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See [illustration] facing p. 361

The Ruins Framed in Marble

RUSSELL SAGE
FOUNDATION

SAN FRANCISCO
RELIEF SURVEY

THE ORGANIZATION AND METHODS OF RELIEF
USED AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE AND
FIRE OF APRIL 18, 1906

COMPILED FROM STUDIES BY

CHARLES J. O’CONNOR
FRANCIS H. McLEAN
HELEN SWETT ARTIEDA
JAMES MARVIN MOTLEY
JESSICA PEIXOTTO
MARY ROBERTS COOLIDGE

NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC.
MCMXIII

Copyright, 1913, by
The Russell Sage Foundation

PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO.
PHILADELPHIA

PREFACE

This Relief Survey is a compilation of studies made for the Russell Sage Foundation by a group of persons each specially qualified to conduct the inquiry and to analyze the issue. The contributors are:

[Part I]. Charles J. O’Connor, Ph.D., secretary of the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red Cross Funds, who was appointed on the relief force soon after the disaster.

[Part II]. Francis H. McLean, now secretary of the American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity; at the time of the study, field secretary of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation. He was superintendent for the Rehabilitation Committee in July and August, 1906.

[Part III]. Helen Swett (now Mrs. Gregorio Artieda), who was secretary of Sub-Committee VI, the business committee of the Rehabilitation Committee, from its organization November 1, 1906; before that date connected with the Associated Charities of Oakland, California. Now resident of the People’s Place settlement, San Francisco.

[Part IV]. James Marvin Motley, Ph.D., now associate professor of economics at Brown University; at the time of the investigation, assistant professor of economics at Leland Stanford Junior University.

[Part V]. Jessica Peixotto, Ph.D., assistant professor of social economics, University of California, and a member of the Central Council of the Associated Charities of San Francisco.

[Part VI]. Mary Roberts Coolidge, formerly associate professor of sociology, Leland Stanford Junior University; reviser of Warner’s American Charities; author of Almshouse Women, and other works.

When the six separate studies were completed, a perplexing situation was disclosed. The purpose in preparing the survey was to offer a book of ready reference for use on occasions of special emergency. The six studies would have formed a set of volumes valuable as a contribution to the literature of relief work but not adapted to the particular purpose in view. It therefore became necessary to condense the studies at the cost of cutting out material. In order to preserve certain facts in proper sequence, subject matter in a few instances has been transposed from one part to another.

The authors of the various parts have wished to express their appreciation of the help rendered by university colleagues and students. A study made by Lilian Brandt of the first registration after she had worked at relief headquarters in the late spring and early summer of 1906, has been used in part. An article by Colonel C. A. Devol, extracts from which appear in [Appendix I], furnished valuable data concerning the part taken by the army, especially in receiving and distributing the relief supplies. Charities and the Commons has been drawn upon for data from articles which have not been noted in the text because their authors were so a part of the relief work itself that specific mention seemed uncalled for.

The statistics of this volume require, perhaps, a word of explanation. The quantitative material upon which the study is so largely based is derived from records, many of which were compiled in haste and under great pressure of work. The record forms themselves were properly devised primarily to aid the relief workers in abating distress, rather than as possible sources of social statistics to be compiled at some future time; and it was necessary to entrust the filling out of the records to persons most of whom were wholly without experience in work of this character. The data for the several parts of the study were, moreover, compiled by a number of persons working quite independently of one another.

Under these circumstances it is but natural that there should have been embodied in the report various minor inaccuracies and some real or apparent inconsistencies. Every possible effort has been made, in preparing the material for publication, to correct errors, to remove inconsistencies, and to harmonize the plan of statistical presentation as far as this could be accomplished by means of the information available.

No attempt has been made to present a comprehensive statement covering the complete disposition of the Relief Funds. It is understood that such a statement will be prepared under the direction of the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red Cross Funds. The figures showing receipts and disbursements, which appear in this volume, have been presented solely because of their bearing on the relief problems dealt with, and not by way of an accounting.

INTRODUCTION

The San Francisco earthquake and resultant fire ranks with the great catastrophes of the world’s history. Comparatively insignificant as was the list of the killed and injured, the annihilation of the business section of the city and of the most thickly populated residence districts brought to the bread line virtually the city’s whole population. The response of the nation and of other nations was in proportion to the magnitude of the disaster.

By a series of favoring circumstances the administration of the large fund donated fell into the hands of a committee, afterwards transformed into a corporation, on which were some of San Francisco’s ablest and broadest-minded men of affairs, as well as representatives of the rejuvenated and re-organized American National Red Cross. How at first the distinguished services of Dr. Edward T. Devine as the representative of the American National Red Cross were utilized by the local committee, and later, the no less valuable services of Ernest P. Bicknell, is told in the following pages along with the account of the splendid part played by the United States Army.

If for no other reason than that the disaster was of tremendous proportions, with relief funds correspondingly large, the value of an intensive study of the problems, methods, and results of the relief work must be very great. No such intensive study of any other American disaster of like proportions has been made. The report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society on the relief work of the Chicago fire is the nearest approach. If one, however, reads that report he will find it to be largely a description of general methods with a thorough accounting of expenditures. The value of such an investigation as this Relief Survey inheres not only in the fact that no previous intensive study has been made of any large disaster but also in the fact that the time and the persons engaged combined to give the San Francisco relief work exceptional significance.

Since the Chicago fire, in this, as in other civilized countries, there has been a rapid evolution of social thought and action. We have become impatient of philanthropic endeavors that do not promise permanently to better conditions. In the field of relief we are discounting mere almsgiving and are fighting for constructive treatment and permanent betterment, which often involve larger relief expenditures. In serious disasters, from the Chicago fire to the San Francisco earthquake and conflagration, this spirit has more and more characterized the relief work. The idea that all moneys should be spent merely to keep the victims of a disaster from the starvation and exposure which confront them in the weeks immediately following the catastrophe is directly opposed to the spirit of modern relief measures. In other words, the idea of rehabilitation, of giving to those who have been left with the least a reasonable lift on the road to a recovery of the standard of living maintained before the disaster, constantly has grown clearer and more definite, a natural fructifying of the modern philosophy of charity.

Attention was given to rehabilitation after the Chicago fire by a special committee on housing and by one on “giving aid to persons in the purchase of tools, machinery, furniture, fixtures, or professional books.” A large part of this special work of relief consisted in aiding destitute sewing women who had lost their machines to obtain others. But in San Francisco we find the first large attempt to emphasize and develop rehabilitation.[1]

[1] For relative expenditures for rehabilitation compare the figures in the Relief Survey with those given in the Report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society of Disbursements of Contributions for the Sufferers by the Chicago Fire, 1874, Chapter XII.

The circumstances that so happily combined to magnify the principle of rehabilitation have already been alluded to. Funds of generous proportions, capable army officers, the reorganized Red Cross, and an exceptional group of keen and broad-minded San Francisco business men,—the last a group which knew its own mind but was willing to take the advice and accept the assistance of experienced social workers,—constituted a force permeated by the spirit of modern philanthropy which wrought out the first large undertaking in rehabilitation in the United States.

Having made clear the reasons for this Relief Survey, let us consider its several parts.

