“Last night two of us ventured out on Van Ness
Avenue a little late. There came up the noise
of some kind of a shooting scrape far down the street.
We hurried in that direction to see what was doing.
An eighteen-year-old boy in a uniform barred the way,
levelled his rifle and said in a peremptory way:
“‘Go home.’
“We took a course down the block, where an older
soldier, more communicative but equally peremptory,
informed us that we were trifling with our lives,
news or no news.
“‘We’ve shot about 300 people for
one thing or another,’ he said. ’Now,
dodge trouble. Git!’ That ended the expedition.”
If we pass now from the record of the loss of lives
to that of the destruction of wealth, the estimates
exceed by far any fire losses recorded in history.
The truth is that when flames eat out the heart of
a great city, devour its vast business establishments,
storehouses and warehouses, sweep through its centres
of opulence, destroy its wharves with their accumulation
of goods, spread ruin and havoc everywhere, it is
impossible at first to estimate the loss. Only
gradually, as time goes on, is the true loss discovered,
and never perhaps very accurately, since the owners
and the records of riches often disappear with the
wealth itself. In regard to San Francisco, the
early estimate was that three-fourths of the city,
valued at $500,000,000, was destroyed.
But early estimates are apt to be exaggerated, and
on Friday, two days after the disaster, we find this
estimate reduced to $250,000,000. A few more
days passed and these figures shrunk still further,
though it was still largely conjectural, the means
of making a trustworthy estimate being very restricted.
Later on the pendulum swung upward again, and two
weeks after the fire the closest estimates that could
be made fixed the property loss at close to $350,000,000,
or double that of the Chicago fire. But as the
actual loss in the latter case proved considerably
below the early estimates, the same may prove to be
the case with San Francisco.
Special personal losses were in many cases great.
Thus the Palace Hotel was built at a cost of $6,000,000,
and the St. Francis, which originally cost $4,000,000,
was being enlarged at great expense. Several of
the great mansions on Nob’s Hill cost a million
or more, the City Hall was built at a cost of $7,000,000,
the new Post Office was injured to the extent of half
a million, while a large number of other buildings
might be named whose value, with their contents, was
measured in the millions.
