USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume II > Part 19
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Vulgar Ostentation Uncommon
All things are relative. If the brokers of the period were able to keep their personal expenses down to the figure named, and accomplish the result of making their fellow citizens think that they were a recklessly extravagant lot, it was due to the fact that the mode of life of the people generally was pitched in another key than that of vulgar ostentation. And indeed this was the case as the letters of Hunt- ington to Colton plainly show. One of the railroad magnate's chief grievances against his associate Stanford, was that the latter had allowed the newspapers to get hold of the fact that he had bought some costly diamonds for his wife, and drew out from him that remarkable zoological observation that "the higher a monkey climbs a tree" the more likely he is to expose himself, especially if he is painted sky blue. Indeed the earlier policy of the managers of the railroad was to avoid ostentation. It was disclosed in a trial in 1871 that the president of the Cen- tral Pacific, Leland Stanford, was only allowed $10,000 per annum for filling that important office. It is true that he had numerous other sources of revenue due to his connection with the railroad, but the amount of his official salary at that time furnishes an excellent measure of the living scale of the more fortunate members of the community, which is more often determined by the high salaried class than the accumulators of great fortunes in whom the spirit of thrift has become second nature.
The reports made to assessors by property holders are not usually regarded as dependable as "holy writ," but they enable us to form some sort of a concept of the mode of life of the fortunate, and those of the year 1875-76 provide a complete refutation of the charge that the men who had made great sums in mines or by spec- ulation loved to make ostentatious displays of their wealth. Consulting the personal property roll of that year we find that James C. Flood, the richest of the bonanza firm living in San Francisco, returned a total of $10,975 worth of personal prop- erty. His establishment in the City was a very modest one containing $6,000 of furniture; a piano worth $500; plate to the value of $500; paintings valued at the same amount; two horses were put in at $600; a carriage at $1,000; a- Rockaway at $275; three buggies at $600 and a phaeton $500, these items totalling the above . sum. There was no other mining magnate who returned possessions even remotely approaching in value the amount named. The railroad magnates did not report enor- mously greater personal possessions. Leland Stanford, whose residence was spoken of as "palatial," in 1875-76, appeared at the head of the roll with $40,150 worth of personal property charged to him, $25,000 of which was furniture and $10,000 in hard cash. His horses and vehicles, for purposes of taxation were valued at only $2,200. Another of San Francisco's wealthiest citizens, Lewis T. Haggin, af- firmed that his personal property, consisted wholly of furniture and was worth only $2,000.
Personal Property of Rich Men
THE CITY HALL AS IT APPEARED IN 1880 BEFORE THE COMPLETION OF THE LARKIN AND MCALLISTER STREETS WING The Stand in front of the circular Hall of Records was on the "Sand Lot" and was used by Denis Kearney and other agitators during the troublous period preceding the adoption of the Constitution of 1879.
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Of course, despite the fact that the property owner is in the habit of making oath that his personal belongings are worth what he says they are in his statement, there is good reason for believing that the assessment roll is more in the nature of a work of fiction than a reliable statistical presentation. But while uncertainty attends its figures, they furnish sufficient evidence that there was not much vulgar ostentation, and that, considering the wealth at their command the rich men of this particular period comported themselves, so far as outward appearances were con- cerned, in a seemly fashion. The charge of extravagance with far more propriety could be brought against the general run of the community, because its members indulged their desires with much more freedom relatively than the men who, by indirection at least, were charged with contributing to the discontent of the period.