[Part I] presents a general picture of the emergency period following the fire, together with a description of the structure of the relief organization and the different phases through which it passed. This part serves as a background for the rehabilitation studies that follow.

[Part II] is a presentation of the methods of rehabilitation, followed by some facts obtained from a tabulation of the case records of the Rehabilitation Committee.

Two of the most important forms of rehabilitation, business and housing, are analyzed in detail in [Parts III] and [IV]. These parts illustrate methods, and they also show actual results of rehabilitation, which were learned by following into their homes at a later period a certain number of the families helped.

A study of the families under care of the Associated Charities since the work of the Rehabilitation Committee ceased gives the data for [Part V]. This was made to determine the character of the dependency, how much was due to the disaster itself, how much to faulty rehabilitation work, how much was inevitable. The work of the Associated Charities is indeed only a prolongation of the rehabilitation effort.

The last inquiry, [Part VI], was into that saddest and least hopeful of all forms of rehabilitation, the permanent care of the aged and infirm. To call it rehabilitation seems a misnomer. The methods, the number of persons involved, their character, and other items are considered. Also the attempt is made to determine how far present dependence was inevitable, or accelerated, or actually caused by the change of circumstances due to the fire and to the additional burdens put upon relatives and friends who in the ordinary course of events would themselves have assumed the duty.

This summary reveals not alone what these studies contain but also what they omit. They do not comprise a complete history of the San Francisco relief work. A bird’s-eye view of that work is given in the Sixth Annual Report of the American National Red Cross. They present, rather, certain important and significant phases of rehabilitation with a sketch of the organization structure. And they present these not primarily for any reason of historical interest but in the hope that they may help concretely and suggestively in solving problems of family rehabilitation in connection with disasters, small and large, which in the future may confront the American National Red Cross, citizens’ committees, and relief agencies of every kind.

The full measure of results cannot be given in this Relief Survey. The acumen of no group of investigators, no matter how broad in their sympathies, or how trained to their work, can probe to the heart of a community to find the main arteries through which it has drawn its full life. The people were sound at the core. They had an instinct for adventure. Their own sanity, their self-reliance and faith in the future made them ready to rebound from fortune’s sudden blow. But in the wearying days that followed in the wake of the first efforts at recuperation, the adventurous spirit flagged under the strain and the ugliness of life. It was then that the city called on men whom it had bred, to uphold the courage and maintain the spirit of independence of its weaker citizens. The men who responded because they treasured San Francisco, their city, have shown, as this study proves, what sustained and co-operative effort can achieve.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

(A detailed Table of Contents precedes each part)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

ORGANIZATION OF THE RELIEF WORK
Showing committees, departments, and bureaus created from April 18, 1906, to February 4, 1909[2]

• Under the Division Commander
• Inspector General
• Depot Quartermaster (transportation of supplies)
• Depot Commissary (Issuance of food)
• Subordinate Officers in Change of Warehouses
• Chief Sanitary Officer
• Military Chairmen of the Seven Civil Sections
• Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations
• Hot Food Stations
• Superintendents of Relief Stations (also called food stations)
• Commander of Official Camps
• Commanders of Several Camps

• Special Representative
• Seven Civil Chairmen of the Civil Sections
• Staff at Headquarters
• Registration Bureau
• Employment Bureau
• Special Relief and Rehabilitation Bureau
• Transportation Bureau

• Committee of Supervising
• Purchasing Committee
• Auditing Committee
• Committee on Hospitals

• Executive Commission, June 22, 1906
• Seven Civil Chairmen
• Committee on Relief Warehouses
• Committee on Camps
• Committee on Complaints
• Committee on Municipal Departments
• Committee on Sewing Circles
• Rehabilitation Committee, June 29, 1906
• Seven Civil Section Committees

• Transportation of Refugees
• Relief of Hungry
• Housing the Homeless
• Roofing the Homeless
• Drugs and Medical Supplies
• Relief of Sick and Wounded
• Care in Hospitals
• Relief of Chinese

• Department A—Finance and Publicity
• Auditing Department
• Subscription Department
• Ledger Department
• Claim Voucher Department
• Cashier’s Department
• History Committee

• Department B—Bills and Demands
• Supervising Committee (superseded by the Judicial Committee, Sept. 9, 1906)

• Department C—Camps and Warehouses (Aug. 1, 1906, Relieved Army of Camps)
• Seven Civil Chairmen
• Camps
• Warehouses

• Department D—Relief and Rehabilitation
• Rehabilitation Committee
• Seven Civil Section Committees, superseded October 26, 1906, by Sub-Committees:
• I.
• Temporary Aid and Transportation
• II.
• Aged and Infirm. Unsupported Children and Friendless Girls
• III.
• Unsupported or Partially Supported Families
• IV.
• Occupation for Women and Confidential Cases
• V.
• Housing and Shelter
• VI.
• Business Rehabilitation
• VII.
• Heads of Families Employed but Unable to Refurnish their Homes, Jan. 16, 1907
• VIII.
• Committee on Deferred and Neglected Applications, Nov. 17, 1907
• Bureau of Hospitals
• Industrial Bureau
• Bureau of Special Relief

• Department E—Lands and Buildings

Organizational chart as [illustration].

[2] The committees appointed independently by the Finance Committee and by the American National Red Cross became practically merged into the so-called new committees under the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds. The committees under the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds continued their work under the more elaborate organisation of the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, a Corporation. The most significant dates of organisation are given.

PART I
ORGANIZING THE FORCE AND
EMERGENCY METHODS

Part I
ORGANIZING THE FORCE AND EMERGENCY METHODS

[Large map] (700 kB)

I
ORGANIZING A RELIEF FORCE

1. THE DISASTER

San Francisco is at the head of one of two narrow peninsulas which, held apart by the Golden Gate, landlock a fifty-mile length of harbor. To the west of the city is the Pacific Ocean itself and to the east, beyond the six to eight-mile reach of San Francisco Bay, such residence towns as Alameda, Oakland, and Berkeley, which merge almost into one another. Many thousands of people who use San Francisco as the center for their business, travel daily along the city’s principal thoroughfare, Market Street, to take at its foot one of the ferries which make frequent runs to the east shore and to Sausalito and Tiburon on the north beyond the Golden Gate. A smaller number go by rail to San José and other residence towns on the peninsula, and each stream is met morning and evening by one of less volume of those who reverse the process to find residence in the large city and employment beyond its boundaries.

On Wednesday morning, April 18, 1906, at twelve minutes past five o’clock, San Francisco, this city of wonderful setting, suffered an earthquake whose sensible duration was about one minute. The shock left her powerless to supply light, heat, water, drainage, to convey her people or to carry their messages; but it would not have paralyzed her activities had it not been that because of the breaking of the main water conduits, the fires, thirty of which were said to have started immediately, could not be controlled.

The fires started on both sides of Market Street, and within three hours after the earthquake, made a continuous line of flame from north of Market Street, along the water front, past the Ferry Building, south of Market Street, and along Mission Street to beyond Third Street, where was the main station of the only railroad that ran out of the city. As the fire spread to the southwest and the north, the whole population seemed cut off from escape except by going west and south within the city. Comparatively few knew during the first two days that there was a narrow but safe way around the fire to the Ferry Building from which the boats were running. Many of those who did learn of this opportunity, or who wished to hazard a chance, reached the ferry and crossed the bay, but many more failed to use this means of reaching their friends and acquaintances without the city. On the second and third days small supplies of water were brought to play upon the fire, but not until the morning of Saturday the twenty-first, by the use of dynamite, was the advance of the flames stopped.

