The
first would supply skill and taste; the second, quick and moderate
priced building; the third, suitable conditions of light, sanitation,
ventilation, and fire protection; the fourth, capital and business
security. To assure the last provision there was a suggestion of the
creation of a new corporation to consist of the mayor, the chairman of
the Finance Committee, the representative of the American National Red
Cross, and representatives from the Executive Commission and the
Rehabilitation Committee, all of whom were to be named by the Finance
Committee.
The need to incorporate became more imperative when the plans to furnish
shelter took, by July 15, the following definite shape:
1. To build a pavilion on the almshouse tract[28] for 1,000 homeless
persons.
[28] For account of Ingleside Camp and the establishment of the
permanent Relief Home for the aged and infirm, see Part VI, p. 319 ff.
2. To appropriate $150,000 to construct and to repair temporary
shelters in the public parks for the use of the homeless during the
winter of 1906-07.
3. To appropriate not more than $500,000 to carry out the bonus
plan.[29]
[29] For discussion of the Bonus Plan, see Part IV, p. 239 ff.
4. To appropriate a second $500,000, to be used for loans to persons
who had owned or rented houses within the burned district.[30]
[30] For discussion of the Grant and Loan Plan, see Part IV, p. 253
ff.
5. To set aside $2,500,000 for the acquiring of suitable and
convenient land on which to build dwellings that might be sold for
cash or on the instalment plan to residents who were in business or
had other employment.
Before passing on to the matter of the incorporation of the funds, one
must record the final act of the Executive Commission. On July 31, after
six weeks of precarious, and one might almost say uneventful life, the
Commission voted to turn its records over to the corporation just
created, and to make an inventory of its supplies and equipment for
transfer to the same body.
June and July mark a clearly defined transition period. In spite of the
politically directed episode of the abortive Commission, rehabilitation
plans were being successfully shaped, even though the ordeals of the
withdrawing of the army as a factor in relief administration and the
introducing of the political appointees were being faced. In spite of
temporary set-backs, the work was getting on a strictly business basis.
Delays meant suffering, yet ultimate community gain, because the
Rehabilitation Committee, in keeping outside the province of the
Executive Commission, drew to itself the best experienced service that
was available, and escaped the danger of being directed or diverted by
any force other than that controlled by right motives.
6. INCORPORATION OF THE FUNDS
Now to return to the suggestion of incorporation. From as early a date
as May 4 the question of the incorporation of the relief funds had been
discussed within and without the Finance Committee. The New York Chamber
of Commerce as a large custodian of relief funds had the matter brought
personally to the attention of members of the Finance Committee through
its representative, James D. Hague, and in writing by its president, the
late Morris K. Jessup. The latter stated, however, that the determining
of the question of incorporation lay with the Finance Committee.
Correspondence in early July with Mr. Hague, the returned envoy, showed
that there was in contemplation the incorporating of an independent body
of men, the majority of whom should be appointed by the chairman of the
Finance Committee. To this proposed corporation it was suggested should
be transferred the $500,000 then held by the Chamber of Commerce, with
such other moneys as might be entrusted to it.
If such a plan had been carried out there would have been two authorized
bodies administering relief with an encouragement to other foreign
custodians of funds to create similar independent agencies. The pressure
to incorporate came therefore from without because of the jealous
guardianship of funds by the non-local contributors; from within because
of the exigency of the situation itself.
In the month of July, as has been said, the imminent need was known to
be to provide suitable shelter against the fall and winter rains. The
members of the Finance Committee considered the question of
incorporation from the standpoint of the provision of a body legally
empowered to acquire land and to loan money for building purposes. As a
committee, therefore, it decided on July 13 to carry out the
recommendations made in the letter written by Dr. Devine to its
chairman, three days earlier, which recommendation, it should be
recalled, embodied the earlier bonus plan suggestion made by one of its
own members.
The certificate of incorporation[31] was issued July 20 to hold for a
period of five years. The president of the corporation, the “San
Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, a Corporation,” was James D.
Phelan; the first and second vice-presidents, F. W. Dohrmann and W. F.
Herrin; the secretary, J. Downey Harvey. The president and first
vice-president, with M. H. de Young, Rudolph Spreckels, and Thomas
Magee, formed the Executive Committee. The personnel of the Corporation,
with the exception of the governor of the state and the mayor, who were
ex officio members and directors of the Corporation, was identical with
that of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds which it
superseded, and whose funds it immediately took over.
[31] See Appendix I, p. 398.
The newly incorporated body held its meetings at the St. Francis
Technical School on Geary and Gough Streets, which took the place of the
Hamilton School as headquarters for all departments of the relief work.
Later a warehouse was added to the building to hold the remaining
supplies. The meetings were open to the press, and to officers and
employes; and others with whom the corporation had business were invited
as was deemed expedient to meet with the Executive Committee. At the
third meeting, held late in July, five departments were created:[32]
A. Finance and Publicity
B. Bills and Demands
C. Camps and Warehouses
D. Relief and Rehabilitation
E. Lands and Buildings
[32] See Appendix I, pp. 399-400. See also Diagram of Organization, p.
xxv.
Each chairman was required to make an investigation of and report on any
undertaking of his department that called for an appropriation. Each
chairman was also a member of the Executive Committee and was
responsible for the appointment of his employes. He was further
responsible for preparing monthly budgets and for the printing and
distribution of all printed matter.
From the plan of organization it is to be seen, of course, that housing
as a reason for incorporation had yielded to the pressure to make
inclusive the treatment by one incorporated body of all divisions of the
many-sided work.
The experiments of the preliminary and transition periods had tried out
many men and methods, so that on the newly incorporated body were found
men of affairs who in the relief work itself were ready to act in
harmony and with method and to come together in small groups for
frequent meetings. If one looks at the diagram of organization
presented,[33] one sees how gradually through the trying three months
there had been a shaping through experiment that made the San Francisco
Relief and Red Cross Funds itself a fruition that in germ lay in the
union of official effort and private initiative.
[33] See p. xxv.
Step by step the confidence of the public at home and abroad had had to
be won. Only through the selection and trying out of generous-minded and
capable men could the suspicions of those who controlled the
contributions in the east have been dispelled.[34] Only after the
abortive effort to make political capital out of positions of relief
administration had fallen flat could the work itself get into its steady
swing. The lessons are clearly written, however, that there must of
necessity be in any great sudden emergency the creation of public
confidence in the administration of the relief, and that along with a
force of persons trained from within and without to act quickly and with
definiteness must be the voluntary services of men and women on whom the
community itself has learned to rely.
[34] See Part I, p. 99 ff.
* * * * *
A few notes of later date are added here to round out the account of
organization.
