 8 Wonderful Record of Thrilling Escapes Shuddering under the memories of what seems more like a nightmare than actual reality to the survivors of this frightful calamity, they have tried to picture in words far from adequate the days of terror and the nights of horror that fell to the lot of the people of the Golden Gate City and their guests. They recount the roar of falling structures and the groans and pitiful cries of those pinned beneath the timbers of collapsing buildings. They speak of their climbing over dead bodies heaped in the streets, and of following torturous ways to find the only avenue of escape, the ferry where men and women fought like infuriated animals bent on escape from a fiery furnace. These refugees tell of the great caravan composed of homeless persons in its wild flight to the hills for safety, and in that great procession women, harnessed to vehicles, trudging along and tugging at the shafts, hauling all that was left of their earthly belongings, and a little food that foresight told them would be necessary to stay the pangs of hunger in the hours of misery that must follow. We give below an especially accurate picture from the description of the well-known writer Jane Tingley, who, an eyewitness of it all, did so much to help the sufferers, and who, with all the unselfishness of true American womanhood, sacrificed her own comfort and needs for those of others. May God be merciful to the women and children in this land of desolation and despair," she wrote on April 21. Men have done, are doing such deeds of sublime self-sacrifice, of magnificent heroism that deserve to make the title of American manhood immortal in the pages of history. The rest lies with the Almighty. I spent all of last night and to-day in that horror city across the bay. I went from this unharmed city of plenty, blooming with abounding health, thronged with happy mothers and joyous children, and spent hours among the blackened ruins, and out on the windswept slopes of the sand-hills by the sea, and I heard the voice of Rachel weeping for her children in the wilderness and mourning because she found them not. I climbed to the top of Strawberry Hill, in Golden Gate Park, and saw a woman, half-naked, almost starving, her hair disheveled and an unnatural luster in her eyes, her gaze fixed upon the waters in the distance, and her voice repeating over and over again. Here I am, my prettys. Come here, come here! I took her by the hand and led her down to the grass of the foot of the hill. A man, her husband, received her from me and wept, as he said. She is calling our three little children. She thinks the sounds of the ocean waves are their voices of our lost darlings. Ever since they became separated from their children in that first terrific onrush of the multitude, when the fire swept along Mission Street, these two had been tramping over the hills and parks without food or rest, searching for their little ones. To all whom they have met they have addressed the same pitiful question. Have you seen anything of our lost babies? They will not know what has become of them until order has been brought out of chaos. Until the registration headquarters of the military authorities has secured the names of all who are among the straggling wanderers around the camps of the homeless. Perhaps then it will be found that these children are in a trench among the corpses of the weaklings who have succumbed to the frightful rigors of the last three days. Last night a soldier seized me by the arm and cried, If you are a woman with a woman's heart go in there and do whatever you can. In there meant behind a barricade of brush, covered with a blanket that had been hastily thrown together to form a rude shelter. I went in and saw one of my own sex lying on the bare grass, naked, her clothing torn to shreds, scattered over the green beside her. She was moaning pitifully, and it needed no words to tell a woman what the matter was. I bade my man escort to find a doctor, or at least send more women at once. He ran off and soon two sympathetic ladies hastened into the shelter. In an hour my escort returned with a young medical student. Under the best administrations we could find a new life was ushered into this hell, which, a few hours before, was the fairest among cities. There have been many such cases, said the medical student. Many of the mothers have died, few of the babies have lived. I personally know of nine babies that have been born in the park today. There must have been many others here, among the sandhills and at the presidio. Think of it, you happy women who have become mothers in comfortable homes, attended with every care that loving hands can bestow. Think of the dreadful plight of these poor members of your sex. The very thought of it is enough to make the hearts of women burst with pity. Today I walked among the people crowded on the panhandle. Opposite the lion street entrance, on the north side, I saw a young woman sitting tailor fashion in the roadway, which, in happier days, was the carriage boulevard. She held the dishpan and was looking at her reflection in the polished bottom, while another girl was arranging her hair. I recognized a young wife whose marriage to a prominent young lawyer eight months ago was a gala event among that little handful of people who clung to the old-time fashionable district of Valencia Street, like the Phalen and Dent families, and refused to move from that aristocratic section when the new-made millionaires began to build their palaces on Nob Hill and Pacific Heights. I spoke to the young woman about the disadvantages of making her toilet under such untoward circumstances. Ah, Julia dear, you must stay to luncheon," she said, extending her fingers just as though she stood in her own drawing-room. Misery drives some insane. I looked at the maid in astonishment, for I had never met the young society woman before. The maid shook her head and whispered when she got the chance. My mistress is not in her right mind. Where is her husband, I asked. He has gone to try and get some food, said the girl. She imagines that she is in her own home, before her dressing-table, and is having me do up her hair against some of her friends dropping in. She must have suffered, I said, to cost such a mental derangement. The girl's eyes filled with tears. She told me that her mistress had seen her brother killed by falling timbers while they were hurrying to a place of safety. A little farther on I saw two women concealed as best they might be behind a tuft of sand-brush, one lying face down on the ground while the other vigorously massaged her bare back. I asked if I might help, and learned that the ministering angel was the unmarried daughter of one of the city's richest merchants, and that the girl whom she succored had been employed as a servant in her father's household. The girl's back had been injured by a fall, and her mistress's fair hands were trying to make her well again. Thus has this overwhelming common woe leveled all barriers of cast, and placed the suffering multitude on a basis of democracy. On a rock behind a man's Anita bush near the edge of Stow Lake, I saw a Chinaman making a pile of broken twigs in the early morning. The man felt inside his blouse and swore a gibbering, unintelligible, Asiatic oath, as his hand came forth empty. Observing my escort, the Chinaman approached and said, Bussy, all the same, catchy match? My escort gave him the desired article, and the Chinaman made a fire of his pile of twigs. Why are you making a fire, John? I asked. Blackfist, he replied leconically. I asked him where his food might be, and he gave us a quick glance of suspicion as he said briefly, no sabi. We stood watching him, evidently to his great distress, and finally he made bold to say, you no stand long, Bussy, you go away! We left him, but after making the tour around the lake came back to the same place. There sat four people on the ground eating fried pork, potatoes, and Chinese cakes. In a young woman of the group I recognized one whom I had seen dancing at one of Mr. Greenway's Friday Night Catillion Balls in the Palace Hotel's Maple Room during the winter. They offered to share their meal with us, but we told them that we had just come from breakfast in Oakland. I told them about the strange conduct of their Chinaman, who was traveling back and forth from his fire to the table, with the food as it became ready to serve. The father of the family laughed. Everybody folks compelled to camp. Yes, he said, that is Charlie's way. He has been with us many years, and when our home was destroyed he came out here with us in preference to seeking refuge among his countrymen in Chinatown. Yesterday we were without food, and Charlie disappeared. I thought he had deserted us, but toward dark he came back with a bamboo pole over his shoulder and a Chinese market gardener's basket suspended from either end. In one of the baskets he had a pile of blankets and a lot of canvas. In the other was an assortment of pork, flour, Chinese cakes, and vegetables, besides half a dozen chickens and a couple of bagfuls of rice. Charlie had been foraging in Chinatown for us before the fire reached that quarter. He made a tent and improvised beds for us, and he has had the food concealed somewhere in the vicinity, but where he will not tell us for fear that we will give some of it to others and reduce our own supply. Charlie boils rice for himself. He will not touch the other food. Without him we should have been starving. G.A. Raymond, who was in the palace hotel when the earthquake occurred, says, I had six hundred dollars in gold under my pillow. I awoke as I was thrown out of bed, attempting to walk. The floor shook so that I fell. I grabbed my clothing and rushed down into the office where dozens were already congregated. Suddenly the lights went out and everyone rushed for the door. Outside I witnessed a sight I never want to see again. It was dawn and light. I looked up. The air was filled with falling stones. People around me were crushed to death on all sides. All around the huge buildings were shaking and waving. Every moment there were reports like one hundred cannon going off at one time. Women's streams of fire would shoot out and other reports followed. I asked a man standing by me what had happened. Before he could answer a thousand bricks fell on him and he was killed. A woman threw her arms around my neck. I pushed her away and fled. All around me buildings were rocking and flames shooting. As I ran people on all sides were crying, praying and calling for help. I thought the end of the world had come. I met a Catholic priest and he said we must get to the ferry. He knew the way and we rushed down Market Street. Men, women and children were crawling from the debris. Hundreds were rushing down the street and every minute people were felled by falling debris. At places the streets had cracked