USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 32
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We may trust the descriptions of the gambling saloons (they can hardly be called dens, their aggressive openness would make the term a misnomer) up to a certain point, but unless we keep in mind the changed significance of adjectives we may easily be misled by the free use of such words as glitter and magnificent. Things are usually judged relatively, and measured by their surroundings the ap- pellation "palace" may have seemed appropriate, but there is reason to believe that the showiest were tawdry affairs despite the almost uniform testimony of the argo- nauts to the contrary. A woman, writing under the nom de plume of "Shirley," in a sketch in which she entered into details, conveys the impression that a bar room trimmed with red calico, from the midst of which gleamed a mirror flanked by de- canters and jars of brandied fruit, was regarded in the mining country as something luxurious. We may assume that the saloons of the metropolis were provided with better adornments than this description implies, but specimens of what were once known as "gorgeous" affairs survived down to a comparatively recent period and permitted the more discerning critic to decide that the impression of grandeur was produced largely by a display of glittering glass, mirrors, and a little gilt, and that if reproduced today they would hardly be considered an attractive addition to the water front of a sea port.
Until very recently the alert traveler, anxious to see novel sights, might have obtained a fair impression of San Francisco's bustling center in 1849 by examining
Preponder- ance of Males
Gambling Games
Glittering Bar Rooms
Portsmouth Square
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any of the open places so common in towns of considerable size along the transcon- tinental railroads. Portsmouth square, like these more recent examples of pioneer life, was flanked by saloons. The whole eastern side was devoted to them, and a not inconsiderable portion of the street on the south. The latter was particularly affected by gamblers, and many of the saloons whose names were almost household words in California for years were situated there. Gambling, however, was by no means confined to these places whose owners used every device to bring the man with money to their tables; it was pursued in all the hotels of consequence, the practice being to set aside rooms where "gentlemen" could find a quiet game, from which we may infer that, while everyone may have gambled, there were some who did not care to openly advertise the fact that they were gamblers.
Women in Gambling Places
In all the big saloons women dealt cards and turned the roulette wheels. It goes without saying that they were of the lower world, and that they owed their positions to that fact. In some of the larger saloons there were as many as a dozen tables, and it was usual to make large displays of gold upon them, the spectacle being arranged with especial reference to exciting the cupidity of the visitors. The policing of the town was notoriously bad for the first few years after the discovery at Sutter's fort, but it is one of the anomalies of the period, that although the men entrusted with the rule of the community could not preserve order the saloonkeep- ers succeeded in doing so in their places, their motto being "no interference with the progress of the game." Brawlers and fault-finders were summarily ejected, and the sentiment of the visitors usually approved the methods of securing peace. even when they were accompanied by a display of force.
Gambling House Proprietors Flourish
It is not of record that the argonauts generally succeeded in amassing wealth, although the opportunities for thrifty persons to do so were abundant; but the pro- prietors of the saloons were, as a rule, forehanded, and many of those conducting the popular places made big fortunes. Their patrons were cast in a different mould, and with them it was "easy come, easy go." No one has attempted to re- duce to terms of percentage the proportion of the first comers who were heedful enough of the future to save a competence, but it was not large. It was not the miner who made a lucky strike who loomed up as an important figure in the com- munity. He too often realized the adage concerning "a fool and his money," and when he parted with his "dust" or "nuggets," not infrequently it was to the man who ran the gambling tables and to dissolute women.
Of the latter the community soon had more than its share. Among the earliest to appear on the scene were numerous Mexicans and Chileans, and it was their presence which formed one of the excuses for the depradations on the Latin Amer- icans by the Hounds, who alleged that they aided their paramours in robbing the indiscreet visitors to their quarter. They were probably no worse than their sisters of evil repute from other countries, who surpassed in audacity the Mexican and Chilean women, who were not unaware of the fact that they were especial objects of that peculiar resentment which is often manifested against the conquered by the conquering class, and were less obtrusive on that account than their rivals. It was noted in 1853 that there was a small and steady increase of female immigrants, and that among them were some "beautiful and modest women," but the preponderance of the disreputable class was such that the annalist feelingly remarks that "there are common prostitutes enough to bring disgrace on the place." He also adds that many men openly maintained mistresses. Perhaps the severest indictment against
Plenty of Fast Women
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the looseness of the period was the flagrant disregard of the decencies of life which attended this practice. It was no uncommon thing for men of standing in the community to parade their mistresses in public, and to obtrude them on women having claims to respectability. But not infrequently men who thus defied the conventionalities later repaired their error by accepting to the fullest extent the obligations imposed by the relation, and clothed their mistresses with the title of wife without the intervention of minister, priest or justice.