The criticism which Bryce voiced would have been applicable to a later period than that dealt with by him. When he visited San Francisco in 1881 the City was in a transition state. Its former leaders were being overshadowed in importance by the owners of greater wealth, and they resented the fact, apparently unconscious that the prestige they had enjoyed was due to the same causes which was putting their successors at the head. In the formation of new social centers, that which calls itself society does not inquire narrowly into the origin of wealth, it merely recognizes the existence of the latter. In that respect it differs in no essential particular from any other aristocracy. The bluest blood of modern times, before it took its cerulean hue, ran very red in the veins of robbers and murderers. Long possession of wealth and the advantages it brings in the way of culture fix the social status of individuals. So it happened that toward the close of the Seventies, and in the beginning of the Eighties, the disposition to brand as upstarts and parveneus all the aspirants to social recognition began to assert itself, and when a wealthy mining magnate had the presumption to buy a house which had once housed a merchant prince and gave a grand ball in it he was sneered at, not alone by those into whose set he was intruding, but by the people at large who always pass a harsher judgment on the "climber" than on the set which he or she seeks to pene- trate.
Before this transition began there was a gradual lessening of the influence of the pioneer who had sometimes been looked up to because he had come to the City or coast in 1849. The new generation, and the accessions from the East who greatly outnumbered the earlier arrivals were prone to think that the old ways of doing business might be improved upon, and that it was better to peer into the future or deal with the ideas of the present than to adhere to the traditions of the past. It cannot be said that there ever was a society in San Francisco based on the pioneer idea, but there was a distinct tendency up to the Eighties on the part of the successful pioneer's family to assume that the early appearance of its head on the scene gave his offspring the right to consider themselves as belonging to "the old families." The real old families of California, those perhaps best entitled to the appellation, had never asserted themselves to any extent in San Francisco, as in other parts of the state which had grown less rapidly in wealth and importance. Perhaps the explanation may be found in the numerous notices which appeared in the papers during the later Seventies, of the demise of this, that or another old Cali- fornian, which were usually accompanied by the statement that Don So and So, "though impoverished at the time of his death was a member of one of the old Vol. II-9
A Free- Handed People
Social Changes Noted
Lessening Influence of the Pioneer
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Spanish families of California, and was at one time owner of the famous ranch this, that or the other."
Centenary of Founding of the Mission
Perhaps the last strong reminder of days past and gone in which the old Cali- fornian figured in San Francisco was that which he gave by participating in the celebration of the centenary of the founding of the Mission Dolores. In the parade of 1876 held to commemorate that event, one of the most interesting features . was a troop of Caballeros, many of them old Californians. They numbered three hundred and gave exhibitions of their horsemanship on native horses. The saddles they rode were the richly silver mounted affairs of earlier days, and the trappings were covered with the same precious metal. Far more interesting than their ability as riders, or the gorgeous dress they wore was a fact noted by Father Gleason in a passing observation. "The old bitterness which for years existed between the Mex- ican and Spaniard," he tells us was to a great extent smoothed over by the friendly rivalry of the occasion, which brought up memories so dear to them.
As the City grew in numbers some curious practices of early days were greatly abated and others ceased entirely. In the earliest pioneer period men were not particular about the names they bore, but a little later, prompted by various consid- erations there was a regular epidemic of desire for change. At first the legislature interested itself in the matter of these "new births," but after a while the duty of considering demands of this sort was relegated to the county courts. There were injurious comments made on the queer predilection which may have fitted many of the cases, but the most of the changes were prompted by practical motives. Ger- mans and other foreigners who had brought with them to the new El Dorado names which did not sound well when translated, or which the people in their new environ- ment found it difficult to pronounce, sought to have them converted into prosaic everyday titles which would not attract attention, but there were some undoubtedly who sought to exchange a plain cognomen like Smith or Jones to something more distinctive. There is at least one instance of this sort in which one of the former tribe was transformed by act of the legislature into Amor de Cosmos.