On August 1, 1906, Mr. Bicknell succeeded Dr. Devine as the
representative of the American National Red Cross, and he in turn was
succeeded on October 1 by Mr. Dohrmann.[35]
[35] For positions held by Mr. Dohrmann and Mr. Bicknell on the
Rehabilitation Committee, see Part I, p. 21.
Early in the year 1907 the County Medical Society urged that the balance
of the relief fund should be used for the erection and endowment of a
free hospital. Impelled by this and similar requests the Corporation did
in February consider seriously the possibility of closing the work.
* * * * *
One year after the fire (April, 1907):
The Department of Bills and Demands had completed its work.
The Department of Finance and Publicity was working with a greatly
reduced force as it was relieved of the accounting connected with claims
and subscriptions.
The Department of Camps and Warehouses had under care a camp population
of about 17,614, but no longer distributed food or other supplies.
The Department of Relief and Rehabilitation had finished the bulk of its
work. The general taking of applications had ceased for some time. Those
on file were being passed upon and closed as rapidly as possible. The
final estimates and appropriations for this work had been made. From
this time on only exceptional cases, and those few in number, were
received. The Housing Committee still had some work to do in connection
with the completion and inspection of houses granted by it, and with the
payment of the bonuses which it had guaranteed to pay to certain
applicants on the completion of houses which they were building for
themselves. The work of the Bureau of Special Relief was almost
finished. The work of the Hospital Bureau had to continue.
The Department of Lands and Buildings had completed its building work,
with the exception of the Relief Home. The Home was expected to be
finished in May.[36] A few hundred applications were on file for
allotment of bonuses from the second appropriation. The first
appropriation was exhausted.
[36] For reasons for delay, see Part VI, p. 321.
* * * * *
Two years after the disaster (April 18, 1908):
The Department of Lands and Buildings had completed its work.
[Illustration: Tent camp, opened May 9, 1906
Cottages
CAMP NO. 10, POTRERO DISTRICT]
The Department of Finance and Publicity, with a small force, was
making the settlements incidental to the closing of the camps and the
refunding of instalments to tenants. It was also preparing its financial
report.
The Department of Camps and Warehouses had removed cottages from all the
public squares but Lobos, where but 479 cottages and 1,287[37] persons
remained. This camp sheltered the poorest refugees.[38] Stricter
sanitary measures could be enforced here and care be given more cheaply
than if the inmates had been removed to cottages on private land.
Bubonic plague in this camp as well as elsewhere in the city had made
precaution necessary.
[37] The number being the same as that given in Part VI, p. 324, as
the total number of persons at Ingleside Camp, is a mere coincidence.
[38] See Part I, p. 85.
The Department of Relief and Rehabilitation had become a supervising
agency. It supervised the collection of housing loans, assisted the
Executive Committee in making grants to charitable institutions, and
advised the Associated Charities which was administering the greater
part of the relief needed in moving people from the camps.[39]
[39] See Part I, pp. 85-86.
The closing chapter of the complicated story of organization was reached
when, acting on the suggestion of its special representative, Mr.
Dohrmann, the American National Red Cross sent Mr. Bicknell in January,
1909, to San Francisco to confer about final plans. Mr. Bicknell had
then accepted the recently created position of national director of the
American National Red Cross. The creation of this position may be said
to be one of the results of the San Francisco relief experience. As a
result of conferences[40] between these two men who had played such a
determining part in San Francisco’s struggle to help its people wisely
to regain their old standing, the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red
Cross Funds was formed in February, 1909.
[40] For statement of action taken, see Appendix I, p. 401 ff.
II
METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION
1. SOURCES OF CONTRIBUTIONS
The complicated story of organization seems comparatively unimportant
when one’s mind is full of questions as to what was to be distributed,
and how many human beings were in need of immediate relief. That there
was general, quick recognition of the need is shown by the quantities of
supplies hurried to San Francisco. Five thousand cars were reported
April 28 to be on the road. General C. A. Devol, who had charge of
receiving and unloading all supplies, states, however:[41] “The stores
that arrived for the relief of San Francisco up to July 20 amounted to
1,702 carloads and five steamship loads, a total of approximately 50,000
tons. At the height of the operations about 150 carloads were delivered
into the city daily, in addition to stores arriving by steamers.” The
chairman of the Finance Committee reported to Mr. Taft, president of the
American National Red Cross, on November 28, 1906, that the estimate of
total receipts in kind was 1,850 carloads of food supplies, and 150
carloads of bedding, tenting, clothing, and so forth.
[41] Devol, Major (now General) C. A.: The Army in the San Francisco
Disaster. Journal United States Infantry Association, Vol. VI, No. 1.
pp. 59-87 (July, 1907). Further quotation from this article will be
found in Appendix I, p. 381, of this volume.
During the first two weeks after the disaster the Southern Pacific
Railroad brought 1,099 carloads of relief supplies into the city. Under
orders of its president, right of way was given to trains carrying these
cargoes, and express time schedules were used for the sake of speed.
These receipts were not all direct donations, as the contents of a
number of carloads had been purchased by the Finance Committee and by
the army from an appropriation of $2,500,000 made by Congress[42] to be
distributed under the direction of the officers of the Pacific Division.
There were also many donations that were sent to agencies other than the
Citizens’ Committee, the Red Cross, and the army. These cannot be
included in any estimate as there was no complete record of the amounts.
[42] See Sixth Annual Report American National Red Cross, 1910.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTATION ROUTES ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO]
It was found to be difficult to protect the mass of the rations in the
railroad yards and in transit to the warehouse against seizure by
ordinary thieves and by those who felt justified in disregarding the
usual rights of property. Goods were stolen, in quantities that could
not be reckoned, by those who expected to realize a profit as well as by
those who considered that they had the right to seize what they felt was
destined to meet their need. Some of these confiscated boxes were
addressed not to the relief authorities but to specified persons and
groups of persons in San Francisco or at other points about the bay. A
further incentive to confiscate lay in the action of the police who, as
was generally known, acting on the orders of the chief of police, had
broken open about 100 grocery and provision stores that were doomed to
be destroyed by fire. The police, after making a rough estimate of the
value of the stock, distributed freely to the destitute.
When the cars reached San Francisco, along with the bulk of the
shipments which were addressed either to the quartermaster of the army,
who was designated to have charge of all supplies sent to the American
National Red Cross, or to the Citizens’ Committee, were boxes addressed
to the mayor, to the churches, to other organizations of all kinds, and
to individuals. It would have interfered seriously with the work of
relief if an effort had been made to find the persons to whom special
boxes were directed. The American National Red Cross through its
representative, in whose care many boxes with specific directions were
sent, did all that was possible to carry out the intent of the donors,
but it could not in every instance find the intended recipient. Many
inquiries were received as to barrels and boxes which had not reached
their destination, but the cost of tracing these and the cost of making
special deliveries under the then existing conditions were often greater
than the value of the packages themselves.
