SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO AND RESURGAM

By Hubert Howe Bancroft

SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO

There had been some discussion as to improving and beautifying thecity of San Francisco prior to the catastrophe of April 18th. Landscapearchitects had been consulted, proposals considered, and preliminaryplans drawn. Therefore when on that day the city was swept by fire, obviously it was the opportune moment for the requisite changes inthe rebuilding. For a brief period enthusiasm waxed warm. It helpedto mitigate the blow, this fencing with fate. Let the earth shake, andfires burn, we will have here our city, better and more beautiful thanever--and more valuable--an imperial city of steel it shall be, and thuswill we get even with the misfortunes of this day. 

Reform in the rebuilding was needed, whatever should be the scale ofbeauty or utility decided upon. Fifty years ago the elevating influencesof tasteful environment were not so highly appreciated as now, and alllarge cities are fifty years old or more. All large cities, as a rule, had their beginning with narrow, crooked streets and mean houses. InEurope and Asia there are aggregations of humanity whose domiciles haveremained unchanged, one might almost say uncleansed, for hundreds orthousands of years, or ever since their mythical beginning, save onlyfor the covering of the debris of dead centuries. 

These ancient towns, mostly offspring of feudalism, begun under castlewalls and continued after walls and castle had crumbled, as their areaenlarged, with some improvement, perhaps, in the suburban parts, stillretained this patch of mediaevalism, until obliterated by war, or fire, or later by modern progress. Look at Edinburgh, for example. With allits Scotch thrift and neatness, there yet remains the ill-conditionedand once filthy quarter, beside which rise the old-time ten-story housesbuilt into the hillside, while in the modern part of the city in sharpcontrast are broad streets and open squares and fine buildings. 

In America the birth of towns is quite different. Here are noplantings of trembling poverty under lordly walls, but bold pioneering, forecasting agriculture and commerce; no Babel building, with "Go to, let us build here a Cleveland or a Cincinnati, " but rather, "Here forthe present we will abide. " If, however, serfdom and mediaevalism wereabsent in New World town-planting, so also were aestheticism or anyappreciation of the beautiful apart from the useful. Old cities requirereconstruction to make them what modern taste and intelligence demand;settlements in their incipiency are dominated by their sturdy founders, who usually have other things to think about than beauty and adornment. 

In this day of great wealth and wonderful inventions we realize more andmore the value of the city to mankind, and the quality of the city asa means of culture. Cities are not merely marts of commerce; they standfor civility; they are civilization itself. No untried naked Adam inEden might ever pass for a civilized man. The city street is theschool of philosophy, of art, of letters; city society is the home ofrefinement. When the rustic visits the city he puts on his best clothesand his best manners. In their reciprocal relations the city is as menmake it, while from the citizen one may determine the quality of thecity. The atmosphere of the city is an eternal force. Therefore as wevalue the refinement of the human mind, the enlargement of the humanheart, we shall value the city, and strive so to build, and adorn, andpurify, that it may achieve its ultimate endeavor. 

Civic betterment has long been in progress among the more civilizedcommunities through the influence of cultured people capable ofappreciating the commercial as well as the aesthetical value of art. Vast sums have been spent and great results accomplished, but theyare nothing as compared with the work yet to be done--work which willcontinue through the ages and be finished only with the end of time. 

And not only will larger wealth be yet more freely poured out onartistic adornment, but such use of money will be regarded as the bestto which it can be applied. For though gold is not beautiful it can makebeauty, even that beauty which elevates and ennobles, which purifies themind and inspires the soul. Progress is rapid in this direction as inmany others. A breach of good taste in public works will ere longbe adjudged a crime. For already mediaeval mud has ceased to befashionable, and the picturesque in urban ugliness is picturesqueno longer. All the capitals of Europe have had to be made over, Haussmannized, once or several times. Our own national capital we shouldscarcely be satisfied with as its illustrious founder left it. 

It is a hopeful sign amidst some discouraging ones that wealth as asocial factor and measure of merit is losing something of its prestige;that it is no longer regarded by the average citizen as the supremegood, or the pursuit of it the supreme aim in life; there are so manythings worth more than money, so many human aspirations and acquirementsworthy of higher considerations than the inordinate cravings of graftand greed. Hoarded wealth especially is not so worshipful to-day as itwas yesterday, while the beautiful still grows in grace--the beautifuland the useful, compelling improvement, always engendered by improvedenvironment. 

Some cities are born in the purple--rare exceptions to the rule. SanFrancisco is not one of these. St. Petersburg, the city of palaces, ofbroad avenues and granite-faced quays, whose greatest afflictions arethe occasional overflow of the Neva and the dynamite habit, was spokeninto being by a monarch. Necessity stands sponsor for Venice, thebeautiful, with her streets of water-ways and airs of heavenly harmony;while nature herself may claim motherhood of Swedish Stockholm, brilliant with intermingling lakes islands and canals, rocks hills andforests, rendering escape from the picturesque impossible. 

Penn planted his Quakers about 1682, long before many of the presentlarge cities in America were begun, yet Philadelphia was one of the fewsketched in such generous proportions that little change was afterwardsnecessary to make it one of the most spacious of urban commonwealths. With this example before him came in 1791, more than a century later, the father of his country, who permitted his surveyors so injudiciouslyto cover the spot on the Potomac which he had chosen for the capitalcity of the republic as to require much expensive remodeling later. Yetwhat American can drive about Washington now and say it is not worth thecost? Further, as an example, the repeated reconstruction and adornmentof the national capital by Congress are priceless to the whole UnitedStates, the government therein bearing witness to the value of thebeautiful. And if of value on the Potomac, is it not equally so at theportal of the Pacific?

