Vague plans, or plans that did not commend themselves, led to refusal. There were, for instance, a man who thought he would like to try his fortune in Nome; a Syrian who had an idea he might get on better in Portland, Oregon, though he had no relatives there and no prospect of work; a Scotch Australian with a large family, known to the Associated Charities for years, who looked hopefully to Australia, though he had left it because he was a failure there; two girls, domestic servants, who wanted to go back to Ireland because they “were afraid of the shakes”; an old man whose only reason for returning to Europe was his desire to see his son ordained a priest; a widow, “saleslady” by occupation, who asked to be sent to Los Angeles on the strength of a letter from a friend, apparently a traveling man living in a hotel, whose mildly expressed concern for her welfare she took as a promise to provide a home. A stonemason wanted to leave his family without resources and try his fortune in Canada. A man whose family had been sent to Massachusetts in the early days to leave him free to get a start got tired of trying and wanted to join them. Another man merely wanted to go away on a visit, leaving his family behind. After the middle of June, requests that wife and children be sent away for a visit while the man stayed behind at work, were refused, though in the abnormal conditions of the earlier days they were frequently allowed. In a considerable number of cases, as of carpenters, shoemakers, domestic servants, and laundresses, transportation was refused because it was known that nowhere else in the country was the opportunity so good for work and good pay in those occupations.
In looking over the records one finds many reasons given for leaving San Francisco. Jewelers, inventors, masseurs, hair dressers, producers of “art work,” said they could find little demand for their services in the first few weeks after the fire. Acrobats, mental science lecturers, teachers of elocution, music, Hebrew, religion, and higher mathematics, could find no one to demand their teaching. Saloonkeepers and barmen had lost their shops through the closing of the saloons, and when they opened July 5, conditions would be hard because a higher license was to be asked. It seems like a jest of fate that at a time when thousands of people were living in tents a tent-sewer could find no occupation. It also seems curious that physicians and nurses should have wished to leave the city, but it is a fact that the demand for their services was decreased rather than increased by the disaster. Physicians suffered perhaps as much as any other class of persons, for they lost not only their offices, libraries, and instruments, but also a large proportion of their patients,—the profitable, well-to-do ones left town, and the poorer ones were stimulated by the out-of-door life, plain food, or by necessity, into unusual good health.[61] Bakers, grocers, and lodging-house keepers asked for transportation because, though there was a demand for their services, they had no capital with which to make a new start. Tailors, dressmakers, milliners, printers, and a number of others could not, or would not, wait for the demand which came for them a few weeks later. In the middle of May, for example, it was thought that ladies’ tailors could not expect to make a living for six months; early in June employers could not begin to get the number they wanted. In but few cases could lack of occupation be accepted as the sole justification for leaving the city. Carpenters and laborers who could not get work in San Francisco in June could hardly be expected to get it anywhere.
[61] In [Part IV] the chapters which discuss condition and status of families in camp cottages, and of those who took advantage of the bonus and loan plans, show that the handicap of ill health was heavy after the first few months.
Sickness was a reason for transporting some of the refugees. A man who had been hurt in the earthquake was sent to relatives as soon as he was able to leave the hospital. Another man, whose little store had been wrecked by the earthquake, he himself injured, and his wife and one child killed, was sent to his sister in Chicago, his other children having been provided for by a charitable organization. A woman suffering from cancer was taken to her sister in Brooklyn by a nurse who was also being assisted to reach her destination. It was not uncommon in the earlier days to find a woman so nervous that her physical condition was a menace to the prospects of her family. One such woman would not allow her husband to do any regular work; another was so irritable that desertion seemed imminent. In such a case as the last the only hope of saving the family seemed, paradoxically, to lie in temporary separation. More than one woman who begged to be sent away for a visit was told, “We are doing this, you understand, because we are sorry for your husband and want to give him a chance to get on his feet here; but please encourage him by writing every week.” The policy, in spite of these instances, was definitely laid down that families should be kept together.
There were numerous examples of that re-distributing of responsibility for dependents which takes place when losses come to families individually. An aunt or grandmother in Nevada or Missouri or New York would offer to take care of a little boy or a young girl, in order to relieve the family in San Francisco. An epileptic woman whose daughters had lost their work on account of the fire was given a home by a cousin in Massachusetts. This cousin, with unnecessary caution, wrote to the woman: “I will not let him (Dr. Devine) know you have any daughters—only that you are without a home and in poor health.” A woman had been visiting her married daughter in San Francisco, and the daughter, after the fire, could neither entertain her longer nor pay her fare home. Still another instance was that of a Roumanian, seventy-seven years old. He had had a home with his granddaughters for the previous two years, but they were burned out and his only refuge was the old home in Roumania. Unfavorable surroundings as a reason for granting transportation may be illustrated by the case of a young girl who had been living in a basement with twenty refugees, men and women. She was sent to her father in Ohio.
The willingness of relatives and friends to receive refugees determined the transporting of a large number of persons. The letters that found their way to the files of the Rehabilitation Committee as evidence that the would-be travelers would not be unprovided for at the end of their journeys form a unique body of testimony. They give a glimpse of those obscure wells of charity in which we all believe, on account of frequent individual instances, but into whose depths we are seldom allowed to look. The open-hearted offers of hospitality that went out from humble homes all over the country were, in fact, a contribution to the relief fund, though they found no place in the list of donations, the quality of their mercy being too subtle. They may be given recognition by a few quotations from many letters:
From Delancey Street, New York, to a Jewish tailor with a wife and six children:
My dear brother,—I have received your letter, also dispatch, and in spite of all my efforts I send you only ten dollars. I cannot send you more for the present. I advise you to come over as soon as you can with your family, on my responsibility, as there are plenty of work for you. Don’t spend the time with nothing but come as soon as you possible can.
From a woman in Council Bluffs, to her sister:
You must and had better come here. J—— can work at his trade here and you can stop with us until you can do better.