Selected American history

CHAPTER IV.

The Reign of Destruction and Devastation

Rarely, in the whole history of mankind, has a great city been overwhelmed by destruction so suddenly and awfully as was San Francisco. One minute its inhabitants slept in seeming safety and security. Another minute passed and the whole great city seemed tumbling around them, while sights of terror met the eyes of the awakened multitude and sounds of horror came to their ears. The roar of destruction filled the air as the solid crust of the earth lifted and fell and the rocks rose and sank in billowing waves like those of the open sea.

Not all, it is true, were asleep. There was the corps of night workers, whose duties keep them abroad till day dawns. There were those whose work calls them from their homes in the early morn. People of this kind were in the streets and saw the advent of the reign of devastation in its full extent. From the story of one of these, P. Barrett, an editor on the Examiner, we select a thrilling account of his experience on that morning of awe.

"I have seen this whole, great horror. I stood with two other members of the Examiner staff on the corner of Market Street, waiting for a car. Newspaper duties had kept us working until five o'clock in the morning. Sunlight was coming out of the early morning mist. It spread its brightness on the roofs of the skyscrapers, on the domes and spires of churches, and blazed along up the wide street with its countless banks and stores, its restaurants and cafes. In the early morning the city was almost noiseless. Occasionally a newspaper wagon clattered up the street or a milk wagon rumbled along. One of my companions had told a funny story. We were laughing at it. We stopped—the laugh unfinished on our lips.

"Of a sudden we had found ourselves staggering and reeling. It was as if the earth was slipping gently from under our feet. Then came a sickening swaying of the earth that threw us flat upon our faces. We struggled in the street. We could not get on our feet.

"I looked in a dazed fashion around me. I saw for an instant the big buildings in what looked like a crazy dance. Then it seemed as though my head were split with the roar that crashed into my ears. Big buildings were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one's hand. Great gray clouds of dust shot up with flying timbers, and storms of masonry rained into the street. Wild, high jangles of smashing glass cut a sharp note into the frightful roaring. Ahead of me a great cornice crushed a man as if he were a maggot—a laborer in overalls on his way to the Union Iron Works, with a dinner pail on his arm.

"Everywhere men were on all fours in the street, like crawling bugs. Still the sickening, dreadful swaying of the earth continued. It seemed a quarter of an hour before it stopped. As a matter of fact, it lasted about three minutes. Footing grew firm again, but hardly were we on our feet before we were sent reeling again by repeated shocks, but they were milder. Clinging to something, one could stand.

"The dust clouds were gone. It was quite dark, like twilight. But I saw trolley tracks uprooted, twisted fantastically. I saw wide wounds in the street. Water flooded out of one. A deadly odor of gas from a broken main swept out of the other. Telegraph poles were rocked like matches. A wild tangle of wires was in the street. Some of the wires wriggled and shot blue sparks.

"From the south of us, faint, but all too clear, came a horrible chorus of human cries of agony. Down there in a ramshackle section of the city the wretched houses had fallen in upon the sleeping families. Down there throughout the day a fire burned the great part of whose fuel it is too gruesome a thing to contemplate.

"That was what came next—the fire. It shot up everywhere. The fierce wave of destruction had carried a flaming torch with it—agony, death and a flaming torch. It was just as if some fire demon was rushing from place to place with such a torch."

The magnitude of the calamity became fully apparent after the sun had risen and began to shine warmly and brightly from the east over the ruined city. Old Sol, who had risen and looked down upon this city for thousands of times, had never before seen such a spectacle as that of this fateful morning. Where once rose noble buildings were now to be seen cracked and tottering walls, fallen chimneys, here and there fallen heaps of brick and mortar, and out of and above all the red light of the mounting flames. From the middle of the city's greatest thoroughfare ruin, only ruin, was to be seen on all sides. To the south, in hundreds of blocks, hardly a building had escaped unscathed. The cracked walls of the new Post Office showed the rending power of the earthquake. A part of the splendid and costly City Hall collapsed, the roof falling to the courtyard and the smaller towers tumbling down. Some of the wharves, laden with goods of every sort, slid into the bay. With them went thousands of tons of coal. On the harbor front the earth sank from six to eight inches, and great cracks opened in the streets.

