USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 38
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With few exceptions all of the hotels and restaurants sold liquors. One of these exceptions was "The Fountain Head," whose proprietor employed 100 persons in catering for the patrons of his two establishments. Their salaries averaged $90 a month. According to a descriptive article published in the "Commercial Advertiser" of April 6, 1854, the monthly receipts of these two temperance houses aggre- gated $57,000; the expenditures were also on a liberal scale, the proprietor's potato bills being $3,000 monthly and his disbursements for ice and eggs amounting to $28,000 in five months. It is interesting to note that the St. Francis hotel, situated on the corner of Clay and Dupont street, was a fashionable hostelry in 1849. It was built of a dozen small houses originally intended for cottages. Its rooms were separated by the thinnest of board partitions without lath or plaster. On the next block stood the City hotel, built in 1846. It was the only public house in San Francisco up to the time of the discovery of gold. Both of these hotels were de- stroyed by fire. The Union hotel on Kearny street between Clay and Washington, was the first hotel built of brick. It was a four story structure and cost $250,000. It was burned in the fire of May 31, 1851, and subsequently rebuilt, but never re- gained its old time importance.
Among the other hotels singled out for recognition were the Jones, on the cor- ner of Sansome and California; the Oriental, corner of Bush and Battery; the Rossette, at Bush and Sansome; the International, on Jackson street between Mont- gomery and Kearny. The latter was conducted on the European plan, but the American method was more generally preferred by proprietors and customers, the rates ranging from $2 to $10 per day. These hotels were designed as much for the use of permanent guests as for transients, and down to the closing years of the decade 1850-60 their patronage was more largely that of home people than of strangers. Charles Warren Stoddard tells us that during the Fifties everybody in San Francisco boarded or kept a boarding house. Some of the latter sought to rival the hotels and as late as 1861 the name of Madame Parran's house on Clay
Vol. I-18
Numerous Hotels and Restaurants
Temperance Restaurants Popular
The Boarding Habit
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street, near Powell, where a number of the leading lawyers of the City boarded, was as well known as that of the best hotel in the City.
Many memories cluster about the early hotels of San Francisco and reams have been written about their peculiarities. The story has been told of how dearly the privilege was bought of sleeping under cover in the most exciting period of the gold rush. Men sometimes paid as much as $30 a week for the use of a shelf or bunk in a shack or tent, and $8 a day for good board. The Parker house on Kearny street, facing the Plaza, paid a rental of $120,000 a year, and a canvas tent adjoining which housed the El Dorado saloon, netted its owner $+0,000 a year. But the glories of the Oriental, and the wonders of the hotel which had for its foundation the submerged hulk of a ship, are not nearly so interesting as the fact that the gregarious or some other instinct of man in 1849 and the early Fifties impelled him to a course which produced the same condition in a new city with all out-doors in which to expand, as that witnessed in our own times and is errone- ously attributed to enforced congestion.
The story of hotel and restaurant life in San Francisco is one of continuous improvement and mirrors the progress of the City. It also, when carefully fol- lowed, exhibits the development of a conservatism which later became as pronounced a characteristic of the people as their earlier instability. Before the breaking out of the Civil war most of the hotels of the earlier Fifties were destroyed or edged out by the encroachments of business, but the hotel and amusement center refused to move far from the district in which it had been established by the pioneers. The Occidental and Cosmopolitan hotels, although the City had spread to the south, and persisted in climbing hills which the prophets declared would be a barrier to expansion, were built within a half dozen blocks of the center of 1849; and a quarter of a century later the Palace was reared in the same neighborhood. Even the calamity of 1906 proved powerless to resist this conservatism. The new St. Fran- cis is scarcely more than five minutes' brisk walk from the spot on which the St. Francis of 1849 stood, and a guest of the Fairmont could almost throw a stone into the district where restaurants and theaters flourished during the Fifties.
