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Show I' V'toS1 Some people look upon the wreck of San ;;'(mB : Francisco, and, shaking their heads, say;- "It IMB cannot bo restored not, at least, for this genera-t genera-t ' fig Such people forget a great many things. San III fif Francisco was built before in fifty-seven years. ' fm flU That was a magical growth. London, when the "S Ml great plague of 1349 struck the city, had 90,000 'B Bl souls. Three hundred and fifty years later it con- iffif talned only "one-half the population that San Fran- HBf Cisco had on the 17th of last April, nor had it half allBfjs Of course, when the early placers were rfHK worked a great deal. of their gold clung to San Francisco. With the discoveries of gold and sil- hh r'SHl ver in Nevada and Idaho, the national clearing Bm " : igfii house for those states was San Francisco. The Bjfg ' fjHfll wealth of the builders of the old Central Pacific HI , . ,1BB road centered there. Without the treasures from Hffi V"',BbB the mines the city might have grown to possess HB B lb0,000 people, but hardly more, for until the past BS ' IBK decade San Francisco had not much foreign trade, jgg "-IjvBf Very well. What are her chances now? When HHH -' ''Wm& snG tQSan before, California had no agriculture, Bcnl IBR no horticulture. She has enough now to found a BUI ' ? 4hBi great city on, and the cultivation of the soil is flffii i. fUWfBy expanding all the time. Si iSBB Her shallow placers are about exhausted, but Hffii , flflB the dredges are at work, and with every year new Bftf MHO quartz veins. are giving up their wealth. And now ilHH Nevada has re-awakened, and her mines are giv- BH '1"HB ing promise of a greater and more sustained yield HS "' 'hIW than over before, and the bulk of her treasures Htfl '. K BBI will gravitate to tho golden city. Then there is a fifi ' WfflM concentration of railroads there which make the BN ;-V.HH whole nation contribute to the city's wealth, peo- Hfl 'JHh pie and power. It was twenty years after San Hgj WmMH' Francisco was. founded belc re there was any con- H : nection with the east, except by the weary trip BH jij 1KBI by wagon; the twenty-five days' journey by the H! ''jBM Isthmus, or the 13,000-mile voyage around the Hj .; J 9H Horn, and all the trade off across the Pacific was Bf " BBI Every element that caused tho first creation HS 1 1 of San Francisco is in force today, with the single B ' 5 SH exception of that class of placer . miners who, In 1 9B working independently, were given to the person- S 'flfli ol di8trI1)Ution of their wealth when once a year Bt iijB they "went down to the Bay." H! iWBi Behind the city is a vastly richer country, and IB IBn vastiy greater in area than behind New York Hg i WKm City. In tho eld days if a 3,000-ton ship entered Bl 'JjBB San Francisco bay it was an event. Now 8,000 Bf ''JBR and 10,000-ton ships cause no remark there. And f mR the commerce of the city is advancing by -leaps 17B and bounds. Down the coast to Valparaiso, up Hjj jj ' 4flH the coast to Nome, across the sea to Hawaii, to Hifl li'sBfi Australia, to the Philippines, to China, Japan and HPfj , Bff' Siberia, and with the China ships direct connec- Bffi '9HK. tion with ships to all European southern ports. BPI W&H TUou there is the old San Francisco air, which is a perpetual tonic, where men can work every day in the year out of doors, and where they have always had the habit of keeping up late at night; And food tastes better there-than anywhere else; a person can eat more than anywhere else and pay less for it. But' some people shake their heads and say, "There is so much made land." The truth is that London is built mostly' on made land and on what was once a swamp. The new city cannot be held back so long as her bay in its beauty opens out through the Golden Gold-en Gate. We anticipate that the new city will be . more beautiful than the old one, and that the structures will be vastly stronger. We believe that within a year such changes will be made in the structure and cost of steel that every man may have his steel house. We hope that the authorities will limit the buildings to five or six stdries, and see to it that every foundation put in shall be solid. The building will be slow at first, but it will gather momentum as it progresses; it will begin to take fofm by another year, and five years hence nearly every scar left by the earthquake and" fire will be obliterated. Nothing can stop the progress less than a series se-ries of great earthquakes, and our belief is that there is no more liability of another earthquak'e there than there is at any other" point on the coast. |
