USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > A history of the city of San Francisco; and incidentally of the state of California > Part 22
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SEC. 171. 1864. The winter of 1863-4 brought only ten inches of rain, or less than half the average, and as the previous season had not brought two thirds of the average, the crops of grass and grain in 1864 were very scant. More than one fourth of the farm animals in the state died of starvation, and several southern coast counties saved only one in three of all their neat cattle. This was a great disaster to the farmers; but San Francisco
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had her compensation from other sources. The silver yield of Nevada was $16,000,000, an increase of nearly one third over the previous year. Besides, the placers of Idaho and eastern Oregon attained high activity, producing together $6,000,000; and with these helps, the exportation of treasure reached $55,000,000, a gain of $9,000,000 over 1863, and of $15,000,000 since 1860, when nearly the whole supply of the precious metals passing through San Francisco came from California. The population of the state increased 9500 by immigra- tion, and 1050 new houses were erected in the city. Among the prominent buildings of the year were Dono- hue, Kelly & Co.'s bank, on the south-east corner of Sacramento and Montgomery streets; Maguire's Academy of Music, on the north side of Pine street, below Mont- gomery; and the Toland Medical College, on Stockton street, near Chestnut. The long bridge, extending a mile across Mission Cove, on the line of Fourth and Ken- tucky streets, was completed; the grading of Broadway, between Kearny and Montgomery, with a cut in one place sixty feet deep through the rock, was finished at a cost of $30,000 for that one block; an ordinance was passed to widen Kearny street; a wharf, a thousand yards long, extending out from the shore at Alameda Point to deep water was built to connect the town of Alameda by cars and ferry-boat with the city; and the Bay View turnpike gave convenient access to South San Francisco.
The legislature of 1863 had authorized San Francisco to give $600,000 of her bonds for an equal amount of
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stock in the Central Pacific Railroad and $400,000 for so much stock in the Western Pacific; and the proposed gifts, when submitted to popular vote, were approved; but the companies were not under the control of San Francisco capitalists; the Central Pacific threatened com- petition to the road from Sacramento to Folsom, owned in San Francisco, and there was a general belief that the Central Pacific would never be built, and that conse- quently the stock would never be worth anything, and might even bring heavy pecuniary liabilities on the city. The supervisors, under the influence of such opinions, stubbornly refused to issue the bonds in compliance with the act of the legislature, and as the city had the means to carry on a protracted litigation, and might even suc- ceed in getting the next legislature to repeal or modify the previous action, a compromise was agreed upon by which the supervisors should give $450,000 to the Cen- tral Pacific, and $250,000 to the Western Pacific and get no stock or other compensation. Subsequent events proved that this compromise was a great mistake, for the stock in the Central Pacific would have been worth four times its cost.
SEC. 172. Gold Currency. This year saw also the end of the struggle in the legislature to force a currency of legal tender notes upon the state. In 1863 the spe- cific contract act had been passed, providing that a writ- ten agreement made for the payment of money in any particular kind of currency recognized as legal tender by the government of the United States might be en- forced specifically by judicial decree. The object of this
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was to enable business men to conduct their transactions in gold coin, and it succeeded. There was much hosti- lity to this statute, under the supposition that it was inconsistent with patriotism, and many speculators com- plained that the state was seriously injured by excluding cheap money; but the general judgment of San Francisco rejected these ideas as unsound, and by the influence of the city the specific contract act and the gold currency were maintained. Some attempts for repeal were made in later years, until the federal supreme court, in one of its decisions, laid down the broad principle that a con- tract for payment of any kind of legal tender money must be enforced in all parts of the United States, whether in writing or not, thus superseding the specific contract act of California.
