The mayor named a Citizens’ Committee[9] of more than 50 persons, 25 of whom came together at three o’clock in the Hall of Justice, close to the edge of the roaring tempest of flame. It was difficult to conduct business, with dynamite explosions shaking the meeting place, so in an hour’s time the mayor moved across the street to Portsmouth Square where amid boxes of dynamite and in the shadow of the monument to Robert Louis Stevenson, the transaction of business continued. The memorial, a drinking fountain in a granite base with a Spanish galleon at full sail on its summit, stood untouched. The gilt of the hardy vessel still glittered and, untarnished beneath, Stevenson’s lines: “To be honest, to be kind ... to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.”
[9] For list of members of the Citizens’ Committee, popularly called the Committee of Fifty, and its sub-committees, see Sixth Annual Report of the American National Red Cross, 1910, pp. 153-155.
Two hours later the mayor and his assistants moved five blocks up the steep side of Nob Hill to the Fairmont Hotel only to be dislodged the next morning from what must at first have seemed an impregnable position. Their retreat carried them eight blocks farther west to the North End Police Station, and by noon still westward to Franklin Hall on the corner of Fillmore and Bush Streets, where they could finally halt. While the citizens were holding their first meetings and the army was helping to fight the fire, the American National Red Cross was sending across the continent its representative, Dr. Edward T. Devine, who reached San Francisco April 23 with Ernest P. Bicknell. Mr. Bicknell was sent by the committee formed in Chicago for the relief of San Franciscans.
At its first meeting in the Hall of Justice the Citizens’ Committee, which was recognized immediately as a representative body, authorized the mayor to issue orders for food and other supplies. The mayor did not, however, make much use of this authority but left the conduct of the relief work to the Finance Committee, which was appointed at the first meeting, and to the other sub-committees which were formed at the following meetings. The chairman of each of these was given power to complete the membership of his committee. From the first the Finance Committee of the Citizens’ Committee, with James D. Phelan elected to be its chairman, stands out as a directing agent of relief.
Interesting items in the minutes of the second meeting of the Citizens’ Committee are the announcements that there would be water in the Western Addition by one o’clock of that day, April 19, and in the Mission the following day, and that there was press boat service at the foot of Van Ness Avenue.[10]
[10] See [map] opposite p. 3. Fort Mason, at the foot of the avenue, overlooks the Golden Gate.
The Citizens’ Committee continued for over two weeks to hold daily meetings, to which were submitted the Finance Committee’s reports of contributions, as well as its methods of relief expenditures. Its only function in relation to the relief work came to be to confer in order to exchange information. It was but natural, therefore, for the mayor to determine to dissolve the larger committee and leave the control of the relief work, as far as he had power to determine it, in the hands of the Finance Committee, which as is shown [below] had on April 25 come into effective co-operation with the army and the American National Red Cross. At the meeting on May 5, the mayor notified Mr. Phelan that the work of all the relief sub-committees but his was done, and that he should make his financial statement to the Committee on the Reconstruction of San Francisco.[11]
[11] Superseded on May 5 the Committee of Fifty. This new committee of 40 members, composed largely of the men who served on the Committee of Fifty, had no part in the subsequent relief work.
The Citizens’ Committee with its list of sub-committees, hurriedly created, quickly to die, gives an excellent illustration of the futility of trying to effect an elaborate organization before the measure of a disaster has been taken or the extent of the means for recovery learned.
The Finance Committee represented the citizens’ choice to which had been entrusted the local subscription of over $400,000 and the contribution from the state at large of $250,000. Its authority had been recognized by the California branch of the Red Cross, by the Massachusetts Association for Relief of California, by the New York Chamber of Commerce, and by many other relief organizations and individuals throughout the country, as well as by the President of the United States who made public his recognition of the Finance Committee as official agent of relief. The relation of the American National Red Cross to the Finance Committee was not defined during the week following the disaster.