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+ <head>
+ <title>
+ Some Cities and San Francisco And Resurgam, by Hubert Howe Bancroft
+ </title>
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+
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+ .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam, by
+Hubert Howe Bancroft
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam
+
+Author: Hubert Howe Bancroft
+
+Release Date: January 2, 2009 [EBook #2504]
+Last Updated: January 25, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOME CITIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David A. Schwan, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+ <p>
+ <br /><br />
+ </p>
+ <h1>
+ SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO<br /><br />AND RESURGAM
+ </h1>
+ <p>
+ <br />
+ </p>
+ <h2>
+ By Hubert Howe Bancroft
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br />
+ </p>
+ <h3>
+ Contents
+ </h3>
+ <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto">
+ <tr>
+ <td>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO </a>
+ </p>
+ <p class="toc">
+ <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> RESURGAM </a>
+ </p>
+ </td>
+ </tr>
+ </table>
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br />
+ </p>
+ <hr />
+ <p>
+ <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+ <!-- H2 anchor --> </a>
+ </p>
+ <h2>
+ SOME CITIES AND SAN FRANCISCO
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ There had been some discussion as to improving and beautifying the city of
+ San Francisco prior to the catastrophe of April 18th. Landscape architects
+ had been consulted, proposals considered, and preliminary plans drawn.
+ Therefore when on that day the city was swept by fire, obviously it was
+ the opportune moment for the requisite changes in the rebuilding. For a
+ brief period enthusiasm waxed warm. It helped to mitigate the blow, this
+ fencing with fate. Let the earth shake, and fires burn, we will have here
+ our city, better and more beautiful than ever&mdash;and more valuable&mdash;an
+ imperial city of steel it shall be, and thus will we get even with the
+ misfortunes of this day.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Reform in the rebuilding was needed, whatever should be the scale of
+ beauty or utility decided upon. Fifty years ago the elevating influences
+ of tasteful environment were not so highly appreciated as now, and all
+ large cities are fifty years old or more. All large cities, as a rule, had
+ their beginning with narrow, crooked streets and mean houses. In Europe
+ and Asia there are aggregations of humanity whose domiciles have remained
+ unchanged, one might almost say uncleansed, for hundreds or thousands of
+ years, or ever since their mythical beginning, save only for the covering
+ of the debris of dead centuries.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ These ancient towns, mostly offspring of feudalism, begun under castle
+ walls and continued after walls and castle had crumbled, as their area
+ enlarged, with some improvement, perhaps, in the suburban parts, still
+ retained this patch of mediaevalism, until obliterated by war, or fire, or
+ later by modern progress. Look at Edinburgh, for example. With all its
+ Scotch thrift and neatness, there yet remains the ill-conditioned and once
+ filthy quarter, beside which rise the old-time ten-story houses built into
+ the hillside, while in the modern part of the city in sharp contrast are
+ broad streets and open squares and fine buildings.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In America the birth of towns is quite different. Here are no plantings of
+ trembling poverty under lordly walls, but bold pioneering, forecasting
+ agriculture and commerce; no Babel building, with "Go to, let us build
+ here a Cleveland or a Cincinnati," but rather, "Here for the present we
+ will abide." If, however, serfdom and mediaevalism were absent in New
+ World town-planting, so also were aestheticism or any appreciation of the
+ beautiful apart from the useful. Old cities require reconstruction to make
+ them what modern taste and intelligence demand; settlements in their
+ incipiency are dominated by their sturdy founders, who usually have other
+ things to think about than beauty and adornment.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In this day of great wealth and wonderful inventions we realize more and
+ more the value of the city to mankind, and the quality of the city as a
+ means of culture. Cities are not merely marts of commerce; they stand for
+ civility; they are civilization itself. No untried naked Adam in Eden
+ might ever pass for a civilized man. The city street is the school of
+ philosophy, of art, of letters; city society is the home of refinement.