The social evil and gambling were a source of trouble to the authorities, who resorted to various devices to check them but with little success. Very early an ordinance was adopted, and promptly repealed, authorizing the seizure of money openly displayed on gaming tables. The sentiment of the period did not sustain the effort, and in 1854, when the common council passed a stringent ordinance against houses of ill fame, and penalizing the inmates, it was soon permitted to fall into desuetude. At first it was rigidly enforced against the cheap brothels of the Mexicans and Chileans, but when it was sought to extend its operation to "the fashionable white Cyprians," it was promptly discovered that it was "intrinsically illegal and tyrannous in some of its provisions." A commentator of the period tells us that it was soon found out "that impurity hid by walls could not be put down by mere legislation."
This attitude was not changed for many years, and while the evils ran their course "society" in San Francisco can only be described as very mixed. General Sherman in his "Memoirs" gives us a glimpse of the state of affairs in a story he tells about a chance encounter on the ship which brought him to California in 1853. It appears that the general, who was then a young officer, was obliging enough to help two "ladies" to secure a change of the stateroom assigned to them, and as a result of his courtesy he not only lost his own berth, but was recorded as being their escort, the passenger list reading "Captain Sherman and ladies." "At every meal," he tells us, "the steward would come to him and say 'Captain will you bring your ladies to the table?'" The "ladies" were the most modest and best behaved on the ship, but sometime after San Francisco was reached a fellow passenger asked the captain if he personally knew Mrs. D., who had so sweetly sang for them, and who had come out under his special escort. He told the inquiring indi- vidual that she was a chance acquaintance of the voyage, and that she expected to meet her husband, who lived near Mokelumne hill. He was then informed that Mrs. D. was "a woman of the town." "Society was decidedly mixed in California in those days," was the general's comment on the incident.
The fact that very few of the gold seekers were in the country with a view of making it their home was more largely than anything else responsible for the loose conditions described. In 1852 many who had made their "pile" were leaving, and usually they made it very clear that they had no desire to return. While many of the earliest American settlers had abundant faith in the future development of California and clearly perceived that San Francisco was destined to become a great sea port, not a few of those who rushed into the country in search of gold, deceived by unfamiliar conditions, quickly reached the conclusion that the land was not fit to live in, and that about the only thing it was good for was to extract the precious metal from its soil. Their brief experience inclined them to share the belief of the Mexican governor, who reported to his government that California was too good for convicts, but not exactly a desirable place for decent people.
Regulating the Social Evil
A Very Mixed Society
No Home Restraints
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Effects of Home Sickness
Early Philosophers
Nostalgia, sometimes in its acute and again in its milder form, was productive of extremely pessimistic views. The morbidly homesick man always looks at the dark side of things, and San Francisco in the first year of the fifty decade was filled with adventurers thus afflicted. The distractions of the bar room and other dissipations were resorted to by some to quell their pangs; it was not always the mere love of excitement that turned men from the straight path in pioneer days; too frequently it was the desire to escape mental torments that drove them to ex- cesses, which, under other conditions, would not have appealed to them. The ad- venturous class may be entitled to all the encomiums bestowed upon it by writers who admire the microbe of unrest; it may have more than its share of the spirit of enterprise; its stock in trade may embrace courage and intelligence, but it does not possess stability of character in an unusual degree. The mass of the argonauts were singularly deficient in this latter respect. It was a long time before they began to show a disposition to look upon San Francisco as a desirable town in which to abide permanently. As late as March, 1855, we find Governor Bigler extolling as one of the advantages of San Francisco the facilities offered by the port for shipping "home" the oil and bone taken by the whalers in the North Pacific, who by that time had begun to use the harbor as a place for wintering.
