CALIFORNIA with one hundred millions of acres is greater in area than New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. On the eastern sea-board its coast line would extend from Boston on the north to Charleston on the south.
In some localities the notion is prevalent that all this great state was shaken by the recent earthquake. Such is not the fact. The earthquake was severe in only about two per cent. of the area of the state, and as a disturbing factor was confined to a district seventy-five miles north, one hundred and twenty-five miles south, and fifty miles east from San Francisco.
Even in this narrow strip of California's expanse, the damage from the earthquake was small in comparison with that of the fire in San Francisco.
The California's chief city is momentarily in distress, her people are undaunted by the great misfortune, and San Francisco will arise, as other cities have arisen, from the ashes of her former greatness. So far as California is concerned it is needful only to note that Illinois was not ruined by Chicago's fire; that South Carolina did not suffer permanently from Charleston's troubles; and that Texas, the only state larger in area than California, did not even pause in her marvelous progress because of the Galveston flood. So California's two million people are not bankrupt nor seriously affected in their courage or resources as a result of the damage to her principal city.
California is rich in her gold-bearing mountains and gravel deposits, in her great valleys of unmeasured fertility, upon which every vegetable product can be grown; in her more than thirty cities of five thousand or more population each, centers of rich localities; in her mighty and extensive forests of redwood and fir; in her abundant oil fields, yielding millions of barrels annually; in electric power generated by the never-falling streams from the Sierras;
California's Chief Magistrate, HON. GEORGE C. PARDEE,
in her Oriental commerce; in her magnificent harbor and its railway connections; marketing her abundant fruitfulness in all the world; in her universities and schools,—in all these and more California is rich, and still remains, as always, "the land of opportunity."
Permit me to convey to all your readers the heartfelt thanks of San Francisco's stricken people and all California for the prompt and generous aid extended to us, and to this I wish to add my official and personal thanks. Should occasion occur, which God forbid, California will show in actions far better than any one may in words, its immeasurable appreciation of the generous gifts the citizens of our country, unasked, have showered upon us.