In an earlier chapter reference was made to the swing of the pendulum which resulted in the passage of a Sunday law which was never enforced. At frequent intervals attempts were made to bring about a stricter observance of the first day of the week, invariably without success. The only effect of these agitations was to cause irritation, and finally, on the recommendation of Governor Stoneman in 1883, the legislature repealed the law. There was absolutely no change in conse- quence. People continued to act as they had while the law was in force, but the most noticeable and offensive practice, that of selling goods on Sunday, ceased, the abandonment of the practice being entirely voluntary. Before the Eighties numbered four San Francisco was a quiet city on Sunday. Very few stores, and they were in the meaner quarters of the town, were kept open, and there were no more martial strains of music heard as the picnic parties marched to the wharves. Theaters did not close their doors, and there was no pretense of holding sacred concerts within their walls; but so far as the community generally was concerned it was not disturbed, and to find occasion for offense it was necessary to seek for it, for there were no longer any flagrant exhibitions of disregard for the sensibilities of those who held to a rigid observance of rules that the cosmopolitan population of the City insisted upon characterizing as puritanical.
Sunday Observance in San Francisco
The Name Changing Habit
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That there was a tendency towards strictness in the closing years of the Seven- ties and in the beginning of the Eighties was evidenced by the attempt to induce the legislature of 1877-78 to pass an act forbidding the practice of drinking at bars. The movement originated in San Francisco and was urged by those who thought that the evils connected with drink were principally, if not wholly, due to the treating habit which prevailed to an alarming extent about this time. The habit of entering saloons was largely promoted by the comparative neglect of home life, and a scarcity of clubs, and was indulged in by all classes of society. The business man entertained his customer at the numerous bars, and the customer reciprocated. The lines of what later became the "cocktail route" were well marked ont in those days, and the number who went over it daily was large. Curiously enough while treating was so prevalent the temperance movement was stronger in the City than at any time before or since. There was an organization known as the "Dashaways" carrying on an active campaign against the drink habit and the meas- ure of its popularity may be gathered from the fact that its membership was ex- tensive enough to permit the purchase of a fine piece of property on Post street, and the erection upon it of a commodious hall. The subsequent history of the or- ganization was not entirely creditable. After the failure of the anti-treat bill there was a gradual abatement of the more demonstrative forms of the drink habit, and with the growth of clubs and the multiplication of modes of amusement the mis- sionary spirit subsided and the Dashaways finally diminished in numbers until the organization wholly faded away, those remaining faithful to the last dividing among themselves the sum derived from the sale of the property acquired during the ac- tive career of the association, at the same time furnishing the cynical San Fran- ciscan with a new verb-to dashaway.
Among the other practices which once had great vogue in San Francisco, and was made much of during the Seventies, was that of New Year's calling. About the beginning of the Eighties it commenced to lose the stamp of fashionable ap- proval. For several years it remained a popular institution, but it ceased to be observed by those who had once prided themselves on keeping open house and making a display of hospitality whose most prominent feature was the dispensing of liquid refreshments. About the same time that the New Year's calling habit lost its fashionable character the habit of drinking champagne at bars fell into desuetude. This was a custom begotten by the desire of the gold miner of early days to show his liberality, and perhaps to advertise his good fortune. It was known as opening a bottle or treating to wine, the word "wine" in the vernacular of the period being exclusively retained for the sparkling product of the grape.
There were other changes during the Seventies indicating the approach of the community towards the conditions existing in the older communities. In 1870 no one thought of deprecating the proposition to lift the Mercantile library out of the slough of despond created by a big debt, by holding a lottery. Not the slight- est difficulty was experienced in persuading the legislature to pass an act authoriz- ing the scheme, and on October 31, 1870, there was a drawing, at which a capital prize of $60,000 and other sums were distributed. A grand concert marked the occasion, but it was not designed to mask the true nature of the affair, which was a frank appeal to the strong gambling instinct still existent, to help an institution which, through a combination of bad management and insufficient patronage had become financially embarrassed. The lottery was a social as well as a financial
The Treating Habit Assailed
New Year's Calls no Longer Fashionable
Mercantile Library Lottery
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success ; everybody who could do so attended the drawing, the board of brokers being present in a body. The capital prize was won by some one in New Orleans, and the surplus was devoted to the purposes of the library, which, however, never flourished and finally gave up the ghost, its books being merged into the collection of the Mechanics institute. Nine years later the sentiment had changed so com- pletely that men who were prominently identified with the promotion of the lottery scheme were foremost in causing to be inserted into the Constitution of 1879 the section forbidding the legislature to authorize lotteries or gift enterprises, and direct- ing it to pass laws to prohibit the sale in California of lottery or gift enterprise tickets.