+ When the rustic visits the city he puts on his best clothes and his best
+ manners. In their reciprocal relations the city is as men make it, while
+ from the citizen one may determine the quality of the city. The atmosphere
+ of the city is an eternal force. Therefore as we value the refinement of
+ the human mind, the enlargement of the human heart, we shall value the
+ city, and strive so to build, and adorn, and purify, that it may achieve
+ its ultimate endeavor.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Civic betterment has long been in progress among the more civilized
+ communities through the influence of cultured people capable of
+ appreciating the commercial as well as the aesthetical value of art. Vast
+ sums have been spent and great results accomplished, but they are nothing
+ as compared with the work yet to be done&mdash;work which will continue
+ through the ages and be finished only with the end of time.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And not only will larger wealth be yet more freely poured out on artistic
+ adornment, but such use of money will be regarded as the best to which it
+ can be applied. For though gold is not beautiful it can make beauty, even
+ that beauty which elevates and ennobles, which purifies the mind and
+ inspires the soul. Progress is rapid in this direction as in many others.
+ A breach of good taste in public works will ere long be adjudged a crime.
+ For already mediaeval mud has ceased to be fashionable, and the
+ picturesque in urban ugliness is picturesque no longer. All the capitals
+ of Europe have had to be made over, Haussmannized, once or several times.
+ Our own national capital we should scarcely be satisfied with as its
+ illustrious founder left it.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It is a hopeful sign amidst some discouraging ones that wealth as a social
+ factor and measure of merit is losing something of its prestige; that it
+ is no longer regarded by the average citizen as the supreme good, or the
+ pursuit of it the supreme aim in life; there are so many things worth more
+ than money, so many human aspirations and acquirements worthy of higher
+ considerations than the inordinate cravings of graft and greed. Hoarded
+ wealth especially is not so worshipful to-day as it was yesterday, while
+ the beautiful still grows in grace&mdash;the beautiful and the useful,
+ compelling improvement, always engendered by improved environment.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Some cities are born in the purple&mdash;rare exceptions to the rule. San
+ Francisco is not one of these. St. Petersburg, the city of palaces, of
+ broad avenues and granite-faced quays, whose greatest afflictions are the
+ occasional overflow of the Neva and the dynamite habit, was spoken into
+ being by a monarch. Necessity stands sponsor for Venice, the beautiful,
+ with her streets of water-ways and airs of heavenly harmony; while nature
+ herself may claim motherhood of Swedish Stockholm, brilliant with
+ intermingling lakes islands and canals, rocks hills and forests, rendering
+ escape from the picturesque impossible.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Penn planted his Quakers about 1682, long before many of the present large
+ cities in America were begun, yet Philadelphia was one of the few sketched
+ in such generous proportions that little change was afterwards necessary
+ to make it one of the most spacious of urban commonwealths. With this
+ example before him came in 1791, more than a century later, the father of
+ his country, who permitted his surveyors so injudiciously to cover the
+ spot on the Potomac which he had chosen for the capital city of the
+ republic as to require much expensive remodeling later. Yet what American
+ can drive about Washington now and say it is not worth the cost? Further,
+ as an example, the repeated reconstruction and adornment of the national
+ capital by Congress are priceless to the whole United States, the
+ government therein bearing witness to the value of the beautiful. And if