and opened. Chasms extended in all directions. I saw a drove of cattle wild with fright rushing up Market Street. I crouched beside a swaying building. As they came nearer they disappeared, seeming to drop into the earth. When the last had gone I was nearer and found they had indeed been precipitated into the earth, a wide fisher having swallowed them. I worked my way around them and ran out to the ferry. I was crazy with fear and the horrible sights. How I reached the ferry I cannot say. It was bedlam, pandemonium and hell rolled into one. There must have been ten thousand people trying to get on that boat. Men and women fought like wild cats to push their way aboard. Clothes were torn from the backs of men and women and children indiscriminately. Women fainted and there was no water at hand with which to revive them. Men lost their reason at those awful moments. One big strong man beat his head against one of the iron pillars on the dock and cried out in a loud voice. This fire must be put out. The city must be saved. It was awful. Terrible scene at the ferry. When the gates were open the mad rush began. All were swept aboard in an irresistible tide. We were jammed on the deck like sardines in a box. No one cared. At last the boat pulled out. Men and women were still jumping for it, only to fall into the water and probably drown. The members of the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York were in San Francisco at this time and nearly all of these famous singers known all over the world suffered from the great disaster. All of the splendid scenery, stage fittings, costumes, and musical instruments were lost in the fire, which destroyed the Grand Opera House where the season had just opened to splendid audiences. Many of the operatic stars have given very interesting accounts of their experiences. Senior Caruso, the famous tenor and one of the principles of the company, had one of the most thrilling experiences. He and Senior Rossi, a favorite basso, and his inseparable companion, had a suite on the seventh floor and were awakened by the terrific shaking of the building. The shock nearly threw Caruso out of bed. He said, I threw up in the window and I think I let out the grandest notes I've ever hit in all my life. I do not know why I did this. I presume I was too excited to do anything else. Great singers escape. Looking out of the window I saw buildings all around rocking like the devil had hold of them. I wondered what was going on. Then I heard Rossi come scampering into my room. My God, it's an earthquake! He yelled, get your things and run! I grabbed what I could lay my hands on and raced like a madman for the office. On my way down I shouted as loud as I could so the others would wake up. When I got to the office I thought of my costumes and sent my valet, Martino, back after them. He packed things up and carried the trunks down on his back. I helped him take them to Union Square. It is said that ten minutes later he was seated on his valet in the middle of the street, but to continue his story. I walked a few feet away to see how to get out, and when I came back four Chinaman were lugging my trunks away. I grabbed one of them by the ears and the others jumped on me. I took out my revolver and pointed it at them. They spit at me. I was mad, but I hated to kill them, so I found a soldier and he made them give up the trunks. That soldier was a fine fellow. He went up to the Chinaman and slapped them upon the face, once twice three times. They all howled like the devil and ran away. I put my revolver back into my pocket and then I thanked the soldier. He said, Don't mention it. Them chinks would steal the money off a dead man's eyes. They say that Rossi, though almost in tears, was heard trying his voice at a corner near the Palace Hotel. Betty's picture proves open sesame. I went to Lafayette Square and slept on the grass. When I tried to get into the square the soldiers pushed me back. I pleaded with them, but they would not listen. I had under my arm a large photograph of Theodore Roosevelt upon which it was written, with kindness regards from Theodore Roosevelt. I showed them this and one of them said, If you are a friend of Teddy, come in and make yourself at home. I put my trunks in the cellar of the Hotel St. Francis and thought they would be safe. The hotel caught fire and my trunks were all burned up. To think I took so much trouble to save them. In spite of the news of all the woe and suffering which we hear, it is cheering to learn also of the many thousands of heroic deeds by brave men during the terrible scenes enacted through the four days passing since the eventful morning when the earth began to demolish splendid buildings of business and residence and fire sprang up to complete the city's destruction. The mayor and his forces of police, the troops under command of General Funston, volunteer aides to all these and the husbands of terrified wives and the sons, brothers, and other relatives who toiled for many consecutive hours through smoke and falling walls and an inferno of flames and explosions and traps of danger of all kinds, often without food or water. Toiling as men never toiled before to save life and relieve distress of all kinds. All these were examples of heroism and devotion to duty seldom witnessed in any scenes of terror in all time. There are brave, unselfish men and heroic women yet in the world and all of the best of human nature has been exhibited in large dimensions in the terrible disaster at San Francisco. END OF CHAPTER VIII. Recording by Kathleen Nelson, Austin, Texas, May 2010. Section 9 of The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire, edited by Charles Morris. CHAPTER IX. Disaster spreads over the Golden State. The first news that the world received of the earthquake came direct from San Francisco and was confined largely to descriptions of the disaster which had overwhelmed that city. It was so sudden, so appalling, so tragic in its nature, that for the time being it quite overshadowed the havoc and misery wrought in a number of other California towns of less or note. As the truth, however, became gradually sifted out of the tangle of rumors, the horror, instead of being diminished, was vastly increased. It became evident that instead of this being a local catastrophe, the full force of the seismic waves had traveled from Yucca in the north to Monterey in the south, a distance of about 180 miles, and had made itself felt for a considerable distance from the Pacific westward, wrecking the larger buildings of every town in its path, rending and ruining as it went, and doing millions of dollars worth of damage. THE DESTRUCTION OF SANTAROSA. In Santa Rosa, 60 miles to the north of San Francisco, and one of the most beautiful towns of California, practically every building was destroyed or badly damaged. The brick and stone business blocks, together with the public buildings, were thrown down. The courthouse, Hall of Records, the Occidental and Santa Rosa hotels, the Athenaeum Theater, the new Masonic Temple, Odd Fellows Block, all the banks, everything went, and in all the city not one brick or stone building was left standing, except the California Northwestern Depot. In the residential portion of the city the foundations receded from under the houses, badly wrecking about twenty of the largest and damaging every one more or less, and here, as in San Francisco, flames followed the earthquake, breaking out in dozen different places at once and completing the work of devastation. From the ruins of the fallen houses, fifty-eight bodies were taken out and interred during the first few days, and the total of dead and injured was close to a hundred. The money loss at the small city is estimated at three million dollars. The destruction of Santa Rosa gave rise to general sorrow among the residents of the interior of the state. It was one of the show towns of California, and not only one of the most prosperous cities in the fine county of Sonoma, but one of the most picturesque in the state. Surrounding it there were miles of orchards, vineyards, and cornfields. The beautiful drives of the city were adorned with boughs of roses, which everywhere were seen growing about the homes of the people. In its vicinity are the famous gardens of Luther Burbank, the California wizard, but these fortunately escaped injury. At San Jose, another very beautiful city of over twenty thousand population, not a single brick or stone building of two stories or over was left standing. Among those wrecked were the Hall of Justice, just completed at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars. The New High School, the Presbyterian Church, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Numbers of people were caught in the ruins and maimed or killed. The death list appears to have been small, but the property damage was not less than five million dollars. The Agnew State Insane Asylum in the vicinity of San Jose was entirely destroyed, more than half the inmates being killed or injured. The Stanford University The Leland Stanford Junior University at Palo Alto, about thirty miles south of San Francisco, felt the full force of the earthquake and was badly wrecked. Only two lives were lost as a result of the earthquake, one of a student, the other of a fireman, but eight students were injured more or less seriously. The damage to the buildings is estimated by President Jordan to amount to about four million dollars. The Memorial Church, with its twelve marble figures of the apostles, each weighing two tons, was badly injured by the fall of its gothic spire, which crashed through the roof and demolished much of the interior. The great entrance archway was split in twain and wrecked. So too were the library, the gymnasium, and the powerhouse. A number of other buildings in the outer quadrangle and some of the small workshops were seriously damaged. In Cena Hall and the inner quadrangle were practically uninjured and the bulk of the books, collections, and apparatus escaped damage. Sacramento, together with all the smaller cities and towns that dot the great Sacramento Valley for a distance of fifty miles south and one hundred and fifty miles north of the capital, escaped without injury, not a single pane of glass being broken or a brick displaced in Sacramento and no injury done in the other places. They lying eastward of the seat of serious earthquake activity. Los Angeles and Santa Barbara escaped with a slight trembling. Stockton, one hundred and three miles north of San Francisco, felt a severe shock and the Santa Fe Bridge over the San Joaquin River at this point settled several inches. The only place in Southern California that suffered was Brawley, a small town lying a hundred and twenty miles south of Los Angeles, about one hundred buildings in the town and the surrounding valley being injured, though none of them were destroyed. The