Some Cities and San Francisco, and Resurgam

by Hubert Howe Bancroft

Outside capital was still ready, but San Franciscans seemed to have sufficient for present needs. Capital is conservative and Californians independent. Even from the government they never asked much, though well aware that since the gold discovery California has given a hundredfold more than she has received. Her people were accustomed to take care of themselves, and managed on the whole to get along. A general conflagration was not a new thing. Four times during gold-digging days San Francisco was destroyed by fire, and each time new houses were going up before the ashes were cold. True, there was not so much to burn in those days, but it was all the people had; there was not so much to rebuild, and there were no insurance companies to keep them back. San Francisco would be grateful, and it would be a graceful thing for the government to do, to keep away the sharks until the people should get their heads above water again, not as charity, but for the general good. The exaction of duties on lumber from British Columbia was simply taking money from the San Francisco builders and thrusting it into the plethoric pockets of the Puget Sound people, who at once advanced their prices so as seriously to retard building and render it in many cases impossible. Even as I write word comes of another advance in the price of lumber, owing to the apathy at Washington and elsewhere, after twice before raising the price to the highest limit.

Meanwhile, in and around the burned district, traffic never ceased. The inflow of merchandise from all parts continued. Upon the ashes of their former stores, and scattered about the suburbs, business men established themselves wherever they could find a house to rent or a lot to build upon. Shacks were set up in every quarter, and better structures of one or two stories were permitted, subject to removal by order of the city at any time they should appear to stand in the way of permanent improvement. Some business houses were extinguished, but other and larger ones arose in their stead. Rebuilding was slow because of the debris to be removed and the more substantial character of the permanent structures to be erected.

Around the bay continues the hum of industry. The country teems with prosperity. Never were the services of the city needed so much as now. There are no financial disturbances; money is easy, but more will be required soon; claims are not pressed in the courts. Any San Francisco bonds thrown upon the market are quickly taken by local capitalists. Customs receipts are larger than ever before, and there is no shrinkage at the clearing house. Land values remain much the same; in some quarters land has depreciated, in other places it has increased in price; buyers stand ready to take advantage of forced sales.

Labor is scarce in both city and country; wages are high and advancing. Five times the present number of mechanics can find profitable employment in the city, and it will be so for years to come, as there is much to be done.

With the advance of the labor wage and of lumber, rents are advanced. Mills and factories are running at their full capacity. Orchards and grain fields are overflowing, and harvesters are found with difficulty. Merchants' sales were never so large nor profits so good. Prices of everything rule high, with an upward tendency, the demand at the shops being for articles of good quality. Oriental rugs and diamonds are conspicuously in evidence. Insurers are paying their losses to some extent, and many people find themselves in possession of more ready money than they ever had before. They are rich, though they may have no house to sleep in. It is a momentary return to the flush times of the early fifties, though upon a broader and more civilized scale, and without their uncertainty or their romance.

In view of the facts it seems superfluous to discuss questions regarding the future of San Francisco. That is to say, such questions as are propounded by chronic croakers: Will the city be rebuilt? If so, will it be a city of fine buildings? Will not the fear of earthquakes drive away capital and confine reconstruction to insignificance?

Let us hasten to assure our friends that the day of doom has not yet come to this city; that the day of doom never comes to any city for so slight a cause, or for any cause short of a rain of brimstone and fire, as in the case of Sodom. Whether of imperial steel or of imperial shacks; whether calamities come in the form of such temblores as are here met occasionally in a mild form, or in the far more destructive form of hurricanes, floods, pestilence, sun—striking, and lightning, so common at the east and elsewhere, and from which San Francisco is wholly free, there will here forever be a city, a large, powerful, and wealthy city.

Every part of the earth is subject at any time to seismic disturbance, and no one can truthfully say that California is more liable to another such occurrence than any other part of the United States. Indeed, it should be less so, the earth's crust here having settled itself, let us hope, to some centuries of repose. Never before has anything like this been known on our Pacific seaboard. Never before, so far as history or tradition or the physical features of the country can show, has California experienced a serious earthquake shock—that is to say, one attended by any considerable loss of life or property. Nor was the earthquake of April last so terrible as it may seem to some. Apart from the fire there was not so very much of it, and no great damage was done. The official figures are: 266 killed by falling walls, 177 by fire, 7 shot, and 2 deaths by ptomaine poisoning—452 in all. The property damage by the earthquake is scarcely worth speaking of, being no more than happens elsewhere in the world from other causes nearly every day; it would have been quickly made good and little thought of it but for the conflagration that followed.

Compare San Francisco casualties with those of other cities. Two hundred and sixty-six deaths as the result of the greatest calamity that ever happened in California! Not to mention the floods, fires, and cyclones common to St. Louis, Chicago, Galveston, and all mid-continent America, the yellow fever at New Orleans and along the southern shore, or the 25,000 deaths from cholera in New York and Philadelphia in less than twenty-five years, or the loss of 1,000 ships on the Atlantic coast in the hurricane of August, 1873-not to mention the many extraordinary displays of vindictive nature, take some of the more commonplace calamities incident to most cities except those along the Pacific coast.

Every year more people and more property are destroyed by lightning, floods, and wind-storms on the Atlantic side of the Rocky mountains than are affected by earthquakes on the Pacific side in a hundred years. Every year more people drop dead from sunstrokes in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other eastern cities than are killed by earthquakes in San Francisco in a thousand years, so far as we may know. Yet men and women continue to live and build houses in those cities without thought of running away.