Chapter 9
IX. The Resumption. In the vernacular of the gods who sit near the roof, San Francisco was quick to get busy. While relief matters were taking up the attention of the entire country, the manned part of the city was casting about to see what it could do in the way of a fresh start. It was a little beginning, but full of hope and grit, and argued well for the larger work
that should soon be undertaken, the work of building anew upon the ashes of the past. Professional men set up offices in front parlors. Residents established themselves at their homes or in such vacant stores as they could snap up. Notary publics and public stenographers, who had taken refuge in the camps, started afresh in their tents. Often a chair, a towel, a razor, a cake of soap,
were the whole stock in trade of front porch barbers. It was not a matter of hours, but in a short time people generally began to think of ordinary things again. Clerks and employees began to get in touch with their employers. Stenographers hurried across town on foot to take dictations, and letters innumerable were sent out by businessmen to tell their customers that it would not take long to have everything running
smoothly, and that the customers had better send in their orders right away. Egotism sublime. The first trade was in soda water. The city had gone dry by the mayor's order on the morning of the earthquake, and to its eternal credit raised no objection when a similar edict kept it dry for weeks afterward. The lid was on and nailed down tight. This suggested a thirst quencher to enterprising men, the need of which was further emphasized by the very limited supply
of putrid, ill-smelling water that was doled out from the tail end of sprinkling carts. Facetious boys had threatened to go fishing in those carts, and even sedate old men called them aquariums. As soon as travel was resumed on Market Street, as soon as Fillmore Street was discovered, they were lined with men and boys who made the neighborhood resound with the popping of stoppers, a nickel-the-pop. At about the same time came those dispensing souvenirs of the fire
for a consideration. It was remarkable how people who had been burned out and had scarcely any money at all went downtown and spent a dime for a broken cup or twisted vase or other trifle from the ruins. Then came the canvas restaurants and cafes on wheels and the fly-trap chop houses that bore outlandishly spelled menus and served the worst, the sloppiest, the most ill-savored coffee imaginable, but the alacrity with which it was downed, especially by the man who had earned some
money and was at last proudly independent of relief rations, though the latter tasted better, was equally beyond conception. These were among the transitory measures of an extraordinary nature, some of the things people did to re-establish themselves without extraneous aid. On the other hand, in that crowding whirl of momentous events, certain official measures stand out prominently in their bearing upon the gradual return of normal conditions. Businesses had been thrown
into a tangled mass of uncertainties. No man could do the accustomed things, and no one could tell or guess with a chance of being right what anyone else was going to do. If affairs were allowed to go on regulated only by the calendar, the result would be a state of chaos out of which nothing but ruin could come for many. If the banks opened, it was very probable that frightened depositors would start a stampede. Certainly some of the weaker would fail. If the calendar ruled,
businessmen would be confronted by notes falling due and going to protest because their businesses had been temporarily wiped out. A like fate would be meted out to innumerable mortgages. The statute of limitations would require the commencement of suits, which in the present disrupted condition of the courts was a physical impossibility. Thus it became necessary, injustice to all interests, that everything should be held in
suspense for a time. To this end, Governor Pardee declared April 19th a legal holiday, a like act being unnecessary regarding the 18th, which by the mere force of circumstances was virtually won already. The Governor continued to specify each day in succession a holiday, until the extra session of the legislature, which he convened on June 3rd, had passed bills further extending the time of any contract which should have been performed during the holidays
till July 10th, and also extending the time of the statute of limitations to January 1st, 1907. This combination of measures had the salutary effect of giving people a chance to think things out reasonably and sanely. It prevented the rushing in of fools to their own and others' undoing. Certain other pieces of legislation were intended to remedy the extraordinary conditions prevalent in San Francisco because of the loss of the books and papers in the public offices,
acts concerning destroyed records and concerning land titles. The first of these provided a method of restoring the records of judicial proceedings in substance and effect, in order that pending litigation might be continued. Similar acts provided for restoring private and corporation papers. Another act necessitated by the destruction of nearly all the recorders' records provided a means of establishing title to real estate, by publication, posting, etc., without serving notice on anyone or
presenting any deeds or similar papers, as in thousands of instances all such documents had been burned. This did much to inspire confidence among landowners and to facilitate real estate transactions. In many cases it would have been otherwise impossible for owners to prove their titles. In the meantime, the city had a unique experience in government. In the first stages of the endeavors to bring order out of chaos, the relief committee was supreme. The original committee of 50 was soon
