USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume II > Part 62
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In studying the growth of a city we must take the good with the bad, and we shall make a grave mistake if at any time we permit ourselves to believe that the former does not predominate. The evils of urban development fill a large space in the public eye simply because they are departures from the normal. We note the instances in which veracity is departed from, but pay no attention to adherence to the truth. The most inveterate liar probably tells the truth 97 times out of a hundred, but his three per cent infraction of the standard we have set up for our- selves impresses us unfavorably, while the 97 per cent. of the straightforwardness to which we are accustomed passes unnoticed. This proportion of good to bad is nearly maintained in city government, and the most of the imperfections of which we complain are attributable rather to lack of system, the attainment of which is impossible while collective judgment and bossing are the rule. We talk much about bosses and hossism, but as a matter of fact the people are the bosses, and because there are so many of them they make a mess of the job. They call the men they elect to office their servants, but as the people are only accountable to
Events More Important Than the Actors
Vices and Evils of Urban Life
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CORNER OF MARKET AND POST STREETS, THREE YEARS AFTER THE FIRE
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themselves when they make bad selections they have to pay the penalty for their ignorance and misjudgments. It is because this is true that this history has dealt with events rather than with the actors who participated in them. The attempt to graft the eponymic feature on a modern municipal system would necessarily prove a failure because the world has become too skeptical to accept as heroes men who are only a part of a machine which even when they appear to be directing it is really run by the people, or is impelled by self-acquired momentum. In ancient Greece the archons, and in Rome the consuls imposed their names on the years during which they held office, and thus perhaps helped out a weak chronological system, but no one remembers them, and the historians who have carefully recorded their names performed no great service. In grubbing through the matter resurrected from the cuneiform tablets from which some sort of a history of Assyria has been pro- duced, many names have been resurrected, but the real point of interest does not lie in their identification, or the fixing of the period in which they lived, but in fugitive facts collected concerning their doings. It is far more interesting to learn that big irrigation ditches and huge temples were erected in Ninevah and Babylonia than it is to know that Sargon II recorded on a stele that 350 kings had ruled in Assyria before him.
The details of the every day life of these ancient peoples give us a better idea of the country, and what its inhabitants had to endure or how they enjoyed them- selves, than the eulogies of kings, often self bestowed. Unfortunately they are com- paratively meager and have to be pieced out with the imagination. There will be no excuse for traveling outside the record in the future. The modern historian has convinced himself, and the public for whom he writes, that we are far more keen to learn what was done, and how it was done, than to know who did it. Not that he fails to realize that biography is intensely fascinating. He has a keen appreci- ation of the fact that it is, and if he overlooked it he would speedily be reminded of the favor in which it is held by the statistics of libraries. But he has it borne in upon him that in every event there are many actors, and that in a democratic country there are few leaders, and that they lead by a species of suffrance where frequent elections are held. It is for that reason that the modern historian chooses to be a chronicler of events rather than a judge of men. He is on the safe side when he determines to place the blame for shortcomings on the whole community, and he does no injustice when he permits the praise for meritorious accomplish- ments to be absorbed by the whole body politic which makes it possible for them to occur rather than to single out for honor the individual who for the moment di- rects, and whose choice as director is as often as otherwise the result of adven- titious circumstances. What has been written in these pages has been largely influ- enced by this idea. The activities of the people rather than of individuals have been dealt with. The people pay the penalty when mistakes are made and to them be- longs the glory which successful achievement calls forth.
An impartial record of the blunders and the accomplishments of the inhabit- ants of a city does not present an exact analogy to a well kept ledger. It is not capable of being balanced after the scientific manner of the accountant, but it enables the student in a large way to size up the character and efficiency of a people. The noticeable achievements of a modern municipality unlike those of an ancient city are those of the market place and not of the battle field. If the city performs its part well in the marts of trade it is very apt to give a good account of itself in
The People Make History
Departures from the Normal Interest
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the other activities of life. Success in commerce paves the way to the accomplish- ment of desirable ends which could not be secured under other conditions. We can best ascertain the cause of progress and measure its advances by noting the growth of commercial institutions. In a modern society the expansion of the one bears a close relation to the other. The city has its vices, and also its virtues, and despite the popular adage which makes man the creator of the town, and thus deprives Providence of any credit for its good works, it can, statistically at least, make a better presentation of active efforts to promote civilization than the country. These chronicles have shown that San Francisco throughout its checkered career has moved steadily along the lines of progress, and that its virtues far outweighed its shortcomings. The fact that the latter have been dwelt upon more insistently than the former is solely due to the tendency of man to take more interest in the exceptional than he does in the every day decencies of life. He expects his neighbors to behave with propriety and to respect the conventions which society has estab- lished for its safety, and departures from them incite him to condemn, or at least to protest by taking notice that he objects to violations of the normal.
