Part 14 (1/2)
OTHER FORMS OF BUSINESS
”Two years ago,” said the ”Alta California” in 1851, ”trade was a wild unorganized whirl.” Staple goods went furiously up and down in price like wild-cat mining stocks. There was no telegraph by which supplies could be ordered from the East or inquiries could be answered, and several months must elapse before an order sent by mail to New York could be filled. A merchant at Valparaiso once paid twenty thousand dollars for the information contained in a single letter from San Francisco.
Consignors in the East were almost wholly ignorant as to what people needed in California, and how goods should be stowed for the long voyage around the Cape. Great quant.i.ties of preserved food--it was before the days of canning--were spoiled _en route_. Coal was s.h.i.+pped in bulk without any ventilating appliances, and it often took fire and destroyed the vessels in which it was carried. One unfortunate woman, the wife of a Cape Cod sea-captain, was wrecked thrice in this way, having been transferred from one coal-laden schooner to another, and later to a third, all of which were set on fire by the heating of the coal, and burned to the water's edge. In one of these adventures she was lashed to a chair on deck, where she spent five days, in a rough sea, with smoke and gas pouring from the s.h.i.+p at every seam. Her final escape was made in a row-boat which landed at a desolate spot on the coast of Peru.
Elaborate gold-was.h.i.+ng machines which proved to be useless and ready-made houses that n.o.body wanted were among the articles s.h.i.+pped to San Francisco. The rate of interest was very high, capital being scarce, and storage in warehouses was both insecure, from the great danger of fire, and extremely expensive. It was, therefore, nearly impossible for the merchants to hold their goods for a more favorable market.
In July, 1849, lumber sold at the enormous rate of five hundred dollars a thousand feet,--fifty times the New England price; but in the following Spring, immense s.h.i.+pments having arrived, it brought scarcely enough to pay the freight bills. Tobacco, which at first sold for two dollars a pound, became so plentiful afterward that boxes of it were used for stepping stones, and in one case, as Bret Harte has related, tobacco actually supplied the foundation for a wooden house.
Holes in the sidewalk were stopped with bags of rice or beans, with sacks of coffee, and, on one occasion, with three barrels of revolvers, the supply far exceeding even the California demand for that article. Potatoes brought sixty dollars a bushel at wholesale in 1849, but were raised so extensively in California the next year that the price fell to nothing, and whole cargoes of these useful vegetables, just arrived from the East, were dumped into the Bay. In some places near San Francisco it was really feared that a pestilence would result from huge piles of superfluous potatoes that lay rotting on the ground. Saleratus, worth in New York four cents a pound, sold at San Francisco in 1848 for fifteen dollars a pound.
The menu of a breakfast for two at Sacramento in the same year was as follows:--
1 box of sardines, $16.00 1 pound of hard bread, 2.00 1 pound of b.u.t.ter, 6.00 1/2 pound of cheese, 3.00 2 bottles of ale, 16.00 ------ Total, $43.00
Flour in the mining camps cost four and even five dollars a pound, and eggs were two dollars apiece. A chicken brought sixteen dollars; a revolver, one hundred and fifty dollars; a stove, four hundred dollars; a shovel, one hundred dollars. Laudanum was one dollar a drop, brandy twenty dollars a bottle; and dried apples fluctuated from five cents to seventy-five cents a pound. It is matter of history that a bilious miner once gave fifteen dollars for a small box of Seidlitz powders, and at the Stanislaus Diggings a jar of raisins, regarded as a cure for the scurvy then prevailing, sold for their weight in gold, amounting to four thousand dollars. As showing the dependence of California upon the East for supplies, it is significant that even so late as 1853 six thousand tons of hard bread were imported annually from New York.
Wages and prices were high, but n.o.body complained of them. There was in fact a disdain of all attempts to cheapen or haggle. Gold dust poured into San Francisco from the launches and schooners which plied on the Sacramento River, and almost everybody in California seemed to have it in plenty. ”Money,” said a Pioneer in a letter written at the end of '49, ”is about the most valueless article that a man can have in his possession here.”
As an ill.u.s.tration of the lavish manner in which business was transacted, it may be mentioned that the stamp box in the express office of Wells, Fargo and Company was a sort of common treasury. Clerks, messengers and drivers dipped into it for change whenever they wanted a lunch or a drink.
There was nothing secret about this practice, and if not sanctioned it was at least winked at by the superior officers. Huge lumps of gold were exhibited in hotels and gambling houses, and the jingling of coins rivalled the sc.r.a.ping of the fiddle as the characteristic music of San Francisco.
The first deposit in the United States Mint of gold from California was made on December 8, 1848, and between that date and May 1, 1850, there were presented for coinage gold dust and nuggets valued at eleven million four hundred and twenty thousand dollars. A lot of land in San Francisco rose from fifteen dollars in price to forty thousand dollars. In September, 1850, bricklayers receiving twelve dollars a day struck for fourteen dollars, and obtained the increase. The wages of carpenters varied from twelve dollars to twenty dollars a day. Those who did best in California were, as a rule, the small traders, the mechanics and skilled workmen, and the professional men who, resisting the temptation to hunt for gold, made money by being useful to the community. ”It may truly be said,” remarked the ”San Francisco Daily Herald” in 1852, ”that California is the only spot in the world where labor is not only on an equality with capital, but to a certain extent is superior to it.”
