Tanks for Sterilizing Water, Lobos Square Camp
The Japanese Relief Association estimated the number of their countrymen made destitute by the fire to be over 10,000, which is about 3 per cent of the total number of persons made dependent for short or long periods of time. On July 6, 1906, not over 100 Japanese were receiving assistance from the Relief and Red Cross Funds. Of these about 50 were receiving shelter only, in Lafayette Square, and 50 were receiving help at relief stations. That is, the Japanese constituted not more than one-half of 1 per cent of the bread line and about a quarter of 1 per cent of the population of the official camps. Even at the beginning the number receiving help from the Relief and Red Cross Funds was probably not much greater. The Relief Survey estimates that the total value of relief of all kinds furnished by the army and the Finance Committee to Japanese did not exceed $3,000. Among the 30,000 or more persons who applied for rehabilitation, there was not one Japanese. Their own relief association, assisted by Japanese throughout the state, within ten days after the disaster sent between 7,000 and 8,000 of them to places outside of San Francisco. On July 6 some of these had returned and the number of Japanese refugees then in the city was estimated by the association to be 4,000, two hundred of whom it was supplying with provisions.
China contributed $40,000 to the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds for the general work of relief.
There is not much information available about the Chinese. They probably received altogether more food than the Japanese and they certainly received more in the way of shelter, yet the total value of all aid given them was relatively insignificant. Like the Japanese, and for the same reasons, they did not ask for much. At the beginning a separate camp was established for them,—Number 3, in the Presidio reservation. The population of this camp on May 8, 1906, was 186. Later, when cottages were built in Portsmouth Square, on the border of Chinatown, 37 out of the 153 cottages were assigned to Chinese. Not over 140 applications for rehabilitation were made by Chinese. About half of the number were assisted at an average expenditure of about $70. Nearly all these cases were brought to the notice of the Committee by social workers, as only a few Chinese applied voluntarily for relief. Ten thousand dollars is a liberal estimate of the value of relief given to the Chinese.
III
QUESTIONS OF FINANCE
1. CLAIMS
The word “claim” as used in the relief accounting was applied to anything from a time check for a day’s work to a ten thousand dollar demand for goods seized, a usage that arose from the fact that for the first few days, when there was no available cash, many obligations were incurred that were a proper charge on the relief funds though not authorized by the Finance Committee.
Some claims were made by those who suffered a change of sentiment toward contributing relief. During the hours of urgent need men donated their goods, workmen gave their labor, and professional men, their services, who when later they saw the size of the relief funds could not resist the insidious craving to have a share of the big whole. There is the instance of men belonging to one of the building trades who did work for which they expected no pay but later were not satisfied to take the $4.00 a day offered as payment by the Finance Committee. They demanded $6.00 because other men were receiving that amount for a day’s work. Business houses within and without the city evinced the same spirit.
Day by day the flood of claims swelled. Claimants and their attorneys laid siege to the Finance Committee and tried by bribes and threats of lawsuits to collect their claims. A large force of clerks and a special committee were kept hard at work trying to learn the merits of the claims. The Finance Committee itself day after day was compelled, instead of discussing necessary relief measures, to give the greater part of its sessions to the hearing or to the discussion of these claims.[93]