An illustration of the difficulty of delivering special packages is the
story of eight cases of bread pans which were addressed to the “Relief
Committee” and were quickly distributed among the refugees. When the
manufacturing company that shipped the cases learned on inquiry of the
bakers for whose use they were intended that they had not received
them, it threatened to file a claim for loss. The trouble, however, lay
in the fact that a letter of instruction addressed to the mayor got
effectually separated from the boxes.
No complete record of cash contributions can be made. Some of the
committees throughout the country expended part of their funds to
purchase supplies to be forwarded to San Francisco or to relieve
refugees at home, or failed to collect all the money reported to have
been contributed. The money reported as subscribed in the state of
California is far from representing the actual value of relief
contributed. Being so near the scene of disaster the California
communities wisely contributed supplies in large quantities for
immediate use and also cared for large numbers of refugees who came to
them. The official reports of contributions cannot therefore give credit
to all communities for all the relief furnished by each, nor can they
show the amounts contributed by the smaller cities when these forwarded
their contributions through the larger city committees. Nor can a record
of contributions sent to the American Red Cross be found in the
published list of contributors to the committee in San Francisco.
TABLE 1.--CASH RECEIPTS OF THE FINANCE COMMITTEE OF RELIEF AND RED CROSS
FUNDS, AND ITS SUCCESSOR, THE CORPORATION,[43] TO JUNE 1, 1909
Cash donations, including San Francisco subscriptions
and Red Cross remittances $8,921,452.86
Interest on deposits (in part at 3 per cent and in part
at 2 per cent) 97,254.80
Exchange 1,140.65
Receipts from sales of commodities donated in whole or in part:
Sales of surplus flour $216,717.15
Sales of foodstuffs 41,498.07
Sales of tents 14,826.55
-----------
Total 273,041.77
-------------
Total receipts from donations $9,292,890.08
Receipts from sales of commodities purchased, loans repaid,
instalments, etc. 380,167.86
-------------
Total cash receipts $9,673,057.94
[43] The San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, a Corporation. See
Part I, p. 25 ff.
The total cash donations, $8,921,452.86, given in Table 1, do not
include the $2,500,000 appropriated by Congress, which was disbursed in
the first two months for food, clothing, bedding, shelter, etc., nor an
estimate of the numerous independent funds which were probably expended
within the first month, nor of the enormous quantity of supplies donated
by the people of the country. These supplied the first needs of the
destitute and enabled the Committee to save its cash for later and more
permanent forms of relief.
TABLE 2.--CASH CONTRIBUTIONS FOR THE RELIEF OF SAN FRANCISCO, TO JUNE 1,
1909, RECEIVED BY THE FINANCE COMMITTEE OF RELIEF AND RED CROSS FUNDS,
AND ITS SUCCESSOR, THE CORPORATION, AND BY AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS,
BY COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
===========================+=============+=============+=============
Country of origin | Received by | Received by | Total
| Finance | the American|
| Committee | National Red|
| of Relief | Cross |
| and Red | |
| Cross Funds | |
| and the | |
| Corporation | |
---------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
San Francisco | $413,090.83| .. | $413,090.83
About 2500 cities and towns| | |
of the United States | 5,261,898.35|$2,967,079.90| 8,228,978.25
Austria (Sec’t’y Amer. | | |
Embassy at Vienna) | .. | 50.00| 50.00
Australia | 385.96| .. | 385.96
Belgium | 50.00| .. | 50.00
Canada | 145,097.15| 315.50| 145,412.65
Cape Colony (Americans) | .. | 464.00| 464.00
Ceylon | .. | 32.33| 32.33
China | 40,000.00| .. | 40,000.00
Cuba | 5.00| 729.30| 734.30
England | 6,522.58| 48.30| 6,570.88
France (Amer. Chamber of | | |
Commerce, Paris, $20,850) | 20,850.00| 385.08| 21,235.08
Germany | 50.00| .. | 50.00
Japan | 98,960.10| 146,000.00| 244,960.10
Mexico | 14,286.44| 193.87| 14,480.31
Russia | 51.45| 147.57| 199.02
Scotland | .. | 50.40| 50.40
United States of Colombia | | |
(Americans) | 200.00| .. | 200.00
---------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
Total |$6,001,447.86|$3,115,496.25|$9,116,944.11
---------------------------+-------------+-------------+-------------
The donations mentioned in Table 2 do not include $100,000 given to the
University of California Hospital by the Massachusetts Association for
the Relief of California.
It appears from the figures of the two preceding tables that while on
June 1, 1909, money to the amount of $9,116,944.11 had been contributed
for the relief of San Francisco, $8,921,452.86 had been received by the
Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds and by the Corporation.
This difference between the amount donated and the amount received by
the local organizations to which the work of relief had been entrusted
is explained by the fact that not all the money contributed through the
American National Red Cross had been paid over to the Finance Committee
or to the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds by June 1, 1909. The
disposition made of the money contributed through the American National
Red Cross is shown in Table 3.
TABLE 3.--DISPOSITION OF CASH CONTRIBUTED FOR THE RELIEF OF SAN
FRANCISCO THROUGH THE AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS, TO JUNE 1, 1909[44]
Total donations made through the American
National Red Cross $3,115,496.25
Remitted to San Francisco to June 1,
1909 $2,920,005.00
Administration expenses, purchase of
relief supplies, and transportation
of refugees 47,073.35
Sent to Italy (for Messina earthquake
sufferers, 1909) 50,000.00
-------------
Total disbursements to June 1, 1909 3,017,078.35
-------------
Balance available from donations, June 1, 1909 $98,417.90
[44] For detailed account of receipts and disbursements see Sixth
Annual Report, American National Red Cross, 1910, pp. 60-152.
The statement shows that of the $3,115,496.25 donated through the
American National Red Cross up to June 1, 1909, $2,920,005.00 had been
remitted to San Francisco. The balance received but not remitted was
therefore $195,491.25,[45] of which $97,073.35 was disbursed directly by
the Red Cross. It will be seen that this balance equals the difference
between the total amount donated for the relief of San Francisco and the
amount of the cash donations received to June 1, 1909.
[45] Subsequent to June 1, 1909, the sum of $100,545.65 was forwarded
to San Francisco, this sum comprising the $98,417.90 above mentioned,
together with a portion of the accrued interest and a delayed
contribution.
2. DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD
Food was of course the first necessity, and out of the need to supply it
grew the whole machinery of relief. Before the noon of Thursday, April
19, the Citizens’ Committee had appointed a sub-committee on relief of
the hungry, with Rabbi Voorsanger as chairman, to furnish food for the
entire population, which for a time fell into a series of long bread
lines. In these lines rich and poor, Italian, German, Swedish, Chinese,
and native fared alike. The only question was one of need. From the
mayor and the military officers down to the humblest families in the
Potrero, there was a good-humored acquiescence in the hardships of the
situation, and an optimism that was inspiring. Supplies in sufficient
quantities were rushed to the city, and the danger of suffering from
lack of food was averted.
The sub-committee began the distribution of food April 20. It at once
called on the army to furnish an officer, two companies of infantry, and
a troop of cavalry to guard rather than to distribute what supplies had
become available. It took steps to get flour from points around the bay
and studied the situation as to the bakeries, some of the largest of
which had been burned or damaged. Repairs were being made to some of
those damaged, and a daily output of 50,000 loaves of bread was shortly
to be expected.
The ruling was made that after the committee on relief of the hungry had
received the quantity of bread it needed, the bakers might sell the
remainder at not more than 10 cents a loaf, in quantities of not more
than five loaves to one person. The committee was furthermore authorized
by the Citizens’ Committee to levy on all supplies wherever found. The
following notes show the general trend of the work during the first
week.
[Illustration: All classes joined the bread line
Soldiers gave aid and protection
RELIEVING THE HUNGRY]
On Friday, April 20, while the fire was still spreading, the general
distribution was begun. About 25 wagons were impressed which were used
in the distribution of the provisions seized by order of the committee.
Refugees were standing in line at the Golden Gate Park Lodge; the Young
Men’s Hebrew Association, Page and Stanyan Streets; St. Mary’s
Cathedral, Van Ness Avenue and O’Farrell Street; at Jefferson and
Columbia Squares, and at the corners of Fifth and Mission Streets and
24th and Douglas Streets, where food stations had already been
established by the citizens. The committee made use of these for its own
distribution, choosing the Young Men’s Hebrew Association as its base
for general distribution.
The bakeries that day furnished 35,000 loaves of bread. The chief
difficulty lay in transporting to the city the supplies that were
available--5,000 tons of flour at Vallejo and many carloads of donated
goods at Oakland.
On Saturday, April 21, the day the fire was brought under control, the
city was reported to be divided into districts. Five bakeries were in
operation and a committee from Fresno appeared before the Citizens’
Committee to announce that it had brought six carloads of supplies.
Committees from some nearby communities put themselves under the
direction of the Citizens’ Committee, but the general efficiency of the
distribution was lowered by the fact that still other out of town
committees undertook to make independent distributions.
On Sunday, April 22, arrangements had been made to have bread baked in
the towns of the Santa Clara Valley. It was found necessary to carry
into effect the committee ruling to prevent alleged exorbitant retail
charges for bread.
On Monday, April 23, there was an abundance of supplies for present use
and an over-supply of milk.
On Tuesday, April 24, there was a shortage of sugar and coffee. Sixty
food stations had been established. No stores were found on
investigation to be charging exorbitant prices for food, but some of the
refugees were trying to get more than their share of food. Confusion was
still being caused by the work of the independent relief committees.
When two days later the committee on relief of the hungry made its final
report to the Finance Committee there had been established 128 stations
and sub-stations, a warehouse in the Moulder School, Page and Gough
Streets, and a branch warehouse at Spear and Howard Streets. It had had
printed a card for the use of the applicant at the food station and had
determined that rations, except in cases of emergency, should be issued
to each person at intervals of three days. Every card carried a
statement of the amount of food required by a person for a day, as
follows:
Fresh beef, 1¹⁄₄ lbs. or bacon or ham, ³⁄₄ lb.
Salt fish, ³⁄₄ lb. [Probably as a substitute for meat and not in
addition to it.]
Fresh or canned vegetables, 1 lb.
Flour, 18 oz., or bread, 22 oz.
Rice, ¹⁄₈ lb. or beans, ¹⁄₄ lb.
Sugar, ¹⁄₁₀ lb.
Coffee, ¹⁄₁₀ lb.
Special diet,--eggs, butter, milk, fruit,--was also issued.
This ration was more liberal than that adopted by the army.[46]
[46] See Appendix I, p. 379 ff. This General Orders No. 18, is an
important document to be read in connection with any facts given about
the army methods.
During the trial week the distribution of food was made to the refugees
either from the stations or at the various camps or shelters. Though a
fixed ration was agreed on there could be no certainty of delivery, as
the quantity and variety of the food supply was indeterminate. The
committee in making its report could give only an approximate estimate
of the goods it had seized. It anticipated that claims would be made
against it as well as against the United States army, the state militia,
the police department, and the various volunteer organizations which had
without authorization seized goods.
It arranged to pay the bakeries at a rate of 5 cents a loaf for the
255,630 loaves of bread which had been supplied by them to the
committee, part of the payment to be made in flour, and to pay the Milk
Dealers’ Association at a rate of not more than 20 cents a gallon for
milk supplied by it. The committee had employed between three and four
hundred men and as many trucks to transport supplies, but it did not
know the extent of its obligation for the use of the latter.
During the first week after the disaster there was a growing inclination
to turn to the army for the direction of the relief work. Though the
army in common with every other body of persons had suffered serious
losses, its efficiency as an organization could not be impaired even
though the extent of the aid it could immediately give were lessened.
To the military reservations which lay outside the burned district
refugees immediately fled in numbers, and on April 19, the day the
committee on relief of the hungry began its work, Major Krauthoff issued
from a depot established by him in the Presidio such food as could be
spared from the Presidio itself and from Forts Mason and Miley. The
great army warehouses, which had stored $2,000,000 worth of supplies,
were burned, but along with the committee on relief of the hungry the
army began to confiscate supplies for use on the reservations. It also
purchased from the posts in the Departments of California and the
Columbia 900,000 rations, the first shipment of which arrived on April
21. On that same day a steamer from Stockton put in at Fort Mason with
donations of provisions and blankets. These were immediately distributed
among 20,000 refugees.
The committee on relief of the hungry had not been given full authority
nor had its powers been defined. It had no machinery adequate for the
handling of a great bulk of supplies, and it was hindered by the
crossing of efforts on the part of unauthorized agencies.
The Finance Committee, as has been said in Chapter I, was the committee
of power, and might have assumed responsibility for perfecting an
adequate relief organization, but as it realized that its efforts could
not be as quickly effective as those of the army, it, as well as the
mayor, called on the army to assume control of the relief work. General
Greely consented and on April 29 took charge of the food issues and
gradually put the work under the direction of 64 officers and 500
enlisted men.
Major C. A. Devol, depot quartermaster, who took over the tremendous
task of unloading cars and boats and transporting supplies to and from
warehouses,[47] quickly introduced order and economy into the work.