SEC. 173. Lincoln Re-elected. The presidential elec- tion of 1864 awakened a strong feeling in San Francisco. The democrats demanded peace, which it was generally believed could not be obtained by diplomacy without a division of the country into two nations, and all the great evils that must necessarily follow such a result; and when, on the eighth of November, the republicans learned that they had carried every loyal state, the city was filled with enthusiasm, which was increased by the news of the capture of the rebel cruiser "Florida." When evening came, there was a grand celebration. Numerous bonfires, illuminated windows, torches, roman candles and rockets, filled the streets with a blaze of light, and a brilliant moon beamed in an unclouded sky, while a procession of four thousand men, with flags,
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transparencies and numerous bands of music, marched twenty abreast through the principal streets, singing patriotic songs, cheering the newspaper offices, the dwell- ings of prominent republicans, and the ladies who, upon the sidewalks or in the windows, waved their handker- chiefs in congratulation. A cannon at the head of the procession halted at brief intervals to add the roaring of its thunder to the general rejoicing. It was a scene never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Its participants believed the victory won at the polls was not less important to the future welfare of the country than any yet won in the field of arms; and when they were sure it had been won, their exultation was intense. They now counted confidently on the near approach of the ultimate triumph over the rebellion that had been prepared for years in advance; that had been on the verge of success, and that had required for its defeat, exertions the like of which had never been made before. But the presence of one man was especially missed-one whose voice had encouraged them in the beginning of the contest, had cheered them in the dark days of disas- ter and defeat, had opened their hearts and their purses for the sanitary fund, and had always been ready with inspiriting eloquence when liberty or union demanded his service. Starr King had died in March, and was buried in the yard of his church on Geary street, the city ordinance forbidding burials in the midst of the city being set aside in that special case, so that the sight of his tomb might serve as a daily reminder of him and of his words and works to the people.
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SEC. 174. 1865. The capture of Richmond, the overthrow of the rebellion, the restoration of the federal authority over all the southern states, and the final ex- tinction of slavery in our continent, were received with great rejoicing in San Francisco, and when, a month later, the great-souled president, who had saved the Union, was assassinated by a southern fanatic, a mob collected hastily in the streets and, before the police could prepare for them, entered several democratic news- paper offices, scattered the type and broke the cases. This was the first mob to injure property in San Fran- cisco, and the city treasury had to pay for the damage afterwards. No person was attacked.
The influx of people from the Atlantic states to avoid the dangers, the excitements, and the disagreeable sights common near the seat of war, ceased, and in its stead, so many Californians went east to look after their relatives or property, that for the first time since the American conquest the number of passengers departing by sea ex- ceeded that of the arrivals. The confidence in the future of the Comstock mines declined. The silver yield of Nevada was about as much as in the previous year, but no new bodies of ore were discovered, and those pre- viously opened were certainly approaching exhaustion. At the end of the year the aggregate market price of the mines on the Comstock lode was little more than $5,- 000,000, or about one fifth of what it had been two years and a half before. Besides, though the yield was large, the dividends were scanty, and the assessments exceeded them in amount.
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In many respects, however, the business of the city was highly profitable. The placers of Idaho and eastern Oregon had nearly reached their highest productiveness. The rainfall of the winter of 1864-5 was twenty-four inches, and the grain crop was so abundant that Cali- fornia gained recognition as an important source of sup- ply for the bread of Europe. The exportation of mer- chandise amounted to $15,000,000, more than three times as much as it had been ten years before. There was a large increase in the clip of wool and in the plant- ing of new vineyards. Many new houses were built, including important additions to the Lick, Occidental, and Cosmopolitan hotels, which, in their size, as well as in the convenience of their plans, the elegance of their furniture, the management of their servants, and the ex- cellence of their tables, were superior to a like number of hotels in any other city save New York, and equal to that. The bridge across Mission Cove, on the line of Fourth and Kentucky streets, nearly twelve hundred yards-long, was built, at an expense of sixty thousand dollars, thus furnishing access by a short, level, clean and solid road to Potrero Point, which had previously been reached by a detour of several miles, passing near the Mission, on a hilly road, dusty in summer and muddy in winter, along the southern shore of Mission Cove. The construction of this bridge was an important advance towards filling in mud flats covering five hundred acres.