A few other cities there have been which have arisen at the command ofman, potentate or pirate, besides those of the quaker Penn and the tzarPeter--Alexandria, the old and the new, with Constantinople between; thefirst by order of the poor world conqueror, at the hand of the architectDinocrates, two or three centuries before Caesar, Cleopatra, and Antony, but made fit for them and their chariots by streets a hundred feet wide. 

The Danube is the mother of many cities, directing the destiny ofnations, from the Iron Gate to the Golden Horn. Vienna has been madebrilliantly modern since 1858. Beside the sufferings of Constantinopleour little calamity seems tame. Seven times during the last halfcentury the city has been swept by fire, not to mention earthquakes, orpestilence, which on one occasion took with it three hundred thousandlives. Yet all the while it grows in magnificence faster than theinvisible enemies of Mohammed can destroy it. But for these purifyingfires the city would still be one of narrow, filthy streets and vilesmells, reeking with malaria. The Golden Horn of the Bosporus possessesno greater natural advantages than the Golden Gate of San Francisco, noreven so great. The industrial potentialities of the former are not to becompared with those of the latter, while for healthful airs and charmingenvironment we have all that earth can give, and therewith should becontent. 

Cities have been made as the marquis of Bute made Cardiff, byconstructing a dock, and ship canal, and converting the ancient castleinto a modern palace. Many towns have been started as railway stations, but few of them attained importance. Steamboat landings have been morefortunate. Some cities owe their origin to war, some to commerce, andnot a few to manufactures. Fanaticism has played a part, as in India andparts of Africa, where are nestings of half-savage humanity with a touchof the heavenly in the air. Less disciplined are these than zion--towns, but nearer the happiness of insensibility--the white--marbled andjeweled Taj Mahal, Agra on the Jumna, and Delhi, making immortalJehan the builder, with his pearl mosque and palace housing thethirty-million-dollar peacock throne; Benares, on the Ganges, a seriesof terraces and long stone steps extending upward from the holy water, while rising yet higher in the background are temples, towers, mosques, and palaces, all in oriental splendor. Algiers, likewise, an amphitheatre in form, might give San Francisco lessons in terraceconstruction, having hillsides covered with them, the scene made yetmore striking by the dazzling white of the houses. After the placebecame French, the streets were widened and arcades established in thelower part. 

In fact, the French believe in the utility of beauty, and in Paris atleast they make it pay. The entire expenses of the municipal government, including police and public works, are met by the spendings of visitors. To their dissolute monarchs were due such creations as the Tuileries, the Louvre, and Versailles. Have we not dissolute millionaires enough togive us at least one fine city?

London and Paris stand out in bold contrast, the one for utility, theother for beauty. Both are adepts in their respective arts. The cityproper of London has better buildings and cleaner streets than when St. Paul was erected; otherwise it is much the same. Elsewhere in London, however, are spacious parks and imposing palaces, with now and thena fine bit of something to look out upon, as the bridges of themurky Thames, the Parliament houses, the Abbey, Somerset house, andPiccadilly, perhaps. Children may play at the Zoo, while grown-ups sitin hired chairs under the trees. 

Three times London was destroyed by the plague, and five times by fire, that of 1666 lasting four days, and covering thrice the area of the SanFrancisco conflagration; yet it was rebuilt better than before in threeand a half years. Always the city is improved in the rebuilding; howmuch, depends upon the intelligence and enterprise of the people. 

Paris is brilliant with everything that takes the eye--palaces, arches, Bon Marche shops, arcades, colonnades, great open spaces adorned withstatues, forest parks, elysian driveways, and broad boulevards cutthrough mediaeval quarters in every direction, as well for air asfor protection from the canaille blockaded in the narrow streets. SanFrancisco may have some canaille of her own to boast of one of thesedays; canaille engendered from the scum of Europe and Asia, and educatedat our expense for our destruction. Over and over, these two cities, each a world metropolis, have been renovated and reconstructed, the workin fact going on continuously. 

For some of the most effective of our urban elaborations we must go backto the first of city builders of whom we have knowledge. The Assyriansmade terraces, nature teaching them. On the level plain building groundwas raised forty feet for effect. Like all artists of precivilization, the Assyrians placed adornment before convenience, as appeared inNineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates. At Thebes andPalmyra it was the same, their palaces of alabaster, if one choosesto believe what is said, covering, some of them, a hundred acres. The fashion now is to build upward rather than outward. Besides thisalabaster acreage there are to be taken into account the pyramids, artificial mountains, and endless towertowns, supposed to be animprovement on whatever existed before their time. Around theMediterranean and over India way were once hundreds of charming placeslike the Megara suburb of Carthage and the amphitheatre of Rhodes, prolific in classic art and architecture, precious gifts of the gods. 

But before all other gods or gifts comes Athens, where the men were asgods and the gods very like the men. Encircling the Acropolis hill--mostancient cities had their central hill--the city owes its grandeur to themany temples dedicated to the Olympian deities by the men who madethem, made both deities and temples, that long line of philosophers thesublimity of whose thoughts civilization fed on and found expression inthe genius of now and then a Pericles or a Phidias. 

Twenty times Rome suffered, each time worse than ever befell an Americancity, the debris of destruction overspreading her sacred soil somefathoms deep, yet all the while mistress of the world. 