Salmi Morse's Passion Piay
Perhaps the swing of the pendulum from the side of laxity to that of strictness received its most significant illustration in 1879, when a playwright named Salmi Morse succeeded in persuading the local manager of a theater to produce a piece which was called "The Passion Play." Its first performance was at the Grand opera house on March 3, 1879, and the actors who took part were from the Baldwin theater. The production was at once attacked by press and pulpit, and the board of supervisors passed an ordinance forbidding any representations of a religious nature on the stage. Out of deference to what seemed public opinion the performance was suspended. Subsequently, however, there was a more tolerant disposition displayed. Those who had seen the first representations declared that there was nothing to offend the sensibilities of the religiously inclined, and that the performance at Oberammergau was no more calculated to excite reverential emotion than that of the artists who were in the cast, some of whose names after- ward became known to the world.
This temperate criticism was regarded as indicative of a changed attitude and it was resolved to repeat the production and the house was reopened on April 15th. At the close of the performance James O'Neill, who personated the Savior, was arrested and a couple of days later he, together with F. E. Brooks, W. J. Dugnan, J. M. McConnell, William Seymour, David Belasco, A. D. Bradley, Lewis Morri- son, J. H. Long, J. H. Wooland and E. A. Ambrose, all members of the Baldwin theater, were called to answer charges of misdemeanor for violating the ordinance forbidding the presenting for money any play having it in any religious incidents. O'Neill was fined $50 and the author appealed the case, which was finally decided adversely to the defendants, Judge Morrison of the fourth district court holding that the board of supervisors had the right to pass such an ordinance, and adding that the life and death of the Savior was not a proper subject for theatrical repre- sentation.
There was much difference of opinion concerning the merits or demerits of the performance, and it may have been due to the fact that the scverest critics, and the opposition generally came from those who had not seen the performance. Those who did were sure that its effect on the spectator must be to arouse reverence. It was finely staged, probably under the direction of David Belasco, who since that time has acquired international fame. The tableaux have never been surpassed in this City, and the acting was without the flaws which mark the performances of amateurs. The play itself had no great literary merit, but its author, Salmi Morse, had the dramatic sense well developed, and the art to adhere closely to the English style of the King James version of the Bible. After the decision of Judge Morri- son no further attempt was made to repeat the performance in San Francisco, but
Merits and Demerits of the Piay
Passion Play Actors Arrested
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it was essayed in New York, where it was accorded a cold reception and was vio- lently attacked, especially by the Protestant clergy. It should be noted that in bringing proceedings against the violators of the ordinance the women in the cast were not molested. May Wilkes and Kate Denin played the parts of the Virgin Mary and Herodias.
The favorite mode of raising money for charitable purposes during the Seventies continued to be that of earlier years with a modification. The benefit performance had not lost its vogue entirely and amusement was still relied upon to coax the dollars from the pockets of the forehanded into the coffers of the organized chari- ties. In the summer of 1879 the active spirits of the period laid plans for a great entertainment to be held at the Mechanics pavilion, and to be known as the Authors' Carnival. The pavilion at that time was situated on the corner of Eighth and Mission streets. It was a large frame structure extending nearly the length of the block along Eighth, in the direction of Market street, and was well adapted to the affair, the chief feature of which was a nightly pageant in which all of the repre- sentatives of the characters made familiar by noted authors participated, costumed to suit the part. There were booths dedicated to the leading lights of literature, and in each the principal and sometimes all of the creations of the author were de- picted. This was particularly true of those of Dickens, whose popularity at that time was attested by the fact that the spectators generally were able to recognize them without assistance. The procession made up of the varied characters with knights and ladies, kings and beggars, beaux and saint was a glittering and interesting spectacle as it moved through the broad aisles of the pavilion and was witnessed during ten nights by thousands. All of the participants were amateurs and their only reward for a great deal of hard work was the consciousness of doing a good deed, and the privilege of being admitted to the grand ball which wound up the affair. The total receipts for the ten days amounted to $44,819.50. In the ensuing year the carnival was successfully repeated but with lessened enthusiasm, and smaller pecuniary results.