San Francisco after the fire of 1906 talked enough about the imperfections of her office holders and people to create the impression in the minds of those who did not know that she was wholly given over to wickedness. As a matter of fact, while the quantity of dust raised was sufficient to confirm the belief that the City was very dirty morally as well as physically, the vigor put into the cleansing effort should carry conviction that the people did not like the condition, and that they were ready to do all in their power to improve affairs. That they differed as to the method by which this improvement should be brought about does not detract from the fact .that the desire for improvement was powerfully active, a tribute which cannot be fairly paid to some other cities in which the disposition to wash dirty linen in public is less pronounced than in the metropolis of the Pacific coast. After the long travail in the courts which required so much space in the telling, and which occupied a far greater share of the attention of the world than it deserved to receive it seems incredible that so much could have happened outside of the Halls of Justice worth mentioning if only after the comparative manner of the statistician who takes a date for his point of departure and tells us how much of a tangible thing existed then, and sets over against it the quantity or number of the same thing in existence at a later period, expecting the imagination to fill in the details of accomplishment. Before this final "rounding up" of the achievements of San Franciscans after 1906 is presented a glance will be taken at some of the happen- ings which occurred, and which show that despite the hubbub in the courts the people were diverted by other spectacles and that the contemplation of municipal defects did not wholly engross the popular mind.
Curiously enough the movement for a Greater San Francisco which has gained considerable force was revived while the City was still a heap of ashes. The project of combining in one political body all the peoples who practically regarded San Francisco as a common center had been mooted before the disaster, but it had never taken definite shape. At that time there seemed to be complete acquiescence in the assumption that consolidation would prove beneficial to the people of the trans- bay region, and no opposition developed until after the fire. The absence of fric- tion resulted in lack of interest, and the subject was little discussed. In 1906 the promotion committee, an organization which had actively promoted interest in
The Greater San Francisco Movement
Not Wholly Absorbed in Contemplation of Evil
BANK OF CALIFORNIA
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the development of the resources of the state, and especially of the region tribu- tary to San Francisco, took up the matter, and at one of the meetings of its direc- torate the suggestion was made, which has since been acted upon by the United States census bureau, that metropolitan areas could be determined by ascertain- ing the relations of the surrounding peoples to a common business center. This idea was not urged as part of a plan of rearrangement of political subdivisions, but as it was closely related it attracted interest. In 1906 the promotion com- mittee actively engaged in the work of collecting data regarding the effects of con- solidation. A great deal of convincing information was obtained which determined the committee to actively promote the project of unification. But the fire had made a material change in the attitude of a part of the people of the transbay region. A large number of San Franciscans had made their homes in Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda and those cities grew with surprising rapidity. The error made by Horace Hawes in framing the Consolidation Act adopted in 1856 had circum- scribed the limits of San Francisco, and operated to prevent the growth of popu- lation southward. The early mistake of the men who planned San Francisco in cutting up tracts into narrow twenty-five feet wide lots also played its part, but the chief cause of the growth of the transbay region was the superior transporta- tion facilities afforded by the Southern Pacific, and later by the Key Route ferries, which enabled the people to spread out over a great area in the transbay region and establish themselves in surroundings congenial to those who care to bring up families in places where there is room to move around.
A large proportion of those who make their homes in the transbay cities are engaged in business in San Francisco or are employed in the City. But communi- ties whose populations attain the hundred thousand mark produce an atmosphere of their own and have their peculiar political aspirations, and these together with interests created by real estate operations gradually brought about an opposition to the project of combination similar to that witnessed in Brooklyn whose citizens succeeded for many years in keeping apart and hindering the formation of a Greater New York. As late as September, 1912, although the discussion of the subject of forming a Greater San Francisco had been carried on for several years no definite expression of the desire or opposition of the people of the transbay region to annexation had been secured. The failure to bring the subject to a head was due to a constitutional provision, the amendment of which was a pre- requisite to obtaining a vote on the proposition. Prior to the general election in 1912, a petition enabling communities desiring to consolidate was circulated and the attitude of the people was on the point of being ascertained. It was urged in favor of consolidation that the result would be to create a metropolis whose rank would be fourth in the list of American cities. It was pointed out that the area of the consolidated City and County of San Francisco under the act of 1856 was only 42 square miles as compared with 326 square miles in New York, 190 square miles in Chicago and 225 square miles in Los Angeles. In the petition in favor of consolidation of the cities about the bay it was estimated that the combined population would exceed 750,000, and that the value of the property of the Greater San Francisco would exceed $800,000,000. The relative proportions were stated as follows: Cities in County of Alameda, $175,873,787; cities in County of San Mateo, $25,621,265 ; cities in County of Marin, $11,785,505; cities in County of Con-
Arguments in Favor of Consolidation
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tra Costa, $12,752,960; San Francisco, $161,850,025, and state assessments of forms of property untaxed by municipalities, $112,000,000.