The Moors in Spain reconstructed and embellished many cities, andbuilt many entire. To them Spain owes her finest specimens of art andarchitecture, as Seville, Cordova, and the Alhambra. In Naples themediaeval still overshadows the modern. The city needs cleansing, thoughshe flourishes in her filth and volcanic belchings. Nice, likeParis, plans to please her guests. Berlin was a little late with herreconstructive work; the town walls were not removed till 1866. Thoughdating from 1190, Glasgow is practically modern, having been severaltimes renovated by fire. Antwerp, burned in 1871, was quickly rebuilt. The Hague is charming as the city of peace. Munich, on the Isar, isevery day drifting into the beautiful, not to say aesthetical. 

Pekin is a city sui generis, with its Kin-Ching, or prohibited city, sacred to royalty; its Hwang-Ching, or imperial city, exclusively forcourt officials; its Tartar division and Chinese division, all completedaccording to the grand khan and Confucius. Happy Celestials! There isnothing more to be done, nothing to reconstruct, nothing to improve; itstands alone, the only city in all the world that is absolutely finishedand perfect. But of a truth our public works sink into insignificancebeside those of the ancient barbarians, the great wall and canal ofChina, the pyramids of Egypt, and the brilliant cities of Assyria andPalmyra. 

The cities of Australia--Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide--in common with allthose of the British colonies, are laid out along liberal lines, withbroad streets, parks, public squares, and beautiful modern buildings, requiring little change for many years to come. The English part ofCalcutta is a city of palaces, built from the spoils of subjugation. Yokohama was a small fishing station when Commodore Perry called therein 1854. 

In the New World as in the Old, from John Cotton to Joseph Smith, religion with cupidity inspires. One William Blaxton in 1630 lived whereBoston now is, and invited thither Winthrop and his colonists. Whenbanished from Massachusetts, Roger Williams stepped ashore on the bankof the Seekonk, on a rock where is now Providence. The French built afort where Marquette camped in 1673, and there is now Chicago. Buffalowas a military post in 1812. St. Paul was an Indian trading stationprior to 1838. The building of Fort Washington was followed by settlersand Cincinnati was begun. Henry Hudson touched at Manhattan island in1609, and the Dutch following, New York was the result. Brigham Young, journeying westward, came to the Great Salt Lake, where, as he told hisfollowers, he was instructed by divine revelation to plant the City ofthe Saints. It proved more permanent than might have been expected, aszion--cities usually are quite ephemeral affairs. 

Boston, the beneficial, swept by fires, smallpox, witchcraft, quakerism, snowstorms, earthquakes, and proslavery riots, still lives to meditateupon her own superiority and to instruct mankind. Much attention hasbeen given of late in Boston and suburban towns to artistic effectin street architecture. Until recently New York has given but littlethought to pleasing effects. Broadway was not broad, and Fifth Avenuewas not striking. Of late, however, the city has become imperial, housesparks and driveways being among the finest in the world. New Orleanshas survived at least a dozen great yellow-fever crises since 1812, population meanwhile increasing twentyfold. After the enforcedconstruction of the levee, the idea came to some one that the top ofit would make a fine driveway, which in due time was extended from theriver and bayous to the lake, thus becoming the most attractive featureof the place. Though not without natural attractions, Chicago was notmade by or for her things of beauty. Beginning with low wooden housesalong dirty streets, transformations were continued until systems ofparks and boulevards with elegant edifices came into view, --whichshows that, however material the beginning of American towns may be, ifprosperity comes the aesthetical is sure to come with it. A contrast toChicago may be found in St. Louis, for a long time trading-post townand city, which would be of more importance now were her people of adifferent quality. Even her chronic calamities, tornadoes, floods, andepidemics, fail to rouse her energies, so that Chicago, startinglater and under more adverse circumstances, outstripped her in everyparticular. Cleveland was laid out for a fine city, so that as she grewlittle alteration was found necessary. The streets are wide, 80 to 120feet--Superior Street 132 feet--and so abundant is the foliage, largelymaple, that it is called the Forest city. 

As an instance of modern aesthetic town construction one might citeDenver, a western Yankee metropolis of ultrarefined men and women fromdown Boston way, breathing a nomenclature never so freely used beforeamong mid-continent mountains, streets, schoolhouses, parks, andgardens--all alive with the names of New England poets, philosophers, and statesmen. Scarcely yet turned the half century in age, few suchcharming cities as Denver have been made with fewer mistakes. 

San Francisco at her birth and christening had for godfather neitherprince nor priest, nor any cultured coterie. The sandy peninsula, onwhose inner edge, at the cove called Yerba Buena, stood some hide andtallow stores and fur depots which drew to them the stragglers thatpassed that way, was about as ill-omened a spot as the one designatedby the snake-devouring eagle perched upon an island cactus as the placewhere the wandering Aztecs should rest and build their city of Mexico. San Francisco's godparents were but common humanity, traders andadventurers, later gold-seekers and pot politicians, intelligent, bold, and for the most part honest; few intending long to remain, few dreamingof the great city to arise here; few caring how the town should bemade, if one were made at all. When was improvised an alcalde after theMexican fashion, and two boards of aldermen were established after theNew York fashion, and the high officials saw that they could now andthen pick up a twenty-five-dollar fee for deeding a fifty vara lot, ifso be they had on hand some fifty varas, they forthwith went to work tomake them by drawing lines in front of the cove and intersecting them atright angles by lines running up over the hills, giving their own names, with a sprinkling of the names of bear-flag heroes, not forgetting theusual Washington and Jackson, leaving in the centre a plaza, the covein front to be filled in later. The streets were narrow, dusty in summerand miry in winter. Spanish-American streets are usually thirty-sixfeet wide. Winding trails led from the Presidio to the Mission, andfrom Mission and Presidio to the cove. This was the beginning of SanFrancisco, which a merciful providence has five times burned, theoriginal shacks and their successors, the last time thoroughly, givingthe inhabitants the opportunity to build something better. 