+ of value on the Potomac, is it not equally so at the portal of the
+ Pacific?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ A few other cities there have been which have arisen at the command of
+ man, potentate or pirate, besides those of the quaker Penn and the tzar
+ Peter&mdash;Alexandria, the old and the new, with Constantinople between;
+ the first by order of the poor world conqueror, at the hand of the
+ architect Dinocrates, two or three centuries before Caesar, Cleopatra, and
+ Antony, but made fit for them and their chariots by streets a hundred feet
+ wide.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Danube is the mother of many cities, directing the destiny of nations,
+ from the Iron Gate to the Golden Horn. Vienna has been made brilliantly
+ modern since 1858. Beside the sufferings of Constantinople our little
+ calamity seems tame. Seven times during the last half century the city has
+ been swept by fire, not to mention earthquakes, or pestilence, which on
+ one occasion took with it three hundred thousand lives. Yet all the while
+ it grows in magnificence faster than the invisible enemies of Mohammed can
+ destroy it. But for these purifying fires the city would still be one of
+ narrow, filthy streets and vile smells, reeking with malaria. The Golden
+ Horn of the Bosporus possesses no greater natural advantages than the
+ Golden Gate of San Francisco, nor even so great. The industrial
+ potentialities of the former are not to be compared with those of the
+ latter, while for healthful airs and charming environment we have all that
+ earth can give, and therewith should be content.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Cities have been made as the marquis of Bute made Cardiff, by constructing
+ a dock, and ship canal, and converting the ancient castle into a modern
+ palace. Many towns have been started as railway stations, but few of them
+ attained importance. Steamboat landings have been more fortunate. Some
+ cities owe their origin to war, some to commerce, and not a few to
+ manufactures. Fanaticism has played a part, as in India and parts of
+ Africa, where are nestings of half-savage humanity with a touch of the
+ heavenly in the air. Less disciplined are these than zion&mdash;towns, but
+ nearer the happiness of insensibility&mdash;the white&mdash;marbled and
+ jeweled Taj Mahal, Agra on the Jumna, and Delhi, making immortal Jehan the
+ builder, with his pearl mosque and palace housing the
+ thirty-million-dollar peacock throne; Benares, on the Ganges, a series of
+ terraces and long stone steps extending upward from the holy water, while
+ rising yet higher in the background are temples, towers, mosques, and
+ palaces, all in oriental splendor. Algiers, likewise, an amphitheatre in
+ form, might give San Francisco lessons in terrace construction, having
+ hillsides covered with them, the scene made yet more striking by the
+ dazzling white of the houses. After the place became French, the streets
+ were widened and arcades established in the lower part.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In fact, the French believe in the utility of beauty, and in Paris at
+ least they make it pay. The entire expenses of the municipal government,
+ including police and public works, are met by the spendings of visitors.
+ To their dissolute monarchs were due such creations as the Tuileries, the
+ Louvre, and Versailles. Have we not dissolute millionaires enough to give
+ us at least one fine city?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ London and Paris stand out in bold contrast, the one for utility, the
+ other for beauty. Both are adepts in their respective arts. The city
+ proper of London has better buildings and cleaner streets than when St.
+ Paul was erected; otherwise it is much the same. Elsewhere in London,
+ however, are spacious parks and imposing palaces, with now and then a fine
+ bit of something to look out upon, as the bridges of the murky Thames, the
+ Parliament houses, the Abbey, Somerset house, and Piccadilly, perhaps.