Major C. R. Krauthoff, in charge of the commissary department, was also
able soon to reduce to an efficient routine his work of receiving
donated supplies, of purchasing, selling, and storing supplies, and of
issuing properly balanced rations.
[47] See Appendix I, p. 383 ff. See also Part I, pp. 8 and 30.
In the report made in July, 1906, to the War Department, Colonel
Febiger, who from April 29 had charge of the organization of relief
stations, and later became chief of the Bureau of Consolidated Relief
Stations, which had been established by the army to facilitate the
relief work, said that on taking charge he had found, after a most
thorough investigation, no instance of extreme suffering from lack of
food or shelter, but many instances of repeating, so that the number of
rations issued was in excess of the needs of the population. With no
accepted general organization bringing about the co-ordinating of
relief, there was of necessity an exaggerated estimate of the needy.
General Greely, who during his Arctic explorations had learned what
extreme suffering from hunger and cold meant, had the city canvassed on
May 13 in order to find any case of destitution which might have been
overlooked. All of his inspectors, with 30 officers in addition to the
officers directly connected with the relief work, were ordered to make a
special effort to learn of persons in absolute need of food and decent
clothing or of bed and shelter. The result was that but two such cases
were reported.
During the early days orders were issued forbidding all householders to
light fires in their houses. Cooking, in consequence, was done in the
street over open fires or on rusty stoves which belched smoke out of
short sections of pipe. In those days only candles were permitted for
light and they had to be extinguished at 8 p.m.
RELIEF STATIONS AND REGISTRATION
As stated in Chapter I,[48] the northern part of the city was, for
purposes of policing, put under military control the third day after the
disaster. Later, for purposes of relief, the city was divided into seven
sections, whose boundaries were made coterminous with those of the army
districts. On May 8, each section was supplied by the army with an
officer who made regular reports to the headquarters of the Bureau of
Consolidated Relief Stations, and with a physician who was responsible
for sanitation and for diet prescriptions. Nine depots and sub-depots
were open for storage of food supplies.
[48] See Part I, pp. 11-12.
[Illustration: Preparing meals in the street
A row of street kitchens
FIRES IN HOUSES WERE PROHIBITED]
To give some idea of the character and origin of the relief stations a
table of the relief stations of Civil Section VI is given:
TABLE 4.--CHARACTER OF LOCATION, ORIGIN, AND DATES OF OPENING AND
CLOSING OF RELIEF STATIONS OF CIVIL SECTION VI
=======+===============+=====================+============+===========
Station| Character of | Opened by |Date opened |Date closed
number | location | | |
-------+---------------+---------------------+------------+-----------
600 |Planing Mill |Citizens of |April 19 |June 12[49]
| |neighborhood | |
601 |Saloon |Committee, Citizens | 24 |May 21
| |of neighborhood | |
602 |Church |Pastor of same | 26[49]|July 1
606 |Butcher shop |Citizens of | 24 |June 1[49]
| |neighborhood | |
609 |Police station |Committee, Citizens | 25[49]|(Unknown)
| |of neighborhood | |
610 |Shack |Mission Relief | 20 |(Unknown)
| |Committee | |
611 |City Park |Committee of citizens| 22[49]|June 2
613 |(Unknown) |Committee, Citizens | 22[49]|May 15
| |of neighborhood | |
616 |Bakery |Citizens of | 23 |June 23
| |neighborhood | |
618 |Schoolhouse |Citizens of | 22[49]|June 16
| |neighborhood | |
619 |Barn |Volunteers | 21[49]|June 23
620 |Hot Meal |Los Angeles Relief |(Unknown) |(Unknown)
|Kitchen |Committee | |
622 |Tent |U. S. Army |April 25[49]|June 23
623 |Maennerbund |Local Order of Eagles| 20[49]|May 14
|Hall | | |
624 |Public square |Citizens of | 20[49]|June 14
| |neighborhood | |
626 |Shack |Citizens of | 27[49]|May 21[49]
| |neighborhood | |
627 |(Unknown) |Committee, Citizens | 22 |June 9
| |of neighborhood | |
628 |Hall |Committee, Citizens | 20 |June 9
| |of neighborhood | |
629 |Residence |Citizens | 25[49]|May 13
630 |Schoolhouse |Physician and other | 22[49]|May 31[49]
| |citizens | |
631 |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |May 1
632 |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |June 16
634 |(Unknown) |Citizens |April 23 |May 12
635 |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |(Unknown)
636 |Residence |Society of Native |April 26[49]|May 26[49]
| |Daughters | |
637 |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |(Unknown) |May 13
641 |Cellar |Ancient Order of |April 24[49]|June 23[49]
| |Hibernians | |
642 |Residence |Two physicians | 22[49]|(Unknown)
643 |City and County|U. S. Army | 25[49]|(Unknown)
|Hospital | | |
|Grounds | | |
645 |Saloon |Ancient Order of | 25 |June 20[49]
| |Hibernians | |
646 |Schoolhouse |Citizens of | 23 |June 15
| |neighborhood | |
647 |School |A physician | 20 |May 1[49]
-------+---------------+---------------------+------------+-----------
[49] Approximate.
There is no information to show that any one of these sub-stations had
been established by the committee on relief of the hungry. As may be
borne in mind, the number of stations in use on April 26 was reported by
the committee on relief of the hungry to be 128; three days later, on
taking charge, the army reported 177; early in May the number dropped,
as is shown by Table 5, to 112.
TABLE 5.--RELIEF STATIONS IN THE SEVEN CIVIL SECTIONS ON MAY 3 AND ON
JUNE 3, 1906
========================================+========+=========+=========
CIVIL SECTION | Food | Food |Hot meal
------+---------------------------------+stations|stations |kitchens
Number| Headquarters |on May 3|on June 3|on June 3
------+---------------------------------+--------+---------+---------
I |Presidio entrance | 19 | .. | 4
II |Oak St. near Stanyan | 8 | 3 | 3
III |3055 Van Ness Ave. | 5 | 4 | 3
IV |Hamilton School, Geary and Scott | | |
| Sts. | 35 | 10 | 4
V |Buena Vista School, 18th and York| | |
| Sts. | 9 | 3 | 4
VI |24th St. and Potrero Ave. | 21 | 5 | 2
VII |25th and Guerrero Sts. | 15 | 8 | ..
----------------------------------------+--------+---------+---------
Total | 112 | 33 | 20
----------------------------------------+--------+---------+---------
Dr. Devine as representative of the American National Red Cross had
appointed a civil chairman to be responsible for the receiving and
investigation of applications. After May 1, the responsibility for the
distribution of supplies was divided at each section between the
military officer and the civil chairman. The civil chairman determined
who should receive relief and the military officer made the necessary
requisition on the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations.
