CHAPTER XII

SAN FRANCISCO IN TRANSITION

By the mid-fifties San Francisco had attained the dimensions of a city.  Among other changes of public interest within the brief space of two or three years were a hospital, a library, a cemetery, several churches, public markets, bathing establishments, public schools, two race-courses, twelve wharves, five hundred and thirty-seven saloons, and about eight thousand women of several classes.  The population was now about fifty thousand.  The city was now of a fairly substantial character, at least in the down-town districts.  There were many structures of brick and stone.  In many directions the sand-hills had been conveniently graded down by means of a power shovel called the Steam Paddy in contradistinction to the hand Paddy, or Irishman with a shovel.  The streets were driven straight ahead regardless of contours.  It is related that often the inhabitants of houses perched on the sides of the sand-hills would have to scramble to safety as their dwellings rolled down the bank, undermined by some grading operation below.  A water system had been established, the nucleus of the present Spring Valley Company.  The streets had nearly all been planked, and private enterprise had carried the plank toll-road even to the Mission district.  The fire department had been brought to a high state of perfection.  The shallow waters of the bay were being filled up by the rubbish from the town and by the debris from the operations of the Steam Paddies.  New streets were formed on piles extended out into the bay.  Houses were erected, also on piles and on either side of these marine thoroughfares.  Gradually the rubbish filled the skeleton framework.  Occasionally old ships, caught by this seaward invasion, were built around, and so became integral parts of the city itself.

The same insistent demand that led to increasing the speed of the vessels, together with the fact that it cost any ship from one hundred to two hundred dollars a day to lie at any of the wharves, developed an extreme efficiency in loading and unloading cargoes.  Hittell says that probably in no port of the world could a ship be emptied as quickly as at San Francisco.  For the first and last time in the history of the world the profession of stevedore became a distinguished one.  In addition to the overseas trade, there were now many ships, driven by sail or steam, plying the local routes.  Some of the river steamboats had actually been brought around the Horn.  Their free-board had been raised by planking-in the lower deck, and thus these frail vessels had sailed their long and stormy voyage—­truly a notable feat.