INTRODUCTION
The San Francisco earthquake and resultant fire ranks with the great catastrophes of the world’s history. Comparatively insignificant as was the list of the killed and injured, the annihilation of the business section of the city and of the most thickly populated residence districts brought to the bread line virtually the city’s whole population. The response of the nation and of other nations was in proportion to the magnitude of the disaster.
By a series of favoring circumstances the administration of the large fund donated fell into the hands of a committee, afterwards transformed into a corporation, on which were some of San Francisco’s ablest and broadest-minded men of affairs, as well as representatives of the rejuvenated and re-organized American National Red Cross. How at first the distinguished services of Dr. Edward T. Devine as the representative of the American National Red Cross were utilized by the local committee, and later, the no less valuable services of Ernest P. Bicknell, is told in the following pages along with the account of the splendid part played by the United States Army.
If for no other reason than that the disaster was of tremendous proportions, with relief funds correspondingly large, the value of an intensive study of the problems, methods, and results of the relief work must be very great. No such intensive study of any other American disaster of like proportions has been made. The report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society on the relief work of the Chicago fire is the nearest approach. If one, however, reads that report he will find it to be largely a description of general methods with a thorough accounting of expenditures. The value of such an investigation as this Relief Survey inheres not only in the fact that no previous intensive study has been made of any large disaster but also in the fact that the time and the persons engaged combined to give the San Francisco relief work exceptional significance.
Since the Chicago fire, in this, as in other civilized countries, there has been a rapid evolution of social thought and action. We have become impatient of philanthropic endeavors that do not promise permanently to better conditions. In the field of relief we are discounting mere almsgiving and are fighting for constructive treatment and permanent betterment, which often involve larger relief expenditures. In serious disasters, from the Chicago fire to the San Francisco earthquake and conflagration, this spirit has more and more characterized the relief work. The idea that all moneys should be spent merely to keep the victims of a disaster from the starvation and exposure which confront them in the weeks immediately following the catastrophe is directly opposed to the spirit of modern relief measures. In other words, the idea of rehabilitation, of giving to those who have been left with the least a reasonable lift on the road to a recovery of the standard of living maintained before the disaster, constantly has grown clearer and more definite, a natural fructifying of the modern philosophy of charity.
Attention was given to rehabilitation after the Chicago fire by a special committee on housing and by one on “giving aid to persons in the purchase of tools, machinery, furniture, fixtures, or professional books.” A large part of this special work of relief consisted in aiding destitute sewing women who had lost their machines to obtain others. But in San Francisco we find the first large attempt to emphasize and develop rehabilitation.[1]
[1] For relative expenditures for rehabilitation compare the figures in the Relief Survey with those given in the Report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society of Disbursements of Contributions for the Sufferers by the Chicago Fire, 1874, Chapter XII.
The circumstances that so happily combined to magnify the principle of rehabilitation have already been alluded to. Funds of generous proportions, capable army officers, the reorganized Red Cross, and an exceptional group of keen and broad-minded San Francisco business men,—the last a group which knew its own mind but was willing to take the advice and accept the assistance of experienced social workers,—constituted a force permeated by the spirit of modern philanthropy which wrought out the first large undertaking in rehabilitation in the United States.
Having made clear the reasons for this Relief Survey, let us consider its several parts.