A Compact City
If the men who had much to do with shaping the destiny of San Francisco knew the lines about a "pent up Utica," and admired them, they never thought of applying them to themselves. Although the tendency to spread southward early manifested itself instead of allowing for expansion in that direction a course was deliberately adopted which later greatly hampered the City's growth. The influ- ences and motives responsible for the attempt to contract the operations of the municipality are easily understood. The corruption of officials prior to the appli- cation of the drastic methods of the Vigilantes had caused the people to distrust themselves, and they easily fell in with the proposition of the framer of the Con- solidation Act of 1856 to lop off a large part of the original county of San Fran- cisco in order to form a compact political subdivision.
Cntting Loose from the Country
Horace Hawes was not gifted with much imagination, and if he had been the times and his environment would have militated against his taking a glance into the future, which would have permitted him to see that changed means of trans- portation would affect men's ideas concerning the desirability of packing people closely together. In cutting off all that part of the original county of San Francisco south of a line running through the southern extremity of Lake Merced, and its erection into San Mateo county, he doubtless thought that he was conferring a
The Tendency to Herd
Hotel Center in Early Days
MEIGGS WHARF, FOOT OF POWELL STREET, NORTH BEACH, AS IT APPEARED IN 1865
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benefit on the remaining part which was consolidated with the City. Consolidation naturally suggested itself to an economical man, and Hawes was economical to the verge of parsimony; but no one criticized him adversely on that account at the time. The people who deemed it expedient to cut up the land into building lots of twenty-five feet and even less frontage were not expansive in their ideas. They leaned to the belief that the business of a city could be effected with more facility by contracting the area in which it was to be carried on than by spreading operations over a large surface.
Street cars were first used in San Francisco in 1863, several years after their introduction into American cities on the Atlantic seaboard. Up to that date "omni- buses" were employed. The first line of stages drawn by horses was used to carry passengers from North Beach to South Park and began operating in the early part of 1852. A road was opened along the bay shore, around the eastern and northern base of Telegraph hill, making communication easy, and the "busses" were regularly dispatched between the two points. The traffic was inconsiderable, and it was not until the advent of the tramway that the disposition to spread manifested itself, and then only feebly, for many years until a San Francisco inven- tion solved the problem of climbing the hills that encircled the bay.
The prestige given to South Park by this communication with North Beach endured well into the following decade. It was not much of a park as parks go in these days, but the people of the Fifties did not regard the term as a misnomer when applied to the oblong enclosure, surrounded by prim houses very much alike, but still having an air of gentility which caused the neighborhood to be regarded as fashionable. It soon had a rival in Rincon hill, which overlooked the bay, and maintained its supremacy until the Seventies when the cable cars began to climb Clay street; then it was deserted by people with pretensions, and surrendered to manufacture and commerce. It is now doomed to disappear entirely. Its integrity was early attacked by the commercial spirit which resented interference with south- ward march of business, and streets were cut through it which gave the houses an inaccessible appearance and made them undesirable for residence.
The same fate for a long while menaced Telegraph hill which survived threat- ened inroads only because the failure of Harry Meigg's project of rivalling Yerba Buena prevented North Beach from growing in population and importance as rapidly as that daring speculator imagined it would. Had his dream been realized there is no doubt that the assaults made upon the hill by those wishing to unite the region which had already won favor with the northern part of the City must have caused its complete demolition. A considerable portion along the edge of the bay was escarped for the purpose of making a roadway, and later there were further encroachments to increase the level area at its shore end, but the practical arrest- ment of business enterprise on the northern side of the City after the flight of Meiggs caused the retention of Telegraph hill until sentiment began to operate and now there is a strong probability that it will remain a permanent landmark, and a reminder of the days when it was an important signal station from which the welcome news of the arrivals of steamships bringing letters from "home" was announced.
Even the success of Meiggs' scheme would have been ineffective to arrest the progress of the City southward and westward. The sand dunes were less formid- able than they appeared to be to the forty-niners, and the successful use of the steam
Early Transporta- tion Facilities
Fashionable Residence District
Telegraph Hill
Southward Movement of City
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shovel soon pointed out the natural direction of extension for business purposes. Happy valley, as that part of the City lying between California street and Rincon Point was called, was assailed when the necessity for expansion exhibited itself and in the course of years not a suggestion of the early character of the soil was left. No pioneer has ever told how the area lying between California street and Rincon Point and the bay and the Mission Peaks came to be called Happy valley. Viewed from what is now known as Nob hill it appeared to be a mere waste of sand, although there were spots in it containing thick undergrowth as was notably the case in the place selected for a cemetery.