There were some, however, who amid the excitement and the discomforts inci- dent to existence in a town which had sprung up like a mushroom, were able to philosophize and make the best of circumstances. One such was the writer of the "Annals," who, after telling us that "San Francisco was in a state of moral fer- ment;" that "the scum and froth of its strange mixture, of its many scoundrels, rowdies, and great men, loose women, sharpers and few honest folk" was about all that was visible in the current of the daily life of the City, was still able to exclaim: "Happy the man who can tell of those things which he saw, and perhaps himself did at San Francisco at that time. He shall be an oracle to his admiring neighbors." The prediction has been amply fulfilled, and as might be expected the oracle has not always approached his narrative in a critical mood. He may at one time have longed as ardently as a boarding school girl for "home," and may have loathed his surroundings even though he contributed to making them what they were, but when the change came, when San Francisco became habitable by a process of elimination, repression and addition, he became as ardently attached to the City as though its early history were without a blemish. Forgotten were the vicissitudes and the hardships, the incessant drinking and gambling, and the daily calendar of crime. The only memory that has survived is that of achievement and in that all the argonauts share, even he who remarks with complacency that he might once have bought the lot on Market street, now worth a million dollars or more, for a pair of old boots if he had been thoughtful enough of the future to have done so, or if he had the old boots to spare to make the purchase.
All the adventurers who thronged to California in the early days did not make fortunes, and all the fortunes that were made were not accumulated in the mines. Many a respectable citizen of later days commenced his career in San Francisco by accepting a menial position. We hear a great deal now-a-days of college stu- dents earning sufficient money to procure an education by waiting on the table; in pioneer days the job of "waiter" was sought by many college graduates who had been more proficient in earning educational honors than they were in the work of finding gold or in the pursuit of the more prosaic occupations. It is said that in .
Plenty of College Bred Men
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1850 there were more collegians in San Francisco than any other city in the coun- try, and unless the chroniclers of the period grossly misrepresent the facts they found more difficulty in adapting themselves to their new environment than the mass of gold hunters and other adventurers less equipped with learning.
It would be a mistake to assume that the conditions described required the dras- tic performances of the Vigilantes to bring about their elimination. Something better than the inspiration of fear was steadily undermining the powers of dark- ness. The introduction of those agencies of civilization which have lifted man to the high plane he now occupies followed close upon the heels of the adventurer. It may have seemed a correct judgment to the annalist when he summed up the situation by asserting "that nearly all come to the City as devout worshippers of Mammon." The facts, however, do not bear out his view, for the evidence of the working of the leaven of good clearly indicates that there were plenty of earnest men who labored hard to eradicate evil in the early Fifties, and that while their fight was an uphill one it never seemed hopeless to them. Nor did it seem so to the writer of the "Annals," whose alternations between pessimism and hopefulness testify to the sincerity of his narrative, for he was able to record in 1854 that "for the honest, industrious and peaceful man San Francisco is now as safe a residence as can be found in any other large city. For the rowdy and shoulder striker, the drunkard, the insolent, foul-mouthed speaker, the quarrelsome, desperate politi- cian and calumnious writer, the gambler, the daring speculator in strange ways of business, it is a dangerous place to dwell in. There are many such here, and it is their excesses and quarrels that make our sad daily record of murders, duels, etc."
The admission that there were still plenty of rogues in San Francisco, and that they engaged in excesses does not impair the force of the statement that the City had become a safe place of residence for the peaceable and industrious. While the City had not yet reached the stage of orderliness attained in the older com- munities it was fast marching in that direction. The conspicuously vicious features had by no means disappeared, but there were daily additions being made to the agencies calculated to counteract their harmfulness. There was still much open flaunting of vice, too much gambling and a great deal of drinking; but schools, churches, charities and social organizations were multiplying rapidly, and what was of much more consequence the number of homes was increasing. It may be neces- sary to again recur to the darker side of San Francisco life in dealing with this period, but before doing so, lest the impression be conveyed that it was once like the city abandoned by Lot, it is desirable to present the facts which show that the struggle toward the light began early, and that while it did not eventuate in creat- ing a community of the sort found in many parts of the East, that the efforts, on the whole, were successful in making the metropolis of the Pacific coast a desirable place in which to live and work out the problems of modern civilization.