SEC. 175. Fire Telegraph. The electric fire-alarm telegraph was established, to give notice of fires more precisely as to place and more promptly as to time than
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could be done by the watchmen who had been main- tained, and who could not see the flames inside of houses, nor when they broke out beyond the hills, nor even on the low land near the City Hall, when the city was cov- ered with dense fog, as it is a hundred evenings or more in the year. This was an important step towards the overthrow of the volunteer fire department, and was re- sisted by strong political influences, and by numerous crimes such as incendiary fires, false alarms, breaking the fire-alarm boxes, and cutting the wires; but they failed in their purpose.
SEC. 176. Railroad Purchase. The Central Pacific railroad company commenced work in 1863, at Sacra- mento, finished its road to near Dutch Flat, and found that the Sacramento valley road, from Freeport, fifteen miles below Sacramento, to Folsom, where it connected with the road to Shingle Springs, was a troublesome competitor, taking much of the Washoe freight and nearly all the passengers to or from Virginia City, and exer- cising a dangerous political influence. A bill introduced in the Nevada legislature to give one million dollars to the railroad which should first reach from the Sacramento river to the state line, was welcome to the capitalists in- terested in the Folsom road, who were confident that they would gain the prize; and was opposed by the friends of the other route. If the first railroad to Vir- ginia City had come from Folsom, the Central Pacific would have lost much of its profitable traffic, and to secure protection against the numerous dangers of this rivalry, the directors of the Central Pacific bought up
23
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the majority of the stock of the Sacramento valley road. The transaction was considered a great triumph for them.
SEC. 177. Earthquake of 1865. An earthquake, more severe than any felt in thirty years before, visited the city on the eighth of October, cracked the walls and plastering of some weak buildings, frightened many per- sons, some of them so much that a hundred or more re- turned to their former homes in the eastern states, for fear of something worse next time, and caused an uneasy feeling in the real estate market for several months.
SEC. 178. City Slip Debt. In this year the city was burdened with a debt of a million dollars, imposed be- cause of official blunders committed in the management of the city slip sale in 1853, and in the litigation about it two years later. Very soon after the sale, a serious panic struck the real estate market; the winter was not favorable either for mining or farming; the receipts of gold and the arrivals of passengers fell off; shipping de- creased; rents fell; business was dull as compared with previous briskness; and the purchasers were soon sick of their bargains. But they had made their first payment of nearly three hundred thousand dollars, and when the second payment of about six hundred thousand dollars fell due two months after the sale, they still hoped for a revival of business, and besides they did not see how they could avoid payment without sacrificing all that they had paid. After the lapse of another period of two months, when the last payment of three hundred thou- sand dollars was to be made, they generally refused,
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though nearly all had taken possession of their lots. Their lawyers told them there was a flaw in the title; that the ordinance ordering the sale was never legally passed; that when the full board of assistant aldermen consisted of eight members, four affirmative votes could not pass an ordinance, even when one of the seats was vacant by resignation. The city tried to cure this de- fect, by confirming the ordinance, and as possession had been taken and most of the price paid, a valid confirma- tion was all that the purchasers had a right to demand; but they preferred to get their money back. Their policy was to wait to be sued for the last payment claimed under their notes given to the city for the lots; and their plea in defense was that they had received no consideration, the title being void, and that a void title could not be confirmed. The legislature could have remedied the defect, but the money was wanted. This litigation rendered it certain that these lots would not be filled in and built upon as expected, and injured the value of lots on Commercial street-which ran through the middle of the city slip-between Davis and San- some. The construction of wharves elsewhere had ac- commodated shipping; other streets, wider than Com- mercial, had been built up later, and were provided with better houses; the buildings on the lower part of this street put on a look of ruin and decay; many of them were vacant; and instead of being, as it had been a few years before, the liveliest and the most cheerful, it became the most disconsolate part of San Francisco.
