USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > A history of the city of San Francisco; and incidentally of the state of California > Part 21
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emphatic, and showed such an immense preponderance of feeling in favor of the Union in the metropolis, that the policy of California and Oregon was decided. Six days later, the legislature adopted resolutions in favor of the Union; but it had previously shown its feeling on the same side by electing James McDougal a Union dem- ocrat to succeed Dr. Gwin as federal senator. The last political duel in which a northerner was shot by a southerner in California soon followed and resulted in the death of C. W. Piercy, a Union man, shot by Daniel Showalter, a secessionist. At the election in September, San Francisco gave more than twice as many votes for the republican ticket as for the two democratic tickets
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together. The republican party carried the state for the first time, electing Leland Stanford governor. As a consequence of the war, the southern overland mail was abandoned, and a daily overland mail was established by way of Salt Lake. By the completion of the tele- graph across the continent, important changes were made in mercantile business, banking, journalism and social life.
SEC. 166. 1862. For eight years from 1853 there had been a steady decline in the yield of the precious metals on the Pacific slope, until in 1861 the exporta- tion had fallen to forty million dollars, a decrease of two million dollars a year on an average; but now it began to rise again. The Comstock lode in 1862 turned out six million dollars, and gave promise of doing far better in the future. A number of mills were at work on its ores, and experience in extracting silver had made enough progress to enable the trustees of the mining companies to form a definite idea of the business. The general opinion among them was one of high satisfaction with the profits of working the better quality of ores. The method of reduction by amalgamation in iron pans holding a ton or two of pulverized ore was new; and though there was a large waste, varying from one third to one half of the precious metal, yet as the working was expeditious, while the other processes were slow and more costly, it was maintained, while all attempts to reduce in wooden barrels like those of Freiberg, or in Mexican heaps like mortar beds, were abandoned. The production of silver having been three times as large as
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in the previous year, with confidence of a still larger yield in the near future, there was an active demand for the stocks of the silver companies, and their sale now became a prominent feature in the city's business, to which it gave a highly speculative tendency. The San Francisco stock and exchange board was organized to accommodate the dealers in the shares of silver mining companies. Although the gold mines of California pro- duced four times as much as the Comstock lode, they had a very inferior place as spheres of investment in the general opinion, partly because most of the gold inines were worked on a relatively small scale, and re- quired the daily attendance of the owners, so that there would have been little profit for companies organized in the metropolis. The largest gold mine ever worked in California is a small affair financially as compared with the leading mines of the Comstock lode. Gold stocks were in 1862, as they still are, of little importance as compared with silver stocks in the San Francisco market.
The civil war which oppressed the Atlantic slope stim- ulated business on the Pacific side. The increased risks of the voyage round Cape Horn caused a rise in freights, and aided the establishment or enlargement of many manufacturing houses. Agricultural produce commanded good prices. Congress, to reward and confirm the loy- alty of California, and to provide a quicker and more secure communication between the eastern and western coasts of the country, passed a bill to aid the construc- tion of a railroad from the Missouri to the Sacramento
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river. While certain classes of people were prevented from coming to California, others fled to the Pacific to avoid the tumult of hostilities or the draft. The check upon travel had a strong influence in favor of economy and stability of population. A flood which exceeded any other before or since within the observation of American residents, drove thousands of people from the lower portions of the Sacramento and San Joaquin val- leys, many taking refuge in San Francisco, and contri- buting to its wealth. For several days the state house in Sacramento was not accessible without the aid of boats, and the legislature moved to the metropolis for the remainder of the session. More than one thousand houses were built. The rapid growth of the city gave rise to an active speculation in town lots, and numerous homestead associations were organized to help poor people in exchanging their money for little patches of land in remote places. The Russ, the Lick and the Occidental, finer and more spacious hotels than any of their prede- cessors, were built and opened. The waters of Pilarcitos creek were brought in with a larger supply than the city had had before, and at a better elevation. The cars of the Omnibus street railroad began to run, and the work on the North Beach and Mission road was commenced. The republican party, which had carried the state in the previous year, withdrew from the field, so as to per- mit a fusion of its members with the Union democrats in the Union party-the Californian political organization which sustained the administration of President Lin- coln till the close of the war, against the democrats, its enemies.