Along the general line of the city’s own growth in wealth and breadth the fire moved, destroying the larger part of the wholesale district, practically all of the retail and the shopping section, the chief financial centers, the leading hotels, and some of the public buildings. Large portions of the most expensive residence sections and multitudes of small hotels and lodging houses, together with great numbers of less expensive residences and quarters for working people, were devastated. Thickly populated districts, such as the “Latin Quarter,” Chinatown, and the section largely inhabited by the Irish, were entirely burned out.

The burned area, the very heart and vitals of the city, covered 4.7[3] square miles, on which were located 521 blocks, 13 of which were saved, 508 burned. The number of buildings destroyed was 28,188,[4] the number of persons made homeless about 200,000[5] of San Francisco’s estimated population of 450,000.

[3] Report of the sub-committee on statistics to the chairman and Committee on the Reconstruction of San Francisco (see [page 10]), April 24, 1907.

[4] The classification and count were made from the block books of the Norwich Union Insurance Company. Each separate building with an independent entrance was estimated as a building. The number and character of buildings destroyed were:

[5] General Greely quoted the chief of the Census Bureau as giving 185,000 as the population of the burned area in 1900.

Striving to reach the Ferry Building

In Union Square, soon to be swept by flames

The Morning of the Disaster

The burned area[6] had a land front of 49,305 feet, or 9.34 miles, and a water front of 9,510 feet, or 1.80 miles, the total being 58,815 feet, or 11.14 miles. Facing this line on the unburned side were 527 buildings, of which 506 were wood, 18 brick, one stone, one adobe, and one corrugated iron. Thus the fire was stopped against a wall of buildings, 96 per cent of which were wood. About 20 per cent of the frontage was on wide streets, and the remainder, 80 per cent, on streets of ordinary width.

[6] See [map] opposite p. 3.

Apart from the larger business houses, the public buildings, and some of the residences of the wealthier citizens, the burned buildings, including the smaller hotels and lodging houses, were built of wood. Their destruction was complete. There was practically no salvage of value from the small wooden dwellings, destroyed as they were by the fire and not by the earthquake.

The loss of real and personal property has been estimated at $500,000,000,—about $1,100 per capita of the city’s population. As only $200,000,000 of insurance money is estimated to have been collected, there was a net loss of over $650 per capita. The great loss of income from non-employment, from unrentable property, and from the general cessation of business, cannot be estimated. There was quick compensation for the day laborers and other workmen connected with the building trades, but the recovery for most of the business men was to be slow and is not yet complete.

The loss of life as a result of both earthquake and fire was reported by General Greely, after careful inquiry, to be: known dead, 304; unknown dead, 194; total, 498; number seriously injured, 415. All persons within the fire zone who were lying sick either in hospitals or in their own homes were carried to places of safety. There were, of course, many unwarranted reports of tragic deaths, such as for instance that numerous men had been shot for looting and that physicians had put their patients to death rather than let them die in the flames. The federal troops arrived so promptly, and with the aid of the militia and the police patrolled the city so thoroughly, that there were few opportunities to loot. To the end of June there were but nine deaths by violence in the whole city, three of which appear to have been brought upon unoffending men by over-zealous patrols.

It can never be reckoned what it meant to the devastated city that its own people as a welded body should have manifested under the shock of the great disaster that quality of the hero which lifts him, the psychic man, above the physical and leaves him freed from himself to be spiritually at one with his community. A witness who lives in Berkeley came to the city early on the morning of the earthquake and spent that and the following day in the thick of the refugees. Nowhere along the fire lines was to be seen the least sign of panic. Women and children without a tear and with scarcely a murmur trudged weary miles, carrying handfuls of possessions, or stood silent to watch their homes destroyed. The chief signs of excitement were shown by those who were fighting the fire or who were hurrying from one place to another on official business. At the end of the second day he saw tears for the first time, the tears of a woman who may have been worn out by long tramping and by loss of sleep.

How the great deep of the common human heart was broken up when that sudden disaster came unawares on the people is borne witness to by many who had their portion of loss and by many others who came from the outside to help carry the load. One of the latter wrote to Charities and the Commons[7] a month afterwards:

“All the fountains of good fellowship, of generosity, of sympathy, of good cheer, pluck, and determination have been opened wide by the common downfall. The spirit of all is a marvelous revelation of the good and fine in humanity, intermittent or dormant under ordinary conditions, perhaps, but dominant and all-pervading in the shadow of disaster.

“Recently I formed the acquaintance of a man who now drives an automobile. He had a large machine shop and was a rich man before the fire. The other day he was working about the automobile while his passengers were attending a committee meeting at army headquarters. Presently there approached a man who had purchased $20,000 worth of machinery at his shops just before the fire.

“The customer said to my friend, ‘Hello R——, what are you doing here?’

“‘Driving this automobile,’ said R——. ‘What are you doing?’

“‘I’m driving that automobile over there,’ said the customer, and the two shook hands and laughed heartily at the grim humor of the situation.

“The prevailing sentiment could hardly be better shown than by a motto chalked on one of the little temporary street kitchens. It is: ‘Make the best of it, forget the rest of it.’”

[7] Bicknell, Ernest P.: In the Thick of the Relief Work of San Francisco. Charities and the Commons, XVI: 299 (June, 1906).

The even temperature of the San Francisco region which assures mild winters and cool summers and the cessation of rains from March to October, made climatic conditions that were peculiarly favorable. There was on April 22 and again in June some inconvenience from unseasonable rain, but there was no complaint of serious discomfort by those living in the temporary shelters. The health of the refugees in general, it was frequently stated, was improved by the outdoor life. Probably thousands lived during the summer of 1906 under improved physical conditions; and even during the rains of the following winter thousands were better off in the refugee shacks than they had previously been in the poorer grade of tenements. A winter that brings but little frost and ice and that accustoms people to live with open doors and to do without artificial heat is one that simplifies the task of providing shelter for the homeless, lessens the cost, and causes but few serious delays to building work. The even temperature is also favorable for the handling of perishable food supplies, which do not need to be kept on ice.

San Francisco had an additional advantage in being an important military and naval center. As the headquarters of the department of California and of the Pacific Division of the army, it has within its boundaries three garrison posts with their reservations,—the Presidio, Fort Mason, and Fort Miley; and without, Fort Baker opposite the Presidio on the north side of the Golden Gate, Alcatraz Island facing the Golden Gate, Fort McDowell within the bay on Angel Island, and Benicia Barracks at the head of the bay. The United States Navy Department has Mare Island Navy Yard at the north end of the bay and the Naval Training Station on Yerba Buena Island. At the time of the disaster the war ships in the harbor as well as the naval stations were able to render prompt and valuable service. The army’s immediate part in fighting the fire and in guarding property, and its later part in providing food, clothing, and shelter was, as is shown in the following pages, of outstanding importance.

