The loss of real and personal property has been estimated at $500,000,000,—about $1,100 per capita of the city’s population. As only $200,000,000 of insurance money is estimated to have been collected, there was a net loss of over $650 per capita. The great loss of income from non-employment, from unrentable property, and from the general cessation of business, cannot be estimated. There was quick compensation for the day laborers and other workmen connected with the building trades, but the recovery for most of the business men was to be slow and is not yet complete.
The loss of life as a result of both earthquake and fire was reported by General Greely, after careful inquiry, to be: known dead, 304; unknown dead, 194; total, 498; number seriously injured, 415. All persons within the fire zone who were lying sick either in hospitals or in their own homes were carried to places of safety. There were, of course, many unwarranted reports of tragic deaths, such as for instance that numerous men had been shot for looting and that physicians had put their patients to death rather than let them die in the flames. The federal troops arrived so promptly, and with the aid of the militia and the police patrolled the city so thoroughly, that there were few opportunities to loot. To the end of June there were but nine deaths by violence in the whole city, three of which appear to have been brought upon unoffending men by over-zealous patrols.
It can never be reckoned what it meant to the devastated city that its own people as a welded body should have manifested under the shock of the great disaster that quality of the hero which lifts him, the psychic man, above the physical and leaves him freed from himself to be spiritually at one with his community. A witness who lives in Berkeley came to the city early on the morning of the earthquake and spent that and the following day in the thick of the refugees. Nowhere along the fire lines was to be seen the least sign of panic. Women and children without a tear and with scarcely a murmur trudged weary miles, carrying handfuls of possessions, or stood silent to watch their homes destroyed. The chief signs of excitement were shown by those who were fighting the fire or who were hurrying from one place to another on official business. At the end of the second day he saw tears for the first time, the tears of a woman who may have been worn out by long tramping and by loss of sleep.
How the great deep of the common human heart was broken up when that sudden disaster came unawares on the people is borne witness to by many who had their portion of loss and by many others who came from the outside to help carry the load. One of the latter wrote to Charities and the Commons[7] a month afterwards:
“All the fountains of good fellowship, of generosity, of sympathy, of good cheer, pluck, and determination have been opened wide by the common downfall. The spirit of all is a marvelous revelation of the good and fine in humanity, intermittent or dormant under ordinary conditions, perhaps, but dominant and all-pervading in the shadow of disaster.
“Recently I formed the acquaintance of a man who now drives an automobile. He had a large machine shop and was a rich man before the fire. The other day he was working about the automobile while his passengers were attending a committee meeting at army headquarters. Presently there approached a man who had purchased $20,000 worth of machinery at his shops just before the fire.
“The customer said to my friend, ‘Hello R——, what are you doing here?’
“‘Driving this automobile,’ said R——. ‘What are you doing?’
“‘I’m driving that automobile over there,’ said the customer, and the two shook hands and laughed heartily at the grim humor of the situation.
“The prevailing sentiment could hardly be better shown than by a motto chalked on one of the little temporary street kitchens. It is: ‘Make the best of it, forget the rest of it.’”