All this time the matchless bay and inviting shores awaited the comingof those who should aid in the accomplishment of their high destiny. Situated on the Pacific relatively as is New York on the Atlantic, thenatural gateway with its unique portal between the old East and the newWest, the only outlet for the drainage of thousands of square miles ofgarden lands and grain fields, a harbor in the world's center of highestdevelopment, with no other to speak of within five hundred miles oneither side; dominator of the greatest of oceans, waters more spaciousthan those of Rio, airs of purple haze sweeter than those of Italy, hills islands and shore lines more sublime than any of Greece--all thistime these benefactions of nature have awaited the appreciation andaction of those who for their own benefit and the benefit of the nationwould utilize them. Are they here now, these new city-builders, or mustSan Francisco wait for another generation?

They must be men of broad minds, for this is no ordinary problem to beworked out. It is certain that in the near or distant future there willbe here a very large and very wealthy city, probably the largest andwealthiest in the world. The whole of the peninsula will be covered, andas much more space beyond it, and around the bay shores to and beyondCarquinez strait. Viewed in the light of history and progressionalphenomena, this is the only rational conclusion. 

Always the march of intellectual development has been from east to west, the old East dying as the new West bursts into being, until now west iseast, and the final issue must here be met. In the advent and progressof civilization there was first the Mediterranean, then the Atlantic, and then the Pacific, the last the greatest of all. What else ispossible? Where else on this planet is man to go for his ultimateachievement?

Conviction comes slowly in such cases, and properly so. Yet inforecasting the future from the light of the past cavilers can scarcelygo farther afield than our worshipful forbears, who less than a centuryago, on the floor of the United States congress, decried as absurdsettlement beyond the Missouri, ridiculed buying half a continent ofworthless Northwest wilderness, thanked God for the Rocky mountainbarrier to man's presumption, scouted at a possible wagon road, not tosay railway, across the continent, lamented the unprofitable theft ofCalifornia, and cursed the Alaska purchase as money worse than thrownaway. In view of what has been and is, can anyone call it a Utopiandream to picture the Pacific bordered by an advanced civilization withcities more brilliant than any of the ancient East, more opulent thanany of the cultured West?

Rio de Janeiro! what have the Brazilians been doing these lastdecades? Decapitating politically dear Dom Pedro, true patriot, thoughemperor--he came to me once in my library, pouring out his soul forhis beloved Brazil--they abolished slavery, formed a republic, andmodernized the city. They made boulevards and water drives, the finestin the world. They cut through the heart of the old town a new AvenidaCentral, over a mile in length and one hundred and ten feet wide, liningit on either side with palatial business houses and costly residences, paving the thoroughfare with asphalt and adorning it with artisticfixtures for illumination, the street work being completed in eighteenmonths. Strangling in their incipiency graft and greed, after kindlydismissing Dom Pedro with well-filled pockets for home, these Portuguesebrought out their money and spent hundreds of millions in improvingtheir city, with hundreds of millions left which they have yet to spend. Thus did these of the Latin race, whom we regard as less Bostonian thanourselves. 

With this brief glance at other cities of present and other times, andhaving in view the part played by environment in the trend of refininginfluences, and remembering further, following the spirit of the times, that nothing within the scope of human power to accomplish is too vast, or too valuable, or too advanced for the purpose, it remains with thepeople of San Francisco to determine what they will do. 

It is not necessary to speak of the city's present or futurerequirements, as sea water on the bills, and fresh water with electricpower from the Sierra; sea wall, docks, and water-way drives; widenedstreets and winding boulevards; embellished hillsides and hilltops; baytunnels and union railway station; bay and ocean boating and bathing;arches and arcades; park strips or boulevards cutting through slums, andthe nests of filthy foreigners, bordered on either side by structurescharacteristic of their country--all this and more will come to thosewho shall have the matter in charge. The pressing need now is a generalplan for all to work to; this, and taking the reconstruction of the cityout of politics and placing it in the hands of responsible business men. 

If the people and government of the United States will consider for amoment the importance to the nation of a well-fortified and imposingcity and seaport at San Francisco bay; the importance to the army andnavy, to art and science, to commerce and manufactures; of the effect ofa city with its broad surroundings, at once elegant and impressive, upon the nations round the Pacific and on all the world, there should belittle trouble in its accomplishment. 

And be it remembered that whatever San Francisco, her citizens and herlovers, do now or neglect to do in this present regeneration willbe felt for good or ill to remotest ages. Let us build and rebuildaccordingly, bearing in mind that the new San Francisco is to standforever before the world as the measure of the civic taste andintelligence of her people. 

RESURGAM

The question has been oftener asked than answered, why Chicago shouldhave grown in wealth and population so much faster than St. Louis, orNew Orleans, or San Francisco. It is not enough to point to her positionon the lakes, the wide extent of contributory industries, and theconvergence of railways; other cities have at their command as greatnatural advantages with like limitless opportunity. As to location, citysites are seldom chosen by convention, or the fittest spots favored. Chicagoans assert that a worse place than theirs for a city cannot befound on the shores of Lake Michigan. New York would be better upthe Hudson, London in Bristol channel, and San Francisco at Carquinezstrait. Indeed, it was by a Yankee trick that the sand-blown peninsulasecured the principal city of the Pacific. 