reorganized as a committee of 40, which through its various subcommittees handled the problems before it. The mayor, of course, was still mayor, but he did his work with the committee. The finance committee received and handled the relief funds and arranged for the compensation of all whose property had been seized for the general good. Other subcommittees considered special aspects of the relief situation. One worked on restoring the water supply,
another in the resumption of streetcar traffic. Still others took up the problem of housing the homeless, sanitation, food supplies, hospitals, insurance, and arranged for the resumption of work by the judiciary and other municipal bodies, obtaining quarters for them. Before the fire was out, volunteer watchers were patrolling the streets throughout the night to preserve order. It was soon seen that such patrols were unnecessary, and when on the morning of the
Sunday following the earthquake, a prominent citizen, while engaged in relief work in an automobile displaying a red cross flag, was shot and killed through a misunderstanding by a member of a citizen's patrol. They were disbanded. For weeks, however, soldiers and militiamen patrolled the streets to keep order and enforce strange regulations as to lights and fires. At all times the city government was in authority, although its work was done mainly through the
committees and the military. Gradually, the various departments resumed operations. The Department of Electricity had been at work ever since the outbreak of the fire, doing its best to keep up a fire alarm system at least, and afterward restoring the lighting service. Other officials established themselves in stores and residences. The Superior Courts held their sessions in a newly finished synagogue, the finest building remaining in the city.
The Justice Courts had a school building, the Police Department another. The physicians of the Health Department, first cooperating with, began to supersede the military doctors, and the police began to take the place of the soldiers. The Board of Supervisors again came into being. By the end of May, San Francisco was in the hands of its regular administration. Meanwhile, the business world had also been working out its salvation in new and unusual ways.
The banks were among the first to catch their breath after the calamity. As early as April 23, the Oakland banks were paying depositors in sums up to $30 and showing every accommodation within their power to persons from San Francisco introduced at the windows of their paying tellers. The bank vaults in the burned city had stood the fire admirably, and though they were for some days inaccessible and could not be safely opened for
weeks, it was soon apparent that their contents were unharmed. This knowledge gave great assurance of the city's financial stability, for in those vaults lay over $76 million in cash and securities. Besides, there were available securities abroad amounting to more than $38 million. In the mint, saved by heroic work, lay $200 million in gold. The government, through Secretary Shaw, was ready with assistance. Local bankers were permitted to deposit sums in
any denomination with the sub-treasury in New York, and upon telegraphic advice of such deposits, an equal amount was placed to their credit at the mint. This led to the establishment of a clearinghouse bank, which opened at the mint on May 1. A teller from each of the banks was in attendance. This extraordinary institution cashed checks drawn on the various banks up to $500, provided they had first been authorized by the bank's officials.
For the commercial banks, where the tellers were familiar in a general way with the balances of the depositors, this plan was perfectly feasible. But with the savings banks, some of which had over 50,000 depositors, conditions were entirely different. They did not feel justified in cashing checks except for those of their depositors with whose standing they were satisfied. These were required to execute notes to the banks upon which they were given checks on the
clearinghouse bank. This remarkable bank was a boon to wage earners particularly, as it enabled employers to meet, in part at least, their payrolls for the unexpired week. Soon the commercial banks inaugurated a system of special accounts, whereby patrons were able to deposit funds and draw checks against them. These special deposits had no connection with old accounts and carried separate balances. Thus the financial situation began to work itself out.
On the 19th of May, all checks dated prior to April 18th were cleared, and on May 23rd, all banks in the city resumed regular business. There was no excitement, no rush. Depositors who had lost their checkstubs called for their balances after they had stopped at the receiving window and put in their earnings. The banks had solved their own problem. Importations of gold, aggregating $46,207,806, had been made from Europe and New York,
with which to pay checks. But as it turned out, none of this was needed, as deposits exceeded withdrawals from the first. The imported money was soon returned and was followed by local gold sent for investment. Cash began to pour in far in excess of the most sanguine hopes. If confidence in the city's future had been shaken, it was speedily restored. During June, the banks cleared $121,677,692.77, a decrease of only 9 percent from the clearings of the same
month in the previous year. During July, $160,631,793.87 were cleared, showing an actual increase of 8.75 percent over July 1905. At the very beginning, measures were taken to make important streets in the burned district passable and safe. Dynamiting squads were sent about to blow down swaying and threatening walls. Soldiers were detailed to impress anybody who happened to be luckless enough to pass their way into the work of throwing bricks from the center of the streets.