As the people in brave and solemn silence moved out of the shattered and fire-swept centers of the city, relief societies were being formed within the city itself and in suburban towns, and citizens of places as distant as Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, hurried from the south and the north to distribute money and supplies. Many agencies, with fervor but with no concerted plan, helped to carry the relief work for the first week, converting churches into hospitals, and preparing and distributing food in unlikely but convenient places. But while sporadic groups of people worked to provide immediate aid in ignorance of one another’s efforts, the organization of the Citizens’ Committee grew.

2. TENTATIVE ORGANIZATION

At a quarter before seven o’clock on that morning of April 18, the mayor, Eugene E. Schmitz, with a small group of citizens met in the Hall of Justice, a building shattered by the earthquake and nearly surrounded by fire. As he hurried to the center of the city he overtook the federal troops which had been summoned from Fort Mason and the Presidio by General Funston, who was in command of the Pacific Division of the army during the temporary absence of General Greely.[8] The troops had been told to take orders from the mayor. Under authority from him they served as police to guard property, not to enforce a military rule. The mayor assumed almost absolute control of the city government for a time, superseding all departments and commissions. His first order was to shoot, not arrest, the looters; his second, to close the places that sold liquor. The latter wise measure was for two months strictly enforced.

[8] For a condensed account of the part taken by the army in the emergency relief work, see [Appendix I], [p. 381]; extracts from article on The Army in the San Francisco Disaster, by Major (now Brigadier General) C. A. Devol. Journal United States Infantry Association, July, 1907, pp. 59-87.

The fire is approaching at the right

The Hall of Justice

The mayor named a Citizens’ Committee[9] of more than 50 persons, 25 of whom came together at three o’clock in the Hall of Justice, close to the edge of the roaring tempest of flame. It was difficult to conduct business, with dynamite explosions shaking the meeting place, so in an hour’s time the mayor moved across the street to Portsmouth Square where amid boxes of dynamite and in the shadow of the monument to Robert Louis Stevenson, the transaction of business continued. The memorial, a drinking fountain in a granite base with a Spanish galleon at full sail on its summit, stood untouched. The gilt of the hardy vessel still glittered and, untarnished beneath, Stevenson’s lines: “To be honest, to be kind ... to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.”

[9] For list of members of the Citizens’ Committee, popularly called the Committee of Fifty, and its sub-committees, see Sixth Annual Report of the American National Red Cross, 1910, pp. 153-155.

Two hours later the mayor and his assistants moved five blocks up the steep side of Nob Hill to the Fairmont Hotel only to be dislodged the next morning from what must at first have seemed an impregnable position. Their retreat carried them eight blocks farther west to the North End Police Station, and by noon still westward to Franklin Hall on the corner of Fillmore and Bush Streets, where they could finally halt. While the citizens were holding their first meetings and the army was helping to fight the fire, the American National Red Cross was sending across the continent its representative, Dr. Edward T. Devine, who reached San Francisco April 23 with Ernest P. Bicknell. Mr. Bicknell was sent by the committee formed in Chicago for the relief of San Franciscans.

At its first meeting in the Hall of Justice the Citizens’ Committee, which was recognized immediately as a representative body, authorized the mayor to issue orders for food and other supplies. The mayor did not, however, make much use of this authority but left the conduct of the relief work to the Finance Committee, which was appointed at the first meeting, and to the other sub-committees which were formed at the following meetings. The chairman of each of these was given power to complete the membership of his committee. From the first the Finance Committee of the Citizens’ Committee, with James D. Phelan elected to be its chairman, stands out as a directing agent of relief.

Interesting items in the minutes of the second meeting of the Citizens’ Committee are the announcements that there would be water in the Western Addition by one o’clock of that day, April 19, and in the Mission the following day, and that there was press boat service at the foot of Van Ness Avenue.[10]

[10] See [map] opposite p. 3. Fort Mason, at the foot of the avenue, overlooks the Golden Gate.

The Citizens’ Committee continued for over two weeks to hold daily meetings, to which were submitted the Finance Committee’s reports of contributions, as well as its methods of relief expenditures. Its only function in relation to the relief work came to be to confer in order to exchange information. It was but natural, therefore, for the mayor to determine to dissolve the larger committee and leave the control of the relief work, as far as he had power to determine it, in the hands of the Finance Committee, which as is shown [below] had on April 25 come into effective co-operation with the army and the American National Red Cross. At the meeting on May 5, the mayor notified Mr. Phelan that the work of all the relief sub-committees but his was done, and that he should make his financial statement to the Committee on the Reconstruction of San Francisco.[11]

[11] Superseded on May 5 the Committee of Fifty. This new committee of 40 members, composed largely of the men who served on the Committee of Fifty, had no part in the subsequent relief work.

The Citizens’ Committee with its list of sub-committees, hurriedly created, quickly to die, gives an excellent illustration of the futility of trying to effect an elaborate organization before the measure of a disaster has been taken or the extent of the means for recovery learned.

The Finance Committee represented the citizens’ choice to which had been entrusted the local subscription of over $400,000 and the contribution from the state at large of $250,000. Its authority had been recognized by the California branch of the Red Cross, by the Massachusetts Association for Relief of California, by the New York Chamber of Commerce, and by many other relief organizations and individuals throughout the country, as well as by the President of the United States who made public his recognition of the Finance Committee as official agent of relief. The relation of the American National Red Cross to the Finance Committee was not defined during the week following the disaster.

3. UNITING OF RELIEF FORCES

On April 24, before the dissolution of the Citizens’ Committee, a momentous conference was held at Fort Mason which was attended by General Greely and General Funston representing the army; by the mayor, Mr. Phelan, Mr. de Young, and Mr. E. H. Harriman representing the citizens; and by Dr. Devine, representing the American National Red Cross and Judge W. W. Morrow representing the California Branch of the Red Cross. That a meeting was to be held to determine the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee and the best method of employing the funds, had been reported earlier in the same day to the Citizens’ Committee. At this conference, after a heated argument it was decided that the military authorities should have entire charge[12] of the relief stations and the shelters for the homeless, two divisions of work that previously had been partially carried by sub-committees of the Citizens’ Committee. It was further decided to unite the Red Cross with the Finance Committee of the Citizens’ Committee under a new title: Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds. This consolidation was immediately approved by the American National Red Cross which soon afterwards remitted $400,000 to the new committee.[13]

[12] For a copy of General Orders No. 18, see [Appendix I], [p. 379].

[13] For list of members of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds and its permanent Committees, see [Appendix I], [p. 377].

There were nice questions of policy involved in the determining of the relation between the army, the civil and state authorities, and the voluntary relief agencies. Tact was required and a faithful compliance with the law. April 21, at a conference of the mayor, the chief of police, General Koster, then in command of the National Guard, and General Funston, the question of the effective policing of the city had been considered.

It was agreed that the northern part of the city should be assigned to the federal troops, the central part to the National Guard, and the southern to the municipal police. The northern part was divided into six military districts. On May 2 military control was extended to the whole city, which was now divided into eight military districts, with only slight changes in their boundaries; and on May 8 there was a general re-districting that resulted in six districts. These military districts have special significance for this Relief Survey because they later served as the basis for the seven geographical divisions known as civil or relief sections, which played a very important part in the relief work. These were formed on April 29 and coincided practically with the six military districts of May 8, except that military district six included civil sections VII and VIII. The civil sections were later used by the American National Red Cross, by the Executive Commission, and by the departments of Camps and Warehouses and of Relief and Rehabilitation.