+ Children may play at the Zoo, while grown-ups sit in hired chairs under
+ the trees.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Three times London was destroyed by the plague, and five times by fire,
+ that of 1666 lasting four days, and covering thrice the area of the San
+ Francisco conflagration; yet it was rebuilt better than before in three
+ and a half years. Always the city is improved in the rebuilding; how much,
+ depends upon the intelligence and enterprise of the people.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Paris is brilliant with everything that takes the eye&mdash;palaces,
+ arches, Bon Marche shops, arcades, colonnades, great open spaces adorned
+ with statues, forest parks, elysian driveways, and broad boulevards cut
+ through mediaeval quarters in every direction, as well for air as for
+ protection from the canaille blockaded in the narrow streets. San
+ Francisco may have some canaille of her own to boast of one of these days;
+ canaille engendered from the scum of Europe and Asia, and educated at our
+ expense for our destruction. Over and over, these two cities, each a world
+ metropolis, have been renovated and reconstructed, the work in fact going
+ on continuously.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ For some of the most effective of our urban elaborations we must go back
+ to the first of city builders of whom we have knowledge. The Assyrians
+ made terraces, nature teaching them. On the level plain building ground
+ was raised forty feet for effect. Like all artists of precivilization, the
+ Assyrians placed adornment before convenience, as appeared in Nineveh on
+ the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates. At Thebes and Palmyra it was the
+ same, their palaces of alabaster, if one chooses to believe what is said,
+ covering, some of them, a hundred acres. The fashion now is to build
+ upward rather than outward. Besides this alabaster acreage there are to be
+ taken into account the pyramids, artificial mountains, and endless
+ towertowns, supposed to be an improvement on whatever existed before their
+ time. Around the Mediterranean and over India way were once hundreds of
+ charming places like the Megara suburb of Carthage and the amphitheatre of
+ Rhodes, prolific in classic art and architecture, precious gifts of the
+ gods.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But before all other gods or gifts comes Athens, where the men were as
+ gods and the gods very like the men. Encircling the Acropolis hill&mdash;most
+ ancient cities had their central hill&mdash;the city owes its grandeur to
+ the many temples dedicated to the Olympian deities by the men who made
+ them, made both deities and temples, that long line of philosophers the
+ sublimity of whose thoughts civilization fed on and found expression in
+ the genius of now and then a Pericles or a Phidias.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Twenty times Rome suffered, each time worse than ever befell an American
+ city, the debris of destruction overspreading her sacred soil some fathoms
+ deep, yet all the while mistress of the world.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The Moors in Spain reconstructed and embellished many cities, and built
+ many entire. To them Spain owes her finest specimens of art and
+ architecture, as Seville, Cordova, and the Alhambra. In Naples the
+ mediaeval still overshadows the modern. The city needs cleansing, though
+ she flourishes in her filth and volcanic belchings. Nice, like Paris,
+ plans to please her guests. Berlin was a little late with her
+ reconstructive work; the town walls were not removed till 1866. Though
+ dating from 1190, Glasgow is practically modern, having been several times
+ renovated by fire. Antwerp, burned in 1871, was quickly rebuilt. The Hague
+ is charming as the city of peace. Munich, on the Isar, is every day
+ drifting into the beautiful, not to say aesthetical.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Pekin is a city sui generis, with its Kin-Ching, or prohibited city,
+ sacred to royalty; its Hwang-Ching, or imperial city, exclusively for
+ court officials; its Tartar division and Chinese division, all completed
+ according to the grand khan and Confucius. Happy Celestials! There is
+ nothing more to be done, nothing to reconstruct, nothing to improve; it
+ stands alone, the only city in all the world that is absolutely finished
+ and perfect. But of a truth our public works sink into insignificance
+ beside those of the ancient barbarians, the great wall and canal of China,
+ the pyramids of Egypt, and the brilliant cities of Assyria and Palmyra.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The cities of Australia&mdash;Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide&mdash;in common
+ with all those of the British colonies, are laid out along liberal lines,
+ with broad streets, parks, public squares, and beautiful modern buildings,
+ requiring little change for many years to come. The English part of
+ Calcutta is a city of palaces, built from the spoils of subjugation.
+ Yokohama was a small fishing station when Commodore Perry called there in
+ 1854.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In the New World as in the Old, from John Cotton to Joseph Smith, religion
+ with cupidity inspires. One William Blaxton in 1630 lived where Boston now
+ is, and invited thither Winthrop and his colonists. When banished from
+ Massachusetts, Roger Williams stepped ashore on the bank of the Seekonk,
+ on a rock where is now Providence. The French built a fort where Marquette
+ camped in 1673, and there is now Chicago. Buffalo was a military post in
+ 1812. St. Paul was an Indian trading station prior to 1838. The building
+ of Fort Washington was followed by settlers and Cincinnati was begun.