San Francisco's famous Chinatown, the greatest settlement of the Celestials on this continent, went down like a house of cards. When the earthquake had passed this den of squalor and infamy was no more. The Chinese theatres and joss-houses tumbled into ruins, rookery after rookery collapsed, and hundreds of their inhabitants were buried alive. Panic reigned supreme among the fugitives, who filled the streets in frightened multitudes, dragging from the wreck whatever they could save of their treasured possessions. Much the same was the case with the Japanese quarter, which fire quickly invaded, the people fleeing in terror, carrying on their backs what few of their household effects they were able to rescue.

As for the people of Chinatown, however, no one knows or will ever know the extent of the dread fate that overcame them, for no one knows the secrets of that dark abode of infamy and crime, whose inhabitants burrowed underground like so many ants; and hid their secrets deep in the earth.

W. W. Overton, of Los Angeles, thus describes the Chinatown dens and the revelations made by the earthquake and the flames:

"Strange is the scene where San Francisco's Chinatown stood. No heap of smoking ruins marks the site of the wooden warrens where the Orientals dwelt in thousands. Only a cavern remains, pitted with deep holes and lined with dark passageways, from whose depths come smoke wreaths. White men never knew the depth of Chinatown's underground city. Many had gone beneath the street level two and three stories, but now that the place had been unmasked, men may see where its inner secrets lay. In places one can see passages a hundred feet deep.

"The fire swept this Mongolian quarter clean. It left no shred of the painted wooden fabric. It ate down to the bare ground, and this lies stark, for the breezes have taken away the light ashes. Joss houses and mission schools, groceries and opium dens, gambling resorts and theatres, all of them went. These buildings blazed up like tissue paper.

"From this place I saw hundreds of crazed yellow men flee. In their arms they bore opium pipes, money bags, silks and children. Beside them ran the trousered women and some hobbled painfully. These were the men and women of the surface. Far beneath the street levels in those cellars and passageways were other lives. Women, who never saw the day from their darkened prisons, and their blinking jailors were caught and eaten by the flames."

Devastation spread widely on all sides, ruining the homes of the rich as well as of the poor, of Americans as well as of Europeans and Asiatics, the marts of trade, the haunts of pleasure, the realms of science and art, the resorts of thousands of the gay population of the Golden State metropolis. To attempt to tell the whole story of destruction and ruin would be to describe all for which San Francisco stood. Science suffered in the loss of the San Francisco Academy of Sciences, which was destroyed with its invaluable contents. This building, erected fifteen years ago at a cost of $500,000, was a seven-story building with a rich collection of objects of science. Much of the academy's contents can never be replaced. It represented the work of many years. There was a rare collection of Pacific Sea birds which was the most valuable of its kind in the world. In fact, the entire collection of birds ranked very high, was visited by ornithologists from every country, and was the pride of the city. The academy was founded in 1850, James Lick, the same man who endowed the Lick Observatory, giving it $1,000,000, so it was on a prosperous footing. It will take many years of active labor to replace the losses of an hour or two of the reign of fire in this institution, while much that it held is gone beyond restoration.

Art suffered as severely as science, the valuable collections in private and public buildings being nearly all destroyed. We have spoken of the rare paintings burned in the Bohemian Club building. The collections on Nob's Hill suffered as severely. When the mansions here, the Fairmount Hotel and Mark Hopkins Institute were approached by the flames, many attempts were made to remove some of the priceless works of art from the buildings. A crowd of soldiers was sent to the Flood and the Huntington mansions and the Hopkins Institute to rescue the paintings. From the Huntington home and the Flood mansion canvases were cut from the framework with knives. The collections in the three buildings, valued in the hundreds of thousands, in great part were destroyed, few being saved from the ravages of the fire.

The destruction of the libraries, with their valuable collections of books, was also a very serious loss to the city and its people. Of these there were nine of some prominence, the Sutro Library containing many rare books among its 200,000 volumes, while that of the Mechanics Institute possessed property valued at $2,000,000. The Public Library occupied a part of the City Hall, the new building proposed by the city, with aid to the extent of $750,000 by Andrew Carnegie, being fortunately still in embryo.