The boundaries of the sections, the number of refugees registered in each, the extent of the burned district, and the location of the more important camps, are given in the [map].[14] The burned district was included almost entirely in Sections IV and V. Sections I, II,[15] and III contained the largest camps. Section VI had only one official camp, and Section VII none, but there were many unsupervised tents and shacks, isolated and in groups, scattered through these two sections. In extent of territory they more than equalled the other five sections. They contained before the fire a large wage-earning population, living in small homes. This population was much increased after the fire by an influx from the burned-out part of the city.

[14] See [map] opposite p. 3. For number of refugees registered in the seven Sections in May, 1906, see also [Part I], [p. 45].

[15] The number of refugees registered for Section II is very inadequate. It included Golden Gate Park, with its three large camps, where a different registration system was instituted before the general registration was begun. These camps, with a population in the middle of May of nearly 5,000, were therefore excluded from the general registration, which consequently represented only the scattered refugees throughout the section outside the Park.

An irresistible force had pushed relief through four broad channels. Food had first to be supplied; then clothing along with bedding and common household necessities; then shelter; and last, the means to make one’s own provision for the future. The order of relief could not be altered by any committee planning. The great primary needs had first to be met. The amounts that could be held in reserve for the purpose of essential importance, rehabilitation, depended on the sum of donations being enough to leave a surplus after the cost of food, clothing, and temporary shelter had been met. In the early days the number of persons that were in the bread line and that lacked shelter was so great that it looked as if the demands for food, clothing, and other primary necessities would exhaust any possible relief fund.

The method of distribution of emergency relief is described in the [following chapter], but in order to understand the animus that underlay the efforts to form an organization that should meet with public recognition, it must be borne in mind that two strong currents, representing distinct conceptions of principles of relief, flowed beneath the surface of the relief administration, sometimes the one and sometimes the other directing the general course or impeding an even progress. Such conflict between the conceptions of the relief task was as inevitable as was the demand for relief itself, and furnished probably the amount of friction necessary to wear a deep bed along which later moved a great stream of rehabilitation. The story of the first efforts to form a compact, working relief body falls almost into dramatic form. The voice of authority one day is the civic servant’s, another day the people’s, a third the military commander’s, a fourth the expert charity worker’s. The stage in turn seems held by each. But the significant fact is that underlying the methods of each is the need, recognized at different periods of time in varying degree, of meeting the demands of the situation by a grasp of rehabilitation as the definitive aim.

4. BEGINNINGS OF REHABILITATION WORK

There was no monopoly of the conception of rehabilitation as an essential part of the relief work. Before the end of April the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds had been asked to supply tools to bricklayers and to make loans to individuals. Individual members had discussed the outstanding importance of rehousing the people. Agencies and individuals acting independently of one another had likewise been making tentative efforts to restore people to self-support.

But there was one group of workers that had been free from the first to base its initial efforts on the need to measure the disaster in terms of future rehabilitation. This group, representing the American National Red Cross, reinforced by the Associated Charities, had been free to do so because the responsibility of meeting the emergency was being carried by the army and by the Citizens’ Committee. Before any distinctive rehabilitation committee was appointed the office of the Red Cross was besieged by applicants who in person and by letter begged for aid to remove their families from the camp life. To some tools were supplied; to others, transportation. Until May 9, when the Finance Committee made its first appropriation of $10,000 for special relief, Dr. Devine drew on a private fund at his disposal to meet rehabilitation expenditures. For these early expenditures he was reimbursed from the first appropriation.

May 5 is a noteworthy date. The representative of the American National Red Cross then began to form a staff of rehabilitation workers, who put the date May 5 at the head of the first case record. The secretary of the Boston Associated Charities, Alice L. Higgins, was appointed secretary to Dr. Devine. Lee K. Frankel of New York became chairman of a tentative bureau of special relief.

On May 18, when the Red Cross had formulated its plans for a registration bureau and for co-operating with the army at the seven civil sections, the Special Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, or Bureau, as it was ordinarily called, got well under way, with Oscar K. Cushing as chairman. In a separate section in the next chapter the relation of this Bureau to the transportation work is told.

The Bureau started with a force of seven field agents. The Associated Charities provided the investigators, reinforced at once by local volunteer and paid relief workers and, after July 2, by a number of workers sent from east of the Sierras by the charity organization and kindred societies that had trained them. The force as a whole represented, without discrimination, various races and creeds. The Finance Committee after July 2 made an appropriation to the Associated Charities to cover the cost of administration.

Watching the fire

The fire draws near

Refugees in Jefferson Square

During the early period of the alliance between the Associated Charities and the Rehabilitation Bureau there was difficulty in the adjustment of work, but the friction was soon overcome and until July, 1907, under the various régimes, the Associated Charities continued to be an effective part of the general rehabilitation machinery. The work of the Bureau grew fast, but it grew naturally as an outcome of the demands of the situation itself, and when on June 29, as is stated on [page 21], the Finance Committee appointed its own Rehabilitation Committee,[16] the new committee was able to take over the work of the Bureau without any waste of effort.

[16] Two weeks later, when the funds were incorporated, July 16, 1906, five departments were formed (see [p. 26]) of which one, the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation, included the Rehabilitation Committee, the Bureau of Hospitals, the Industrial Bureau, and the Bureau of Special Relief. (See Diagram of Organization, [p. xxv].)

Early in May, when the Red Cross Rehabilitation Bureau was being organized, the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds, stimulated by insistent requests that it should state its plans, called on Dr. Devine, one of its members, to make recommendations for future work. The New York Chamber of Commerce, through its representative, James D. Hague, and the Massachusetts Association for the Relief of California through its representative Jacob Furth, were urging that their funds be used as far as possible to provide permanent relief.

Dr. Devine, who already had carefully considered with his staff of Red Cross workers the general question of rehabilitation, in a report submitted on May 4 made seven recommendations, which were considered by a special committee consisting of the governor, Archbishop Riordan, Rabbi Voorsanger, E. H. Harriman, and Dr. Devine. The first six recommendations were accepted by the Finance Committee; the last was rejected. They read:

1. That the opening of cheap restaurants be encouraged and facilitated by the sale to responsible persons at army contract prices of any surplus stores now in hand or en route, the proceeds to be turned into the relief fund to be expended in the purchase of the same or other supplies as the Finance Committee or its purchasing agents may direct.

2. That definite provision be made for the maintenance of the permanent private hospitals which are in position to care for free patients, by the payment at the rate of $10 per week for the care of patients who are unable to pay, and that after an accurate estimate has been made of the number of beds in each hospital, a sufficient sum be appropriated for this purpose.

3. That provision be made on some carefully devised plan for the care during the coming year of convalescent patients, and for the care of aged and infirm persons for whom there is not already sufficient provision.

4. That on the basis of the registration now in progress and subsequent inquiry into the facts in such cases, special relief in the form of tools, implements, household furniture, and sewing machines, or in any other form which may be approved by the committee, be supplied to individuals and families found to be in need of such relief.