These activities and charities and the amusements of the period which are yct to be described, indicate that the people of California were becoming very like those of the older states of the Union, yet Bryce thought he saw characteristics which distinguished them from the normal American. Californians "had formed the habit of buying and selling in the mining exchanges, with effects on the popular temper both in business and politics which everyone can understand," but seem- ingly he failed to comprehend their real temperament for he assumed that there was bred in them a distaste for patient industry, and a recklessness and turbulence 'in their inner life which did not fail to express itself in acts. It cannot be insisted upon too strongly that this view is a mistaken one, and that the people of the state, and particularly of San Francisco, did not lack stability of character. It is true though, as he asserted, that the most active minds of San Francisco were too much engrossed in business to attend to politics, but it is absolutely untrue that "the masses were impatient, accustomed to blame everything and everybody but themselves for the slow approach of the millennium, and that they were ready to try instant, even if perilous, remedies for a present evil." Unless it can be said that an agitation carried on for many years can be regarded as evidence of an impatient disposition and a resort to legal methods to remedy grievances can properly be characterized as a demand for the application of perilous remedies, the distinguished
Author's Carnivals
Stability Not Lacking
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Englishman must be considered to have made a blundering diagnosis of the trouble from which San Francisco suffered, which after all that has been said on the sub- ject consisted mainly in the people getting twenty-five or thirty years in advance of the modern movement which Roosevelt thinks he is leading, but which was mapped out for him by California in its so-called "sand lot" constitution.
San Franciscans Law-abiding
Otherwise Californians were a perfectly normal people, pretty much like the people of other states of the Union. They took their amusements and religion in the same way, perhaps accentuating their preference for the former a little more strongly than the people of other American cities, and although San Francisco "was a New York which had no Boston on one side of it, and no shrewd and or- derly population on the other to keep it in order," it managed to perform that dnty for itself, and its defenders can safely challenge comparison with other cities whether in Europe or America, in the full assurance that the record will show that for a half a century it has managed to preserve the peace better, and has had a more law abiding population than any other city occupying the position Bryce assigned it when he said "California more than any other part of the Union is a country by itself and San Francisco a capital."
San Francisco had so many distinguishing features during the Seventies and early Eighties it was hardly necessary to invest its people with characteristics they did not possess. There was, for instance, its propensity to enter wholesouledly into anything in which it took an interest, a disposition oftener present in places that do not aspire to headship than in capitals. When General Grant passed through San Francisco, in the early part of the winter of 1879, he was accorded a reception which he subsequently declared caused him to feel more emotion than he had experienced during the entire course of his travels. The enthusiasm of the welcome enhanced the delight of setting foot in his native land after a long ab- sence, and the heartiness made him feel as though he had reached home, as indeed he had, for San Francisco knew him before he had distinguished himself and written his name large in history. The population of the City has grown greatly since the day when a fleet of vessels numbering hundreds welcomed him outside the heads, and escorted the Pacific mail steamer, on which he was the honored passenger, to its dock, but never since have the throngs on the streets through which the procession moved on the day of his arrival seemed denser. The whole country for hundreds of miles around had invaded the gaily decorated city and its main thoroughfares were overflowing with humanity. An observant police officer who had occasion to investigate made the assertion that the outpouring was so great that practically every house in the City was deserted by its occupants while the ovation was in progress, but happily without evil results so far as the ' safety of property was concerned.
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