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SEC. 167. Sanitary Fund. While the rebels were seeking to divide the country into two nations, which would probably have been hostile to each other for ages, and would necessarily have maintained standing armies objectionable on account of their danger to liberty, as well as of their cost, many patriotic citizens of San Fran- cisco, unable to leave their families and business and make the long voyage to the Atlantic side, at an expense greater than that of hiring a substitute there, felt some twinges of conscience that. they had not borne arms in defense of the starry flag. Others, who could conveni- ently go, went. Among those who reached high com- mands in the Union army were not less than a dozen who had been residents of California. Sherman, Hal- leck and Hooker, stationed as officers of the army at San Francisco, had long before resigned to engage in civil business. McPherson had been one of the army engineers at San Francisco for years before he was ordered east at the outbreak of the rebellion. Grant and Sher- idan had been stationed in the state. Others of less note were numerous; and many of the military leaders on the southern side had also been in California.
The time came, however, when patriotic citizens could render valuable service to the Union without taking up arms. In the disastrous campaign of 1862, large num- bers of soldiers were stricken down by wounds or dis- ease, and the government was unable to take the best care of them. Some philanthropic and patriotic New Yorkers organized the Sanitary Commission, under the leadership and presidency of Dr. Bellows, the distin-
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guished Unitarian clergyman and pulpit orator. He wrote to his friend Starr King, who started the move- ment for a subscription in San Francisco, and gave his zeal and eloquence to the cause. Here was a chance for the people to show their attachment to the Union, and their response was magnificent. San Francisco sent three hundred thousand dollars in gold in the last half of 1862, and other portions of the Pacific Slope supplied one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. The secre- tary of the committee which collected the money, in a report of its work, said :
All private business was ignored, for the time, by the gen- tlemen composing the committee, and the chief hours of the day given to this new and noble work. The whole city seemed to be thrilled as with an electric shock, and the talk of the groups on the streets, the merchants on 'change, boys in the gutter, of men, women and children, was the movement for the relief of our sick and wounded soldiers; and every loyal man's heart beat in active sympathy with the work. The soldiers' needs took such an energetic hold on the people that the committee, on their rounds, were not treated as unwelcome beggars, but greeted as men who were doing a work which it was each man's pride to see well accomplished; and they gave-all citizens gave-with such enthusiasm as one might expect from recipients of good gifts, instead of givers of the wealth they had toiled for; and there was such singular unanimity as men see in no other great public undertaking. There was alive, to interrupt their action, no bias of political feeling, no conflict of religious opinion, no difference on grounds of nationality. Men gave their gold as the overflow of great patriotic love. It was the blood of their giant pro- tector, their country, native or adopted, that was flowing, and they came forth readily to stay its stream. Men of every politi- cal party gave, whether Democrats, Republicans, or even seces- sionists; and there was no sect or religion that was not repre-
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sented in this noble army of givers. The Christians gave with loyal self-denial; the Jews, as earnest sympathizers with the suffering; heretics, as citizens of a republic to be saved; and men of no religion, with an ardor worthy the humblest religious devotee. The representatives of every nation living in our midst, English, German, French, Irish, Chinese, Italian, Hun- garian, Russian, Spanish, gave with the fervor of native citi- zens.