It happened in this way. General Vallejo, Mexican comandante residing atSonoma, upon the arrival of the new American authorities said tothem: "Let it bear the name of my wife, Francesca, and let it be thecommercial and political metropolis of your Pacific possessions, and Iwill give you the finest site in the world for a city, with state-houseand residences built and ready for your free occupation. " And so it wasagreed, and the general made ready for the coming of the legislature. 

Meanwhile, to the American alcalde, who had established his rule atYerba Buena, a trading hamlet in the cove opposite the island of thatname and nucleus of the present San Francisco, came Folsom, UnitedStates army captain and quartermaster, to whom had been given certainlots of land in Yerba Buena, and said: "Why not call the town SanFrancisco, and bring hither ships which clear from various ports forSan Francisco bay?" And so it was done; the fine plans of the Mexicangeneral fell to the ground, and the name Benicia was given to what hadbeen Francesca. A year or two later, with five hundred ships of thegold-seekers anchored off the cove, not all the men and money in thecountry could have moved the town from its ill-chosen location. 

Opportunity is much the same in various times and places, whetherfortuitous or forced. More men make opportunity than are made byit, particularly among those who achieve great success. Land beingunavailable, Venice the beautiful was built upon the water, while theHollanders manage to live along the centuries below sea level. 

The builders of Chicago possessed varied abilities of a high order, notleast among which was the faculty of working together. They realizedat an early date that the citizens and the city are one; whatever ofadvantage they might secure to their city would be returned to them bytheir city fourfold. 

"Oh, I do love this old town!" one of them was heard to exclaim as, returning from the station, his cab paddled through the slushy streetsunder a slushy sky. He was quite a young man, yet he had made a largefortune there. "It's no credit to us making money here, " he added, "wecouldn't help it. " So citizenized, what should we expect if not unityof effort, a willingness to efface self when necessary, and with intenseindividualism to subordinate individual ideas and feelings to the publicgood? In such an atmosphere rises quickly a new city from the ashes ofthe old, or a fairy creation like the Columbian Exposition. Imagine thepeninsula of San Francisco covered by a real city equal in beauty andgrandeur to the Chicago sham city of 1893. 

The typical West-American city builder has money--created, notinherited, wealth. But possession merely is not enough; he gives. Yet possessing and giving are not enough; he works, constantly andintelligently. The power which wealth gives is often employed inretarding progress when the interests of the individual seem to clashwith those of the commonwealth; it is always lessened by the absence ofrespect for its possessor. But when wealth, intelligence, honesty, andenthusiasm join hands with patriotism there must be progress. 

Time and place do not account for all of Chicago's phenomenal growth, nor do the distance from the world's centres of population and industry, the comparative isolation, and the evil effects of railway dominationaccount wholly for San Francisco's slow growth toward the end of thecentury. For, following the several spasms of development incident tothe ages of gold, of grain, and of fruit, and the advent of the railwayincubus, California for a time betook herself to rest, which indeed waslargely paralysis. Then, too, those who had come first and cleared theground, laying the foundations of fortunes, were passing away, andtheir successors seemed more ready to enjoy than to create. But with theopening of a new century all California awoke and made such progress aswas never made before. 

Coming to the late catastrophe, it was well that too much dependence wasnot placed on promises regarding rehabilitation made during the firstflush of sympathy; the words were nevertheless pleasant to the ear atthe time. The insurance companies would act promptly and liberally, taking no advantage of any technicality; congress would remit duties onbuilding material for a time, and thus protect the city-builders fromthe extortions of the material men; the material men roundly assertedthat there should be no extortion, no advance in prices, but, on thecontrary, all other work should be set aside and precedence given toSan Francisco orders; eastern capitalists were to cooperate with thegovernment in placing at the portal of the Pacific a city which shouldbe a credit to the nation and a power in the exploitation of the greatocean. 

None of these things came to pass. Indeed it was too much to expectof poor human nature until selfishness and greed are yet furthereliminated. Never to be forgotten was the superb benevolence which sopromptly and so liberally showered comforts upon the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the houseless until it was feared that the people mightbecome pauperized. But that was charity, whereas "business is business. "

The insurance companies, themselves stricken nigh unto death, paused inthe generous impulse to pay quickly and in full and let the new steelcity arise at once in all its glory. They began to consider, then totemporize, and finally, with notable exceptions, to evade by everymeans in their power the payment of their obligations. The loss andthe annoyance thus inflicted upon the insured were increased by theuncertainty as to what they should finally be able to do. Congresslikewise paused to consider the effect the proposed remission of dutieswould have on certain members and their lumber and steel friends. Thus ahundred days passed by, and with some relief half a hundred more. 

Outside capital was still ready, but San Franciscans seemed to havesufficient for present needs. Capital is conservative and Californiansindependent. Even from the government they never asked much, though wellaware that since the gold discovery California has given a hundredfoldmore than she has received. Her people were accustomed to take careof themselves, and managed on the whole to get along. A generalconflagration was not a new thing. Four times during gold-digging daysSan Francisco was destroyed by fire, and each time new houses were goingup before the ashes were cold. True, there was not so much to burn inthose days, but it was all the people had; there was not so much torebuild, and there were no insurance companies to keep them back. SanFrancisco would be grateful, and it would be a graceful thing for thegovernment to do, to keep away the sharks until the people should gettheir heads above water again, not as charity, but for the general good. The exaction of duties on lumber from British Columbia was simplytaking money from the San Francisco builders and thrusting it into theplethoric pockets of the Puget Sound people, who at once advanced theirprices so as seriously to retard building and render it in many casesimpossible. Even as I write word comes of another advance in the priceof lumber, owing to the apathy at Washington and elsewhere, after twicebefore raising the price to the highest limit. 