earthquake and other cities. At Alameda, on the bay opposite San Francisco, a score of chimneys were shaken down and other injuries done. Railroad tracks were twisted and over six hundred feet of track of the Oakland Transit Company's railway sank four feet. The total damage done amounted to probably two hundred thousand dollars, but no lives were lost. Tomales, a place of three hundred and fifty inhabitants, was left a pile of ruins. At Los Panos several buildings were wrecked causing damage to the extent of seventy five thousand dollars, but no lives were lost. At Loma Prieta the earthquake caused a minehouse to slip down the side of a mountain, ten men being buried in the ruins. Fort Bragg, one of the principal lumbering towns in Mendocino County, was practically wiped out by fire following the earthquake, but out of a population of five thousand only one was killed, though scores were injured. The town of Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco, suffered considerable damage from twisted structures, fallen walls, and broken chimneys, the greatest injury being in the collapse of the town hall and the ruin of the deaf and dumb asylum. The University of California, situated here, was fortunate in escaping injury, it being reported that not a building was harmed in the slightest degree. Another public edifice of importance and interest in a different section of the state, the famous Lick Astronomical Observatory, was equally fortunate, no damage being done to the buildings or the instruments. At the State University, Salinas, a town down the coast near Monterey, suffered severely, the place being to a large extent destroyed with an estimated loss of over one million dollars. The Spreckles Sugar Factory and a score of other buildings were reported ruined and a number of lives lost. During the succeeding week, several other shocks of some strength were reported from this town. Thus, the ruinous work of the earthquake stretched over a broad track of prosperous, peaceful, and happy country, embracing one of the best sections of California, laying waste not only the towns in its path, but doing much damage to ranch houses and country residences. Huge manifestations of nature were reported from the interior, where the ground was opened in many places like a plowed field. Great rents in the earth were reported, and for many miles north from Los Angeles, miniature geysers are said to have spouted volcano-like streams of hot mud. Railroad tracks in some localities were badly injured, sinking or lifting, and being put out of service until repaired. In fact, the ruinous effects of the earthquake immensely exceeded those of any similar catastrophe ever before known in the United States, and when the destruction done by the succeeding conflagration in San Francisco was taken into account, the California earthquake of 1906 takes rank with the most destructive of those recorded in history. End of Chapter 9. Recording by Kathleen Nelson, Austin, Texas, May 2010. Section 10 of The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire. Edited by Charles Morris. Chapter 10. All America and Canada to the Rescue. During the first three days after the terrible news had been flashed over the world, the relief fund from the nation had leaped beyond the five million dollar mark. New York took the lead in the most generous giving that the world has ever seen. From every town and country village the people hastened to the town halls, the newspaper offices, and wherever help was to be found most quickly, to add their savings and to sacrifice all but necessities for their stricken fellow countrymen. Never has there been such a practical illustration of brotherly love. A perfect shower of gold and food was poured out to the sufferers to give them immediate assistance and to help them to a new start in life. All relief records were broken within two days of the disaster, but still the purses of the rich and poor alike continued to add to the huge contributions. Though the relief records were broken, every succeeding dispatch from the West told too plainly the terrible fact that all records of necessity were also broken. For the entire globe Americans wherever they were hastened to cable or telegraph their bankers to add their share to the great work, a large fund was at once started in London, and with contributions from two thousand dollars to twelve thousand dollars, the sum was soon raised two hundreds of thousands of dollars. Individual contributions of one hundred thousand dollars were common. In addition to John D. Rockefeller's gift of this sum, his company, the Standard Oil, gave another one hundred thousand dollars. The Steel Corporation and Andrew Carnegie each gave one hundred thousand dollars. From London, William Waldorf Astor cabled his American Representative, Charles A. P. Body, to place one hundred thousand dollars at once at the disposal of Mayor Schmitz of San Francisco, which was done. The Dominion Government of Canada made a special appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars, and the Canadian Bank of Commerce at Toronto gave ten thousand dollars, and two of the great steamship companies owned in Germany sent twenty five thousand dollars each. Right of way for food trains. On nearly a dozen roads, two days before the fire was over, great trains of freight cars loaded with foodstuffs were hastening at express speed to San Francisco. They had the right of way on every line. E.H. Harriman, in addition to giving two hundred thousand dollars for the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and other Harriman roads, issued orders that all relief trains bound for the desolated city should have precedence over all other business of the roads. orders for many points indicated that at least one hundred and fifty freight cars loaded with the necessary so eagerly awaited in San Francisco were speeding there as fast as steam could drive them. In addition, several steamers from other Pacific coast points, all food laden, were rushing toward the stricken city. The rapidity with which the various relief funds in every city grew was almost magical. From corporations, firms, labor unions, religious societies, individuals rich and poor money flowed. Even the children in the schools gave their pennies. Every grade of society, every branch of trade and commerce seemed inspired by a spirit of emulation in giving. The United States government at once voted a contribution of one million dollars and government supplies were rushed from every post in the West. The one million dollar government gift, which formed the nucleus of the relief fund, was doubled on Saturday by a resolution appropriating another and a vote was taken on Monday to increase this sum to one million five hundred thousand dollars, making a total government contribution of two million five hundred thousand dollars. This was largely expended in supplies of absolute necessaries, furnished from the stores of the War Department, and those first sent being five carloads of Army medical supplies from St. Louis. A cargo of evaporated cream was also sent to use in the care of little children, while the Red Cross Society shipped a carload of eggs from Chicago. Dr. Edward Devine, special Red Cross agent in San Francisco, was appointed to distribute these supplies. Cargo of Supplies Trainloads of other supplies were dispatched in all haste from various points in the West and East, carrying provisions of all kinds, tents, cots, clothing, bedding, and a great variety of other articles. A special train of twenty-six cars was dispatched from Portland, Oregon on Thursday night, conveying ten doctors, twenty trained nurses, and eight hundred thousand pounds of provisions. Chicago sent meat, Minneapolis sent flour, and, in fact, every part of the country moved in the greatest haste for the relief of the stricken city. There was urgent need of haste. On Friday, while the flames were still making their way onward, General Funston telegraphed, famine seems inevitable. The people of the country took a more hopeful view of it, and by Saturday night the specter of famine was definitely driven from the field, and food for all the fugitives was within reach. The sympathy of the people awakes. On all sides the people were awake and doing. In all the great cities, agencies to receive contributions were opened, and many of the newspapers undertook the task of collecting and forwarding supplies. The smaller towns were equally alert in furnishing their quota to the good work, and from countryside and village contributions were forwarded until the fund accumulated to an unprecedented amount. Collections were made in factories, in stores, in offices, in the public schools. Fresh boxes, or globes, stood in all frequented places and were rapidly filled with banknotes. Theatrical and musical entertainments were given for the benefit of the earthquake sufferers. Never had there been such an awakening. As an instance of the spirit displayed, one man came running into a banking-house and threw a thousand-dollar bill on the counter. For San Francisco, he said, as he turned toward the door. What name? asked the teller. Put it down to cash, he answered, as he vanished. Rapidly the fund accumulated. A few days brought it up to the five million dollar mark. Then it grew to ten million dollars. Within ten days' time the relief fund was estimated at eighteen million dollars, and the good work was still going on. In less profusion it is true, but still the spirit was alive. Foreign Offers of Aid The general impulse was not confined to the United States. From all countries came offers of aid. Canada was promptly in the field, and the chief nations of Europe were quick to follow, while Japan made a generous offer, and in far Australia funds were started at the various cities for the sufferers. No doubt a large sum from foreign lands would have been available had not President Roosevelt declined to accept contributions from abroad, as not needed in view of America's abundant response. To the Hamburg Line, which offered twenty-five thousand dollars, the following letter was sent. The President deeply appreciates your message of sympathy, and desires me to thank you heartily for the kind offer of outside aid. Although declining, the President earnestly wishes you to understand how much he appreciates your cordial and generous sympathy. All other offerings from abroad were in the same thankful spirit declined, even those from our immediate neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Some feeling was aroused by this, especially in the relief committee at San Francisco, which felt that the need of that city was so great and urgent that no offer of relief should have been declined. In response the President explained that he only spoke for the government in his official capacity, and that San Francisco was in no sense debarred from accepting any contributions made