The large sum thus supplied by California gave im- portance to the Sanitary Commission, which had pre- viously done little, and had been almost unheard of in most of the Atlantic states; but with this help, it became a prominent feature of the war. The money subscrip- tions from the other parts of the Union were compara- tively small, and in October, 1863, Dr. Bellows sent the following telegram to San Francisco:
The sanitary funds are low. Our expenses are fifty thousand dollars a month. We can live three months, and that only, without large support from the Pacific. Twenty-five thousand dollars a month, paid regularly while the war lasts, from Cali- fornia, would make our continuance on our present magnificent scale of beneficence a certainty. We would make up the other twenty-five thousand dollars a month here. We have already distributed sanitary stores, of the value of seven million dollars, to all parts of the army, at a cost of three per cent. To aban- don our work, or to allow it to dwindle, would be a horrible calamity to the army and the cause. We never stood so well with the nation; but California has been our main support in money, and if she fails us we are lost. So organize, if possible, a monthly subscription, and let us feel that California trusts and will sustain us in her past spirit to the end.
A response sent that San Francisco would supply two hundred thousand dollars in 1864, and that there
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was reason to hope that other parts of the state would give one hundred thousand dollars more, called out the following acknowledgment, which, read with high local pride and tears of emotion on the morning of its recep- tion at the tables of many of the contributors, was a re- ward for past and a stimulus for future contributions:
Brothers: I wonder that your life-giving telegram, charged with two hundred thousand dollars, did not find me in my travels, and shock me into immediate consciousness of the splen- did news. But just returned to New York, I see my table illu- minated with this resplendent message, and in my haste to acknowledge such a glorious and patriotic continuance in well- doing, I can only stutter: Noble, Tender, Faithful San Francisco, city of the heart, commercial and moral capital of the most humane and generous state in the world! If God gives to you, so you give to others. Your boundaries will not hold the riches and the blessings in store for you; they must needs overflow into the hands of the needy and suffering, and make your name the balm and cordial of want and sorrow. "I was sick, and ye visited me." This is the nation's thought, as she sees herself wounded in every hero that languishes in her hospitals, and then gazes at the Pacific, at California, with San Francisco at the head-the good Samaritan for the first time appearing in the proportions of a great city, of a whole state, of a vast area.
A monthly subscription was organized, and the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars a month-nearly one thousand dollars for every business day-was sent by San Francisco, which then had not more than one hun- dred and ten thousand inhabitants. The final report of the commission, published after the close of the war, showed that out of four million eight hundred thousand dollars cash received, California had supplied more than one million two hundred thousand in currency. The
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gold value of the latter amount was about nine hundred and forty thousand dollars, and of this sum San Fran- cisco supplied about half. The Christian Commission of California organized for purposes similar to those of the Sanitary Commission, sent thirty-four thousand dollars in gold to the central organization in Philadelphia.
SEC. 168. 1863. The flood season of 1862, which brought forty-nine inches of rain, was succeeded by the drought of 1863, when there were only fourteen, or less than two thirds of the average; but as agricultural pro- duce commanded high prices, and the Comstock lode yielded twelve million dollars, or twice as much as in the previous year, San Francisco was prosperous. The opening of the railroad to San José extended the sub- urbs of the city for a distance of thirty miles, and helped to enrich San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The North Beach and Mission, and the Central street-rail- road to Lone Mountain, were completed, and also the Oakland railroad wharf, twelve hundred yards long, so that access was given to that town at regular hours, in- stead of being dependent on the tides as before. The Cliff House road was finished, and the legislature passed acts to authorize the widening of Kearny street, and to transfer the control of the water front of San Francisco from private corporations to state officials. The new houses of the year numbered twelve hundred.