In the burning of the banks the losses were limited to the buildings, their money and other valuables being securely locked in fireproof vaults. But these became so heated by the flames that it was necessary to leave them to a gradual cooling for days, during which their treasures were unavailable, and those with deposits, small or large, were obliged to depend on the benevolence of the nation for food, such wealth as was left to them being locked up beyond their reach. It was the same with the United States Sub-Treasury, which was entirely destroyed by fire, its vaults, which contained all the cash on hand, being alone preserved. Guards were put over these to protect their contents against possible loss by theft.

One serious effect of the conflagration was the general disorganization of the telegraph system. News items were sent over the wires, but private messages inquiring about missing friends for days failed to reach the parties concerned or to bring any return.

That the world received news of the San Francisco disaster during the dread day after the earthquake is due in part to the courage of the telegraph operators, who stuck to their posts and, continued to send news and other messages in spite of great personal danger.

The operators and officials of the Postal Telegraph Company remained in the main office of the company, at the corner of Market and Montgomery Streets, opposite the Palace Hotel, until they were ordered out of it because of the danger of the dynamite explosions in the immediate vicinity. The men proceeded to Oakland, across the bay, and took possession of the office there. That night the company operated seven wires from Oakland, all messages from the city being taken across the bay in boats. As the days passed on the service gradually improved, but a week or more passed away before the general service of the company became satisfactory.

Such news as came from the city was full of tales of horror. For a number of days one of the chief sources of trouble was from thirst. Although the earthquake shocks had broken water mains in probably hundreds of places, strange to say, no water, or very little at least, appeared on the surface of the ground. Public fountains on Market Street gave out no relief to the thirsty thousands. At Powell and Market Streets a small stream of water spurted up through the cobblestones and formed a muddy pool, at which the thirsty were glad enough to drink. The soldiers, disregarding the order not to let people move about, permitted bucket brigades to go forth and bring back water to relieve the women and the crying children. To reach the water it was necessary sometimes to go a mile to one of the four reservoirs which top the hills.

Here is a story told by one observer of incidents in the city during the fire:

"I talked to one man who slept in Alta Plaza. The fire was going on in the district south of them, and at intervals all night exhausted fire-fighters made their way to the plaza and dropped, with the breath out of them, among the huddled people and the bundles of household goods. The soldiers, who are administering affairs with all the justice of judges and all the devotion of heroes, kept three or four buckets of water, even from the women, for these men, who kept coming all night long. There was a little food, also kept by the soldiers for these emergencies, and the sergeant had in his charge one precious bottle of whisky, from which he doled out drinks to those who were utterly exhausted.

"Over in a corner of the plaza a band of men and women were praying, and one fanatic, driven crazy by horror, was crying out at the top of his voice:

"'The Lord sent it, the Lord!'

"His hysterical crying got in the nerves of the soldiers and bade fair to start a panic among the women and children, so the sergeant went over and stopped it by force. All night they huddled together in this hell, with the fire making it bright as day on all sides; and in the morning the soldiers, using their sense again, commandeered a supply of bread from a bakery, sent out another water squad, and fed the refugees with a semblance of breakfast.

"There was one woman in the crowd who had been separated from her husband in a rush of the smoke and did not know whether he was living. The women attended to her all night and in the morning the soldiers passed her through the lines in her search. A few Chinese made their way into the crowd. They were trembling, pitifully scared and willing to stop wherever the soldiers placed them. This is only a glimpse of the horrible night in the parks and open places.

"We learn here that many of the well-to-do people in the upper residence district have gathered in the strangers from the highways and byways and given them shelter and comfort for the night in their living rooms and drawing rooms. Shelter seems to have come more easily than food. Not an ounce of supplies, of course, has come in for two days, and most of the permanent stores are in the hands of the soldiers, who dole them out to all comers alike. But the hungry cannot always find the military stores and the news has not gotten about, since there are no newspapers and no regular means of communication.