directly to it. It may justly be said for the people of this country that their spontaneous generosity in the presence of a great calamity, either at home or abroad, is always magnificent. It never waits for solicitation. It does not delay even until the necessity is demonstrated, but it assumes that where there is great destruction of property and homes are swept away there must be distress which calls for immediate relief. There is one ray of light in the gloom caused by the calamity at San Francisco. A truly splendid display of brotherly love and sympathy has been shown by the people of this country, and a similar display was ready to be shown by the people of the civilized world had it been felt that the occasion demanded it, and that the exigencies surpassed the power of our people to meet it. Enter prize in San Francisco. In the face of an appalling and death-dealing disaster rendering an entire community dependent for the bare necessities of life and putting it in imminent danger of greater horrors, the nation has been stirred as it has rarely been before, and there have been awakened to those deeper feelings of brotherhood which are referred to in the oft-quoted passage that one touch of nature makes the whole world akin. The nature indicated in this instance is human nature in its highest manifestation. The sympathetic sentiment that stirs deeply in all our hearts and needs, but the occasion to make itself warmly manifested. There is something incomparably splendid in the spectacle of an entire nation stranding every nerve to send succor to the helpless and the suffering, and this spectacle has warmed the hearts of our people to the uttermost, and inspired them to make the most strenuous efforts to drive away the gaunt wolf of famine from the ruined homes of our far Pacific brethren. It may be said that San Francisco will be willing to accept this relief only so long as stern necessity demands it. At this writing only two weeks have passed since the dread calamity, and already active steps are being taken to provide for themselves. As an example of their enterprise, it may be said that their newspapers hardly suspended at all. The evening post alone suspending publication for a time for being unable to acquire a plant in the vicinity of the city. When the conflagration made it apparent that all plants would be destroyed, the bulletin put at work a force in its composing rooms. A handbill was set and some hundreds of copies run off on the proof press, giving the salient features of the day's news. The morning papers, the call, chronicle, and examiner retired to Oakland on the other side of the bay, and there, on Thursday morning, issued a joint paper from the office of the Oakland Tribune. On Friday morning they split forces again, the examiner retaining use of the Tribune plant and the call and chronicle issuing from the office of the Oakland Herald. Two days later the call secured the service of the Oakland Inquirer Plant. Meantime, on Friday, the bulletin, after a suspension of one day, made arrangements for the use in the afternoon of the Oakland Herald equipment, and from these sources and under such circumstances the San Francisco papers have been issuing. The papers were hurriedly opened on Fillmore Street, which today is the main thoroughfare of San Francisco, and from these headquarters the news of the day as it is gathered is transmitted by means of automobiles and ferry service to the Oakland shore. There were also accepted such advertisements as had been offered. The number of these was, perhaps, the best visual sign of the resurrection of the new city. It was noted that in a fourteen-page paper printed within two weeks after the fire by the examiner there were over nine pages of advertisements, and in a sixteen-page paper published by the Chronicle at least fifty percent of its space was devoted to the same end. Many of the larger factories left on harm were also quick to start work. At the Union Ironworks twenty-three hundred men were promptly employed, and the management expected within a fortnight to have the full complement of its force, nearly four thousand men, engaged. No damage was done to the three new warships being built at these works for the government, the cruisers California and Milwaukee and the battleships South Dakota. The steamer, city of Puebla, which was sunk in the bay, has been raised and is being repaired. The men are also engaged fixing the steamship Columbia, which was turned on her side. The hulls of the new Hawaiian-American steamship company's liners were pitched about four feet to the south, but were uninjured and only need to be replaced in position. As for the working people at large, those without funds for their own support, abundant employment will quickly be provided for them in the necessary work of clearing away the debris, thus opening the way to resumption of business and reducing the number requiring relief. The UCAS has already been issued that all able-bodied men needing aid must go to work or leave the city. This dictum of chief of police dinens will be strictly enforced. The relief work and distribution of food and clothing are attracting a certain element to the city which does not desire to labor, while some already here prefer to live on the generosity of others. Chief Dynan has determined that those who apply for relief and refuse work when it is offered them shall leave the city or be arrested for vagrancy. The police judges have suggested establishing a chain gang and putting all vagrants and petty offenders at work cleaning up the ruins. Perhaps never in the history of the city has there been so little crime in San Francisco. With the saloons closed, Chinatown, the Barbary Coast, and other haunts of criminals wiped out, and soldiers and marines on almost every block in the residence districts, there have been few crimes of any kind. It is the opinion of the police that most of the criminal element has left the city. The saloons, in all probability, will remain closed for two months more. The Problem of the Chinese In conclusion of this chapter, it is advisable to refer to the situation of one of the elements of San Francisco's population, the people of Chinatown. One of the problems facing the relief committees on both sides of the bay is the sheltering of the Chinese. Many of them are destitute. It has long been a question in San Francisco what should be done with Chinatown, and moving the Chinese in the direction of Colma has been agitated. Now they are without homes and without prospects of procuring any. They can get no land. The limits of Oakland's Chinatown have already been extended, and the strictest police regulations are enforced to prevent further enlargement. On this side of the bay they are camping in open lots. Unless the government undertakes their relief, they are in grave danger. Those who have money cannot purchase property, as no one will sell to them. Few, however, even of the wealthiest merchants in Chinatown, saved anything of value, for their wealth was invested in the Oriental village which had sprung up in the heart of the area burned. But it is the desire of the municipality not to harass this portion of its foreign population, and the vexatious problem of placing the new Chinatown will probably be settled to the satisfaction of the Chinese colony. This colony diverts an important part of the trade of San Francisco to that city, and if its members are dealt with unjustly there is danger of losing this trade. The question is one that must be left for the future to decide, but no doubt care will be taken that a new Chinatown with the unsavoryed conditions of the old shall not arise. End of CHAPTER X 11 San Francisco of the past The story of San Francisco's history and tragedy appealed with extraordinary force to the imagination of all civilized men. For several generations the city was looked upon as an Arabian night's dream, a place where gold lay in the streets, and joy and happiness were unlimited. And settlement, or rather its real rise as a city, was as by magic. It was first a city of tents, of shanties, of shacks, lying on the rim of a great spacious bay. Ships of all sizes and rigs brought gold seekers and provisions from the east, all the way round Cape Horn, after forages of weary months, and at San Francisco their crews deserted and hundreds of these crafts were left at their moorings to rot. A shore was a riot of money, prodigious extravagance, mean, shabby appointments, sudden riches, great disappointment, reverie, improvidence, and suicide. The streets that now lay squares from the water were then at the water's edge, and batos brought cargos ashore. Long wharves, one was for years called the Long Wharf, even after there were others built much longer, led out over the shallow water. These shallows were later filled in streets built upon them, and upon them rose warehouses, hotels, factories, lodging houses, and business places. The city grew rapidly in the direction away from the bay, but in its early days it was a city of no confidence in its own stability, and its buildings were accordingly unstable. A few minor earthquakes shook some of these down years ago, and established in the minds of the people a horror of earthquakes. Frame houses became the rule. In its ensuing life San Francisco developed the attributes of a city of gaiety tempered by business. The population, for the most part, affected light-hearted scorn of money, or rather of saving money. It made mirth of life, habituated itself to expect windfalls such as miners and prospectors dream of, developed a moderate amount of business, and enjoyed the day while there was sunlight, and the night when there was artificial light. The windfalls grew less frequent, mining became a costly and scientific process, and agriculture succeeded it. But though it was only necessary to tickle the land with a hoe and pour water upon the tickled spot to have it laugh with two, three, or even four harvests a year, agriculturalists continued scarce. The Chinese truck farms, some of which lay within the city's lines, supplied the small fruits and vegetables. Across the bay white men farmed, and grapes, fruits, vegetables, and flowers of prodigious variety and monstrous dimensions were grown. But eastern men came to do the farming. The Californian who himself was an argonot, or whose father was an argonot, found no attractions in the steady labor of farming. Their followed a period of depression, ascribed by many to the influx of the Chinese and their effect upon the labor market, though the armies of the unemployed were, as a rule, unwilling to do the work their celestial rivals engaged in, that of truck farming, fruit raising, manual household labor, wood cutting, and the like. A heavy weight settled on the city, business grew slack. The army of the unemployed, of ruined speculators and moneyless newcomers, grew steadily greater, and for an