SEC. 169. Silver Panic. The production of silver at Washoe, and the distribution of large dividends, made an intense excitement in the metropolis. Mining for silver, and the management of silver mining companies,
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were as yet comparatively new, and people did not know what to expect or believe. The books on Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, were ransacked for information about the Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Cerro Pasco, and Potosi argent- iferous lodes which were similar in many of their min- eralogical features to the Comstock; and the continued productiveness of these mines for centuries had a strong influence to encourage speculation in the silver stocks of San Francisco. The shares, or feet, as they were gen- erally called, for at that time it was customary to have one share for each lineal foot, had in some leading mines been rising in price at the rate of about one hundred dollars every month for a year, until in June, Gould & Curry sold for six thousand three hundred dollars; Sav- age, four thousand dollars; Ophir, two thousand seven hundred dollars; Hale & Norcross, two thousand one hundred dollars, and Chollar, one thousand dollars. These figures indicate that the aggregate value of the lode was about twenty-five million dollars, of which a large part had been gained or added by speculation with- in the year. The market was then sustained chiefly by the Gould & Curry, which was working a highly profit- able bonanza. Some of the richest stockholders, learn- ing that the limits of the rich deposit had been reached, and that the dividends to be expected would not justify the price, sold out. A panic followed, with a swift dis- appearance of much of the imaginary wealth, and great losses to thousands of poor people, for by this time all classes of the population had become holders of feet, and the stock board was one of the chief centers of business in San Francisco.
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So long as the bodies of silver ore in the Comstock lode had appeared to grow larger as greater depth was reached, and inexperience and hope knew not where they should limit their calculations of profit from the dividends of the mining companies, so long there was increase of excitement upon a basis that had no per- manence. After the panic, unscrupulous speculators began to make changes in their mode of doing business, so that they would be sure of gains whether their mines should pay dividends or not. The laws had been loosely drawn, and all the permissible privileges that could be turned to their pecuniary advantage were taken. The increase in the number of shares was a great conveni- ence, and almost a necessity, for companies whose shares had sold for as much as six thousand dollars each; but as there was no proper restriction upon the increase or the disposal of the new shares, it sometimes happened that they were issued to pay for adjacent property, of which the managers directly or indirectly owned a large part. So the mining companies contracted at good prices with mills to crush ore in large quantities, and though the ore did not pay the expense of extraction and reduc- tion, the mill yielded a large dividend to its owners, who were at the same time directors of the mine. The mining directors, as a class, looked not to the dividends from the mine, but to their mills and the purchase and sale of the stock for the bulk of their profits. For the purpose of hiding their transactions, they held perhaps a score of shares in their own names and thousands in the name of a trustee-the name of the principal not
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being given-so that there was nothing on the record of the company to show the ownership, and no one save the trustee could tell on whose account the sale or pur- chase was made. The shares were not numbered, and could not be traced; the certificates were evidences that so many shares had been sold, but did not indicate which special ones. The superintendents were selected by the directors, and were expected to consult their wishes and interests. In a rich mine the quantity and quality of the ore produced and the appearance of the stopes must be regulated by the desire of the directors to buy or sell. The rich deposits were concealed when the stock was to be bought up, or worked with every energy when it was to be thrown on the market. The superintendent of every prominent mine conducted on such principles had his book of ciphers, so that he could send secret messages to his masters and let them know whether the ore was growing richer or poorer, enlarging or diminishing in quantity. Mines were systematically treated as combinations, in which the managers were to be enriched at the expense of the mass of the stockhold- ers. Secret drifts, winzes and crosscuts, and at a little later date, the boring of the diamond drill, gave them important information weeks and even months before it was accessible to others. A decent regard for the rights of the company required that mining engineers of high reputation for ability, learning and integrity, should be employed in the richer mines to make a comprehensive report to be submitted at every annual meeting, showing the quantity and quality of the ore in sight, the condi-
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tion of the shafts, drifts and stopes, and the prospect for further working, but such reports would have prevented the trustees from swindling the public. Some of the most important checks upon dishonesty were never adopted; while every trick that cunning could devise to make the many pay the expenses, securing to the few the bulk of the profit, was practiced on an extensive scale, in the most active of all the stock markets. On such a basis not less than a dozen of the millionaire for- tunes of San Francisco have been built.