The purchasers having gained the decision that no
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title passed, brought suit for the money paid; and though they were not entitled in justice to recover, yet the supreme court, after five or six years of litigation, gave decrees in their favor. But before the matter was closed up, a new era of prosperity had commenced, and the purchasers agreed to compromise, taking the lots and something more than they had paid-allowance being made for interest money. Bonds for one million dollars were issued to thirty-five of the purchasers who recov- ered judgment. Six others commenced suit subse- quently; but the city lawyers made a plea not tried before-they averred that the city had never legally received the money, though the supreme court had assumed in the previous judgment that the city council had appropriated the money. But proof was furnished that the ordinance appropriating the money received from these sales had been passed by both boards of alder- men on the same day, and in the second board had not obtained unanimous consent, whereas such consent was necessary if passed on the same day; and the supreme court held that as the money had not been appropriated in compliance with the technicalities, therefore it had never legally come into the possession of the city treas- urer, and that when paid out it was not the money of the city but of the city slip purchasers, and they might follow it if they could. This decision saved one hun- dred and ninety thousand dollars to the city, and when considered from the standpoint of justice and reason, was as absurd as the other. In one case the purchasers who had paid three fourths of the price and had taken
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possession of the lots were permitted to refuse the offer of the city to make a perfect title to the property; and in the other, citizens were told that the payment to the city treasurer was void, because the ordinance appro- priating the money to various purposes was defective. The city creditors paid with money thus illegally appro- priated ought to have sued the city for second payment, on the ground that they had never been paid legally; and a judgment in their favor against the city would have completed the circle of absurdity and injustice.
SEC. 179. 1866. The year 1866 was marked by the tearing down of the buildings on the west side of Kearny street, for the purpose of widening it; by the success of the state harbor commissioners in getting possession of the entire water front from the wharf corporations, which had held control there for fifteen years; by the construction of the extensive wharves and other improvements of the Pacific Mail company, at the foot of Brannan street, to accommodate their steamers, running to China and Panama; by the cut- ting down of a hill containing 300,000 cubic yards on Rincon Point, to obtain material for filling in water lots near the Pacific Mail wharves; by the opening of Woodward's garden as a pleasure resort for the gen- eral public; by the completion of the Sutter street railroad, giving convenient access to a considerable area in the western addition; and by the establish- ment of the paid fire department and the abandon- ment of hand fire-engines, those drawn by horses and driven by steam being substituted. The Bay View
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railroad and the stone dry-dock on Hunter's Point were commenced. Building in the southern part of the city, and land speculation, were very active. The sum of the sales of land within the city limits was $13,000,000. The rainfall, though not above the average, was so distributed as to time that the crops were large. The exports of merchandise were $17,-' 000,000, nearly $3,000,000 more than in any previous year. The yield of the Comstock lode was $15,000,- 000, but only one tenth was dividend; and as no new bodies of ore were opened, speculation in silver shares was dull, and the sales in the San Francisco board amounted to only $32,000,000, or about two thirds as much as in 1865. The state gained 4,800 inhabitants by the excess of arrivals over departures.
SEC. 180. Subsidies. The numerous subsidies given at previous sessions of the legislature to railroads, and the division of the profits among relatively few indi- viduals, stimulated schemes for getting more money from the public treasury in the same way. One of these created a lively excitement throughout the state, and led to the overthrow of the republican domination in the state government. A bill was passed by the legislature to pay $52,000 annually as interest on bonds of the Sacramento and Placerville railroad, and $90,000 on the Western Pacific. The former road, only thirty-six miles long as projected, and twenty-six were already completed, had already obtained $300,- 000 in El Dorado and Placerville bonds, and to give $1,000,000 from the state treasury for building only
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ten miles additional road of no service save to a small district, inhabited by not one twentieth of the inhab- itants of California, was outrageous. The proposed gift to the Western Pacific was scarcely less objection- able. That company had already obtained a loan of $2,000,000 in federal bonds for thirty years, a gift of 800,000 acres of federal land, $250,000 from San Francisco as a gift, and $400,000 in Santa Clara and San Joaquin county bonds in payment for an equal amount of the company's stock. These subsidies might be put down as worth certainly $2,500,000 in cash, and as the route was only one hundred and twenty-six miles long, nearly level, through a well settled part of the state, and was the western termi- nal section of the transcontinental railroad, the aid already supplied by the government was abundant. The daily press protested against requiring the people to pay $2,850,000 for the benefit of a few individuals, under the pretense of securing the construction of roads that would be built without further subsidy, or that if built would render no benefit to the state gen- erally; but the legislature was under the control of a corrupt lobby, and the bill was adopted by both houses. Now, as on other occasions, the public inter- ests were saved by the veto power. Governor Low protected the state treasury against this excessive lib- erality of the legislature.
