However, the early pioneers were hard-headed citizens. Many of the shopkeepers and merchants, after a short experience of the mines, hurried back to make the inevitable fortune that must come to the middleman in these extraordinary times. Within the first eight weeks of the gold excitement two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold dust reached San Francisco, and within: the following eight weeks six hundred thousand dollars more came in. All of this was to purchase supplies at any price for the miners.
This was in the latter days of 1848. In the first part of 1849 the immigrants began to arrive. They had to have places to sleep, things to eat, transportation to the diggings, outfits of various sorts. In the first six months of 1849 ten thousand people piled down upon the little city built to accommodate eight hundred. And the last six months of the year were still more extraordinary, as some thirty thousand more dumped themselves on the chaos of the first immigration. The result can be imagined. The city was mainly of canvas either in the form of tents or of crude canvas and wooden houses. The few substantial buildings stood like rocks in a tossing sea. No attempt, of course, had been made as yet toward public improvements. The streets were ankle-deep in dust or neck-deep in mud. A great smoke of dust hung perpetually over the city, raised by the trade winds of the afternoon. Hundreds of ships lay at anchor in the harbor. They had been deserted by their crews, and, before they could be re-manned, the faster clipper ships, built to control the fluctuating western trade, had displaced them, so that the majority were fated never again to put to sea.
Newcomers landed at first on a flat beach of deep black sand, where they generally left their personal effects for lack of means of transportation. They climbed to a ragged thoroughfare of open sheds and ramshackle buildings, most of them in the course of construction. Beneath crude shelters of all sorts and in great quantities were goods brought in hastily by eager speculators on the high prices. The four hundred deserted ships lying at anchor in the harbor had dumped down on the new community the most ridiculous assortment of necessities and luxuries, such as calico, silk, rich furniture, mirrors, knock-down houses, cases and cases of tobacco, clothing, statuary, mining-implements, provisions, and the like.
The hotels and lodging houses immediately became very numerous. Though they were in reality only overcrowded bunk-houses, the most enormous prices were charged for beds in them. People lay ten or twenty in a single room—in row after row of cots, in bunks, or on the floor. Between the discomfort of hard beds, fleas, and overcrowding, the entire populace spent most of its time on the street or in the saloons and gambling-houses. As some one has pointed out, this custom added greatly to the apparent population of the place. Gambling was the gaudiest, the best-paying, and the most patronized industry. It occupied the largest structures, and it probably imported and installed the first luxuries. Of these resorts the El Dorado became the most famous. It occupied at first a large tent but soon found itself forced to move to better quarters. The rents paid for buildings were enormous. Three thousand dollars a month in advance was charged for a single small store made of rough boards. A two-story frame building on Kearny Street near the Plaza paid its owners a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year rent. The tent containing the El Dorado gambling saloon was rented for forty thousand dollars a year. The prices sky-rocketed still higher. Miners paid as high as two hundred dollars for an ordinary gold rocker, fifteen or twenty dollars for a pick, the same for a shovel, and so forth. A copper coin was considered a curiosity, a half-dollar was the minimum tip for any small service, twenty-five cents was the smallest coin in circulation, and the least price for which anything could be sold. Bread came to fifty cents a loaf. Good boots were a hundred dollars.
Affairs moved very swiftly. A month was the unit of time. Nobody made bargains for more than a month in advance. Interest was charged on money by the month. Indeed, conditions changed so fast that no man pretended to estimate them beyond thirty days ahead, and to do even that was considered rather a gamble. Real estate joined the parade of advance. Little holes in sand-hills sold for fabulous prices. The sick, destitute, and discouraged were submerged beneath the mounting tide of vigorous optimism that bore on its crest the strong and able members of the community. Every one either was rich or expected soon to be so. Opportunity awaited every man at every corner. Men who knew how to take advantage of fortune's gifts were assured of immediate high returns. Those with capital were, of course, enabled to take advantage of the opportunities more quickly; but the ingenious mind saw its chances even with nothing to start on.