The records of relief distribution are incomplete and there is no means
of determining accurately from week to week the number of persons who
received food, clothing, and other supplies, medical care and shelter.
The most complete records[50] are furnished by the official camps.
Colonel Febiger in his July report, already quoted, says that “313,145
persons were on May 2 estimated to be receiving rations, though this
number should probably be reduced to 300,000 to make allowance for
repeaters.” General Greely made estimate that the number of cases of
fraudulent repeating was not more than 3 per cent of the whole.
[50] For report sheet forms see Appendix II, pp. 430 and 431.
TABLE 6.--DAILY ISSUES OF RATIONS FROM APRIL 19 TO MAY 12, 1906
==============+=================+==============+=================
Date |Number of persons| Date |Number of persons
| (estimated) | | (actual)
--------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
1906 | | 1906 |
April 19 | 100,000 |May 1 | 313,117
20 | 150,000 | 2 | 313,117
21 | 200,000 | 3 | 279,631
22 | 225,000 | 4 | 230,207
23 | 250,000 | 5 | 264,570
24 | 270,000 | 6 | 262,027
25 | 290,000 | 7 | 233,989
26 | 306,000 | 8 | 223,915
27 | 310,000 | 9 | 222,313
28 | 315,000 | 10 | 204,637
29 | 315,000 | 11 | 186,960
30 | 315,000 | 12 | 147,232
--------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
Daily average | 253,833 |Daily average | 240,143
--------------+-----------------+--------------+-----------------
Care has been taken to verify the estimate of the issues, which has
called for some reduction of the totals as given in earlier reports.
This accounts for the slight discrepancy between Colonel Febiger’s
figure for May 2 and that given in the table.
The reason for the large increase in numbers in the bread line in the
days immediately after the disaster is that householders had by then
exhausted their private stock and could not make purchases, as most of
the goods in retail stores had been confiscated; nor could food be
prepared in private houses until chimneys had on inspection been found
safe. From a week to two or three months, according to the location and
the activity of the inspection, the fire prohibition held. In towns
across the bay people with money in bank had difficulty in securing food
because the banks were temporarily closed and the retail stores could
not determine when they would be able to replenish their stock.
As the number in the bread line in the early part of May represented
two-thirds of the population of a city that had been raised to a high
degree of prosperity by the industry and thrift of its citizens, there
would have been rapid decrease in the number of applicants for rations
even had there been no concerted plan to reduce numbers. Pressure was
brought from without, however, which, as is shown in the following
paragraph, did accelerate the citizens’ return as a body to the normal
means of making provision for creature needs.
In order that the smaller traders might be encouraged to resume business
and the funds be reserved in a great measure to give permanent relief,
the representatives of the army and the American National Red Cross
co-operated during late April and early May in a strenuous effort to
lessen the number supplied with rations. The attractiveness of the free
food issues was diminished by reducing the ration items to meat, bread,
and vegetables for all applicants in sound health except such as were
living in the camps under military control. The number of the stations
was rapidly reduced, as shown by Table 5. After the middle of May,
except in cases of invalidism, rations were issued but three times a
week, and an offer was made of a final issue of a month’s rations to any
one who would accept that in place of the regular allowances. These
measures served to concentrate in the permanent camps those refugees who
were to continue as charges on the relief administration. The work of
concentration was hindered, however, by the numerous private relief
stations throughout the city which could be persuaded only gradually to
send their patrons to the public relief stations. An Associated
Charities worker who knew well the people in one large section of the
city went through the tents with a soldier and demanded the return of
extra bacon, canned goods, and potatoes, which had been laid in by
thrifty refugees who had made use of both public and private food
stations.
The Red Cross began within the first week of the disaster a general
registration of the refugees. As substantially every one in the city was
at that time dependent on the relief stations for food, the natural way
of getting access to the refugees was through the distribution of
rations. Carl C. Plehn, professor of finance in the University of
California, whose experience as director of the census of the Philippine
Islands suggested special fitness for the work, undertook to prepare a
plan, organize the force, and superintend the work of a registration
bureau. The force consisted of some 200 volunteers from among the public
school teachers, an intelligent and capable, even though inexperienced,
group of enumerators. Their regular employment stopped on April 18, but
their salaries were paid to the end of the school year. Though the
service given was very unequal and largely unsatisfactory, if judged by
the standard of a census bureau or a charity organization society, it is
doubtful whether at the time so high an average of efficiency could have
been obtained in any other way.
On April 27 Professor Plehn submitted a tentative plan for the
registration. By May 7 the cards[51] and instructions had been printed,
a force of 175 persons was in the field, and the work was well under
way. Ten days later 20,000 cards had been filled out and the canvass was
practically completed as far as it could then be carried.
[51] See Appendix II, pp. 425 and 426.
After excluding duplicates as far as they could be detected, the 19,438
cards, which represented the same number of families or household
parties, distributed the 84,703 persons included among the seven
sections as follows:
TABLE 7.--FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS REGISTERED IN THE SEVEN CIVIL
SECTIONS, MAY, 1906
=======+===================+==================
|FAMILIES OR PARTIES| INDIVIDUALS
| REGISTERED | REGISTERED
Section+--------+----------+--------+---------
| Number | Per cent | Number | Per cent
-------+--------+----------+--------+---------
I | 2,590 | 13.3 | 10,206 | 12.1
II | 813 | 4.2 | 3,076 | 3.6
III | 3,097 | 15.9 | 12,473 | 14.7
IV | 2,577 | 13.3 | 10,737 | 12.7
V | 2,220 | 11.4 | 8,384 | 9.9
VI | 2,876 | 14.8 | 14,896 | 17.6
VII | 5,265 | 27.1 | 24,931 | 29.4
-------+--------+----------+--------+---------
Total | 19,438 | 100.0 | 84,703 | 100.0
-------+--------+----------+--------+---------
The 84,703 individuals were 28,319 men, 32,650 women, 22,795 children,
and 939 persons who were entered under the heading, “Aged, etc.”[52]
[52] This classification was adopted for the purpose of determining
the number of rations required by the family, and for that reason the
dividing line between children and adults was placed at twelve years,
the allowance for a child under twelve being placed at half the
standard ration. “Men” and “Women” meant respectively the number of
males and females twelve years of age and over, who were not aged and
infirm. The heading, “Aged, etc.” (see card, Appendix II, p. 425), was
an unfortunate one for statistical purposes, especially as on some of
the cards it was printed “Ages, etc.” It was intended to be used, as
the instructions to the enumerator clearly stated, for recording the
“number of persons so old, sick, or crippled, as to be presumably
unable to support themselves by labor.” This information would have
had much practical value, but the cards show plainly that the
ambiguity of the heading on the card was not corrected in the
enumerators’ minds (as such ambiguity can rarely be corrected) by the
careful explanation in the instructions. In many cases, when an entry
was made under it, it was the ages of the children; in other cases it
was apparently the number of adults in the party who were not
immediate members of the family. The figures which have been tabulated
are only of significance as recording so many additional adults. They
do not indicate the proportion of aged and infirm, or the amount of
physical disability among the refugees.