+ Henry Hudson touched at Manhattan island in 1609, and the Dutch following,
+ New York was the result. Brigham Young, journeying westward, came to the
+ Great Salt Lake, where, as he told his followers, he was instructed by
+ divine revelation to plant the City of the Saints. It proved more
+ permanent than might have been expected, as zion&mdash;cities usually are
+ quite ephemeral affairs.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Boston, the beneficial, swept by fires, smallpox, witchcraft, quakerism,
+ snowstorms, earthquakes, and proslavery riots, still lives to meditate
+ upon her own superiority and to instruct mankind. Much attention has been
+ given of late in Boston and suburban towns to artistic effect in street
+ architecture. Until recently New York has given but little thought to
+ pleasing effects. Broadway was not broad, and Fifth Avenue was not
+ striking. Of late, however, the city has become imperial, houses parks and
+ driveways being among the finest in the world. New Orleans has survived at
+ least a dozen great yellow-fever crises since 1812, population meanwhile
+ increasing twentyfold. After the enforced construction of the levee, the
+ idea came to some one that the top of it would make a fine driveway, which
+ in due time was extended from the river and bayous to the lake, thus
+ becoming the most attractive feature of the place. Though not without
+ natural attractions, Chicago was not made by or for her things of beauty.
+ Beginning with low wooden houses along dirty streets, transformations were
+ continued until systems of parks and boulevards with elegant edifices came
+ into view,&mdash;which shows that, however material the beginning of
+ American towns may be, if prosperity comes the aesthetical is sure to come
+ with it. A contrast to Chicago may be found in St. Louis, for a long time
+ trading-post town and city, which would be of more importance now were her
+ people of a different quality. Even her chronic calamities, tornadoes,
+ floods, and epidemics, fail to rouse her energies, so that Chicago,
+ starting later and under more adverse circumstances, outstripped her in
+ every particular. Cleveland was laid out for a fine city, so that as she
+ grew little alteration was found necessary. The streets are wide, 80 to
+ 120 feet&mdash;Superior Street 132 feet&mdash;and so abundant is the
+ foliage, largely maple, that it is called the Forest city.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As an instance of modern aesthetic town construction one might cite
+ Denver, a western Yankee metropolis of ultrarefined men and women from
+ down Boston way, breathing a nomenclature never so freely used before
+ among mid-continent mountains, streets, schoolhouses, parks, and gardens&mdash;all
+ alive with the names of New England poets, philosophers, and statesmen.
+ Scarcely yet turned the half century in age, few such charming cities as
+ Denver have been made with fewer mistakes.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ San Francisco at her birth and christening had for godfather neither
+ prince nor priest, nor any cultured coterie. The sandy peninsula, on whose
+ inner edge, at the cove called Yerba Buena, stood some hide and tallow
+ stores and fur depots which drew to them the stragglers that passed that
+ way, was about as ill-omened a spot as the one designated by the
+ snake-devouring eagle perched upon an island cactus as the place where the
+ wandering Aztecs should rest and build their city of Mexico. San
+ Francisco's godparents were but common humanity, traders and adventurers,
+ later gold-seekers and pot politicians, intelligent, bold, and for the
+ most part honest; few intending long to remain, few dreaming of the great
+ city to arise here; few caring how the town should be made, if one were
+ made at all. When was improvised an alcalde after the Mexican fashion, and
+ two boards of aldermen were established after the New York fashion, and
+ the high officials saw that they could now and then pick up a
+ twenty-five-dollar fee for deeding a fifty vara lot, if so be they had on
+ hand some fifty varas, they forthwith went to work to make them by drawing
+ lines in front of the cove and intersecting them at right angles by lines
+ running up over the hills, giving their own names, with a sprinkling of
+ the names of bear-flag heroes, not forgetting the usual Washington and
+ Jackson, leaving in the centre a plaza, the cove in front to be filled in
+ later. The streets were narrow, dusty in summer and miry in winter.