"An Italian tells me that he was taken in by a family living in a three-story house in the fashionable Pacific Avenue. There were twenty refugees who passed the night in the drawing room of that house, whose mistress took down hangings to make them comfortable. In the morning all the food that was left over in that home of wealth was enough flour and baking powder to shake together a breakfast for the refugees. They were hardly ready to leave that house when the fire came their way, and the people of the house, together with the refugees, who included two Chinese, made their way to the open ground of the Presidio. With them streamed a procession of folks carrying valuables in bundles.

"There came out, too, tales of both heroism and crime. The firemen had been at it for thirty-six hours under such conditions as firemen never before faced, and they do little more than give directions, while the volunteers, thousands of young Western men who have remained to see it through, do the work. The troops have all that they can do to handle the crowds in the streets and prevent panics. The work of dynamiting, tearing down and rescuing is in the hands of the volunteers.

"This morning an eddy of flame from the edge of the burning wholesale district ran up the slope of Russian Hill, the highest eminence in the city. All along the edge of that hill and up the slopes are little frame houses which hold Italians and Mexicans. A corps of volunteer aides ran along the edge of the fire, warning people out of the houses. But the flames ran too fast and three women were caught in the upper story of an old frame house. A young man tore a rail from a fence, managed to climb it, and reached the window. He bundled one woman out and slid her down the rail; then the roof caught fire. He seized another woman and managed to drop her on the rail, down which she slid without hurting herself a great deal. But the roof fell while he was struggling with another woman and they fell together into the flames. There must have been hundreds of such heroisms and dozens of such catastrophes. We are so drunken and dulled by horror that we take such stories calmly now. We are saturated."

One thing to be strictly guarded against in those days of destruction was the outbreak of lawlessness. A city as large as San Francisco is sure to hold a large number of the brigands of civilization, a horde who need to be kept under strict discipline at all times, and especially when calamity lets down for the time being the bars of the law, at which time many of the usually law-abiding would join their ranks if any license were allowed. The authorities made haste to guard against this and certain other dangers, Mayor Schmitz issuing on Wednesday the following proclamation:

"The Federal troops, the members of the regular police force and special police officers have been authorized to kill any and all persons engaged in looting or in the commission of any other crime.

"I have directed all the gas and electric lighting companies not to turn on gas or electricity until I order them to do so. You may, therefore, expect the city to remain in darkness for an indefinite time.

"I request all citizens to remain at home from darkness until daylight every night until order is restored.

"I warn all citizens of the danger of fire from damaged or destroyed chimneys, broken or leaking gas pipes or fixtures or any like causes."

He also ordered that no lights should be used in the houses and no fires built in the houses until the chimneys had been inspected and repaired.

There was need of vigilance in this direction, for the vandals were quickly at work. Routed out from their dens along the wharves, the rats of the waterfront, the drifters on the back eddy of civilization, crawled out intent on plunder. Early in the day a policeman caught one of these men creeping through the window of a small bank on Montgomery Street and shot him dead. But the police were kept too busy at other necessary duties to devote much time to these wretches, and for a time many of them plundered at will, though some of them met with quick and sure retribution.

One onlooker says: "Were it not for the fact that the soldiers in charge of the city do not hesitate in shooting down the ghouls the lawless element would predominate. Not alone do the soldiers execute the law. On Wednesday afternoon, in front of the Palace Hotel, a crowd of workers in the mines discovered a miscreant in the act of robbing a corpse of its jewels. Without delay he was seized, a rope obtained, and he was strung up to a beam that was left standing in the ruined entrance of the hotel. No sooner had he been hoisted up and a hitch taken in the rope than one of his fellow-criminals was captured. Stopping only to obtain a few yards of hemp, a knot was quickly tied, and the wretch was soon adorning the hotel entrance by the side of the other dastard.

"These are the only two instances I saw, but I heard of many that were seen by others. The soldiers do all they can, and while the unspeakable crime of robbing the dead is undoubtedly being practiced, it would be many times as prevalent were it not for the constant vigilance on all sides, as well as the summary justice."

Another observer tells of an instance of this summary justice that came under his eyes:

"At the corner of Market and Third Streets on Wednesday I saw a man attempting to cut the fingers from the hand of a dead woman in order to secure the rings which adorned the stiffened fingers. Three soldiers witnessed the deed at the same time and ordered the man to throw up his hands. Instead of obeying the command he drew a revolver from his pocket and began to fire at his pursuer without warning. The three soldiers, reinforced by half a dozen uniformed patrolmen, raised their rifles to their shoulders and fired. With the first shots the man fell, and when the soldiers went to the body to dump it into an alley nine bullets were found to have entered it."