Meanwhile, in and around the burned district, traffic never ceased. Theinflow of merchandise from all parts continued. Upon the ashes of theirformer stores, and scattered about the suburbs, business men establishedthemselves wherever they could find a house to rent or a lot to buildupon. Shacks were set up in every quarter, and better structures of oneor two stories were permitted, subject to removal by order of thecity at any time they should appear to stand in the way of permanentimprovement. Some business houses were extinguished, but other andlarger ones arose in their stead. Rebuilding was slow because of thedebris to be removed and the more substantial character of the permanentstructures to be erected. 

Around the bay continues the hum of industry. The country teems withprosperity. Never were the services of the city needed so much as now. There are no financial disturbances; money is easy, but more will berequired soon; claims are not pressed in the courts. Any San Franciscobonds thrown upon the market are quickly taken by local capitalists. Customs receipts are larger than ever before, and there is no shrinkageat the clearing house. Land values remain much the same; in somequarters land has depreciated, in other places it has increased inprice; buyers stand ready to take advantage of forced sales. 

Labor is scarce in both city and country; wages are high and advancing. Five times the present number of mechanics can find profitableemployment in the city, and it will be so for years to come, as there ismuch to be done. 

With the advance of the labor wage and of lumber, rents are advanced. Mills and factories are running at their full capacity. Orchards andgrain fields are overflowing, and harvesters are found with difficulty. Merchants' sales were never so large nor profits so good. Prices ofeverything rule high, with an upward tendency, the demand at the shopsbeing for articles of good quality. Oriental rugs and diamonds areconspicuously in evidence. Insurers are paying their losses to someextent, and many people find themselves in possession of more readymoney than they ever had before. They are rich, though they may have nohouse to sleep in. It is a momentary return to the flush times of theearly fifties, though upon a broader and more civilized scale, andwithout their uncertainty or their romance. 

In view of the facts it seems superfluous to discuss questions regardingthe future of San Francisco. That is to say, such questions as arepropounded by chronic croakers: Will the city be rebuilt? If so, will itbe a city of fine buildings? Will not the fear of earthquakes drive awaycapital and confine reconstruction to insignificance?

Let us hasten to assure our friends that the day of doom has not yetcome to this city; that the day of doom never comes to any city for soslight a cause, or for any cause short of a rain of brimstone andfire, as in the case of Sodom. Whether of imperial steel or of imperialshacks; whether calamities come in the form of such temblores as arehere met occasionally in a mild form, or in the far more destructiveform of hurricanes, floods, pestilence, sun--striking, and lightning, socommon at the east and elsewhere, and from which San Francisco is whollyfree, there will here forever be a city, a large, powerful, and wealthycity. 

Every part of the earth is subject at any time to seismic disturbance, and no one can truthfully say that California is more liable to anothersuch occurrence than any other part of the United States. Indeed, itshould be less so, the earth's crust here having settled itself, let ushope, to some centuries of repose. Never before has anything like thisbeen known on our Pacific seaboard. Never before, so far as historyor tradition or the physical features of the country can show, hasCalifornia experienced a serious earthquake shock--that is to say, one attended by any considerable loss of life or property. Nor was theearthquake of April last so terrible as it may seem to some. Apart fromthe fire there was not so very much of it, and no great damage was done. The official figures are: 266 killed by falling walls, 177 by fire, 7 shot, and 2 deaths by ptomaine poisoning--452 in all. The propertydamage by the earthquake is scarcely worth speaking of, being no morethan happens elsewhere in the world from other causes nearly every day;it would have been quickly made good and little thought of it but forthe conflagration that followed. 

Compare San Francisco casualties with those of other cities. Two hundredand sixty-six deaths as the result of the greatest calamity that everhappened in California! Not to mention the floods, fires, and cyclonescommon to St. Louis, Chicago, Galveston, and all mid-continent America, the yellow fever at New Orleans and along the southern shore, or the25, 000 deaths from cholera in New York and Philadelphia in less thantwenty-five years, or the loss of 1, 000 ships on the Atlantic coastin the hurricane of August, 1873-not to mention the many extraordinarydisplays of vindictive nature, take some of the more commonplacecalamities incident to most cities except those along the Pacific coast. 

Every year more people and more property are destroyed by lightning, floods, and wind-storms on the Atlantic side of the Rocky mountainsthan are affected by earthquakes on the Pacific side in a hundred years. Every year more people drop dead from sunstrokes in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other eastern cities than are killed by earthquakesin San Francisco in a thousand years, so far as we may know. Yet men andwomen continue to live and build houses in those cities without thoughtof running away. 

Nor can California claim the whole even of United States earthquakes. In1755 all New England was shaken up, and Boston housetops and walls wereset dancing, the horror coming in "with a roaring noise, like that ofthunder, " as the record has it, "and then a swell like the roaring sea";and yet, and notwithstanding the great fire later, the city still showsvitality, the people are not afraid, and property is valuable. And so inregard to New York and London and all cities. In Missouri, in 1811, theearth shook almost continuously for several months along a stretch ofthree hundred miles, throwing up prairies into sand hills and submergingforests. Chicago and New York, and all the country between, were visitedby earthquakes in 1870. Then there are Virginia and the Carolinas, Alabama Texas and Colorado--there is not a state in the union that hasnot had a touch of well-authenticated earthquakings at some time in itshistory. 