era San Francisco saw its dark side. But this was not a long duration. There was fast developing a new and important business, resulting from the development of the real resources of the state, the fruits, particularly the citrus fruits that grew abundantly in the warm valley. Raisins were made in oranges, lemons, limes, grapes, almonds, and pears. Raisins, whose size defied anything here to foreknown, were made from the huge grapes that grew in the San Joaquin Valley. Sonoma sent its grapes to be made in the wine. Capital flowed in from every side. Eastern men in search of health, others in search of wealth, came to the golden state. No matter who came, where they came from, or where they were going, they spent a few days, or many, and some money, or much, in Frisco. The enterprise of the second-edition pioneers quickly transformed the state and city. Agriculture brings new wealth. Luxury was startling. San Francisco's mercantile community equalled the best. The stores and shops were as beautiful as anywhere in the world and proportionately as well patronized. Theaters, music halls, restaurants, hotel bars, and the like were ablaze, with lights at night and patronized by a gay throng. Sutro's bath, near the cliff house, was a species of entertainment unequaled anywhere. The prosidio, as the army post is still known, as in the Spanish nomenclature, gave its drills, regarded as free exhibitions for the people. Golden Gate Park was an endless daily picnic ground. The crowds in the streets of San Francisco were noticeably well-dressed and usually gay. Without that fixed run, the Saturnine looked noticeable among the people of the East. It is doubtful whether, upon the whole, the earnings of the San Francisco man equaled those of his eastern brother, but his holidays were frequent and his joys greater. The grind of life was not yet steady. Men had not become mere machines. The climate of California is peculiar. It is hard to give an impression of it. In the first place, all the forces of nature work on laws of their own in that part of California. There is no thunder or lightning. There is no snow, except a flurry once in five or six years. There are perhaps half a dozen nights in the winter where the thermometer drops low enough so that there is a little film of ice on exposed water in the morning. Neither is there any hot weather. Yet most easterners remaining in San Francisco for a few days remember that they were always chilly. A peculiar yet delightful climate. Where the gate is a big funnel, drawing in the winds and the mists, which cool off the great hot interior valley of San Joaquin and Sacramento. So the west wind blows steadily ten months of the year and almost all the mornings are foggy. This keeps the temperature steady at about 55 degrees, a little cool for the comfort of an unacclimated person, especially indoors. Californians used to it, hardly ever think of making fires in their houses, except in the few exceptional days of the winter season, and then they rely mainly upon fireplaces. This is like the custom of the Venetians and the Florentines. But given easterners six months of it, then he too learns to exist without a chill and a steady temperature a little lower than that to which he is accustomed at home. After that one goes about with perfect indifference to the temperature. Winter and winter, San Francisco women wear light, tailor-made clothes, and men the same fall-weight suits all the year around. Except for the modern buildings, the fruit of the last ten years, the town presented at first sight to the newcomer a disreputable appearance. Most of the buildings were low and of wood. In the middle periods of the 70s, when a great part of San Francisco was building, there was some atrocious architecture perpetrated. And that time, too, everyone put bow windows on his house to catch all the morning sunlight that was coming through the fog, and those little houses with bow windows and fancy work all down their fronts were characteristic of the middle-class resident districts. Then the Italians, who tumbled over Telegraph Hill, had built as they listed, and with little regard for streets, and their houses hung crazily on the side hill, which was little less than a precipice. For the most part, the Chinese, though they occupied and abandoned business district, had remade the house's Chinese fashion, and the Mexicans and Spaniards had added to their houses those little balconies without which life is not life to a Spaniard. The streets are steep beyond conception. Before Vallejo Street ran up Russian Hill, it progressed for four blocks by regular steps like a flight of stairs. With these hills, with the strangeness of the architecture, and with a green-gray tinge over everything, this city fell always into vistas and pictures, a setting for the romance which hung over everything, which has always hung over life in San Francisco since the Padres came and gathered the Indians about Mission Dolores. And it was a city of romance and a gateway to adventure. It opened out on the mysterious Pacific, the untamed ocean, and most of China, Japan, the South Sea Islands, lower California, the west coast of Central America, Australia that came to this country, passed in through the Golden Gate. There was a sprinkling too of Alaska and Siberia. From his windows on Russian Hill, one saw always something strange and suggestive, creeping through the mists of the bay. It would be a South Sea Island brig bringing in copra to take out cottons and idols, a Chinese junk with fan-like sails back from an expedition after shark slivers, an old whaler which seemed to drip oil back from a year of cruising in the Arctic. Even the tramp-wind jammers were deep-chested craft, capable of rounding the horn or circumnavigating the globe. And they came in streaked and picture-asked from their long voyaging, a mixture of races. In the orange-colored dawn, which always comes through the midst of that bay, the fishing fleet would crawl in under triangular Latin sails, for the fishermen of San Francisco Bay were all Neapolitan's who have brought their costumes and sail with Latin rigs, shaped like the ear of a horse and the wind fills them, and stained in orange-brown. The smelting pot of the races, Stevenson called the region along the waterfront, for here are the people of all these craft-met Italians, Greeks, Russians, Alaskans, Kenakas, Alaska Indians, Black Gilbert Islanders, Spanish Americans, Wonders, and Sailors from all the world, who came in and out from among the queer craft to lose themselves in the disreputable shannies and saloons. The Barbary Coast was a venerable bit of Satan's realm. The place was made up of three solid blocks of dance halls for the delectation of the sailors of the world. Within those streets of peril the respectable never set foot behind the swinging doors of those saloons anything might be happening. Crime was as common here as drink, and much went on of which the law was blankly ignorant. Not far removed from this haunt of crime was the world-famous Chinatown, a district six blocks long and two wide, and housing when at its fullest some 30,000 Chinese. Old business houses at first, the new inmates added to them, rebuilt them, ran out their own balconies and entrances, and gave them that feeling of huddled irregularity, which makes all Chinese-built dwellings fall naturally into pictures. Not only this, they borrowed to adapt the equal to three stories under the ground, and through this ran passages in which the Chinese transacted their dark and devious affairs, as the smuggling of opium, the trafficking slave girls, and the settlement of their difficulties by murder, if they saw fit. The law was powerless to prevent or discover and convict the murderers. Chinatown is gone, the Barbary Coast is gone, the haunts of crime have been swept by the devouring flames, and if the citizens can prevent they will never be restored. The old San Francisco is dead. The gayest, lightest-hearted, most pleasure-loving city of this continent, and in many ways the most interesting and romantic, is a horde of huddled refugees living among ruins. It may rebuild, it probably will, but those who have known that particular city by the Golden Gate and have got its flavor of Arabian knights feel that it can never be the same. When it rises out of its ashes it will probably doubtless resemble other modern cities and have lost its old strange flavor. End of Section 11. Recorded by Tom Crawford, Coole, California, April 2010. Section 12 of the San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire by Earthquake. Life in the Metropolis of the Pacific. Brought up in a bountiful country where no one really has to work very hard to live. Nurtured on adventure. Scion of a free and merry stock. The real, native Californian is a distinctive type. As far from the eastern-ur and psychology as the extreme southern-ur is from the Yankee. He is easygoing, witty, hospitable, lovable, inclined to be un-moral rather than immoral in his personal habits, and above all, easy to meet and to know. Above all, there is an art sense all through the populace which sets it off for many other parts of the country. This sense is almost Latin in its strength, and the Californian owes it to the leaven of Latin blood. The Frisco Restaurants. With such a people, life was always gay. They did not show it on the streets, as do the people of Paris. It was because the winds made Open Café disagreeable at all seasons of the year. The gay that he went on indoors or out on the hundreds of estates that fringe the city. It was noted for its restaurants. Perhaps people who cared not how they spent their money could get the best they wished, but for a dollar down to as low as fifteen cents, the restaurants furnished the best area to be had anywhere at the price. The country all about produced everything that a cook needs, and that in abundance. The bay was an almost untapped fish pond. The fruit farms came up to the very edge of the town, and the surrounding country produced in abundance fine meats, all cereals, and all vegetables. But the chefs who came from France in the early days, and liked this land of plenty, were the head in front of it. They passed their art to other Frenchmen or to the clever Chinese. Most of the French chefs at the biggest restaurants were born in Canton, China. Later the Italians, learning of this country where good food is appreciated, came and brought their own style. Householders always dined out one or two nights of the week, and boarding houses were scarce, for the unattached preferred the restaurants. The eating was usually better than the surroundings. The Famous Poodle Dog Meals that were marveled were served in tumble-down little hotels. Most famous of all the restaurants was the Poodle Dog. There have been no less than four restaurants of this name. Beginning with a frame shanty where, in the early days, a prince