Roadways, scarcely more than paths, were thus cleared, and travel, however arduous and beset with obstacles, was at last possible through the former arteries of the business section. Gradually, public utilities resumed operations. The post office, which had lost many of its branches, was overwhelmed with difficulties, which were partially defined by a carrier who remarked that most of the house numbers had been rubbed off, which made it hard to deliver letters.
The task of handling mail for a city in which 250,000 people had moved was herculean. At one time, 1,500 tons of second-class matter were piled up on the Oakland mole, and for some time the first-class mail was very much congested in very many places. But the department was speedily reorganized, and the delivery of mail slipped back into its customary place as a cog in the wheel of commerce. During May, the United Railroads was granted a temporary
franchise by the supervisors for trolley lines to replace their old cable roads, and soon had gangs of men installing the new system. The Fillmore Street line had already been reopened as soon as the relief committee's subcommittee had done away with all possible danger of fire by cutting the telephone, power, and light wires within two blocks of the street on either side. Cars were in operation there for a few hours on the Saturday of the fire week. Traffic was resumed by the United
Railroads on April 28th, on one line at a time, until all parts of the city were comparatively accessible. The rivals of the United Railroads were also quick to repair the damage to their properties. The Geary Street cable system was ready as soon as the tall chimney of its powerhouse was rebuilt. In spite of the widely circulated reports that the earthquake had wrecked the cable conduit, the roadbed needed only a few hours work, where the slot had been warped by the heat of the fire.
The California Street cable line was also in operation at an early date, although the fire had destroyed its cars and powerhouse and plant. For a time its machinery was operated in an exposed basement while walls were being built around it. The master stroke of the earthquake, from the point of inconvenience to those who had not felt the tragedy of it, was divided into three parts. The destruction of the water system, the demoralization of the lighting system, and the throwing down of
chimneys. The water company, which hardly had a single supply pipe left unbroken, had restored a partial service within four days of the calamity, but in the meantime water had to be obtained. On the first day of the fire, Admiral McCalla had sent lighters from the Mayor Island Navy yard carrying 50,000 gallons of water. The Preble and other steamers brought water from Goat Island and Oakland. The Board of Public Works had their sprinkling wagons cart the water to the camps
and about the streets, whence it was drawn off into the wash boilers and saucepans and pitchers of the thirsty people. The gas and electric companies that had supplied power and light and heat to the city were quick to repair the damage to their properties, but there was great risk that new fires might be started in houses where pipes and wires had been damaged. A thorough inspection had to be made before the service could be resumed, and in the meantime candles
went to premium prices. From the very beginning, fires in stoves were prohibited. Hardly a chimney in the city had escaped some damage, and with water scarce and the fire department crippled, it was not a time to tempt the imps of the perverse. It was decided to make a careful inspection of all chimneys, and until it should be seen that all damage had been repaired and all flues were in perfect order, all cooking should be done in the streets. It was necessary to place
windbreaks around the kerbstone fireplaces to prevent the wind from scattering sparks. And so it came about that pretentious cookeries, with every show of convenience, lined the streets. Many kitchen stoves were disconnected and set up in the streets. Everywhere bricks from the fallen chimneys were piled into crude fireplaces, across which oven grates or sheets of iron were placed. Often an inverted sink was used with a stovepipe rising from the trap.
Real, substantial meals were prepared, meals to which any man would hurry home. This phase of the new life remained for several weeks, as the unusual demand for masons made the repairing of chimneys very slow. The city at large was possessed with a cheery spirit of hopefulness. Men met on the street and congratulated each other that it was no worse. Even amid the inconveniences of cooking in the street and living in a tent,
the people showed a brave humor. A sign on a tent in one of the camps bore the legend, the whole damn family. Another bid the curious, ring the bell for landlady. Still others announced that cars stop here, and that the elevator is not running. Some of the kitchens were jokingly called after the city's most pretentious restaurants. Tates, Tichows, Zincans, others bore fantastic names. The outside in, the inside out,
the step in, the good fellows grotto. One, not much larger than a dog kennel, displayed the crudely lettered sign, Unfairmont Hotel, open all night, will exchange for country property. Another bore the motto, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may have to go to Oakland. Cheer up, said still another, have one on me, come in and spend a quiet evening. Even the ruins were made to play their part in the fun.