SEC. 170. Conness. The election of John Conness to the federal senatorship was a singular turn in events. A year and a half before, as the candidate of the Doug- las democrats for governor, he had used his influence to prevent a fusion of the Union men, and had thus ex- posed the cause to defeat. But he was so badly beaten at the polls that his faction were demoralized, and they were glad to accept the invitation of the republicans to form the Union party, which then became dominant and held control of the state government for several years. The course of Mr. Conness in 1861, in trying to prevent a combination of the Union men, his ardent advocacy of the bulkhead bill and his position as the favorite of the lowest class of professional politicians in the state, were serious drawbacks to his advancement, but he had his zealous supporters, and he appeared as an aspirant for the senatorship in 1863. His principal rivals were T. G. Phelps and A. A. Sargent, both old republicans and then members of congress. The caucus of union mem- bers of the legislature balloted many times before any
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candidate could obtain a majority. While matters were in this situation, a friend of Mr. Phelps tried to buy one of Sargent's mnen. The proof of the attempted bribery was conclusive, and it destroyed Mr. Phelps' chances for that occasion, and as his adherents generally were bitter against Sargent for the exposure, enough went over to Conness to give him the prize, and he thus obtained the chief control of the federal patronage for the next six years. His senatorial colleague during most of that time was James A. McDougal, who, on ac- count of his adherence to the democratic party and his dissipated habits, had little influence in political affairs at Washington.
For the purpose of strengthening his own influence at home, Mr. Conness undertook to manage the distribu- tion of the state as well as the federal offices. The first election of a state administration for a term of four years under the amendments to the constitution adopted by the people in 1862, was now to be held. Mr. Phelps was not a candidate, and Mr. Sargent wanted to be gov- ernor, and was fairly entitled to the place, but Mr. Conness, by the help of his senatorial position, obtained control of the state convention and made up a ticket so as to leave as little influence as possible for Mr. Sargent. Among the republican friends of Mr. Sargent claiming seats in the convention was Frank Pixley, an old repub- lican and a brilliant orator. He held a proxy from San Francisco; but Mr. Conness, for the purpose of excluding him, secured the adoption of a rule that no person should hold a proxy without the consent of the majority of the
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delegation from the county. The majority were against Pixley, and he was excluded. A considerable part of the business of the convention had been transacted when Pixley presented himself with a proxy from San Ber- nardino.
The Conness faction then tried to adopt a rule that no person should hold a proxy, except from a county of which he was a resident. This trick in convention man- agement was new and base, but did not succeed. Pixley took the platform to speak upon the question, as his rights were involved. The large delegations from San Francisco and Sacramento, consisting in considerable proportion of low ruffians, stamped and yelled so that the speaker's voice could not be heard. After saying a few words he ceased to make a noise, but continued to work his mouth and gesticulate as if he were delivering an oration. Exhaustion and curiosity got the better of the rowdies, and as their noise declined Pixley began to speak about the civil war, and that topic had such an overwhelming interest, that even those, who hated him most, wanted to hear his remarks. The national cause then, two months before the victories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, looked very dark, and whoever could say an encouraging word to the Union men was welcome. Pix- ley's eloquence soon restored order and commanded ap- plause. Having secured a hearing, he spoke wittily of the situation of himself and other original republicans, who were excluded from a Union convention represent- ing a party of which two thirds were republicans, organ- ized to sustain a republican national administration, and
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he soon had the convention in a roar of laughter. Then he turned his attention to business. Pointing to the ruffians who had drowned his voice, he said he knew them; he recognized among them men who had thrown rotten eggs at him when he delivered republican speeches before his party obtained control of the state govern- ment; they were professional ruffians, and not too good to murder for money; their admission to a state con- vention was a disgrace to the cause; and they were fit tools to be used against him as they had been. This invective was notoriously true, and was answered with howls of rage, and even threats of violence, by the subjects of it; but they were soon subdued by the over- whelming applause of the majority. Pixley's triumph was one of the greatest that oratory could achieve; but the oration itself had much reference to circumstances that could not be appreciated by readers generally with- out long explanations, and even if it had been reported in full, as it was not, would not have much interest now, though to those present at the convention and familiar with the previous political history of the state, it showed wonderful mastery of many varied and strong passions.
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