One man, who landed broke but who possessed two or three dozen old newspapers used as packing, sold them at a dollar and two dollars apiece and so made his start. Another immigrant with a few packages of ordinary tin tacks exchanged them with a man engaged in putting up a canvas house for their exact weight in gold dust. Harlan tells of walking along the shore of Happy Valley and finding it lined with discarded pickle jars and bottles. Remembering the high price of pickles in San Francisco, he gathered up several hundred of them, bought a barrel of cider vinegar from a newly-arrived vessel, collected a lot of cucumbers, and started a bottling works. Before night, he said, he had cleared over three hundred dollars. With this he made a corner in tobacco pipes by which he realized one hundred and fifty dollars in twenty-four hours.
Mail was distributed soon after the arrival of the mail-steamer. The indigent would often sit up a day or so before the expected arrival of the mail-steamer holding places in line at the post-office. They expected no letters but could sell the advantageous positions for high prices when the mail actually arrived. He was a poor-spirited man indeed who by these and many other equally picturesque means could not raise his gold slug in a reasonable time; and, possessed of fifty dollars, he was an independent citizen. He could increase his capital by interest compounded every day, provided he used his wits; or for a brief span of glory he could live with the best of them. A story is told of a new-come traveler offering a small boy fifty cents to carry his valise to the hotel. The urchin looked with contempt at the coin, fished out two fifty-cent pieces, handed them to the owner of the valise, saying "Here's a dollar; carry it yourself."
One John A. McGlynn arrived without assets. He appreciated the opportunity for ordinary teaming, and hitching California mules to the only and exceedingly decrepit wagon to be found he started in business. Possessing a monopoly, he charged what he pleased, so that within a short time he had driving for him a New York lawyer, whom he paid a hundred and seventy-five dollars a month. His outfit was magnificent. When somebody joked with him about his legal talent, he replied, "The whole business of a lawyer is to know how to manage mules and asses so as to make them pay." When within a month plenty of wagons were imported, McGlynn had so well established himself and possessed so much character that he became ex officio the head of the industry. He was evidently a man of great and solid sense and was looked up to as one of the leading citizens.
Every human necessity was crying out for its ordinary conveniences. There were no streets, there were no hotels, there were no lodging-houses, there were no warehouses, there were no stores, there was no water, there was no fuel. Any one who could improvise anything, even a bare substitute, to satisfy any of these needs, was sure of immense returns. In addition, the populace was so busy—so overwhelmingly busy—with its own affairs that it literally could not spare a moment to govern itself. The professional and daring politicians never had a clearer field. They went to extraordinary lengths in all sorts of grafting, in the sale of public real estate, in every "shenanigan" known to skillful low-grade politicians. Only occasionally did they go too far, as when, in addition to voting themselves salaries of six thousand dollars apiece as aldermen, they coolly voted themselves also gold medals to the value of one hundred and fifty dollars apiece "for public and extra services." Then the determined citizens took an hour off for the council chambers. The medals were cast into the melting-pot.
All writers agree, in their memoirs, that the great impression left on the mind by San Francisco was its extreme busyness. The streets were always crammed full of people running and darting in all directions. It was, indeed, a heterogeneous mixture. Not only did the Caucasian show himself in every extreme of costume, from the most exquisite top-hatted dandy to the red-shirted miner, but there were also to be found all the picturesque and unknown races of the earth, the Chinese, the Chileño, the Moor, the Turk, the Mexican, the Spanish, the Islander, not to speak of ordinary foreigners from Russia, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the out-of-the-way corners of Europe. All these people had tremendous affairs to finish in the least possible time. And every once in a while some individual on horseback would sail down the street at full speed, scattering the crowd left and right. If any one remarked that the marauding individual should be shot, the excuse was always offered, "Oh, well, don't mind him. He's only drunk," as if that excused everything. Many of the activities of the day also were picturesque. As there were no warehouses in which to store goods, and as the few structures of the sort charged enormous rentals, it was cheaper to auction off immediately all consignments. These auctions were then, and remained for some years, one of the features of the place. The more pretentious dealers kept brass bands to attract the crowd. The returning miners were numerous enough to patronize both these men and the cheap clothing stores, and having bought themselves new outfits, generally cast the old ones into the middle of the street. Water was exceedingly scarce and in general demand, so that laundry work was high. It was the fashion of these gentry to wear their hair and beards long. They sported red shirts, flashy Chinese scarves around their waists, black belts with silver buckles, six-shooters and bowie-knives, and wide floppy hats.