5. That the administration of this special relief fund be entrusted to a committee of seven with such paid service at its disposal as the special relief committee may find necessary.

6. That as soon as practicable a definite date be fixed after which applications for aid from the Relief and Red Cross Funds cannot be considered.

7. That a sum not to exceed $100,000 be set aside to be expended by the said committee for the immediate employment of both men and women in some necessary work which is in the public interest but which cannot be undertaken by the municipality and is not properly a charge on any private corporation or individual.

In making its own report this special committee said it assumed “that the supply of food and clothing will be continued until the absolute need in these directions is met.” It was not prepared to take action on the seventh recommendation.

At the end of May, no action as a result of the recommendations having been taken, Dr. Devine urged the Finance Committee to appoint the committee of seven suggested in the fifth recommendation, which had been authorized the first of the month, so that the work of providing shelter more adequate than that provided by the tents should be begun. For consideration of more permanent forms of rehabilitation, he thought it might be necessary to have still another committee.

His advice to the Finance Committee was supplemented on June 4 by a letter to the chairman, in which he drew a general outline of the relief course that should be taken. It reiterates in more specific form the advice given in May. The points emphasized were:

1. The general distribution of uncooked food and of clothing should be discontinued by June 30, the date the army proposed to withdraw. The bread line, the clothing line, and the relief stations, should then be abandoned.

2. The established charities of the city should, as far as possible, on that date resume the discharge of their normal functions.

3. The clothing and provisions, tools, sewing machines, and household furniture remaining on June 30 in the relief stores should be placed at the disposal of a special relief committee and a central warehouse should be designated to hold them. Appropriations should be made to the suggested committee for its administrative expenses, and as its plans developed, for additional relief.

4. Housing, loans, and other plans for rehabilitation should be taken up by a legally incorporated body to be formed to administer the relief funds; one which should be ready to deal in the broadest possible way with all problems relating to the rehabilitation of families and of individuals. The hot meal kitchens, it was conjectured, would by the end of June be on a business basis.

5. The most important task remaining would be to supervise permanent camps and barracks.[17]

[17] See Providing Shelter, [Part I], [p. 69] ff.

6. The Police Department should give general protection, and the Health Commission should guard the public health.[18]

[18] See [Safeguarding Health], [Part I], [p. 89] ff.

To quote the letter:

“What will be needed in each permanent camp after June 30 will be (1) a business agent authorized by the Finance Committee, and in the case of public parks by the municipal authorities, to assign tents or rooms in barracks to particular persons, to collect rents, if rental is charged, to evict tenants when necessary, and to call upon the police authorities in the name of this committee, when necessary for the maintenance of order; (2) a sanitary officer responsible to the health commission; and (3) a police guard responsible to the police department. The general business agents should all be responsible to one general superintendent of permanent camps. The general superintendent of business agents, in the case of the larger camps, will require a certain number of clerical and administrative assistants corresponding to the military officers who are now serving in similar capacities under the military supervision of camps and the commanding officers of the several camps. Neither the business agent nor the sanitary superintendent need have anything to do with relief, except to report cases of destitution which come to their attention to the Special Relief Committee.”

The mayor, who was futilely trying to determine relief policies, in a conference with Mr. Phelan a few days later suggested the importance of appointing the committee urged by Dr. Devine. He said that he might ask the municipal board of supervisors to appoint a committee on relief and rehabilitation. This action, however, he did not take.

General Greely at this time also expressed his appreciation of the need of a change of relief policy.[19] He and Dr. Devine agreed as to the next steps to be taken, his point of view concurring with that expressed in the letter just quoted. He counseled specifically a separation of questions of administration, sanitation, and relief, and a thorough co-operation with the municipality in all matters affecting the administrative policy and sanitation of the camps. He said further that as an army officer was familiar with but two aspects of the relief problem,—the distribution of supplies and the care of camps,—the Finance Committee of the Relief and Red Cross Funds should appoint an executive committee, which should be prepared after July 1 to relieve the army of responsibility.

[19] For letter written on June 15 by General Greely to the chairman of the Finance Committee, see [Appendix I], [p. 387].

He asked three of his officers who had been carrying on the relief work to submit a plan for its further conduct. The resultant plan, submitted by General Greely to the Finance Committee, was necessarily a reflex of the military experience of its framers. Though it was incited by an appreciation of the fact that the emergency relief period must be superseded by the period for permanent adjustment, the plan provided for yet further distribution of necessities rather than in any comprehensive way for housing and rehabilitation. It called for the organizing of a bureau with a paid personnel. The chief of the bureau was to be accountable to the mayor, and was to have under him four sub-chiefs, three of whom should be army officers, each in charge of a department,—the departments of distribution and supply, administration, general superintendence, and finance.

General Greely, realizing the difficulty of having a suitable man appointed as chief, made later the substitute suggestion of a commission of three. The mayor and General Greely were present by invitation at a meeting of the Finance Committee when the substitute plan was considered. The attitude of the mayor during this month of June was one of serious interference. The Finance Committee naturally did not wish to have any public disagreement with him, and with the knowledge that the army was shortly to be withdrawn from control of relief work it seemed wise as a compromise to accept General Greely’s suggestion of a commission rather than a chief who should be responsible solely to the mayor. The decision was reached, therefore, for the Finance Committee to appoint an Executive Commission of three members, one member to represent the mayor, a second, the American National Red Cross, and a third, the Finance Committee itself.

5. AN INTERLUDE

On June 22, at a meeting of the Finance Committee at which 11 of the 21 members were present, announcement was made that the mayor had appointed a political friend as his representative on the Executive Commission, and the American National Red Cross, Dr. Devine. Dr. Devine at the time of the meeting was absent in the East. The Committee had therefore to make its appointment. After a discussion, which later became public, several men were nominated for appointment, two of whom possessed the confidence of the community on account of their honorable standing, native ability, readiness freely to serve the public, and knowledge gained of the relief situation through arduous volunteer work. The man elected, by a vote of six to four, was a politician with no previous experience in the relief work. A scrutiny of the records shows on the part of these local members of the Executive Commission no indication of effort to use their positions to further political ends, and one of the two returned to the Finance Committee the salary of $500 to which he was entitled as a member of the Commission. There is no record of lack of harmony, merely the indication of an ineptitude on their part to meet the needs of the distressed community.

The attitude of the Finance Committee was one of detachment from, or one might say, suspicion of the Executive Commission. It refused to define the scope of the Commission’s work, but directed it to organize and submit a plan of work for approval, and, for confirmation, the names of the employes it wished to appoint. The members who had forced the election of a feeble representative, realizing the mistake of their policy, agreed to restrict the powers of the Commission, and were ready to vote to abolish it at the end of the month.

The irony of the situation lay in the fact that the chairman of the Commission, Dr. Devine (who accepted no salary), and its secretary, Ernest P. Bicknell (who likewise received no salary), presented for consideration a plan of work which in substance was the same as that submitted by the chairman early in June to the Finance Committee and to General Greely.

