Yet, in spite of the indomitable courage of the citizens and the 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 the school buildings throughout the city showed that twenty-nine school buildings were destroyed and that forty-four 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 in tents erected in the parks, 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 water front 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 Sutro baths, located near the Cliff House, with the hundreds of thousands of square feet of glass roofing, also were practically unharmed. Only a few of the windows in the Sutro baths and the Cliff House were broken, and the lofty chimney of the pumping plant of 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 appal 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 strong boxes 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 Mint and the Sub-Treasury held between them some $245,000,000 in ready money. The Secretary of the Treasury immediately deposited $10,000,000 to the credit of the local banks, and financiers of the great business centres 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 life blood, was ever annihilated by such a disaster as that of San Francisco. Pompeii and Herculaneum were not great cities in the first place, and in the second, 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 valuation, is destroyed, we have yet the fact remaining that the lives of only about one four-hundredth of its population have been lost.
“San Francisco was not merely land and the 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, sore-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 of those mortgaged can be so nursed that they will be made absolutely good. The banks 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 future 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 eighteenth century and its 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 personalty $122,258,406. The question of issuing further amounts of bonds was therefore one of the first measures considered by Mayor Schmitz 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 toward the colossal sum of $150,000,000. Several of the largest 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.