Fifty years of municipal life have seen great advance and promise a rich future. Materially they have been as prosperous as well-being demands or as is humanly safe—years of healthy growth, free of fever and delirium, in which natural resources have been steadily developed and we have somewhat leisurely prepared for world business on a large scale. In population we have increased from about 150,000 to about 550,000, which is an average advance from decade to decade of thirty-three per cent.
Bank clearances are considered the best test of business. Our clearing house was established in 1876, and the first year the total clearances were $520,000. We passed the million mark in 1900, and in 1920 they reached $8,122,000,000. In 1870 our combined exports and imports were about $13,000,000. In 1920 they were $486,000,000, giving California fourth rank in the national record.
The remarkable feature in all our records is the great acceleration in the increase in the years since the disaster of 1906. Savings bank receipts in 1920 are twice as large as in 1906, postal receipts three times as large, national bank resources four times as large, national bank deposits nine times as large.
There can be no reasonable doubt that San Francisco is to be a very important industrial and commercial city. Every indication leads to this conclusion. The more important consideration of character and spirit cannot be forecast by statistics, but much that has been accomplished and the changed attitude on social welfare and the humanities leave no doubt on the part of the discerning that we have made great strides and that the future is full of promise.
CHAPTER VII
INCIDENTS IN PUBLIC SERVICE
At twenty-two I found myself Register of the Humboldt Land Office, with offices on the first floor of a building at Eureka, the second story of which was occupied by a school. An open veranda extended across the front. When I first let myself into the office, I carelessly left the key in the lock. A mischievous girl simply gave it a turn and I was a prisoner, with a plain but painful way of escape—not physically painful, but humiliating to my official pride. There was nothing for it but ignominiously to crawl out of the window onto the veranda and recover the key—and that I forthwith did.
The archives of the office proved interesting. The original Register was a Missouri Congressman, who had been instructed to proceed to Humboldt City and open the office. Humboldt City was on the map and seemed the logical location. But it had "died aborning" and as a city did not exist. So the Register took the responsibility of locating the office at Eureka, and in explanation addressed to the President, whom he denominated "Buckhannan," a letter in which he went at length into the "hole" subject. The original draft was on file.
I was authorized to receive homestead applications, to locate land warrants, to hear contests, and to sell "offered land." The latter was government land that had been offered for sale at $1.25 an acre and had not been taken. Strangely enough, it embraced a portion of the redwood belt along Mad River, near Arcata.