Early Street System
Through this waste of sand a broad street, to which the name of Market was given, was traced to run in a southwesterly direction from the bay. It did not follow the line of least resistance, but those who laid it out were apparently governed by the desire to avoid some of the embarrassments which would have been presented by a too strict adherence to the rectangular plan of the streets that were first sur- veyed. The pioneers of San Francisco were not wholly unmindful of the possibili- ties of conforming thoroughfares to topography; there was much criticism of the unloveliness of the formal squares or blocks, and it was pointed out that beauty and convenience might be made to go hand in hand, but the commercial spirit was the dominating factor in determining the matter and straight lines were decided upon. Hindsight is frequently more reliable than foresight, but it will be wise for those who take advantage of experience to criticize the failure of the pioneers to build for the future to keep in mind the fact that the builders of the City had many problems to deal with, and that the one which appealed to them most strongly for solution was that of making San Francisco a great commercial port and that object was constantly kept in the foreground.
No Desire to be the Capital
At no time was this idea subordinated to any other consideration. Few aspiring communities escaped more easily the desire to become a capital. On two or three occasions sporadic efforts were made to establish the seat of state government in San Francisco, but they never received the hearty support of the community. In 1850 the legislature which had been meeting at San Jose got tired of that place, and an agitation was started to transfer the capital to a spot that would be deemed more suitable. Numerous offers were made to tempt location, but San Francisco ex- hibited little or no concern, and was not even disposed to regard with alarm the pro- posal of Vallejo to start a city on the Straits of Carquinez which was to be pro- vided with all the requisites of a great capital, including botanical gardens, universities and penitentiaries. Five or six years later, after the capital had been located at Sacramento, a flood compelled the legislators to find refuge in the City, and a move- ment was set on foot to offer inducements which would bring about its transfer to San Francisco, but it never gained force. Perhaps the inhabitants of the City were conscious of the jealousy of the interior which early asserted itself and concluded that any effort they might make would prove unavailing; but it is more than prob- able that the cause of the apathy concerning the matter was the same as that which made San Franciscans indifferent to the numerous attempts to divide the state, namely, the profound conviction that the destiny of the City was assured and could not be seriously affected by the machinations of politicians or by rivalry.
Confidence in Future
When Bret Harte wrote that San Francisco sat by the Golden Gate, "serene and indifferent to fate," he poetically expressed the unfaltering belief of the pioneer in the manifest destiny of the City. It was not, however, an unintelligent conviction,
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and was never responsible for the relaxation of energy which at times exhibited itself during the growth of the City. Other causes for the temporary arrestments of progress can easily be assigned, and they in no wise conflict with the assertion that on the whole the pioneers, and their immediate successors, made excellent use of their opportunities which in many respects were far inferior to those enjoyed by the regions on the other side of the Rockies which were helped by an unceasing stream of assimilable immigrants who assisted in the development of their resources.
The interdependence of city and country was clearly understood by the people of San Francisco who were perhaps keener to appreciate the possibilities of the soil than those who, by a variety of methods, some of them not altogether creditable, obtained possession of large quantities of land which they held for a rise in values. The people of the City at all times were averse to large holdings, and eager for the subdivision of the land, and they were settled in the determination that the big Spanish grants should never be made profitable by the introduction of cheap Oriental labor, fully realizing that the inevitable result of development by means of a servile and nonassimilable people would in the long run produce results not unlike those which for a period made the South a comparatively negligible indus- trial and commercial factor.