A firm which had occupied sales rooms on the ground floor of one of the large buildings announced that it had moved because the elevator was not running, and another because of alterations in the building on the 18th of April. Despite the holidays, the county clerk was compelled to open his office. An army of matrimonial aspirants besieged him. Recreants and procrastinators had arrived at a
sudden determination that it was the best time of all to take this final step. Boys and girls who had only half made up their minds before suddenly realized how necessary they were to each other. The first license was issued only one day after the earthquake. In the next 10 days, 220 were issued. The newspapers, which had lost about everything they possessed, moved temporarily across the bay and issued from the presses of the Oakland papers.
Upon their return, they housed themselves as best they could. The bulletin in a shed on the roof of a cold storage plant, the chronicle and the call in hastily refitted offices in their former quarters, the examiner in a one-story shack on Folsom Street near the waterfront. Theaters were among the first pleasure places to show signs of returning life. The Orpheum had a matinee at the shoots the week following the earthquake. The Central and others opened in tents.
The first building permit issued after the fire was for a new theater, the Davis. The restaurants were soon displaying the old familiar signs in unfamiliar places. The clubs quickly rehoused themselves in private residences. Fillmore Street, which had been seized upon as the first business thoroughfare, soon became the center of operations, soon showed evidences of the pluck and indomitable purpose of the risen city. It achieved a temporary importance because the relief committee and various
branches of the city government found quarters there. Other reasons made it available for business purposes. It had the one undamaged car line, a line between the Mission and the Western Edition, the two unburned districts. Then, too, it was already a business street in a small and unassuming way, and it also happened that there were more vacant lots of large size there than anywhere else, as a great deal of the land around had been owned by one man who had believed more in holding
property than in improving it. The vacant lots were cleared and graded, and the foundations laid of buildings in which merchants who had grown old in the city of the past were to make a fresh start in the city to be. Old buildings were raised and stores built underneath. Among the wholesalers, it was decided that they should gather on the vacant land near the railroad in the level district south of Townsend Street. This was at first intended as a temporary measure to avoid clearing away the
mass of wreckage in the old district, but as time went on it came to be looked on as a permanent change. The heavy expense of drayage had been a great handicap in the old location north of Market Street, which had grown up when everything came by steamer, and this was entirely dispensed with in the new place. By July the wholesalers were shipping 250 carloads of produce daily to the interior and coast customers. Hayes Valley sprung into a little city almost overnight.
There were no hills to contend with, the streets were well paved, and it had two car lines, which however did not resume operations for some months. Everything there invited business. Van Ness Avenue, with its great width, bare of all buildings on one side, and with those on the other blistered almost beyond recognition, offered a splendid opportunity to retail business. The beautiful avenue, which had been at one time the place of fashionable residences,
only to give way to equally fashionable boarding houses and apartments, had at last sunk or risen to the fashionable shopping street. The Saturday afternoon parade on Market and Kearney had its resurrection after the fire on Van Ness. So thorough was the change by which this fashionable avenue had been given over to the vanities of life. In its entire length the only landmark that remained unchanged during this metamorphosis was St. Mary's Cathedral, strangely out of place in its new
surroundings. Property values along all the favored streets took a fabulous leap. Substantial fortunes were made by the juggling of ground leases and by the erection of stores to be leased at exorbitant rentals to anxious retailers. Hardly a month had passed before there were 25,000 men employed in the building trades alone. In less than two months nearly a thousand building permits had been issued by the Board of Public Works, and in addition over 2,000 temporary structures
had been erected. By the middle of June eight firms were employing a thousand clerks. Some firms had the courage to return to their former sites while the ruins were still hot and start over again in shacks built of scraps of cans and corrugated iron pulled from the debris. The removal of debris in the burned districts was at first badly handicapped by the lack of facilities, but one at a time donkey engines began to puff in the streets, standing walls began to
disappear, and tangled steel and iron came to be straightened out. Bunkers were built and spur tracks laid. As early as July a hundred cars of debris were moved daily. An army of men from the camps was soon at work among the ruins clearing bricks, which had a value in rebuilding if unbroken, and piling them up in neat stacks, loading wagons en route to the bunkers, tearing down with pick and crowbar the stumps of walls, breaking up with heavy sledges,