Attempts to Eradicate Evil
Progress Towards Order
CHAPTER XXVIII
CONDITIONS IMPROVE SOCIALLY AND OTHERWISE IN THE CITY
A STRUGGLE FOR DECENCY-FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS-CHURCHES FOUNDED-ALL THE DENOMINATIONS REPRESENTED-A UNION OF PROTESTANT CONGREGATIONS- SUNDAY OBSERVANCE-FIRST PROTESTANT SERMON IN CALIFORNIA-THE CATHOLIC CHURCH-BISHOP ALEMANY ARRIVES-THE PIOUS FUND-SAN FRANCISCO'S FIRST CATHEDRAL-ATTEMPTS TO CHRISTIANIZE THE CHINESE-IMPROVED MANNERS AND MORALS-THANKSGIVING DAY-PIONEER DIVORCES-PASSAGE OF A SUNDAY LAW.
Changing Social Conditions
ACH passing year brought an improvement to San Francisco, we are told by the annalist, and we may credit his state- E ment even though at times he despairingly exclaimed that the City was going to the dogs. Among the changes for the better noted by him in 1850 was the fact that some of the immigrants were sending "home" for their families. FR The most of the inhabitants were still living simply to heap up dollars, but the churches and a few good people were establishing sociable and charitable organizations. The prisons were full, but they could not hold a tithe of the offenders and there was a good deal of talk about lynch law. There was some disquiet caused by fear of incendiarism, and gambling was common; the drink habit was dreadfully prevalent. Treating was carried to extremes and carouses were indulged in by many. From the gambling dens increasingly came the cry "the ace! the ace! the ace! a $100 to him who will tell the ace! Who will name the ace of spades? A $100 to anyone who will tell the ace!" The play went on by day and night. Through the twenty-four hours foolish men were getting rid of their hard-earned dust or nuggets, and the adventurers of the Cora stamp untir- ingly devoted themselves to the task of relieving the silly ones of the money they were anxious to get rid of, although the most of them professed to believe that they were striving to augment their store. But decency entered into competition with blackguardism, and while its advocates had an uphill fight before them they never lost courage and always felt sure of victory in the end.
It is interesting to follow the contest. It began early in 1849. Against the revelries of the bar room were placed the attractions of the lodge. Instead of men spending all their time and money in a society in which each sought to drag the other down the more sober minded were organizing for rational enjoyment and mutual benefit. In 1849 a lodge of Masons was formed under a charter granted by the District of Columbia and named the California Lodge. It was small in numbers at first and held its meetings in a room in the third story of a house on Montgomery street. In less than six months, on the 17th of April, 1850, a grand
Fraternal Organizations
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lodge was organized and in 1852 there were as many as thirteen lodges in the City. Organizations of Odd Fellows were effected with equal promptitude. California Lodge No. 1 was started in 1849 and in 1853 a grand lodge was formed, and by 1854 there were five more or less flourishing lodges in the city. In 1849 there was also organized by the Rev. T. D. Hunt a temperance society which waged war on the saloon and did its part in the work of regeneration.