+ Spanish-American streets are usually thirty-six feet wide. Winding trails
+ led from the Presidio to the Mission, and from Mission and Presidio to the
+ cove. This was the beginning of San Francisco, which a merciful providence
+ has five times burned, the original shacks and their successors, the last
+ time thoroughly, giving the inhabitants the opportunity to build something
+ better.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ All this time the matchless bay and inviting shores awaited the coming of
+ those who should aid in the accomplishment of their high destiny. Situated
+ on the Pacific relatively as is New York on the Atlantic, the natural
+ gateway with its unique portal between the old East and the new West, the
+ only outlet for the drainage of thousands of square miles of garden lands
+ and grain fields, a harbor in the world's center of highest development,
+ with no other to speak of within five hundred miles on either side;
+ dominator of the greatest of oceans, waters more spacious than those of
+ Rio, airs of purple haze sweeter than those of Italy, hills islands and
+ shore lines more sublime than any of Greece&mdash;all this time these
+ benefactions of nature have awaited the appreciation and action of those
+ who for their own benefit and the benefit of the nation would utilize
+ them. Are they here now, these new city-builders, or must San Francisco
+ wait for another generation?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ They must be men of broad minds, for this is no ordinary problem to be
+ worked out. It is certain that in the near or distant future there will be
+ here a very large and very wealthy city, probably the largest and
+ wealthiest in the world. The whole of the peninsula will be covered, and
+ as much more space beyond it, and around the bay shores to and beyond
+ Carquinez strait. Viewed in the light of history and progressional
+ phenomena, this is the only rational conclusion.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Always the march of intellectual development has been from east to west,
+ the old East dying as the new West bursts into being, until now west is
+ east, and the final issue must here be met. In the advent and progress of
+ civilization there was first the Mediterranean, then the Atlantic, and
+ then the Pacific, the last the greatest of all. What else is possible?
+ Where else on this planet is man to go for his ultimate achievement?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Conviction comes slowly in such cases, and properly so. Yet in forecasting
+ the future from the light of the past cavilers can scarcely go farther
+ afield than our worshipful forbears, who less than a century ago, on the
+ floor of the United States congress, decried as absurd settlement beyond
+ the Missouri, ridiculed buying half a continent of worthless Northwest
+ wilderness, thanked God for the Rocky mountain barrier to man's
+ presumption, scouted at a possible wagon road, not to say railway, across
+ the continent, lamented the unprofitable theft of California, and cursed
+ the Alaska purchase as money worse than thrown away. In view of what has
+ been and is, can anyone call it a Utopian dream to picture the Pacific
+ bordered by an advanced civilization with cities more brilliant than any
+ of the ancient East, more opulent than any of the cultured West?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Rio de Janeiro! what have the Brazilians been doing these last decades?
+ Decapitating politically dear Dom Pedro, true patriot, though emperor&mdash;he
+ came to me once in my library, pouring out his soul for his beloved Brazil&mdash;they
+ abolished slavery, formed a republic, and modernized the city. They made
+ boulevards and water drives, the finest in the world. They cut through the
+ heart of the old town a new Avenida Central, over a mile in length and one
+ hundred and ten feet wide, lining it on either side with palatial business
+ houses and costly residences, paving the thoroughfare with asphalt and
+ adorning it with artistic fixtures for illumination, the street work being
+ completed in eighteen months. Strangling in their incipiency graft and
+ greed, after kindly dismissing Dom Pedro with well-filled pockets for
+ home, these Portuguese brought out their money and spent hundreds of
+ millions in improving their city, with hundreds of millions left which
+ they have yet to spend. Thus did these of the Latin race, whom we regard
+ as less Bostonian than ourselves.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ With this brief glance at other cities of present and other times, and
+ having in view the part played by environment in the trend of refining
+ influences, and remembering further, following the spirit of the times,
+ that nothing within the scope of human power to accomplish is too vast, or
+ too valuable, or too advanced for the purpose, it remains with the people
+ of San Francisco to determine what they will do.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It is not necessary to speak of the city's present or future requirements,