fallen and useless cast iron columns. Hotels early announced their intention of opening in temporary quarters. The St. Francis erected a one-story shelter in Union Square, a building almost classic in its simple rambling design. Hammers were soon ringing upon the frame of a new palace on Leavenworth and Post. A hotel on the west side of Van Ness Avenue, unburned but badly damaged, was soon refitted and opened. Quickly made changes converted popular apartments into
much-needed hostelries. The clearing away of the debris and the opening of badly littered streets in the burned district began to bear fruit. The banks built sheds over their vaults and reopened on their old sites. Business houses followed the example of their more impetuous brethren in the corrugated iron shacks and moved back to their old location. Repairs were started upon the fireproof buildings. Within three months 18 were occupied in part and 35 others were being
rehabilitated. At that time there were also under construction 66 permanent buildings. Building of this class was retarded, however, as no one could be sure where the new fire limits would be established or what the new building ordinances would be, and a further delay was caused by a general inability to adjust fire losses with the insurance companies or to obtain any idea of the course they would pursue. The task of settling these losses was one of monumental
proportions. The estimated risks on San Francisco properties of the various companies was, in round figures, $235 million. Their total capital and surplus, including the foreign assets of some companies, only about $270 million. In some cases the losses were from 6 to 10 times the entire assets of the company involved. In some way and upon some basis these losses had to be met. They seemed to mean ruin to many companies. As the basis of settlement was a cause of wrangling and
haggling and almost interminable delay, no one knew how much he could expect to receive. Finally the lines began to be drawn. About a third of the companies acknowledged their full indebtedness and paid the adjusted loss in every case. Others made various offers to their policy holders, some as low as 33 and a third percent, some 50 percent, and ranging from there up to 75 percent, in rare instances even 90 percent. Some of the companies were simply unable to make
payment in full and did what they could. Others, whether able to pay or not, flatly repudiated all responsibility by leaving the state and carrying on negotiations with all the impudence which is available to a debtor in a foreign country 6,000 miles away. A few American companies, unable to do this, promptly entangled themselves in litigation and so tied up their funds with sufficient red tape as to make access to them very difficult. Some of the companies too had in their policies
various forms of provisions exempting them from liability for losses caused by earthquake and took refuge behind the question as to whether this covered damage caused by fire indirectly brought about by earthquake and so affected compromises of various sorts with their policy holders. Many unkind things were said of these companies, many harsh names applied to them, six bitters, Wilchers and the like, but in all fairness to both sides it must be confessed
that no man can look such astounding losses in the face without trembling. Perhaps the example of San Francisco will give rise to a mode of operation in the future which will make sufficient allowance for all possible contingencies, even the destruction of an entire city. For years the companies operating in San Francisco had feared such a calamity, but they had gambled upon its uncertainty and some of them had recklessly involved themselves in risks far beyond their
ability to pay. Gradually a settlement was affected in the great majority of cases, although numerous suits against certain companies will probably drag themselves through years of court procedure, and landholders began to take steps toward rebuilding. The new building ordinance, which was passed early in June, specified the requirements for the various classes of buildings. Another ordinance was passed, fixing the new fire limits,
so as to include almost all of the burned district. These two measures had been watched for by men eager to rebuild, and after their passage the reconstruction of the city went forward at a rapid pace. Not strictly upon the old lines, but more in the way of a mining town which suddenly wakes to find itself important. Wooden buildings, of from one to four stories, clustered around the frames and shells of the former great office buildings, already under
repairs, and here and there appeared the growing skeletons of the new steel, stone, and brick structures, the work of the new city. The foundations of new and greater skyscrapers appeared. Many brick buildings reared their splendid walls high above the ruins around. Building operations involving an expenditure of over 25 millions were underway. The streets were crowded with wagons hauling great loads of lumber. Orders for whole trainloads of steel were placed
with the manufactories. Carloads of cement were used daily. Six months after the fire, six thousand buildings, which covered half the burned area, had been erected. A new city was rising from the ruins, gradually, with much labor. End of section 9
