Read Online A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit - Free Book Online
Authors: Rebecca Solnit
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and mansions.”
Colonel Charles Morris, who was in command of the western side of the city, said, “I was waited upon at my headquarters on Broadway by a committee of highly respected citizens of the district, who stated they had learned on good authority that the poor who had been burned out, felt that the rich had not suffered losses as had the poor, and were therefore determined to invade the Western Addition and lay it waste by incendiarism and attendant acts of spoil, looting, and violence. I completely reassured this committee by informing them of the precautionary measures, particularly as regarded the destruction of liquor, adopted to safeguard the lives and property of the people residing in my district.” Morris, like much of the occupying army, may not have known the city very well. The fires had ravaged many mansions, luxury hotels, and the central business district almost as soon as it burned the poor neighborhoods nearby. Other working-class districts—Telegraph Hill, Potrero Hill, and the Mission District—came through with earthquake damage but little fire damage.
The authorities’ fear was not precipitated by anything the public did in those days, but by earlier anxieties in that era of upheaval. They believed uncontrolled crowds routinely degenerated into mobs, and they doubted the legitimacy of the system they dominated, since they expected mobs to tear it apart given the least opportunity. San Francisco had a lively working class, a strong labor movement, and a history of dramatic public actions, from parades to real mob activities such as the anti-Chinese riots of 1877. But there is no evidence of civil unrest in the period of the 1906 earthquake. The mayor had ordered all saloons closed to preserve the public peace, but soldiers and marines took the orders too literally, and with an order given by Colonel Morris to justify them, began breaking into closed saloons and grocery stores on the west side of town and destroying the whole stock of alcohol. The rampage frightened the citizens. You could argue that the army sent to prevent mobs became a mob.
Opportunistic theft began with the cigar stealers Officer Schmitt thwarted early in the morning on April 18. There isn’t evidence that it constituted a major problem. Far, far more property, including homes, warehouses, and workplaces and all their contents, was lost in the fires for which those in command bore partial responsibility. And some of the thieves were soldiers. A banker who stayed in the old Montgomery Building downtown, which survived the flames, witnessed the soldiers who were supposed to be guarding it “going in and out at all times except when the officers were coming to pass the word along to post the guard—then they would skip out like rats from a trap—I don’t think that the officers ever saw them. . . . I saw the soldiers carrying out cigar boxes loaded under their arms, ten or twenty boxes, as much as they could carry.” A navy man saw two drunken sailors trying to rob a jewelry store and was nearly shot by one of them when he intervened.
Others were engaged in what might better be called “requisitioning”—the obtaining of necessary goods by taking them where they could be found. One improvised emergency hospital was supplied with mattresses and bedding that volunteers took out of abandoned hotels. Volunteers, including some from the Salvation Army, broke the windows of drugstores on Market Street to get medical supplies. Among those participating in such ethical pillaging were cable car company president James B. Stetson and his son Harry, an attorney. Another man was seen picking over the rubble of a ruin, and the discoverer fired a warning shot. The man ran, and a soldier shot him dead. He had been trying to free someone trapped in that rubble.
The police invited Mormon elders to take supplies from a grocery store about to be destroyed by fire. On their second trip to bring food to their camp in Jefferson
Colonel Charles Morris, who was in command of the western side of the city, said, “I was waited upon at my headquarters on Broadway by a committee of highly respected citizens of the district, who stated they had learned on good authority that the poor who had been burned out, felt that the rich had not suffered losses as had the poor, and were therefore determined to invade the Western Addition and lay it waste by incendiarism and attendant acts of spoil, looting, and violence. I completely reassured this committee by informing them of the precautionary measures, particularly as regarded the destruction of liquor, adopted to safeguard the lives and property of the people residing in my district.” Morris, like much of the occupying army, may not have known the city very well. The fires had ravaged many mansions, luxury hotels, and the central business district almost as soon as it burned the poor neighborhoods nearby. Other working-class districts—Telegraph Hill, Potrero Hill, and the Mission District—came through with earthquake damage but little fire damage.
The authorities’ fear was not precipitated by anything the public did in those days, but by earlier anxieties in that era of upheaval. They believed uncontrolled crowds routinely degenerated into mobs, and they doubted the legitimacy of the system they dominated, since they expected mobs to tear it apart given the least opportunity. San Francisco had a lively working class, a strong labor movement, and a history of dramatic public actions, from parades to real mob activities such as the anti-Chinese riots of 1877. But there is no evidence of civil unrest in the period of the 1906 earthquake. The mayor had ordered all saloons closed to preserve the public peace, but soldiers and marines took the orders too literally, and with an order given by Colonel Morris to justify them, began breaking into closed saloons and grocery stores on the west side of town and destroying the whole stock of alcohol. The rampage frightened the citizens. You could argue that the army sent to prevent mobs became a mob.
Opportunistic theft began with the cigar stealers Officer Schmitt thwarted early in the morning on April 18. There isn’t evidence that it constituted a major problem. Far, far more property, including homes, warehouses, and workplaces and all their contents, was lost in the fires for which those in command bore partial responsibility. And some of the thieves were soldiers. A banker who stayed in the old Montgomery Building downtown, which survived the flames, witnessed the soldiers who were supposed to be guarding it “going in and out at all times except when the officers were coming to pass the word along to post the guard—then they would skip out like rats from a trap—I don’t think that the officers ever saw them. . . . I saw the soldiers carrying out cigar boxes loaded under their arms, ten or twenty boxes, as much as they could carry.” A navy man saw two drunken sailors trying to rob a jewelry store and was nearly shot by one of them when he intervened.
Others were engaged in what might better be called “requisitioning”—the obtaining of necessary goods by taking them where they could be found. One improvised emergency hospital was supplied with mattresses and bedding that volunteers took out of abandoned hotels. Volunteers, including some from the Salvation Army, broke the windows of drugstores on Market Street to get medical supplies. Among those participating in such ethical pillaging were cable car company president James B. Stetson and his son Harry, an attorney. Another man was seen picking over the rubble of a ruin, and the discoverer fired a warning shot. The man ran, and a soldier shot him dead. He had been trying to free someone trapped in that rubble.
The police invited Mormon elders to take supplies from a grocery store about to be destroyed by fire. On their second trip to bring food to their camp in Jefferson
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