+ as sea water on the bills, and fresh water with electric power from the
+ Sierra; sea wall, docks, and water-way drives; widened streets and winding
+ boulevards; embellished hillsides and hilltops; bay tunnels and union
+ railway station; bay and ocean boating and bathing; arches and arcades;
+ park strips or boulevards cutting through slums, and the nests of filthy
+ foreigners, bordered on either side by structures characteristic of their
+ country&mdash;all this and more will come to those who shall have the
+ matter in charge. The pressing need now is a general plan for all to work
+ to; this, and taking the reconstruction of the city out of politics and
+ placing it in the hands of responsible business men.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If the people and government of the United States will consider for a
+ moment the importance to the nation of a well-fortified and imposing city
+ and seaport at San Francisco bay; the importance to the army and navy, to
+ art and science, to commerce and manufactures; of the effect of a city
+ with its broad surroundings, at once elegant and impressive, upon the
+ nations round the Pacific and on all the world, there should be little
+ trouble in its accomplishment.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And be it remembered that whatever San Francisco, her citizens and her
+ lovers, do now or neglect to do in this present regeneration will be felt
+ for good or ill to remotest ages. Let us build and rebuild accordingly,
+ bearing in mind that the new San Francisco is to stand forever before the
+ world as the measure of the civic taste and intelligence of her people.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+ <!-- H2 anchor --> </a>
+ </p>
+ <div style="height: 4em;">
+ <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </div>
+ <h2>
+ RESURGAM
+ </h2>
+ <p>
+ The question has been oftener asked than answered, why Chicago should have
+ grown in wealth and population so much faster than St. Louis, or New
+ Orleans, or San Francisco. It is not enough to point to her position on
+ the lakes, the wide extent of contributory industries, and the convergence
+ of railways; other cities have at their command as great natural
+ advantages with like limitless opportunity. As to location, city sites are
+ seldom chosen by convention, or the fittest spots favored. Chicagoans
+ assert that a worse place than theirs for a city cannot be found on the
+ shores of Lake Michigan. New York would be better up the Hudson, London in
+ Bristol channel, and San Francisco at Carquinez strait. Indeed, it was by
+ a Yankee trick that the sand-blown peninsula secured the principal city of
+ the Pacific.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It happened in this way. General Vallejo, Mexican comandante residing at
+ Sonoma, upon the arrival of the new American authorities said to them:
+ "Let it bear the name of my wife, Francesca, and let it be the commercial
+ and political metropolis of your Pacific possessions, and I will give you
+ the finest site in the world for a city, with state-house and residences
+ built and ready for your free occupation." And so it was agreed, and the
+ general made ready for the coming of the legislature.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Meanwhile, to the American alcalde, who had established his rule at Yerba
+ Buena, a trading hamlet in the cove opposite the island of that name and
+ nucleus of the present San Francisco, came Folsom, United States army
+ captain and quartermaster, to whom had been given certain lots of land in
+ Yerba Buena, and said: "Why not call the town San Francisco, and bring
+ hither ships which clear from various ports for San Francisco bay?" And so
+ it was done; the fine plans of the Mexican general fell to the ground, and
+ the name Benicia was given to what had been Francesca. A year or two
+ later, with five hundred ships of the gold-seekers anchored off the cove,
+ not all the men and money in the country could have moved the town from
+ its ill-chosen location.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Opportunity is much the same in various times and places, whether
+ fortuitous or forced. More men make opportunity than are made by it,
+ particularly among those who achieve great success. Land being
+ unavailable, Venice the beautiful was built upon the water, while the
+ Hollanders manage to live along the centuries below sea level.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The builders of Chicago possessed varied abilities of a high order, not
+ least among which was the faculty of working together. They realized at an
+ early date that the citizens and the city are one; whatever of advantage
+ they might secure to their city would be returned to them by their city
+ fourfold.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ "Oh, I do love this old town!" one of them was heard to exclaim as,
+ returning from the station, his cab paddled through the slushy streets