of French cooks used to exchange recipes for gold dust. Each succeeding restaurant in the name has moved farther downtown, and the recent Poodle Dog stands, or stood, on the edge of the tenderline in a modern five-story building, and it typified a certain spirit that there was in San Francisco. On the ground floor was a public restaurant where there was served the best dollar dinner on earth. It ranked with the best, and the others were in San Francisco. Here, especially on Sunday nights, almost everybody went to vary the monotony of home cooking. Everyone who was anyone in the town could be seen there off and on. It was perfectly respectable. A man might take his wife and daughter there. On the second floor there were private dining rooms, and to dine there, with one or more of the opposite sex, was risqué, but not especially terrible. But the third floor, and the fourth floor, and the fifth, the elevator man of the Poodle Dog, who had held the job for many years and never spoken less spoken to, wore diamonds and was a heavy investor in real estate. There were others as famous in their ways. Zincods were at one time everyone went after the theater, and Tates, which is lately bitten into that trade. The Palace Grill, much like the grills of Eastern Hotel except for the price, and Delmonicoes, which ran the Poodle Dog neck and neck in its own line, and many others, humbler, but great at the price. The Bohemian Club To the visitor who came to see the city and who put himself in the hands of one of its well-to-do citizens for the purpose, the few days that followed were apt to be a whirl of mirth and sightseeing, made up of breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, drives, little trips across the bay, dashes down the peninsula to the polo and country clubs, hours spent in Bohemia, trips around the world among all the races of the habitable club, all of whom had their colonies in this most cosmopolitan of American cities. In club life the Bohemian stood first and foremost the famous club whose meeting place, with all its art treasures, is now Ahippa Ashes, but which was formerly Frisco's head center of mirth. Founded by Henry George, the world-famous single-tax advocate, when he was an epicunius scribbler on the San Francisco Post, it grew to be the choice's place of resort in the Pacific Metropolis. Within its walls the possession of dollars was a bar rather than an open sesame, the master key to its circles being the knack of telling a good story, or the possession of a quick and telling wet. Fun-making was the rule there, and the only way to escape being made its victim was the power to deliver a ready and witty retort. In his home of good fellowship all the artists, actors, wits, literati, fiddlers, pianoists, and bon vivants were members. Here an impoverished painter could square his grill and buffet account by giving the club a dab to hang on its walls. Here in the days of old the sheriff used to camp regularly once a month until the members wrestled up the money to reap within the furniture. But those days of poverty passed away, and in later years the club came to no prosperity beyond the dreams of the good fellows who founded it. The wickedest and gayest. The bohemian is gone, but the spirit that founded made it still exists, and we may look to see it rise, like the phoenix from its ashes. San Francisco was often called the wickedest city in America. It was hardly that. It was simply the gayest. It was not the home of purity, neither is any other city. What other cities do behind closed doors San Francisco did not hesitate to do in the open. In eastern cities the police have driven vise in the tenements, lodging houses, and apartments. San Francisco did not do that. She had certain quarters where, according to unwritten law, vise was allowed to abide, and she did not try to hide the fact that it could be found there. She was not secretly immoral. She was frankly un-moral. She did not believe in driving her vise from the open where it could be recognized and controlled, prevented from doing any more harm than it was possible to stop, into districts of the city where good people dwell in purity would feel its contaminated influence. There were regions in which the respectable never set foot, haunts of acknowledged vise which for virtue to enter would be to lose caste. As for its gaiety, San Francisco was proud of the reputation of being the Paris of America. Its women were beautiful and they knew it. They liked to adorn their beauty with fine clothes and peacock among the streets on matinee days. If you asked a San Francisco girl why she worked such expensive clothes, she would say, frankly, because I like to have men admire me, and she would see no harm in saying it. There was very little sham about the San Francisco women. Their men understood them and worshiped them. They bore themselves with the freedom that was theirs by right of their heritage of open-air living, the Bohemian atmosphere they breathed, the unconventional character of their surroundings. Their figures were strong and well-molded, their faces bloomed with health like the roses in their gardens. They drew the wine of laughter from their balmy California air. Sorrow and trouble sat lightly on their shoulders. There was no end of enjoyments. After theater they would go to zinc pods, tates, the palace, or some other of the many places of resort under the music, which was to be heard everywhere. Another part of the gay life of the city was for a private dance to keep going all night in a fashionable residence and a daylight instead of everybody going to bed to jump into automobiles or carriages and take the trolley cars and whiz off to the beach for a dip in the cold salt water at sutra's baths and then, with ravenous appetites, an open-air breakfast while watching the ships sail in and out at the golden gate and herring the seals barking on the rocks after that home and to rest an all-night town. The city never went to sleep altogether. It was an all-night town. Few of the restaurants ever closed, none of the saloons did. Always during the whole 24 hours of the day there was something doing in the tenderline. Before the night was ever free of revelry. It was marvelous how they kept it up. The average San Francisco could stay awake all night at a card game, take a cold wash and a good breakfast in the morning and go straight downtown to business and feel none the worst for it. It was a gay town, a captivating, pecan, audacious but not especially wicked city. A Frenchie, a risque city, it might justily have been called but it was not wicked in the sense that sort-advice, vulgar crime and wretched squalor constitute wickedness. It was a lovable place that everyone longed to get back to once having been there. A woman, leaving it for years, watched it from the ferry boat and weeping said, San Francisco, oh, my San Francisco, I am leaving thee. Will those who left it after the fire go back to their old city again? We have already expressed our doubt of this. The old San Francisco is probably gone, never to return. The new San Francisco will be as cleaner, saner and safer city, destitute of its rookeries, its tenements and its Chinatown. It will be a greater and more sightly city than that of the past but to those who knew and loved the old San Francisco, San Francisco the captivating, the maddest, gayest, liveliest and most rollicking in the country, there must have been something impressively sad to its old inhabitants in the reflection that the new city of the Golden Gate can never be quite the same as the haven of their earlier affections. End of Chapter 12 Recorded by Tom Crawford, Cool California in April 2010 Section 13 Section 13 of the San Francisco Calamity by earthquake and fire This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The San Francisco Calamity by earthquake and fire by Charles Morris Chapter 13 Plans to rebuild San Francisco Almost as soon as the terrible conflagration had been checked and gotten under control by the heroic efforts of soldiers and firemen a little group of the leading citizens of the desolated city had met in the office of Mayor Eugene E. Schmidt and had begun to plan the restoration of their municipality. It was an admirable courage bred in the stock of those men who on 1849 left comfortable homes in the east near Fortune in the Golden State that inspired the loyal leaders of the present-day citizen to provide with far-seeing eyes for the rebuilding of their homes and business houses with more orderly precision after the fire than had been possible during the hustle of the early days in a new city. The old San Francisco was no more and never could be recalled save as a memory. The local color, atmosphere might be termed the feeling of the old city, vanished with the clustered houses as rich in tradition as the ancient missions and whose cloisters worshiped the Spanish Padre before the gringo came. Heart-rending as it was to the citizens who loved their homes and haunts to see them disappear into smoke, there was an attraction about the city of the Golden Gate which endeared it to all Americans. One of San Francisco's charms was in its defiance of precedent. There were hills to be conquered and San Francisco's expanding traffic hurled itself at the face of them. It went up and up with no thought of finding a way around. So it happened that on some of the streets the steepness was too great for horses. In the center there are cable roads and on either side of the rails grass grows through the cobbles. The earlier structures on the level were put together in haste. For the most part they remained essentially unchanged till they fell with a crash. True, they had become stained by time, uncapped, dwarfed by new neighbors, but no one desired to efface them. Away from the business section houses appeared on the various hills perched precariously near the brink. Houses reached by long flights and grown over with roses. The bathing fogs touched them with gray, moss grew on their roofs. In the little lofty yards color-lidlies bloomed with the profusion of weeds. The natural beauty of the site, the quaintness of the commercial and social development of which it became the center, attracted the poet and the artist. It incited them to paint the attractions and to sing the praises of their chosen home. But the royal sons of those pioneers who founded the Metropolis were not in the least daunted by the problem of raising from its ruins the whole vast number of dwellings and business houses. The leaders of the people, the men who had been identified with San Francisco since its early days and whose great fortunes were almost swept away by the cataclysm, lent courage to all the weary thousands by firm statements of their optimism. James D. Pellin, former mayor of the city and one of its richest capitalists, immediately announced his intention of rebuilding his properties at Market and