The information recorded on the registration cards varies in
completeness and value on account of the great diversity in carefulness
and capability among the persons who collected it. Many of the cards
were filled out intelligently and conscientiously; many are wholly
unsatisfactory. Taken together, however, they give a rough picture of
that quarter or third, whichever it may have been, of the city’s
population which was still, in the middle of May, dependent on the
general distribution of food for its daily supplies; and they reflect to
some extent the dislocations that were brought about by the disaster, in
residence, occupation, and circumstances.
It was not the primary object of the registration to furnish material
for a description of the refugees, but to establish a uniform system of
food distribution which should prevent waste by cutting out repeaters,
apportioning the number of rations to the size of the family, and
cutting off persons as they reached a position where they no longer
needed to be dependent. Other purposes were also in mind. At the
beginning, in fact, the efforts seem to have been made to provide a
record of the persons who received relief, for historical purposes and
for aid in determining their future needs. It was also hoped that the
registration could be made of practical value to the state labor
commissioner, in the free employment bureau[53] which had been opened.
In part for this last reason, information was asked about former
occupation and former employer, union membership, and present
employment.
[53] A free employment bureau at Hearst School in charge of State
Labor Commissioner Stafford closed its office May 29, 1906, after four
weeks’ work, during which time employment was found for over 1,100 men
and 93 women. See 12th Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics of the State of California, 1905-06. For brief mention of
the work of the employment bureau see _Charities and the Commons_,
June 2, 1906, p. 304.
[Illustration: The bread line, Mission District
Relief station, Mission District
DISTRIBUTION OF RELIEF SUPPLIES]
The registration was made at the relief stations, the cards being filled
out when applicants came for rations. If the applicant did not live
within the boundaries of the section served by the station to which he
had come he was referred to the proper station. When the applicant had
been registered he was given a food card[54] bearing a serial number,
good for ten days, which stated conspicuously, so that the attendants
could see, even before he reached the counter, the number of rations to
which his family was entitled, and showed uncanceled the dates on which
the card would be honored. The food card number was entered on the
registration card, which was kept at the relief station. Each time
rations were drawn the date for which they were drawn was canceled on
the card. After the registration had been completed at any station no
rations were issued except on presentation of a food card.
[54] A reproduction of the card is shown in Appendix II, p. 427.
By this system abuses were controlled: no one could draw supplies from
two or more stations, nor two or three times on the same day from the
same station, nor for more persons than he represented; able-bodied men,
for whom by this time there was abundant opportunity of employment,
could be cut off; and at the expiration of the ten-day period the merits
of the case could be reviewed before granting a renewal of the food
card.
It was through its success in establishing a uniform and workable system
of food distribution that the first registration was most valuable. It
did not prove to be of much service in aiding applicants to find
employment, in giving a record of the entire work of relief, or in
furnishing a basis for the rehabilitation work. That it failed in
realizing all that was hoped from it in these directions was due partly
to changes in the labor situation, which soon made efforts to supply
employment superfluous; partly to some ambiguity and lack of
definiteness in the headings on the card, and the omission of some
essential items; but chiefly to the many omissions on the part of the
enumerators, the lack of uniformity in their interpretation of the
headings on the card, and the large amount of carelessness they
exhibited in recording the information that was secured. The
inexperience of the enumerators in investigation, the immense difficulty
of supervising them adequately when the automobile and the wagon were
the only means of transportation between the far-scattered stations, and
the necessity for getting the whole work done as speedily as possible,
so that there was no time for correcting mistakes or training
investigators, are the simple explanations of these defects.
If all the circumstances are taken into consideration--the number of
persons affected by the disaster, the extent of the territory to be
covered, the difficulty of getting about, the confusion which still
existed among the many elements of the relief organization, and the
inexperience in relief work of those who made the registration, both
university professors and public school teachers--the results obtained
were surprisingly satisfactory. The registration would have justified
itself if it had done nothing more than systematize the food
distribution and contribute toward the reduction of the bread lines.
This it undoubtedly did.
An indication of the effectiveness of the first registration, as may be
seen in Table 11,[55] is the sudden drop in the number of persons who
received rations after May 12, a decrease of 21 per cent on that day
against an average daily decrease for the five preceding days of
slightly over 7 per cent. The marked drop of May 16 is, however, in part
due to the stimulation to self-help caused by putting into effect the
order that rations should be issued only three times a week. The general
use of the food card was an important factor in bringing about the
reduction; another, the rapid increase in the number of persons gaining
self-support. One special use to which the so-called first registration
was put was to determine who should receive special diet. The diet
included meat, fresh milk, butter and eggs, vegetables, and fruit, and
was prepared for the sick, the aged, and for mothers with infants. The
method of its distribution varied in the different sections and from
time to time, but the policy was to subject its distribution to more
direct control from the central office than the ordinary rations. Issues
of special diet were not finally discontinued until October 1, a few
days before the closing of the last kitchen.
[55] See Part I, p. 53.
A second general registration[56] was made in June by the American
National Red Cross staff of workers with the aid of the camp commanders.
General Greely appreciated the need of having a more complete case
record of the individuals who were making use of the camps, in order
that a restriction of numbers might be judiciously and expeditiously
made. The relief workers outside the camps, also, realized clearly the
need of a more adequate registration as a basis for intelligent
rehabilitation work.
[56] See Part II, p. 115. For registration card, see Appendix II, pp.
428 and 429.
HOT MEAL KITCHENS
The Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations, acting on the advice of the
Finance Committee, opened its first kitchen in Lobos Square about the
middle of May to serve hot meals both to refugees and to persons able to
pay for their food. From immediately after the disaster kitchens had
been established by voluntary relief committees as the best means of
feeding the people living in or near the camps. One such committee, that
of Los Angeles, sent equipment to furnish five kitchens, with a
representative, Mr. Desmond, of the Desmond Construction Company, to put
them in operation. They were intended freely to furnish food and they
gave timely aid in the early days.