The warning this severity gave was accentuated in one instance in a most effective manner. On a pile of bricks, stones and rubbish was thrown the body of a man shot through the heart, and on his chest was pinned this placard:

"Take warning!"

Those of the ghouls who saw this were likely to desist from their detestable work, unless they valued spoils more than life.

Willis Ames, a Salt Lake City man, tells of the kind of justice done to thieves, as it came under his observation:

"I saw man after man shot down by the troops. Most of these were ghouls. One man made the trooper believe that one of the dead bodies lying on a pile of rocks was his mother, and he was permitted to go up to the body. Apparently overcome by grief, he threw himself across the corpse. In another instant the soldiers discovered that he was chewing the diamond earrings from the ears of the dead woman. 'Here is where you get what is coming to you,' said one of the soldiers, and with that he put a bullet through the ghoul. The diamonds were found in the man's mouth afterward."

Others were shot to save them from the horror of being burned alive. Max Fast, a garment worker, tells of such an instance. He says:

"When the fire caught the Windsor Hotel at Fifth and Market Streets there were three men on the roof, and it was impossible to get them down. Rather than see the crazed men fall in with the roof and be roasted alive the military officer directed his men to shoot them, which they did in the presence of 5,000 people."

He further states: "At Jefferson Square I saw a fatal clash between the military and the police. A policeman ordered a soldier to take up a dead body to put it in the wagon, and the soldier ordered the policeman to do it. Words followed, and the soldier shot the policeman dead."

Among the many stories of this character on record is that of a concerted effort to break into and rob the Mint, which led to the death of fourteen men, who were shot down by the guard in charge. They had disregarded the command of the officer in charge to desist. They disobeyed, and the death of nearly the whole of them followed.

As may well be imagined, the privilege given to fire at will was very likely to lead to examples of unjustifiable haste in the use of the rifle. Such haste is not charged against the United States troops, but the militia and volunteer guards showed less judgment in the use of their weapons. Thus we are told that one man was shot for the minor offense of washing his hands in drinking water which had been brought with great trouble for the thirsty people gathered in Columbia Park. It is also said that a bank clerk, searching the ruins of his bank under orders, was killed by a soldier who thought he was looting. More than one seems to have been shot as looters for entering their own homes.

Among the reports there is one that two men were shot through the windows of their houses because they disobeyed the general orders and lit candles, and one woman because she lighted a fire in her cook stove. Yet, if such unwarranted acts existed, there were others better deserved. It is said that three men were lined up and shot before ten thousand people. One was caught taking the rings from a woman who had fainted, another had stolen a piece of bread from a hungry child, and the third, little more than a boy, was found in the act of robbing tents. One thief who escaped the bullet richly deserved it. He came upon a Miss Logan when lying unconscious on the floor of the St. Francis Hotel after the earthquake, and, rather than take the time to wrench some valuable rings from her hand, cut off the finger bearing them, and left her to the horrors of the coming fire.

The climax in the too free use of the rifle came on the 23d, when Major H. C. Tilden, a prominent member of the General Relief Committee, was shot and killed in his automobile by members of the citizens' patrol. Two others in the car were struck by bullets. The automobile had been used as an ambulance and the Red Cross flag was displayed on it. The excuse of the shooters was that they did not see the flag and that the car did not stop when challenged. This act led to an order forbidding the carrying of firearms by the citizens' committees and to stricter regulation of the soldiers in the use of their weapons.

Later on looting took a new form different from that at first shown and was practiced by a different class of people. These were the sightseers, many of them people of prominence, who entered upon a crusade of relic hunting in Chinatown, gathering and carrying off from the ashes of this quarter valuable pieces of chinaware, bronze ornaments, etc. It became necessary to put a stop to this, and on April 30th four militiamen were arrested while digging in the ruins of the Chinese bazaars, and others were frightened away by shots fired over their heads. A strong military line was then drawn around the district, and this last resource of the looter came to an end.