O'Farrell Streets in the heart of the ruined business district. William H. Crocker, one of the heaviest losers, and that few of Charles Crocker who founded the Central Pacific Railroad with calls P. Huntington, Leal and Stanford and others, stated emphatically that he would put his shoulder to the wheel. Upon receiving the first news of the disaster and before he knew what his losses would amount to, he said, Mark my words, San Francisco will arise from these ashes a greater and more beautiful city than ever. I don't take any stock in the belief of some people that investors and residents will be panicky and afraid to build up again. This calamity, terrible as it is, will mean nothing less than greater San Francisco. It is preposterous to suggest the abandonment of the city. It is the natural metropolis of the Pacific Coast. God made it so. D. O. Mills, the Speckles family, everybody I know have determined to rebuild and to invest more than ever before. Burnham, the great Chicago architect, has been at work for a year or more on plans to beautify San Francisco. Terrible as this destruction has been, it serves to clear the way for the carrying out of these plans. Why, even now we are figuring on rebuilding. More than that, I am confident that, except for what the fire has absolutely laid waste, it will be found that the buildings are less injured than was supposed. Plastering, ornamental work, glass, and more or less loose material has been shaken down. But the work, I am sure, will be found intact in many big buildings. D. O. Mills, of New York, who owned enormous properties in the stricken city, was equally confident. We will go ahead, said he, and build the city, and build it so that earthquakes will not shake it down, and so fire will not destroy it, and we will have a water system which will enable us to draw water from the sea for fire extinguishing service for municipal purposes. We will thus have less to fear from the destruction of the land mains. The whole point, with all of us who own property down there, is that we have to build. To let it die idle, piled with its ruins, would mean throwing a way of money, and I am sure that none of us intends to do that. The city will go up like Baltimore did, in Galveston and Charleston and Chicago, and there will be no lack of capital. California Spirit and California Enterprise, which are always associated with the state of California, will rise superior to this calamity. George Crocker, elder brother of William H. Crocker, Archer M. Huntington, son of Collis P. Huntington, Mrs. Herman Ulriches, Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt Jr., members of the wealthy Spreckles family and others all expressed before the great conflagration had ceased burning. The confident expectation that the city would rise, phoenix-like, firm as ashes, and become more beautiful and prosperous than it had ever been in the past. So complete was the calamity that the government of the United States lent a hand in the earliest work of restoration. On April 20, two days after the earthquake, Congress took immediate steps to repair and replace all the public buildings damaged or destroyed in San Francisco. The willingness of Congress to assist those in need of work by immediately beginning the reconstruction of the federal buildings was indicated when Senator Scott, Chairman of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds introduced a resolution calling upon the Secretary of the Treasury for full information as to the exact condition of the various government buildings in San Francisco and instructing him to submit an estimate showing the aggregate some needed to repair or rebuild them. The resolution suggested that steel frames be used in any new buildings. This resolution was adopted. It was soon learned that the new post office, the mint, and the old customs house were practically undamaged. The branch of the United States mint on Fifth Street and the new post office at Mission Streets were striking examples of the superiority of workmanship put into federal buildings. The old mint building surrounded by a wide space of pavement was absolutely unharmed. The mint made preparations to resume business at once. The post office building also was virtually undamaged by fire. The earthquake shock did some damage to the different entrances to the building, but the walls were left standing in a position. President Roosevelt also sent a message to Congress asking that $300,000 be at once appropriated to finish the Maryland Navy Yard in order that employment might be given to the many workmen who were in extreme need of money for the necessities of life. It was a most fortunate circumstance that the property records in the Hall of Records were unharmed either by earthquake unless disputes and litigation over the questions of ownership would undoubtedly have otherwise impeded the work of those sincerely anxious to repair their shattered fortunes and opened the way for the unscrupulous to take unfair advantage of the general chaos. But the temper of the people was such that only the boldest would have dared use trickery for his own ends. Every man stood at the side of his neighbor working for himself and for the good before the embers were cool the owners of some of the damaged skyscrapers gave commands to proceed instantly with their reconstruction. The Spreckles Building, the Hayward Building, the St. Francis Hotel, the Merchants Exchange and structures that permitted it were ordered rushed into shape as quickly as possible. And already contracts had been drawn up for other steel frame buildings to be erected with all speed. Many substantial businessmen and property owners of San Francisco were in consultation with the architects within a few days. While the work of clearing away the debris went forward, a core of draftsmen were busily occupied preparing plans for the new buildings to adorn the city. Mayor Schmidt telegraphed to the mayors of all leading cities inquiring how many architects or architectural draftsmen could be induced to leave San Francisco at once and hundreds of young men immediately responded to the call. Experts of the several great contracting companies hurried to the scene and were ready to deposit material and labor on the ground for the work of restoration. Daniel H. Burnham, a leading architect of Chicago who had previously drawn plans for beautifying the city was summoned to superintend the work. All the horses, mules, and wagons attainable were immediately pressed into service to remove the debris and clear the streets so the traffic could be resumed. Within a week after the first earthquake shock, trolley cars were running in the principal streets, telephone communication had been reestablished in the most needed quarters, electric lights were available, and business had begun again on a limited scale. Yet, in spite of the formidable courage of the citizens and efficient labor of the public officers and the utility companies, an enormous amount of work remained. Virtually every bank in San Francisco had to be rebuilt. Only the Market Street National Bank was left nearly undamaged. An official list of the condition of school buildings throughout the city showed that 29 school buildings were destroyed and that 44 were partially, at least, spared. Many of the latter were so damaged that they had to be either pulled down or thoroughly repaired. And arrangements were made to resume the short-term and tense, erected in parts where thousands of the homeless had already found temporary shelter. With these two vital classes of public institutions prepared to care for the demands about to be made on them, confidence was not lacking in other parts. Most of the foundries and factories near the waterfront and south of Market Street immediately called in all their employees and began to clear away the wreckage and make ready for continuing business. Great credit is due to the newspapers, nearly all of which continued their daily issues without interruption. Although their buildings, with offices and printing plants were entirely destroyed by the flames which followed the earthquake, those whose premises were early threatened with destruction betook themselves to Oakland, seven miles distant across the bay, and published their sheets from the establishments of the Oakland papers. A thorough inspection shows that comparatively little damage was done in the vicinity of the cliff. The cliff house, which was at first reported to have been hurled into the sea, not only stood, but the damage sustained by it from the earthquake was slight. The famous narrow baths located near the cliff house with hundreds of thousands of square feet of glass roofing also were practically unharmed. Only a few of the windows in the narrow baths in the cliff house were broken, and the lofty chimney of the pumping plant to the former establishment was cracked only a trifle. When the situation was finally summed up, however, nearly three-fourths of the city had to be rebuilt or remodeled, and the cost of doing this was enough to appall the strongest hearts. Financially, the prospect was encouraging. Not a bank lost the contents of its fireproof vaults and remained practically unharmed so far as credit was concerned. For a number of days it was impossible to open any strongboxes on account of the great heat which the thick walls retained, and this naturally caused some embarrassment and lack of ready money. Nearly all of them, however, had strong connections in eastern cities and large balances to their credit in other banks of America and Europe. They were also favored by the fact that the United States meant in a sub-trasary held between them some two hundred forty-five million dollars in ready money. The Secretary of Treasury immediately deposited ten million dollars to the credit of the local banks and financiers of the great business centers of the country added to public confidence by prompt statements that they would facilitate the reconstruction of the city by a liberal advancement of funds. One prominent eastern capitalist expressed the general conviction in the following words. No great city, unless it dried up entirely from lack of commercial lifeblood, was ever annihilated by such a disaster as that of San Francisco. Pompey and Hercolium were not great cities in the first place, and in the second place they were completely covered, smothered as it were, with the ashes and molten lava of the adjoining volcano, and nearly all of their inhabitants perished. If it be admitted that three-fourths of the superstructures, so to speak, of San Francisco estimated according to the valuation is destroyed, we have yet to fact remaining that the lives of only one four hundredths of its population have been lost. San Francisco was not merely land buildings erected upon it, but it was people and one of the most active, most hopeful, most vivacious human communities on the face