Among the activities in which the people of San Francisco interested themselves during the busiest days of rehabilitation were some that the Eastern public only began to concern themselves about years later. The project of a free public market was revived in 1907 and the State Harbor Commission was induced to establish such an institution on the property under their jurisdiction. There had for a long time been a pier devoted to the landing of garden and other products which was freely used by commission merchants and dealers in market produce and it was theoretically available to the general public which, however, failed to take advantage of its opportunities. In the year named the free market idea was broadened. A place was provided, and country producers were invited to bring their wares to its stalls. The invitation was complied with after a fashion, but the public did not see fit to patronize it and it soon become disused. There was no question concerning the advantage that might be gained by the housekeeper resorting to the water front market, but the ingrained habit of having things de- livered at the kitchen door proved fatal to the innovation. It cannot be said that the creation of the establishment was inspired by the high cost of living, for at the time there was little being said on the subject. It was an economic experiment pure and simple and failed to work practically because San Franciscans elevated convenience above bargains. The cost of living has not at any time been made a burning question in the City. It was seized upon by the unions in order to main- tain the wages scale established in many trades after the fire, and to retain those which had been in force for many years, and employers in many cases submitted to the demands of workers based on the assumption that the cost of living is greater than in other American cities. It does not so appear, however, to outside trades unionists. At a meeting of the San Francisco Labor Council held on the 20th of September, 1912, J. F. Hart, president of the International Association of Meat Cutters and Butchers Workmen of North America made an address in which he stated that since his stay in the City he had found that "the labor movement here is far ahead of the movement in the East, that while he had heard complaints that the cost of living is high, it is not as high as in the East." He added "that here the cost of meat, taken all around is from five to ten cents a pound less than on the Atlantic coast, and that the wages here in all lines are much higher than in the East." He thought, however, "that workmen here have to pay more for rent of flats and more for coal, but as to coal on the whole it may not be so much higher. In my home town in winter," he told his hearers, "I have to burn two tons of coal to keep from freezing to death. Here it is not needed." His observation concern- ing the use of fuel showed discrimination, but his reference to rents was misleading. It is impossible to make a satisfactory comparison of rents in different localities without taking into consideration the standard of living which the workingman fixes for himself in the places compared. If it were a mere matter of space without ref- erence to surroundings it could be shown that toilers in San Francisco enjoyed lower rents than any other people in the country at the time that this criticism was passed.
Location of Oriental Population
The reference to rents directs attention to a phenomenon which followed the earthquake. Prior to the dispersion occasioned by the great conflagration the Japanese inhabitants in San Francisco were less directly in evidence than they
Failure of a Free Market Experiment
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A SAN FRANCISCO RESIDENCE STREET
JOHN D. SPRECKELS' RESIDENCE, PACIFIC AVENUE
THE IRWIN AND CROCKER RESIDENCES
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were afterward. Unlike the Chinese they had not created a quarter for them- selves, but many were dispersed throughout Chinatown. The Chinese following their gregarious instincts made their way to Oakland and at one time it was hoped by the people of that city that they would permanently establish themselves there, but this expectation was not realized. The leading spirits of the Chinese colony in San Francisco had always been its merchants and they had no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that the burned City would be speedily restored, and that their interests would be subserved by relocating themselves in their former quarter. This resolve was acted upon, and one of the conspicuous features of rehabilitation was the disposition evinced by these Orientals to supply themselves with business facilities superior to those they had formerly enjoyed. In the old Chinatown not infrequently costly stocks of merchandise were installed in ramshackle buildings. In the rebuilding of Chinatown all this was altered. The fire had swept away all the rookeries which housed the thousands who crowded the noisome alleys, and in the place of the destroyed buildings substantial brick structures were erected. Spacious stores with an abundance of light let in by plate glass windows took the place of the cramped places formerly used. The new quarter was deprived of much of its Oriental aspect by the change, but the conditions were vastly improved and its principal thoroughfare now boasts many handsome stores. In the case of the Japanese dispersal a different effect was produced. They invaded many streets formerly regarded as desirable residence quarters, but which their presence speedily caused to deteriorate. This latter result was not due to race prejudice. The outcome would have been precisely the same if whites had occupied the houses and brought with them the same habits. The cupidity of the owners of property induced them to accept high rentals from the Japanese without asking what use was to be made of the hired premises, and the tenants, or lessees made even by subletting and converting them into crowded lodging houses, thus virtually calling into existence many congested districts.