Southern sentiment, which after its first defeat in the attempt to make a slave state of California nearly regained dominance, did not appear to have any other than political consequences. The offices and those occupations closely related to politics were swayed by Southerners, but their point of view was not largely shared by the mercantile element of San Francisco which preferred to mould itself on the methods of the more vigorous Northern states. The tremendous admiration entertained by San Franciscans for Henry Clay was largely due to their sympathy with his aspirations for American industrial emancipation. The people of San Francisco believed that the future of their City was linked with free labor. At times they appeared to vacillate, but the departure from the straight path never proceeded too far to be easily arrested. The vagaries of politics led them to side with a party whose leaders were not in accord with them, but when the crucial moment arrived they arrayed themselves without hesitation against the slaveholders; and in the same way, while they occasionally paltered with the proposition to hasten the state's development by means of cheap Chinese labor, when it became neces- sary to make a choice they were uncompromisingly against its introduction.
It is necessary to make the connection perfectly clear so that the reader may comprehend that San Francisco encountered obstacles to her advancement which no other city of the Union was called upon to deal with. The first wave of emigra- tion which swept into California nearly a quarter of a million people quickly receded. Afterward the tide ebbed and flowed placidly, and at the end of fourteen years of occupation its great area was occupied by less than four hundred thousand inhabitants, made up very largely of classes not disposed to enter upon the land.
At the same time the older states of the Union were receiving continuous acces- sions of toilers to whom tilling of the soil was a congenial occupation, and inci- dentally their absorption was creating a labor condition which California must necessarily attain if her expectations of great industrial expansion were to be realized.
City and Country
Advocates of Free Labor
Tide of Immigration
CHAPTER XXXII
RESOURCES THAT PROMOTED THE GROWTH OF SAN FRANCISCO
CHARACTER OF CALIFORNIA LANDS-A BIGGER HOME MARKET FOR THEIR PRODUCTS NEEDED-PAST DEPENDENCE ON THE OUTSIDER-UNORGANIZED MERCANTILISM- EARLY TRADE DEPRESSIONS-THE PANIC OF 1855-BANKING TROUBLES-PLENTY OF GOLD BUT NO CURRENCY-PRIVATE COINAGE-BUYING AND SELLING GOLD DUST -GOVERNMENTAL METHODS OF DEALING WITH THE PEOPLE-MERCHANT PRINCES OF PIONEER PERIOD-PIONEER STOCKS OF MERCHANDISE-LITTLE ATTEMPT TO DISPLAY GOODS-CREDIT SYSTEM AND COLLECTIONS-PIONEER IDEAS OF A TRANS- CONTINENTAL RAILROAD-MUCH TALK OF CONNECTING EAST AND WEST-STATE PRIDE DEVELOPS SLOWLY-WAGON ROADS-HIGH FARE AND FREIGHT RATES-SEA AND RIVER NAVIGATION-CLIPPER SHIPS-PANAMA AND NICARAGUA ROUTES-THE PANAMA RAILROAD-SHIPPING OF THE PAST-BUSINESS DRAWBACKS.
LTHOUGH mining was the only industry which largely contributed to the growth and prosperity of San Francisco during the early Fifties, those most interested in the development of the City did not deceive themselves con- cerning the probability of its becoming a diminishing re- OF CO source. The exhaustion of the placers was freely discussed SEAL SAN and the question asked what products could be made to take the place of gold when the fields should cease to yield large quantities of the precious metals. Later, when quartz mining began to make a showing there was a revival of the belief that the production of gold would always be California's most important industry, but it was not shared by observant men who recognized the possibilities of a thorough development of the vast area of fertile land which had been practically neglected up to the time of the occupation, and was not made much use of during the first few years after the discovery of gold.
There was a wide divergence of opinion respecting the agricultural capabilities of California in the early Fifties. They were relatively better appreciated before the gold rush began than while the excitement attending the great finds of the precious metal lasted. Among the immigrants who entered the state with the view of engaging in mining there were comparatively few who had previously worked on farms, and they were easily misled by appearances into the belief that most of the land was unfit for any other than grazing purposes. This view was to some extent shared by the immigrants who had been farmers and was only aban- doned by them when actual experience demonstrated that there was no branch of agriculture which could not be profitably pursued within the borders of California.