SEC. 181. Paid Fire Department. The volun- teer fire department had rendered great service to the city, and had even been indispensable for its preserva-
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tion, but the time had come when something better was needed. In early years, when families were few, when the rich men were young and active, when nearly all the merchants had their homes in or near their stores, and when all their property was exposed to the flames, the fire companies had included many of the best citizens, but when those men advanced in age, moved out to the suburbs, and put their money in lands, mines, canals, railroads, steamboats, insur- ance companies and banks, they retired from active service with the fire companies, and other less scrupu- lous men took their places. The engine houses be- came the homes of a disreputable class, always ready to run with the machine in payment for free lodgings. As the city grew, and fires became more numerous, the conduct of these men became more troublesome, and the danger from the insubordination greater, so the people's party purchased steam fire-engines and discharged the volunteers, not without bitter opposi- tion from those who liked the old system for the plunder or political influence which it gave them.
SEC. 182. Kearny Street Widened. The most not- able change in San Francisco in the course of 1866 was the work done in widening Kearny street, which had been previously forty-five and a half feet wide, and now thirty feet more taken from the western side were added, from Market to Broadway, a distance of nearly a mile. At that time the district west of Dupont and north of Washington was much more important in the business of the city relatively than
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it is now, and people going from that district to any place south of Bush street went by way of Mont- gomery street, which, because of its wide sidewalks and level grade, was the preferred route for persons passing between the two leading residence districts of "North Beach" and "South Park," as the northern and southern parts of the city were sometimes desig- nated, and for that reason Montgomery street had in 1853 become the fashionable promenade, and after- wards acquired the most elegant shops, and leading hotels, and its lots became the most valuable in the city.
It did not offer room enough, however, for the busi- ness that thronged it, and the rapid growth of the city demanded more space for the future. The legislature passed a general act to authorize the widening of streets in San Francisco, with special reference to Kearny street, though without mention of it; in 1865, commissioners were appointed to assess benefits and damages, and a suit to restrain them from acting was defeated, and there was a lively demand for Kearny street lots at improved prices. The next year their report was adopted, and the demolition of the houses along the western side of the street and the construc- tion of others in their places were commenced. When the assessments were made lots near Washington street were worth twice as much a front foot as near Market, but before a year had gone by it was evident that the southern part of the street would get much more than an equal share of the benefit, though this
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result could not have been foreseen with sufficient con- fidence to serve as a basis of the official estimates. The new street had some important advantages over Montgomery. It had a greater length of level ground; it was six feet wider; it was nearer the residence dis- tricts; its buildings on the west side were more ele- gant, as a class, and better adapted for the sale of elegant merchandise; it was certain that the eastern side of the street would be rebuilt in equal, if not superior style; it was exempt from the throng of stockbrokers who filled the sidewalks on Montgomery street, and it connected directly with Third street, which might thus be considered as an extension of it. Under these influences, Kearny superseded Mont- gomery as the preferred street for promenaders and fashionable shops. The accounts for widening the street were closed in 1868, and the total expense was five hundred and seventy-nine thousand dollars, while the aggregate pecuniary benefit to the lot owners directly interested was not less than three million dollars.
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