To one who knows the people and the country, the people with theirmagnificent energy and ability, their indomitable will and theirsplendid courage; the country with its boundless natural wealth andillimitable potentialities; the city, key to the Golden Gate, whichopens the East to the West and West to East; the bay, mistress primeval, through which flows the drainage of six hundred miles in length ofinterior valley, the garden of the world; to one who has here lived andloved, assisting in this grand upbuilding, thoughts of relinquishment, of lesser possibilities, of meaner efforts, do not come. 

What would you? If there is a spot on earth where life and property aresafer, where men are more enterprising and women more intelligent andrefined, where business is better or fortunes more safely or surelymade, the world should know of it. The earth may tremble now and then, but houses may be built which cannot be destroyed, fires are liableto occur wherever material exists that will burn, but fires may becontrolled. 

As for the city, its life and destiny, there is this to be said. The fewsquare miles of buildings burned were not San Francisco, they were onlybuildings. Were every house destroyed and every street obliterated, there would still remain the city, with its commerce, its manufactures, its civilization, a spiritual city if you like, yet with material valuesincapable of destruction--an atmosphere alive with cheerful industry;also land values, commercial relations, financial connections, skilledlaborers and professional men, and a hundred other like souls of things. In a thousand ideas and industries, though the ground is but ashes, thespirit of progress still hovers over the hills awaiting incarnation. Dependent on this pile of ashes, or the ghosts thereof, are fleets ofvessels sailing every sea; farms and factories along shore and back toand beyond the Sierra; merchants and mechanics here and elsewhere; minesand reclamation systems, and financial relations the world over. 

The question now is not as to the existence or permanency of a centralcity on the shores of San Francisco bay. That fact was establishedbeyond peradventure with the building of the bay, and nothing short ofuniversal cataclysm can affect it. It is rather to the quality ofthat city that the consideration of the present generation shouldbe directed. The shell has been injured, but the soul of the cityis immortal; and in the restoration it would be strange if ourtwentieth-century young men cannot do better in artistic city buildingthan the sturdy gold-seekers and their successors of half a century ago. 

If history and human experiences teach anything; if from the past we mayjudge somewhat of the future, we might, if we chose, glance back at thehistory of cities, and note how, when the Mediterranean was the greatestof seas, Carthage and Venice were the greatest of cities; how, when theAtlantic assumed sway, Ghent, Seville, and London each in turn cameto the front; or how, following the inevitable, as civilization takespossession of the Pacific, the last, the largest in its native wealth aswell as in its potentialities the richest of all, it is not difficultto see that the chief city, the mistress of this great ocean, must bemistress of the world. 

But this is not all. A great city on this great bay, beside thisgreatest of oceans, centrally situated, through whose Golden Gate passthe waters drained from broad fertile valleys, a harbor without anequal, with some hundreds of miles of water front ready for athousand industries, where ocean vessels may moor beside factories andwarehouses, with a climate temperate, equable, healthful, and brewed forindustry; a city here, ugly or beautiful, fostered or oppressed, givenover to the sharks of speculation or safeguarded as one of the brightestjewels of the nation, is an inexorable necessity; its destiny isassured; and all the powers of graft and greed cannot prevail againstit. It is a military necessity, for here will be stationed the chiefdefenses and defenders of the nation's western border. It is anindustrial necessity, for to this city three continents and a thousandislands will look for service. As the Spanish war first revealed toAmerica her greatness, so the possible loss of San Francisco quicklydemonstrates the necessity of her existence to the nation. It is aneducational necessity, whence the dusky peoples around the Pacific maydraw from the higher civilization to the regeneration of the world. Inthe University of California, standing opposite the Golden Gate, withits able and devoted president and professors, this work is already wellestablished, the results from which will prove too vast and far-reachingfor our minds at present to fathom. 

And in all the other many byways of progress the results of thelast half-century of effort on our sand-dune peninsula are not lost. Earthquakes cannot destroy them; fire cannot burn them. San Franciscogrew from the Yerba Buena hamlet in sixty years. In a new and untriedfield city-building then was something of an experiment; yet populationgrew to half a million, and wealth in proportion; and never wasimprovement so marked as just before the fire. With wealth andpopulation but little impaired, and with the ground cleared for newconstructive work, there would be nothing strange in a city here ofthree or four millions of people in another sixty years. Actual progresshas scarcely been arrested. We are rudely hustled and awake to higherand severer effort. No house or store or factory or business will berebuilt or established except in a larger and more efficient way, andthat is progress. 

In and around the city are already more people than were here before thefire, and soon there will be twice as many, for from every quarterare coming mechanics and business men, attracted by high wages and thematerial requirements of the city. Hundreds of millions of money fromthe insurance companies and from local and outside capitalists arefinding safe and profitable investment. And this is only the beginning. 

San Francisco is already a large manufacturing city; it will be manytimes larger. Around its several hundred miles of bay shore and up theCarquinez strait will be thousands of industries to-day not dreamed of, and all ministering to the necessities of the thousand cities ofthe Pacific. There is no place in the world better adapted formanufacturing. All sorts of raw material can be gathered here from everyquarter of the earth at small cost, lumber, coal, iron, wool, and cottonfor a hundred factories, and mineral ores for reduction. Likewise laborat a minimum wage, congress and the lords of labor permitting. Add tothese advantages a climate cool in summer and warm in winter, wherework can be comfortably carried on every day in the year, and a moredesirable spot cannot be found. 