When the Bureau opened its own community kitchens,[57] the experiment
was made as a distinctive part of the effort to reduce the long bread
lines. The kitchens were intended to test the needs of those applying
for free food, because the number of those willing to accept relief in
food was expected to suffer diminution when a common eating room was
offered. They were also to give a convenient eating place to persons
able to pay but not able to provide their own food, with the privilege
of sitting at separate tables and of ordering a better quality of food
than that furnished at the free tables. They were also to serve to the
aged and infirm better food than had been supplied to them before. The
kitchen system was intended to be economical and sanitary. Sanitary
inspection could be made more thorough when in each encampment there
should be one general kitchen rather than scattered individual kitchens
for the preparing of free rations. Insistence on the first article of
the new experiment--the common eating room--made Section VII, in the
part of the city known as the Mission, unwilling to open a kitchen. It
successfully opposed the step because it was one that the Mission
workers felt would degrade the people and tend to destroy the privacy of
family life.
[57] For partial list of kitchens and dates of closing, see Sixth
Annual Report of the American National Red Cross, 1910, p. 43.
It must be borne in mind that the kitchen system was introduced after
the bread line had been reduced to less than one-half its greatest
length, and that it threw into conspicuous relief those who were without
power to re-establish themselves or unwilling to try to do so.
The hot meal kitchens caused no sudden drop in the amount of food
distributed. On May 12 when, as has been already commented upon, there
was a marked decrease in the number of persons receiving rations, there
were but five kitchens in operation; but the new method did effectively
help to weed out those who no longer needed free rations. Colonel
Febiger wrote late in June that “by the operation of these hot food
camps thousands of dollars were saved for future relief; probably 95 per
cent of the 15,000 persons now being supported by food relief were
absolutely in need of it, those not in need either having withdrawn or
having been forced out.”
The kitchens were at first run exclusively by the Desmond Construction
Company under contract with the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations;
that company, which had already made its experiment, having been the
only one willing to undertake what was considered by the contractors to
be an undesirable job. When by June 21 the number of kitchens had been
gradually increased to 27, two other contractors were operating under
the Bureau.
The Bureau and the Red Cross provided police protection, furnished sites
for the kitchens, and supplied fuel and water. Each contractor provided
his own buildings or tents, equipment, and service. The contractor
agreed to furnish a wholesome meal, and to submit his daily menu to the
relief officials for approval.
[Illustration: An open air dining room
In Golden Gate Park
HOT MEAL KITCHENS]
The following is a typical daily menu:
BREAKFAST DINNER
Hot Hash, or Hot Mush and Milk Hot Soup, or Roast Beef or Hash
Bread or Hot Biscuit One Vegetable, Bread
Coffee, and Sugar Coffee, and Sugar
SUPPER
Soup, or Irish Stew
Bread or Hot Biscuits
Tea, and Sugar
Meals were supplied to any person who was ready to pay cash or who
possessed a meal ticket. The meal tickets were issued daily by the Red
Cross and were redeemed by it by payment made to the contractor in cash
or in kind from the relief supplies. The original plan was to serve
ten-cent free meals with provision for granting an extra five-cent
purchase to such persons as might be considered in need of extra food.
Certain kitchens within the Presidio reservation are not reported on
later than July 11, when they were furnishing about 1,200 meals a day.
One thousand meals a day would probably be a liberal estimate for the
remainder of the time, thirty days, that these Presidio kitchens were to
remain open, but such an estimate is not included in Table 8.
TABLE 8.--MEALS SERVED BY HOT MEAL KITCHENS, FROM MAY TO OCTOBER, 1906,
INCLUSIVE
=========+================================+===================
Month | MEALS SERVED | Amounts disbursed
+---------+----------------------+from Relief and Red
| Free | Paid | Cross Funds in
| | | payment for meals
---------+---------+----------------------+-------------------
May | 87,160|(Unknown) | (Unknown)
June | 402,522|1,027 (all in 3 days) | $46,610.55
July | 486,182|3,786 (all in 11 days)| 75,756.30
August | 377,776|4,608 | 61,379.75
September| 109,448| 684 | 17,746.80
October | 11,875| .. | 2,953.14
---------+---------+----------------------+-------------------
Total|1,474,963|(Unknown) | (Unknown)
---------+---------+----------------------+-------------------
From the data on hand we can estimate the proportion of ten-cent meals
at 12.1 per cent and fifteen-cent meals at 87.9 per cent.
The first report of meals paid for is for June 28. Those who patronized
these restaurants paid from 10 to 20 cents for their meals, the average
price being 15 cents. The extent to which this opportunity was utilized
is shown in Table 9.
TABLE 9.--FREE AND PAID MEALS SERVED BY HOT MEAL KITCHENS ON SPECIFIED
DATES IN 1906
===========+==========+==================
Date |Free meals| PAID MEALS SERVED
| served +------+-----------
| |Number|Per cent of
| | | free meals
-----------+----------+------+-----------
June 28 | 16,666 | 617 | 3.7
July 1 | 14,087 | 423 | 3.0
August 1 | 15,202 | 191 | 1.3
September 1| 7,484 | 82 | 1.1
-----------+----------+------+-----------
The last paid meal was served on September 19, 1906. The last kitchen
closed was that at Speedway Camp, where the final meal was served
October 10, 1906.
Frequent complaints were made that the kitchens supplied food which
lacked in quality and variety, was poorly cooked, and served on
fly-infested tables in unsanitary rooms. In some instances the
complaints were justified, but the army inspections were thorough, and
the contractors on the whole lived up to the contracts. Some of the
complaints were made not by those who were using the kitchens but by
those who were critical of the kitchen system itself.
It is not possible to estimate the total value of the food distributed.
For food and its distribution the Relief and Red Cross Funds expended
$1,226,567.16. The army report gives $259,811.20 as expended for
subsistence stores, but this is not a complete statement of the
disbursements made by it from the appropriation from Congress. These
sums do not include an estimate of the value of donations in kind that
were used as such and not sold. General Greely in his report stated that
in the food donations distributed by the army there were about 2,000,000
complete rations, which had to be increased by substitutions and by
purchase to supply the 3,873,745 rations distributed by the army during
May and June. Two commodities that had been donated in excess of need
were flour and potatoes.
TABLE 10.--EXPENDITURES OF SAN FRANCISCO RELIEF AND RED CROSS FUNDS FOR
PURCHASE AND DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD, TO MAY 29, 1909
Purchases of food
Groceries $560,205.77
Meat 182,798.74
Bread 84,436.10
Milk, fresh 33,032.64
Fruits and Vegetables 25,029.01
Flour 21,848.14
Miscellaneous 8,029.43
-----------
Total $915,379.83
Distribution of food
Stoves, hardware, kitchen utensils, dishes,
fuel, etc. $30,540.72
Labor of all kinds 39,968.72
Drayage, etc. 14,787.10
-----------
Total 85,296.54
Hot Meal Kitchens 204,446.54
Bureau of Special Relief 21,444.25
-------------
Grand total $1,226,567.16
TABLE 11.--PERSONS TO WHOM RATIONS WERE ISSUED IN MAY AND JUNE, 1906