Fortunately for themselves and the community in which they live the work- ingmen of San Francisco when driven from their old homes did not adopt new habits. As rapidly as possible they found their way to sections of the City where land was still low priced and established themselves in homes of their own, or in houses built to meet the exigencies of the situation created by the disaster. A large proportion of the toilers of the City before the fire had been housed in the region south of Market street, and conditions there in many places had reached the con- gestion stage. Doubtless many of those compelled to leave their old homes and reestablish themselves in the districts which grew with great rapidity after 1906 found the rent of their new quarters dearer, but in such cases the increase was invariably due to the fact that better and more ample accommodations were se- cured. The involuntary shifting of population after 1906 caused the rapid up- building of many districts whose progress was relatively slow before the fire, despite the fact that the population of the City was increasing rapidly. The tendency of the worker to get as near as possible to the place where he is employed was very manifest in the growing congestion of the down town section. The disposition still exists, but the demand for prospective business purposes has proved an obstacle to the building of small houses in places formerly covered with such structures, and the taste for suburban life has militated against the construction of large tene- ments or apartment houses in the region south of Market which in 1912 still had
Working- men's Homes in New Districts
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many bare spots formerly occupied by homes. Although the population of the City was considerably greater in 1912 than in 1906 those portions of the town formerly the most populous were sparsely occupied at the latter date, but many of the streets were filling up with large structures designed in part for trade, but making pro- vision for housing.
Titles and the McEnerney Act
The rehabilitation of the City was less hampered by anticipated drawbacks than unforeseen troubles. One of the fears which found frequent expression while the Committee of Fifty was holding its deliberations was that the destruction of records would disturb titles and possibly cause confusion or worse. San Fran- cisco's previous experience with squatters had made her people acquainted with what might occur if proper precautions were not taken. But the expected did not happen. An act was promptly passed by the legislature, convened in special session shortly after the disaster, known by the name of its framer, McEnerney, under whose provisions property owners were made secure in their possessions. Its re- quirements were simple but effective and but little capable of abuse. It required the owner to come into court and establish ownership by evidence of a satisfactory character as against adverse claimants. The instances of attempts to gain posses- sion improperly were few. While the law was largely availed of by property hold- ers many finding themselves undisturbed neglected this means to establish their titles, and the period during which the act was to run was extended. Others have depended on the title guaranty companies to secure them against adverse claimants, the latter having saved their research records.
One of the earliest subjects to engage attention after the disaster was that of building laws and the fire limits. The portion of the City saved from destruc- tion was almost wholly composed of wooden structures. At no time was there any thought, as was the case after the Chicago fire, of restricting the use of timber for building purposes. When the authorities set to work to revise the regulations controlling construction more attention was paid to the matter of resistance to earth shocks than to fire possibilities. No serious effort was made to greatly ex- tend the fire limits, and those established were antagonized by property owners affected who urged that reconstruction was of paramount importance, and that precaution was a secondary consideration. The north line of the fire limits was Pine street, which at once began to be covered with large frame structures, while the streets south of that thoroughfare and west of Powell street were held back because of the costlier nature of the building materials demanded. An agitation was started, and great pressure was brought to bear on the supervisors to induce them to contract the established limits, but a charter provision prohibiting such action proved a barrier and the attempt was abandoned. There were still many gaps in the streets between Pine and Market and Powell and Van Ness in 1912, but the population within these boundaries was not much smaller than in 1906 owing to the large number of apartment houses and hotels erected. The tendency to favor apartment houses was just beginning to manifest itself a year or so before the fire, but after that event owing to the increasing difficulty of obtain- ing servants life in apartments became very popular. The district particularly affected for this purpose was the sloping land on the south side of Nob hill. Pine and Bush streets were rapidly built up with large structures, some of which made pretentions to elegance externally and internally, and all of which were well patronized. This class of buildings, however, was not confined to
Apartment Houses in Great Favor
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The White House, One of the Great New Stores First National Bank Building Pacific Building
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the section named; they were erected in all parts of the City, but in the lo- cality mentioned they formed the bulk of the new construction. Sutter street which was in great favor before the conflagration, containing many family hotels and some apartment houses, came by its own very slowly. The high valuation placed upon real estate by its owners militated against the erection of small or cheap buildings, and while it was among the earliest of the thoroughfares to be used for communication with the down town district during the period while the latter was being restored to its old time condition, the streets north and south of it, west of Powell, made more rapid advances.
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