Industrially San Francisco should dominate the Pacific, its firm landand islands, upon whose borders is to be found more natural wealth, mineral and agricultural, than upon those of all the other waters of theearth combined, and the exploitation of which has scarcely begun. Herein abundance are every mineral and metal, rich and varied soils, allfruits and native products, fuels and forests, for some of which we mayeven thank earthquakes and kindred volcanic forces. Manufactures compelcommerce, and the commerce of the Pacific will rule the world. Theessentials of commerce are here. Intelligence and enterprise are hereand open to enlargement. 

For the late severe loss the city may find some compensations--as thecleansing effect of fire; much filth, material and moral, has beendestroyed. Yet one is forced to observe that the precincts of Satanretain their land values equal to any other locality. The greatestblessing of the destruction, however, is in the saving from a lifeof luxury and idleness our best young men and women, who will inconsequence enter spheres of usefulness, elevating and ennobling, thusexercising a beneficial influence on future generations. Already workhas become the fashion; snobbism is in disgrace; and some elements orinfluences of the simple life thus reestablished will remain. 

When all has been said that may be regarding the present and the future, regarding purposes and potentialities, the simple fact remains that thecity of San Francisco will be what people make of it, neither more norless. The fruitful interior and the pine-clad Sierra; the great ocean, its islands and opulent shores, with their fifty thousand miles oflittoral frontage, and every nation thereon awaiting a higher culturethan any which has yet appeared; the Panama canal, the world's highway, linking east and west, all these will be everything or nothing tothose who sit at the Golden Gate, according as they themselves shalldetermine. For the glory of a city is not altogether in its marblepalaces and structures of steel, though these have their value, butin its citizens, its men and women, its men of ability, of unity, ofenergy, and public spirit, and its brave and true women. And has notthis city these? Surely, if in the late catastrophe all that is noble, benevolent, and self-effacing did not appear in every movement of ourpeople, then no such qualities exist anywhere. The manner in which theyrose to meet the emergency argues well for the city's future. Before thecalamity was fairly upon them they sprang to grapple it and ward it offso far as possible. It was owing to them and to the military that thecity was saved from starvation, anarchy, and disease. It also speakswell for men so severely stricken to be the first to send aid to asimilarly stricken city, the metropolis of Pacific South America. 

All this leads us to the highest hopes for the future. What we need mostof all is a centralization of mechanical industries around the shores ofthis bay. Let everything that is made be made here, and the requirementsof all the peoples facing this ocean here be met. The Panama canal willbe a blessing or a curse to California in proportion as she rises tothe occasion and makes opportunities. Manufactures and commerce tell thewhole story. Let us have the city beautiful by all means--it will pay;Paris makes it pay; but we must have the useful in any event--this, anda municipality with its several parts subordinated to a general scheme. What we can do without is demagogism, with its attendant laborwrangles, and all the fraud, lying, and hypocrisy incident to a too freegovernment. We want a city superior to any other in beauty, as well asin utility, and it will pay these United States well to see that wehave it. If we build no better than before, we gain nothing by this firewhich has cost many a heartache. 

The game of the gods is in our hands; shall we play it worthily? Twodecades of inaction at this juncture, like those which followed theadvent of the overland railway, would decide the fate of the cityadversely for the century, and the effect of it would last for tencenturies. When the shores of the Pacific are occupied as the shores ofthe Atlantic now are, when all around the vast arena formed by America, Asia, and Australia are great nations of wealth and culture, withhundreds of Bostons and Baltimores, of Londons and Liverpools, the greatAmerican republic would scarcely be satisfied with only a porter's lodgeat her western gateway. 

It is not much to say that the new city will be modern and up to date, with some widened streets and winding boulevards, gardens banging tothe hillside, parks with lakes and cascades, reservoirs of sea water onevery hilltop; public work and public service, street cars telephonesand lighting being of the best. Plans for such changes were preparedbefore the fire; they can be extended and carried out with greaterfacility since the ground has been cleared from obstructions. All thisand more may easily be done if the government can be made to see wherethe true interests of the people lie, to regard a west-coast metropoliswith an eye for something of beauty as well as of utility, an eye whichcan see utility in beauty, and withal an eye of pride in possession. Apaltry two or three hundred millions judiciously expended here by thegovernment would make a city which would ever remain the pride of thewhole people and command the admiration and respect of all the nationsaround this great ocean. 

Of what avail are art and architecture if they may not be employed in acause like this? Here is an opportunity which the world has never beforewitnessed. With limitless wealth, with genius of as high an order asany that has gone before, with the stored experiences of all ages andnations--what better use can be made of it all than to establish at thenation's western gate a city which shall be the initial point of a neworder of development? Away back in the days of Palmyra and Thebesthe rulers of those cities seemed to understand it, if the people didnot--that is to say, the value of embellishment. And had we now but oneAmerican Nebuchadnezzar we might have a Babylon at our Pacific seaport. For a six-months' world's fair any considerable city can get from thegovernment five or ten millions. And why not? There's politics in it. Can we not have some of "those politics" for a respectable west-coastcity? Would it not be economy to spend some millions on an industrialmetropolis which should be a permanent world's fair for theenlightenment of the Pacific? The nation has made its capital beautiful, and so established the doctrine that art, architecture, and beautifulenvironment have a value above ugly utility. May we not hope forsomething a little out of the common for the nation's chief seaport onthe Pacific, a little fresh gilding for our Golden Gate?

THE END