First Protestant Church
After the occupation by the Americans the new members of the community were quick to introduce their religion. The Mission church at Dolores had met the needs of the Catholics up to that time, and there were few of any other denomination until the gringo came. In 1847, on the 6th of May, a public meeting was held in the City to consider the question of erecting a Protestant church and a committee was appointed to that end. There is some dispute as to which denomination is en- titled to the honor of priority. The claim is made for the Baptists that they erected in 1849, in the month of July, a structure, which was the first Protestant edifice on the coast with the exception of a small chapel built in Washington county, Oregon, by Rev. Victor Snelling in 1848. The San Francisco church was not very imposing in appearance, having Oregon pine boards for walls and ship's sails spread over scantlings serving as a roof. The major part of the cost of construction was borne by one person, Charles L. Ross, but he was stimulated and encouraged in his work by the American Baptist Home Missionary Society of New York. Its first pastor was the Rev. Osgood C. Wheeler, who arrived in San Francisco in February, 1849. On March 18th services were held by him in the new church, and it is recorded that in closing an address on the 17th of June in that year he predicted the great com- mercial future of the City, and urged upon his hearers the importance of the Bap- tist church effecting a thorough organization so that its religious work could develop with the City and become a part of its future greatness. In August, 1850, the second Baptist church in San Francisco was organized with twelve members. This congregation held its services in a rented building on the north side of Pine street, not far from the site of the present California Market, but the organization only continued a few months. Its members after the disbandment of the congregation united with the first church. The first pastor, Rev. Mr. Wheeler, resigned his pas- torate in November, 1851, and for an interval the pulpit of the First Baptist church was filled regularly by ministers of other denominations. It appears that the worldliness and the bustle and excitement of the City in the first two years after the discovery of gold made San Francisco seem a profitless field for religious work, and there was some difficulty in getting a successor, but the place was finally filled by Rev. Benjamin Brierly, who began his ministrations on September 29, 1852. It is interesting to note that his salary was fixed at $3,000 a year.
In July, 1853, the membership of the church had increased to seventy-five. In the meantime the building on Washington street had been enlarged, but the increas- ing attendance demanded more commodious quarters and the building of a brick edifice was resolved upon by the congregation. The new church was 52x85 in size and had a seating capacity of 450 when finally completed in 1857. Its construction was delayed by various causes, but the congregation had the forethought to retain the old building, which they removed to the rear of their lot and used it as their place of worship until they were installed in their new quarters. Mr. Brierly's ministrations lasted six years. There was an interval between his departure in May, 1858, in which the pulpit was not filled. In June, 1859, Rev. Dr. Cheney,
A New Brick Church Building
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of Philadelphia, accepted a call and within a year after he commenced his labors the congregation was nearly doubled.
In the "Annals" we are told that in 1852 it was noted that the number of women immigrants were increasing, and that many of them were of a better class than the earlier arrivals. This testimony is amply corroborated by the statement that on the day after Christmas, 1849, John C. Pelton and his wife opened a school with three pupils in the First Baptist church building, the free use of which was granted to him by resolution of the trustees. In April, 1850, the number of pupils had increased to 130, and the care of the school was assumed by the city council, and Pelton and his wife were paid $500 a month for their services. The pioneer school continued to occupy the church building, rent free, until its destruction in the fire of June 22, 1851, and at one time it had close to 300 scholars enrolled. The significance of this increase, and the further statement that there was a flour- ishing Sunday school maintained, will be realized by those who carefully trace the connection between it and the steady improvement of the condition of the com- munity.
The first Presbyterian church of San Francisco was due to the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, which sent the Rev. Albert Williams to this City in 1849. He arrived on April 1st, and in accordance with instructions he opened a school in a small tent on Portsmouth square, near its northwestern corner, but he said subse- quently : "I had no more children than if I had opened it on the Desert of Sahara, and for the same reason-there were no children in either place." In the course of a couple of weeks, however, he succeeded in securing four pupils, but he only retained them for a few days as their parents abandoned the City for the mines and took their progeny with them. Mr. Williams commenced preaching at once after his arrival, but owing to insufficient housing accommodations he was compelled to move from place to place for several Sundays, but finally, on May 20th, he secured a location for a good sized tent and organized the First Presbyterian church of San Francisco. A writer who has traced the fortunes of the church since its establishment tells us that "although the Baptists, under the ministerial charge of Reverend O. C. Wheeler, had been holding Sunday services in the private house of Charles L. Ross for several weeks, they had not formally organized as a church, so the First Presbyterian church," he says, "stands as the first Protestant church organization inaugurated in San Francisco."
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