IT is yet hard to be believed that the Queen City of the Golden West, which yesterday was reigning in wealth, in beauty, in pride, in voluptuousness, in glory, is to-day low in the dust. Yesterday "the gayest city in the United States:" to-day she is the saddest, as she mourns by the urnless, wind-swept ashes of her treasures.
Yesterday, like Babylon of old, she was the glory of cities, and the beauty of California's excellency. Her magnificent public buildings, her gilded palaces, her beautiful and extensive parks with their evergreen foliage, their ever-blooming flowers, vied with the famed gold-covered palaces and hanging gardens of the city of nations of old. And like Babylon's king of old, her merchant and mining and marine princes said, "Is not this great San Francisco, which we have built by the might of our power for the honor of our name?" forgetting God, who ruleth over the kingdoms of men.
Union Street near Van Ness Avenue. This street was formerly straight, as may be seen from the track in the foreground and that in the distance forming a direct line between the two. It will be seen that the track at the left has been forced out much more than the track on the right. The depth of the cavities remaining may be seen from the men who are standing on either side of the track. This street is not on made land, but high up on the hills of northwestern San Francisco. This is one of the most striking street break-ups we have seen.
Like Tyre of old she was a "merchant city," aye, the "merchant city" of the West; like Tyre, she dwelt, at "the entry of the sea," "the merchant of the people unto many isles;" and to her, as to Tyre, came a multitude of all kinds of merchandise and riches. Her bank clearings exceeded that of all the great combined cities of the West, to Salt Lake City and Helena. The value of her buildings erected yearly increased from $6,300,000 in 1900 to $21,900,-000 in 1905. Her increase in shipping the last five years was in imports more than $4,900,000; in exports, $23,500,000; in tonnage 972,000.
All California was dependent upon her. For all large orders local merchants depended on her wholesale houses. It was the great central market, the emporium, the trade center of the West. When the awful blow fell upon our modern Tyre, California north of Tehachapi was for several days paralyzed.
The Power of the Earthquake
was incredibly awful. Now a fair growing city of a half-century's building; in a half-minute a wreck. Mighty walls of brick and stone crumble and fall; great steel girders are twisted and broken like straws, streets heave and sink and fall and rise; the half-minute is over, buildings, small and great, are in ruins, hundreds are dead and dying, the greatest earthquake of modern history, measured in gold, is over; and men stare and cry and gaze, stunned and broken and helpless before such dynamic forces, the coming and going and power of which none ever measured.
The Awful Holocaust.
Then followed, before the earth had ceased her trembling, the awful holocaust with the city for the sacrifice. Its hungry and insatiate maw devoured with appetite unappeasable till over 7,000 acres were devastated and desolated, much of it stripped of everything standing save occasional chimney stacks and iron telegraph poles. Sometimes a ruined wall, all that is left of a noble pile, faces you like a gaunt, drear relic of an age past and gone.
Noted Buildings.
The City Hall, which cost $6,000,000, is a wreck; and the after heat of the fire of the city, which poured its inferno over the mighty pile, cracked the granite fence next to the sidewalk near no consumable material save green grass, till it peeled like poor plaster from a wall.
The Palace Hotel, costing $7,000,000, the St. Francis, and the Fairmont, all of which withstood the earthquake, were burned out, and their windowless ruins stare upon you in a silent agony. The walls of the Spreckels, the Flood, the Mutual Savings Bank, the new Flood, and the new Chronicle, buildings are standing seemingly little injured, but everything consumed on the inside. But such buildings are few; gray, smoky desolation marks ten to twelve square miles in the Tyre of the West. A score of churches, the great playhouses,—the Tivoli, the California, Alcazar, and Orpheum theaters, and the Grand Opera House,—are in utter ruin, or stand as empty walls, wreck and ruin peering out of the eyeholes of windows and doors.
The Loss in Dollars?
No one knows. It has been estimated at $300,000,000; at $500,000,000; at $1,000,000,000. Insurance men say $300,000,000, with probable insurance at $175,000,000. It is thought that most of this will be paid.
The Loss of Life?
Nor can any one tell this. Not till God's judgment books their records unfold will we know the number who perished as the result of that awful cataclysm. San Francisco papers persist in placing the list at not over 500. But their own records indicate more. For instance, in the awful holocaust of Telegraph and Russian Hills, which the fire encircled so quickly that all hope of escape was cut off, it is said that more than 150 perished. For instance, 200 bodies were found in the Potrero district south of Channel Street, and were cremated. For instance, forty bodies were taken from a house, 119 Fifth Street, a four-story wooden building. Again and again we are told that hundreds and hundreds must have perished in the instant wrecks of big lodging-houses, hotels, etc., where they were immediately cremated. The dead must have numbered from 1,000 to 1,500. God alone knows, He only can tell the number.
Was It an "Avenging God,"
as a newspaper man remarked?—Rather, was it not the fruitage of earth's awful load of sin, which God's mercy and justice could restrain no longer and the consequences of perverted law were permitted to develop. Certainly in San Francisco, as in Babylon and Sodom of old, there was open, flaunting, God-defying wickedness; and yet, adapting the words of the Master, "Think ye these Americans were sinners above all the Americans, because they have suffered these things? I tell you, nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." See Luke 13:1-5.
Not to San Francisco alone comes the calamity and its lessons. Many times to all the sinners and cities and towns and people of the nation have the warnings come in every way God could send them. So came they to Babylon unheeded until the hand of fire wrote her doom upon the palace wall, "Weighed, and wanting." Read, fellow pilgrim of earth, Isaiah 13; Jeremiah 51 and 52; and Ezekiel 26 and 27. These are lessons for us, for New York, for Chicago, for every other place and person forgetting and defying God.
Will the lesson, the fear, awaken only impulse to do better, or the principle to do right?