Women cooks received one hundred dollars a month, and chambermaids and nurses almost as much. Washerwomen made fortunes and founded families. A resident of San Francisco went to the mines for four weeks, and came back with a bag of gold dust which, he thought, would astonish his wife, who had remained in the city; but meanwhile she had been ”taking in was.h.i.+ng,”
at the rate of twelve dollars a dozen; and he was crestfallen to find that her gains were twice as much as his. It was cheaper to have one's clothes sent to China or the Sandwich Islands to be laundered, and some thrifty and patient persons took that course. A valuable trade sprang up between China and San Francisco. The solitude became a village, and the village a city, with startling rapidity. In less than a year, twelve thousand people gathered at Sacramento where there had not been a single soul.
Events and changes followed one another so rapidly that each year formed an epoch by itself. In 1853 men spoke of 1849 as of a romantic and half-forgotten past. An old citizen was one who had been on the ground a year. When Stephen J. Field offered himself as a candidate for the newly-created office of Alcalde at Marysville, the supporters of a rival candidate objected to Field as being a newcomer. He had been there only three days. His opponent had been there six days.
But in 1851 the material progress of California received a great, though only a temporary, check. As commerce adjusted itself to the needs of the community prices and wages fell. A drink cost fifteen cents (the half of ”two bits”), instead of fifty cents, which had been the usual price, and the wages of day laborers shrank to five dollars a day. The change was thus humorously described by an editor, obviously of Southern extraction: ”About this time the Yankees began to pour into San Francisco, to invest in corner lots, and speculate in wooden gingerbread, framed houses and the like. Prices gradually came down, and money which was once thrown about so recklessly has now come to be regarded as an article of considerable importance.”
In San Francisco there was almost a commercial panic. The city was heavily in debt, many private fortunes were swept away, property was insecure, and robbery and murder were common events. Delano relates that a young man of his acquaintance, a wild and daring fellow, was offered at this time a salary of seven hundred dollars a month, to steal horses and mules in a large, systematic and business-like manner.[76]
The tone of the San Francisco papers in 1851 was by no means cheerful. The following is the description which the ”Alta California” gave of the city in December of that year: ”Our city is certainly an unfortunate one in the matter of public accommodation. Her wharves are exposed to tempestuous northers and to the ravages of the worm; the piles that are driven into the mud for houses to rest upon are forced out of their perpendicular and crowded over by pressure of sand used in filling in other water lots against them; a most valuable portion of the city survey is converted into a filthy lake or salt water _laguna_ filled with garbage, dead animals and refuse matter from the streets; the streets are narrow and are constructed with sidewalks so irregular, miserable, and behampered as to drive off pa.s.sengers into the middle of the street to take the chance of being ridden over and trampled under foot by scores of recklessly driven mules and horses; with drays, wagons and carriages without number to deafen, confuse and endanger the unfortunate pedestrian. A few thin strips of boards, pieces of dry-goods boxes or barrel staves const.i.tute the sidewalks in some of our most important thoroughfares, and even this material is so irregularly and insecurely laid that the walks are shunned as stumbling places full of man-traps; more than all this, the sidewalks of the princ.i.p.al streets in the city are strewn and obstructed with shop wares.”
The first Vigilance Committee of 1851 checked crime and restored order for a short period, and the second Vigilance Committee of 1856, together with the election which followed it, effected a most decided and lasting improvement in the government of San Francisco, and especially in the management of its police. In the brief account already given of James King and his career, this episode in California life has been touched upon.
The fires which successively overran the cities of California, and especially San Francisco, were another source of disaster to the business world. There were many small fires in San Francisco and six conflagrations, all within two years. The first of these occurred in December, '49, the loss being about one million dollars. A characteristic act at this fire was that of a merchant whose shop had been burned, but who had saved several hundred suits of black clothes. Having no place for storing them, and seeing that they would be stolen or ruined, he gave them away to the bystanders. ”Help yourselves, gentlemen!” he cried. The invitation was accepted, and the next day an unusual proportion of the citizens of San Francisco were observed to be in mourning.
In May, and again in June, 1850, there were large fires, and it was after these disasters that the use of cloth for the sides and roofs of buildings was prohibited by law. Up to that time the shops of the city had been constructed very commonly of that highly inflammable material.
In September, 1850, there was another but less destructive fire, and on May 4, 1851, occurred the ”great fire,” in which the loss of property was at least seven million dollars. It was estimated at the time at fifteen million dollars. This conflagration produced a night of horror such as even California had not seen before. The fire started at eleven P. M., and the flames were fanned by a strong, westerly breeze. The glow in the sky was seen at Monterey,--one hundred miles distant. So rapidly did the flames spread that merchants in some cases removed their stock of goods four or five times, and yet had them overtaken and destroyed in the end.
Since the burning of Moscow no other city had suffered so much from fire.
Delicate women, driven from their homes at midnight, were wandering through the streets, with no protection from the raw wind except their nightclothes. A sick man was carried from his bed in a burning house, and placed in the street, where, amid all the turmoil of the scene, the roaring of the flames, the shouts, cries and imprecations of men, amid falling sparks and cinders, and jostled by the half-frenzied pa.s.sers-by, he breathed his last.
Among the brave acts performed at this fire was that of a clerk who picked up a burning box which contained canisters of powder, carried it a block on his shoulder, and threw it into a pool of water. It was during this fire, also, that an American flag, released by the burning of the cord which held it, soared away, above the flames and smoke, while a cry that was half a cheer and half a sob, burst from the throats of the crowd beneath it.
But, great as this disaster was, the merchants rallied from it with true California courage. ”One year here,” wrote the Reverend Mr. Colton, ”will do more for your philosophy than a lifetime elsewhere. I have seen a man sit and quietly smoke his cigar while his house went heavenward in a column of flame.” This was exemplified in the great fire. Men began to fence in their lots although the smouldering ruins still emitted an almost suffocating heat. Contracts for new stores were made while the old ones were yet burning; and in many cases the ground was cleared, and temporary buildings went up before the ashes of the burned buildings had cooled.