The plan[20] called again for a regulation of camps, warehouses, the hot meal kitchens, the care of the sick in hospitals, and for making provision for housing, loans, and special relief. Unlike a rolling stone, however, to reiterate plans meant to gather moss, so a new suggestion may be noted. It was, that the civilian chairmen of the seven sections should be men on salary, giving their entire time, and responsible to the Commission until relieved. Their duties should include distribution of clothing, meal tickets, and other relief, and the carrying out of the second registration[21] then in progress.

[20] For plan of the Executive Commission, see [Appendix I], [p. 391].

[21] See [Part I], [p. 49], and [Part II], [p. 115]. The first registration was begun during the week following the disaster.

Recommendation was made by the Commission that all executive work should devolve on it, and that it should be held responsible for initiating relief measures.

The Finance Committee approved the plan in general, with the exception that the question of special relief be left for future decision and that no action be taken on housing until further information had been collected. It did decide, specifically, that the rehabilitation work should continue in charge of Dr. Devine as representative of the Red Cross, and should not be transferred to the Executive Commission while final decision was pending.

The first bakery rebuilt

A cheerful kitchen

Supplying Food Under Difficulties

The Executive Commission got rather beaten round the bush. It was permitted to expend certain appropriations for sanitation, the care of camps, and the distribution of food, clothing, and other supplies, under direction of its chairman and a group of army officers. The relation of the army to the new Commission was practically what it had before been to the Red Cross representative. Under the military régime Major A. J. Gaston was commanding officer of permanent camps; under the new régime he was general superintendent of camps with authority to appoint all camp employes.

In the latter part of June Mr. Phelan, acting on Dr. Devine’s suggestion that the Finance Committee should appoint a Rehabilitation Committee of its own to supersede the work of the special Rehabilitation Bureau, did appoint such a committee with Dr. Devine as chairman and Archbishop Riordan,[22] Bishop Nichols,[23] Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, O. K. Cushing, F. W. Dohrmann, and Dr. John Gallwey as members. Its scope was defined as including “all aid” to be given to individuals or families other than food or ordinary clothing. It superseded, as has been already stated,[24] the Red Cross Rehabilitation Bureau and took over the latter’s unexpended balance. The Bureau had expended $18,599.70 for 840 applicants.

[22] Delegated his position to Rev. D. O. Crowley.

[23] Delegated his position to Archdeacon J. A. Emery.

[24] See [Part I], [p. 15].

The Rehabilitation Committee met in Hamilton School July 2, two and a half months after the beginning of the relief work in San Francisco. Mr. Bicknell was elected secretary, Mr. Cushing, treasurer, the latter, with the chairman, having authority to sign checks in the name of the Committee. When Dr. Devine returned to New York, August 1, Mr. Bicknell was appointed a member of the Committee and Mr. Dohrmann then became chairman, a position he was to hold from the first of August, 1906, until the close of the rehabilitation work.

During June and July, to repeat, the pressure to give food and temporary shelter was yielding to the pressure to furnish permanent shelter and other means of rehabilitation. The problem of housing was very complicated. No one knew how far shelter would be provided by private enterprise; no one knew whether manufacturing plants and wholesale and retail business would seek old locations; no one knew where the shifting population would settle. There was delay in collecting insurance, uncertainty as to the land, labor, and materials available and as to the future street car service and water and sewer connections. There was difference of opinion as to whether the subsidized building should be of a permanent or temporary character, of scattered individual dwellings or large blocks, as to whether financial aid should be in the form of bonuses or of loans.

One of the minor notes of irony in this mid-summer situation lies in the fact that the Finance Committee referred to its own Rehabilitation Committee for consideration and report the housing suggestion of one of its members, M. H. de Young, and that the report that followed, July 10, was signed by Dr. Devine as chairman both of the Rehabilitation Committee and of the Executive Commission.[25]

[25] See Original Housing Plan, [Appendix I], [p. 393]. See also [Part IV], Housing Rehabilitation, [p. 212] ff.

Mr. de Young’s suggestion was that a donation, or as it was commonly called, a bonus, of not more than $500[26] in any case, be made in behalf of any resident whose house had been destroyed, provided that the $500 represented not more than one-third of the value of the house to be built, and that it be paid to the contractor after the house was completed and was clear of liens.

[26] For class of people who benefited by the bonus plan, see [Part IV], [pp. 218], [239].

The resultant report as submitted stated that the Executive Commission had, with the approval of the Finance Committee, appointed a board of consulting architects and builders who offered their services as expert counsel on general plans and on designs for suitable dwellings. It also stated that the matter had been carefully considered by the Rehabilitation Committee and the Executive Commission, and that the bonus plan was recommended for such workingmen as could not secure sufficient funds from banks, building and loan associations, or from other business or private sources.

Attention was called to the fact that the Rehabilitation Committee was already studying the general situation so as to estimate how many loans[27] were likely to be called for. It was further stated that there was no anticipation that the bonus plan would carry far in providing shelter for the families living in tents, and that no inclusive plan could be framed to provide housing for all the homeless.

[27] For method of carrying out the loan plan, see [Part IV], [p. 253] ff.

It was recognized, moreover, that first in order of importance came provision of shelter for the aged, the infirm, the invalided, and the other adult dependents who had become permanent city charges. For these the recommendation was to erect permanent buildings on the cottage pavilion plan to house 1,000 persons; the cost of building to be met from the fund, the maintenance to be left to the city. It was recognized that there were two possible alternate plans; namely, to care for the dependent group in existing private institutions, or to board its members in private families. A marked advantage of the first plan was that it provided a permanent addition to the city’s charitable institutions. The suggestion was intended to supplement what was already being done in the way of giving care to the sick in hospitals.

It was further recognized that there should be quick effort made to supply dwellings for the 5,000 persons who before the disaster had paid moderate rentals, but who were housed in tents or other temporary shelters. It was also necessary to make provision for a possible 5,000 persons who were out of the city. No accurate estimate had been or could be made of those who, independent of aid, had readjusted themselves.

The proposal made in behalf of the possible 10,000, a proposal that touched the kernel of the big relief problem, was to use money lying idle to build houses which should be sold on the instalment plan, or rented to families that had been living in San Francisco on April 17. Shelter had to be provided against the rainy season in order that there might be held in San Francisco a population of working people. The proposal was intended also to carry to a workingman the opportunity to own a house of such character as should serve to set a standard for sanitary and attractive dwellings. Through the carrying out of this scheme there were to be brought into happy co-operation the architects, the builders, the municipality, and the Finance Committee itself. The first would supply skill and taste; the second, quick and moderate priced building; the third, suitable conditions of light, sanitation, ventilation, and fire protection; the fourth, capital and business security. To assure the last provision there was a suggestion of the creation of a new corporation to consist of the mayor, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the representative of the American National Red Cross, and representatives from the Executive Commission and the Rehabilitation Committee, all of whom were to be named by the Finance Committee.

The need to incorporate became more imperative when the plans to furnish shelter took, by July 15, the following definite shape:

1. To build a pavilion on the almshouse tract[28] for 1,000 homeless persons.

[28] For account of Ingleside Camp and the establishment of the permanent Relief Home for the aged and infirm, see Part VI, p. 319 ff.

2. To appropriate $150,000 to construct and to repair temporary shelters in the public parks for the use of the homeless during the winter of 1906-07.