of the earth. You cannot long discourage such a community unless you wipe out three-fourths of its members. Will San Francisco rise again? Most certainly it will. Galveston and Baltimore, not to mention Charleston, Boston and Chicago, showed the spirit of material resurrection in American communities sourced smitten by calamity. After Galveston had been made a desert of sand and debris there were predictions that it would never rise again. What was the outcome? A finer Galveston than before, and finer than many years of slow improvement in the natural course would have made it. Baltimore is busier commercially than it was before the great fire. San Francisco is exceedingly fortunate in the fact that its moneyed institutions remain strong with abundant supplies of funds. It is true that many of them undoubtedly hold large numbers of real estate mortgages as securities for loans and that much of the property thus represented is now in ashes. But with care and an accommodating spirit practically all those mortgages can be so nursed that they will be made absolutely good. The bank will be found to be only too eager to afford new loans which will enable realty owners to rebuild. You will see San Francisco rise a more splendid city than ever and better prepared to resist further earthquake shocks. Because it has had this dreadful visitation is no reason for apprehension that another like it will come within the life of the present generation or two or three after. The destruction of Lisbon in the middle of the 18th century that subsequent immunity from seismic damage is a reassuring example. The municipality was in excellent financial condition to meet and rise above the extraordinary needs of the situation. It had a bonded debt of only $4,245,100 while its realty valuation was $402,127,261 and its personality $122,258,406. The question of issuing further amounts of bonds was therefore one of the first measures considered by Mayor Schmitt and his co-workers and an appeal was made to the federal government to guarantee the proposed loans so that the most urgent work which lay in the city's province could be undertaken at once and without an excessive burden of interest. The vast insurance loss was divided among 107 companies and though only a little more than half the damage was covered by policies, the total swelled towards the colossal sum of $150 million. Several of the large companies were seriously crippled by the disaster and some were forced into liquidation. To the great relief of the entire country, nevertheless, the financial situation was not severely affected and there was every reason to believe that the great bulk of the insurance would be paid. And Section 13 Section 14 of The San Francisco Calamity by earthquake and fire This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Bologna Times The San Francisco Calamity by earthquake and fire by Charles Morris Chapter 14 The earthquake wave felt round the earth. The outbreak of earth forces at San Francisco did not stand alone. There were others elsewhere at nearly the same time. The holes seeming to indicate a general disturbance in the interior of the earth's crust. Some scientists, indeed, declared that no possible connection could exist between the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the earthquake at San Francisco. But others were inclined to view certain facts in regard to recent seismic and volcanic activity as, to say the least, suggestive. As to the actual cause of the California earthquake, the wisest confession we can make is that of ignorance. They're being almost as little known as to the origin, period, and coming of earthquakes as when Pliny wrote 1800 years ago. The Roman observer knew that the tremor passed like a wave through the surface of the earth. He knew that it had a given direction, and he knew that certain regions were rife with seismic disturbance. More he could not say, and when this is said, all has been said that is known today. Setting aside these general considerations, let us return to the question of the disaster at San Francisco on that fatal morning of April 18th. The shock did not come unexpectedly. A month previous there had been a severe earthquake in the island of Formosa and many lives were lost there while an enormous amount of damage was done. Only a few days before the event in San Francisco there was another earthquake in the same island. Still greater havoc was caused by it than by the earthquake in March, but fewer lives were lost, the reason being that the people were warned in time. Early in April the eruption of Mount Vesuvius reached its height and devastated the country around the volcano covering an enormous territory with ashes and caused the loss of hundreds of lives. On Tuesday night, April 17th word was received from Pietegorsk, Circassia that there had been two severe earthquake shocks the previous day in Northern Caucasia. The same night a telegram from Madrid said that the newspapers there reported that the long dormant volcano on Palma, the largest of the Canary Islands, was showing signs of the eruption, columns of smoke issuing from the crater. Widespread earth tremors while scientists as a rule doubt that there was any connection between these volcanic phenomena and the earthquake at San Francisco. Yet reports from the Mount Weather Observation Station in Virginia a few miles from Washington show that the eruptions of Vesuvius acted on the magnetic instruments by electromagnetic waves in such a way as to disturb the electrical potentials at that place. Be this as it may, there is one remarkable circumstance in regard to all this activity. All places mentioned, Formosa, Southern Italy, Caucasia and the Canary Islands lie within a belt bounded by lines a little north of the 40th parallel and a little south of the 30th parallel. San Francisco is just south of the 40th parallel while Naples is just north of it. The latitude of Calabria where the terrible earthquakes occurred in 1905 is the same as that of the territory affected by the recent earthquake in the United States. This may or may not have some bearing on the question. Whatever be thought of all this one thing is certain the earthquake which laid San Francisco in ruins was felt the world over. Wherever there were instruments in position to detect and record it. The seismograph and the government observatory at Washington showed that the first wave on April 18th came at 819 equivalent to 519 at San Francisco. That at 825 there was a stronger wave motion and that from 832 to 835 the recording pen was carried off the paper. The vibrations did not entirely cease until 1235 p.m. during this period there having been nearly half an inch of two and fro motion in the surface of the earth. Records of foreign observations From far away New Zealand on the same day the government seismograph at the capital Wellington recorded seismic waves that apparently passed round the earth five times at intervals of about four hours each. Across the Atlantic at Heidelberg in Germany the records show vibrations lasting one hour. At Sarajevo and Bosnia there was a sharp shock at 11 a.m. undulating from west to east at Fumpkirchen Hungary at Leibach in Austria in the Isle of Wight off the coast of England and all through Italy from north to south the shocks were felt. At Hancock, Michigan a shock was felt on April 19th a mile below the surface in the Quincy Mine of such severity that one man was killed and four injured by a fall of rock loosened by the trembling of the earth. There is no evidence however that seismographs had any connection with the California disaster the dates not coinciding. Turning to the far east across the Pacific seismographs and the Imperial University of Tokyo showed that the earthquake was felt there 11 minutes later than in San Francisco and similar instruments in Manila detected the arrival of the seismic waves 20 minutes after the San Francisco shock. In this there was some time compared with Tokyo but considering the distance near enough to prove that the disturbances came from the same source. Not until the day following was any noticeable disturbance felt in Honolulu but on April 19th shocks were plainly felt for 6 minutes and the water and the harbor rose rapidly. Panics seemed imminent just before the shocks subsided. Earthquakes are by no means infrequent in these islands. This was more severe than any recorded in recent years causing buildings to sway to and fro and partly demolishing some of frail construction. If as the majority of men qualified to discuss earthquakes seemed to think the San Francisco earthquake had no connection with volcanic action but was caused by what is technically known as a fault in the formation of the crust of the earth. It seems easy enough to account for these wave motions travelling round the earth. How widely this may really have made itself felt, it is not possible to say. Several of the great earthquakes in Japan have been recorded in the seismographs of the observatories on every continent and in Australia showing that in severe disturbances of this kind the whole surface strata quiver alike under the oceans and over the continents and islands. At the time of a shock, of course, half of the world is in darkness and asleep. This is taken to account for the fact that so far only a few observatories have reported catching the San Francisco vibrations. The instruments invented for the recording of the motions of the earth's crust are looked upon by scientists as the most delicate of all machines. And so highly sensitive are they, indeed, that the very slightest vibratory motion is recorded perfectly. Even the tread of feet cannot escape this instrument if sufficient to cause a vibration. There are three classes of instruments for the automatic recording of earth tremors each with its own particular function. First is the seismic scope, which will merely detect and record the fact that there has been such a tremor. Some of these are so equipped as to indicate the time of the disturbance. Second is the seismometer, the function of which is to measure the maximum force of the shock, either with or without an indication of its direction. The third instrument is the seismograph, which is so arranged that it will accurately record the number, succession, direction, amplitude, and period successive oscillations. This last instrument is by far the most delicate of the three. In the construction of this earthquake recording machine, the maker must so suspend a heavy body that when its normal position is disturbed in the most infinitesimal degree, no reactionary force will be developed, tending to restore it to its original position. The inventor has never been found who could accomplish this suspension of a body to perfection. The seismograph of today, however, has reached a stage of perfection where close approximations are obtained in the records made. End of Chapter 14