Thus it happened that the pioncer merchants of San Francisco, while all their
Sources of Prosperity
Fertility of California Lands
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energies were at first absorbed in the conduct of a trade unique in many particulars, inasmuch as it involved the exchange of a universally sought product for an infinite variety of commodities, rather than the complex operations attending the quest for markets in which to dispose of competing articles, were the first to recognize the need of industrial expansion, and did all in their power to bring about that result. That this was their attitude is made plain by the discussions in the legislature and the press in which the future of the port of San Francisco was always spoken of as dependent upon the development of the agricultural resources of the country, and the conversion of raw materials into finished products. It was the prevalence of this opinion as much as any other cause that kept California from meeting the fate which a section of the American people were desirous of imposing upon her from the date of acquisition. Had the course of events after 1846 not been inter- rupted by the discovery of gold it hardly admits of a doubt that the most of the immigrants attracted to the new territory would have been from the South and Southwest, and that they would have succeeded when the rupture between North and South finally came, in carrying California out of the Union. The influx of great numbers of men from those parts of the country where free labor prevailed, and where the conviction was very general that American prosperity depended on the creation of a condition which would relieve the country of the necessity of depending on foreigners, determined the future of California and set at naught the plans of politicians.
The early trade conditions, and the first feeble efforts at manufacturing in San Francisco very faintly indicated the aspirations of its inhabitants which were im- possible of speedy realization because of economic obstacles that will only be overcome when the population of the state is great enough to permit it to manufac- ture on a scale which will make low cost of production possible. In tracing these efforts it will be seen that San Francisco was subject to drawbacks which at first seemed advantages, and that in reaching out to secure the benefits which close intercourse undoubtedly confers she subjected her growing industries to a compe- tition which her sparse population and limited resources were not able to withstand.
Turning back to the days of Forty-nine we find that the country was as dependent on the outside world for all those things which men desire as the native Californians were before their arrival. The commonest necessaries of life had to be brought from the "States" or Europe, and those artificial contributions to comfort demanded by man, whenever he can command the means to obtain them, were all derived from the same sources. As a consequence for several years the import trade of San Francisco was not merely the most important, it was practically the sole direct trade with other peoples, for the commodities imported were almost wholly paid for with the gold taken from the placers. In 1848 there were twelve mercantile establishments and a number of agencies for Eastern concerns and firms doing busi- ness in the Sandwich islands; and there were also several direct importers. Within the first eight weeks after the discovery at Sutter's fort fully $250,000 worth of gold dust had reached San Francisco, and in the ensuing eight weeks an additional $600,000 was received. The effect on trade was what might have been expected. The stocks on hand were rapidly cleaned out. So great was the demand for all sorts of commodities that the Russian American Company, whose managers in Alaska had early intelligence of the gold find, were enabled to clear shelves and
Agriculture Possibilities
A Greater Market Needed
Dependence on the Outside World
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warehouses of dead stock that had accumulated during the many years their estab- lishment had been in operation.
In 1849 merchants were so eager to procure goods that they went out in boats to meet ships in the offing. It is related that a trader who adopted this plan of replenishing his stock hailed a ship just arrived, asking: "Have you woolen shirts?" "Yes," was the reply. "How many?" "About a hundred dozen." "What will you take for the lot?" "A hundred per cent over New York cost." "Done. Here's a hundred dollars to bind the bargain." The trade thus concluded, netted the purchaser more than the New York consignor or the ship, but all were satis- fied. It is not surprising that the knowledge of this extraordinary demand should have resulted in a great movement of goods towards the new El Dorado. Soon ships were sailing toward the Golden Gate from all quarters of the globe bringing merchandise and men. Before the middle of the year 1849 the bay was filled with shipping. Over two hundred square rigged vessels lay at anchor in the harbor, and they had all brought goods, and as is usual in such cases, the importations were nearly all responsive to the same impulse, and not nicely adjusted to the requirements of the market. Nevertheless, although the merchants were obliged to pay the excessive rents and high prices for their goods, they made large profits.
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