3. To appropriate not more than $500,000 to carry out the bonus plan.[29]

[29] For discussion of the Bonus Plan, see [Part IV], [p. 239] ff.

4. To appropriate a second $500,000, to be used for loans to persons who had owned or rented houses within the burned district.[30]

[30] For discussion of the Grant and Loan Plan, see [Part IV], [p. 253] ff.

5. To set aside $2,500,000 for the acquiring of suitable and convenient land on which to build dwellings that might be sold for cash or on the instalment plan to residents who were in business or had other employment.

Before passing on to the matter of the incorporation of the funds, one must record the final act of the Executive Commission. On July 31, after six weeks of precarious, and one might almost say uneventful life, the Commission voted to turn its records over to the corporation just created, and to make an inventory of its supplies and equipment for transfer to the same body.

June and July mark a clearly defined transition period. In spite of the politically directed episode of the abortive Commission, rehabilitation plans were being successfully shaped, even though the ordeals of the withdrawing of the army as a factor in relief administration and the introducing of the political appointees were being faced. In spite of temporary set-backs, the work was getting on a strictly business basis. Delays meant suffering, yet ultimate community gain, because the Rehabilitation Committee, in keeping outside the province of the Executive Commission, drew to itself the best experienced service that was available, and escaped the danger of being directed or diverted by any force other than that controlled by right motives.

6. INCORPORATION OF THE FUNDS

Now to return to the suggestion of incorporation. From as early a date as May 4 the question of the incorporation of the relief funds had been discussed within and without the Finance Committee. The New York Chamber of Commerce as a large custodian of relief funds had the matter brought personally to the attention of members of the Finance Committee through its representative, James D. Hague, and in writing by its president, the late Morris K. Jessup. The latter stated, however, that the determining of the question of incorporation lay with the Finance Committee. Correspondence in early July with Mr. Hague, the returned envoy, showed that there was in contemplation the incorporating of an independent body of men, the majority of whom should be appointed by the chairman of the Finance Committee. To this proposed corporation it was suggested should be transferred the $500,000 then held by the Chamber of Commerce, with such other moneys as might be entrusted to it.

If such a plan had been carried out there would have been two authorized bodies administering relief with an encouragement to other foreign custodians of funds to create similar independent agencies. The pressure to incorporate came therefore from without because of the jealous guardianship of funds by the non-local contributors; from within because of the exigency of the situation itself.

In the month of July, as has been said, the imminent need was known to be to provide suitable shelter against the fall and winter rains. The members of the Finance Committee considered the question of incorporation from the standpoint of the provision of a body legally empowered to acquire land and to loan money for building purposes. As a committee, therefore, it decided on July 13 to carry out the recommendations made in the letter written by Dr. Devine to its chairman, three days earlier, which recommendation, it should be recalled, embodied the earlier bonus plan suggestion made by one of its own members.

The certificate of incorporation[31] was issued July 20 to hold for a period of five years. The president of the corporation, the “San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, a Corporation,” was James D. Phelan; the first and second vice-presidents, F. W. Dohrmann and W. F. Herrin; the secretary, J. Downey Harvey. The president and first vice-president, with M. H. de Young, Rudolph Spreckels, and Thomas Magee, formed the Executive Committee. The personnel of the Corporation, with the exception of the governor of the state and the mayor, who were ex officio members and directors of the Corporation, was identical with that of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds which it superseded, and whose funds it immediately took over.

[31] See [Appendix I], [p. 398].

The newly incorporated body held its meetings at the St. Francis Technical School on Geary and Gough Streets, which took the place of the Hamilton School as headquarters for all departments of the relief work. Later a warehouse was added to the building to hold the remaining supplies. The meetings were open to the press, and to officers and employes; and others with whom the corporation had business were invited as was deemed expedient to meet with the Executive Committee. At the third meeting, held late in July, five departments were created:[32]

• A. Finance and Publicity
• B. Bills and Demands
• C. Camps and Warehouses
• D. Relief and Rehabilitation
• E. Lands and Buildings

[32] See [Appendix I], [pp. 399-400]. See also Diagram of Organization, [p. xxv].

Each chairman was required to make an investigation of and report on any undertaking of his department that called for an appropriation. Each chairman was also a member of the Executive Committee and was responsible for the appointment of his employes. He was further responsible for preparing monthly budgets and for the printing and distribution of all printed matter.

From the plan of organization it is to be seen, of course, that housing as a reason for incorporation had yielded to the pressure to make inclusive the treatment by one incorporated body of all divisions of the many-sided work.

The experiments of the preliminary and transition periods had tried out many men and methods, so that on the newly incorporated body were found men of affairs who in the relief work itself were ready to act in harmony and with method and to come together in small groups for frequent meetings. If one looks at the [diagram] of organization presented,[33] one sees how gradually through the trying three months there had been a shaping through experiment that made the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds itself a fruition that in germ lay in the union of official effort and private initiative.

[33] See [p. xxv].

Step by step the confidence of the public at home and abroad had had to be won. Only through the selection and trying out of generous-minded and capable men could the suspicions of those who controlled the contributions in the east have been dispelled.[34] Only after the abortive effort to make political capital out of positions of relief administration had fallen flat could the work itself get into its steady swing. The lessons are clearly written, however, that there must of necessity be in any great sudden emergency the creation of public confidence in the administration of the relief, and that along with a force of persons trained from within and without to act quickly and with definiteness must be the voluntary services of men and women on whom the community itself has learned to rely.

[34] See [Part I], [p. 99] ff.

A few notes of later date are added here to round out the account of organization.

On August 1, 1906, Mr. Bicknell succeeded Dr. Devine as the representative of the American National Red Cross, and he in turn was succeeded on October 1 by Mr. Dohrmann.[35]

[35] For positions held by Mr. Dohrmann and Mr. Bicknell on the Rehabilitation Committee, see [Part I], [p. 21].

Early in the year 1907 the County Medical Society urged that the balance of the relief fund should be used for the erection and endowment of a free hospital. Impelled by this and similar requests the Corporation did in February consider seriously the possibility of closing the work.

One year after the fire (April, 1907):

The Department of Bills and Demands had completed its work.

The Department of Finance and Publicity was working with a greatly reduced force as it was relieved of the accounting connected with claims and subscriptions.

The Department of Camps and Warehouses had under care a camp population of about 17,614, but no longer distributed food or other supplies.

The Department of Relief and Rehabilitation had finished the bulk of its work. The general taking of applications had ceased for some time. Those on file were being passed upon and closed as rapidly as possible. The final estimates and appropriations for this work had been made. From this time on only exceptional cases, and those few in number, were received. The Housing Committee still had some work to do in connection with the completion and inspection of houses granted by it, and with the payment of the bonuses which it had guaranteed to pay to certain applicants on the completion of houses which they were building for themselves. The work of the Bureau of Special Relief was almost finished. The work of the Hospital Bureau had to continue.

The Department of Lands and Buildings had completed its building work, with the exception of the Relief Home. The Home was expected to be finished in May.[36] A few hundred applications were on file for allotment of bonuses from the second appropriation. The first appropriation was exhausted.

[36] For reasons for delay, see [Part VI], [p. 321].

Two years after the disaster (April 18, 1908):