In August, Juan B. Bandini, second son of the famous Don Juan, died at Santa Monica. Two of Bandini's daughters were noted Los Angeles belles—Arcadia, who became the wife of John T. Gaffey, of San Pedro; and Dolores, who married into the well-known literary family, the Wards, of London.
Strenuous efforts were made in 1905 to house the Historical Society of Southern California, which, incorporated on February 12th, 1891, boasts of being the oldest organization of its kind on the Coast and the only one doing State work; and the Legislature appropriated one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for a building. Governor Pardee, however, vetoed the bill—an act which later contributed to the endowment, by the State, of the comely County Museum in which the Historical Society now has its home.
In the spring of 1905, the then eight-year-old town of Redondo, with her large hotel and busy wharf, and famed for her fields of carnations, became the scene of one of those infrequent, but typically American, real estate frenzies which come suddenly, last a few days and as suddenly depart. This particular attack, not to say epidemic, was brought on by one or two newspaper headlines announcing to the breakfasting reader that Henry E. Huntington had decided to spend millions of dollars in making immense railroad and other improvements in the seaside town, and that this would at once raise Redondo from the humble status of a village to almost metropolitan dignity. In about as little time as is required to relate it, the astonished beach-dwellers found themselves overwhelmed by a surging mass of humanity struggling for the privilege of buying lots. The real estate offices were soon surrounded by hundreds of people, fighting, pushing and shoving, all possessed of but the one idea—to buy.
And they bought. They bought corners and they bought in the middle of the blocks; they bought heaps of sand and holes in the ground; they bought in one breath and sold in the next; they bought blindly and sold blindly. Redondo had become a huge, unregulated stock exchange, lots instead of stocks for five days becoming the will-o'-the-wisps of the fated bidders, until the boom collapsed leaving hundreds with lots they had never seen and which, for the time being, they could not sell at any price.
Huntington did not spend his millions—at least then and there. Redondo did not suddenly become a big center. Yet, in passing through the experience of many a town, Redondo has gradually grown in population and importance, even developing something of a suburb—Clifton-by-the-Sea. Such was the famous boom of 1905; and such will probably be the story of similar California booms to come.
CHAPTER XLII
THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE
1906-1910
On January 1st, 1906, after more than half a century of commercial activity—with some things well done, and some poorly enough—during which it has never been my ambition to better myself at the expense of others, I retired from business to enjoy the moderate but sufficient affluence which years of varying fortune had bestowed upon me.
Rather early in the morning of April 18th, news was received here of the awful calamity that had befallen San Francisco; and with lightning rapidity the report spread throughout the city. Newspaper and telegraph offices were besieged for particulars as to the earthquake, which, strange to say, while it also affected even San Diego, was scarcely felt here; and within a couple of hours, more than a thousand telegrams were filed at one office alone, although not a single message was despatched. Thousands of agitated tourists and even residents hastened to the railroad stations, fearing further seismic disturbance and danger, and bent on leaving the Coast; and soon the stations and trains were so congested that little or nothing could be done with the panic-stricken crowds. Meanwhile, more and more details of the widespread disaster poured in; and Los Angeles began to comprehend how paralyzing to her sister cities must have been the wreck and ruin following, first, the shaking of the earth, and then the much more serious fires and explosions. Soon, too, refugees from the North commenced flocking into our city; and these thousands, none with complete and few with decent attire, each pleading pathetically for assistance, told the sad tale much more frankly than could the noisy newsboy, with his flaring headlines and shrill, intermittent Extra!
Long before much information was secured as to just what had happened, public-spirited men and women, some under the banners of regular organizations, some acting independently, moved energetically to afford relief. The newspapers led off with large subscriptions, while the Chamber of Commerce, Board of Trade and the Merchants & Manufacturers' Association swelled the amount. Eventually some two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was raised. At the same time, and within two or three hours after the terrifying news had first been received, the Directors of the Chamber of Commerce met and appointed various committees headed by Francis Quarles Story, a patriotic and indomitable citizen who arrived in 1883; and having the valuable coöperation of Frank Wiggins, who served as Secretary, they went actively to work to render the most practical assistance possible. A Supply Committee, of which M. H. Newmark was chairman, by five o'clock the same afternoon had assembled fourteen carloads of goods, partly donated and partly sold to the Committee at cost, to go by rail, and nine carloads to go from San Pedro by water. This train full of necessaries was the first relief of its kind that reached San Francisco; other shipments of supplies followed daily; and with the first relief train went a corps of surgeons, under the chairmanship of Dr. L. M. Powers, Health Officer, who established a hospital in the Jefferson Square Building, treating two thousand patients in less than three weeks. Among the chairmen of the several committees were: J. O. Koepfli, J. Baruch, R. W. Burnham, Niles Pease, Perry Weidner, John E. Coffin, J. J. Fogarty, W. L. Vail, D. C. McGarvin, W. A. Hammel, F. Edward Gray, Mrs. R. M. Widney and D. J. Desmond; while H. B. Gurley, long identified with Frank Wiggins in Chamber of Commerce work, was Assistant Secretary.
In this way was our sister-city laid low; but only, as it were, for a moment. While the flames were yet consuming the old San Francisco, her children were courageously planning the new; and supported by that well-nigh superhuman spirit which community misfortune never fails to inspire—the spirit that transforms weakness into strength, and transmutes, as by an altruistic alchemy, the base metal of "eachness" into the pure gold of "allness"—this stricken people built and built until, to-day, less than a decade after that memorable night, there stands by the Golden Gate a finer and more beautiful city than the one from which it sprang. And, as if to emphasize to other nations the fulness of San Francisco's accomplishment, her invincible citizens are now organizing and triumphantly carrying out a great world's exposition.