+ under a slushy sky. He was quite a young man, yet he had made a large
+ fortune there. "It's no credit to us making money here," he added, "we
+ couldn't help it." So citizenized, what should we expect if not unity of
+ effort, a willingness to efface self when necessary, and with intense
+ individualism to subordinate individual ideas and feelings to the public
+ good? In such an atmosphere rises quickly a new city from the ashes of the
+ old, or a fairy creation like the Columbian Exposition. Imagine the
+ peninsula of San Francisco covered by a real city equal in beauty and
+ grandeur to the Chicago sham city of 1893.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The typical West-American city builder has money&mdash;created, not
+ inherited, wealth. But possession merely is not enough; he gives. Yet
+ possessing and giving are not enough; he works, constantly and
+ intelligently. The power which wealth gives is often employed in retarding
+ progress when the interests of the individual seem to clash with those of
+ the commonwealth; it is always lessened by the absence of respect for its
+ possessor. But when wealth, intelligence, honesty, and enthusiasm join
+ hands with patriotism there must be progress.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Time and place do not account for all of Chicago's phenomenal growth, nor
+ do the distance from the world's centres of population and industry, the
+ comparative isolation, and the evil effects of railway domination account
+ wholly for San Francisco's slow growth toward the end of the century. For,
+ following the several spasms of development incident to the ages of gold,
+ of grain, and of fruit, and the advent of the railway incubus, California
+ for a time betook herself to rest, which indeed was largely paralysis.
+ Then, too, those who had come first and cleared the ground, laying the
+ foundations of fortunes, were passing away, and their successors seemed
+ more ready to enjoy than to create. But with the opening of a new century
+ all California awoke and made such progress as was never made before.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Coming to the late catastrophe, it was well that too much dependence was
+ not placed on promises regarding rehabilitation made during the first
+ flush of sympathy; the words were nevertheless pleasant to the ear at the
+ time. The insurance companies would act promptly and liberally, taking no
+ advantage of any technicality; congress would remit duties on building
+ material for a time, and thus protect the city-builders from the
+ extortions of the material men; the material men roundly asserted that
+ there should be no extortion, no advance in prices, but, on the contrary,
+ all other work should be set aside and precedence given to San Francisco
+ orders; eastern capitalists were to cooperate with the government in
+ placing at the portal of the Pacific a city which should be a credit to
+ the nation and a power in the exploitation of the great ocean.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ None of these things came to pass. Indeed it was too much to expect of
+ poor human nature until selfishness and greed are yet further eliminated.
+ Never to be forgotten was the superb benevolence which so promptly and so
+ liberally showered comforts upon the poor, the sick, the hungry, and the
+ houseless until it was feared that the people might become pauperized. But
+ that was charity, whereas "business is business."
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The insurance companies, themselves stricken nigh unto death, paused in
+ the generous impulse to pay quickly and in full and let the new steel city
+ arise at once in all its glory. They began to consider, then to temporize,
+ and finally, with notable exceptions, to evade by every means in their
+ power the payment of their obligations. The loss and the annoyance thus
+ inflicted upon the insured were increased by the uncertainty as to what
+ they should finally be able to do. Congress likewise paused to consider
+ the effect the proposed remission of duties would have on certain members
+ and their lumber and steel friends. Thus a hundred days passed by, and
+ with some relief half a hundred more.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Outside capital was still ready, but San Franciscans seemed to have
+ sufficient for present needs. Capital is conservative and Californians
+ independent. Even from the government they never asked much, though well
+ aware that since the gold discovery California has given a hundredfold
+ more than she has received. Her people were accustomed to take care of
+ themselves, and managed on the whole to get along. A general conflagration
+ was not a new thing. Four times during gold-digging days San Francisco was
+ destroyed by fire, and each time new houses were going up before the ashes
+ were cold. True, there was not so much to burn in those days, but it was
+ all the people had; there was not so much to rebuild, and there were no
+ insurance companies to keep them back. San Francisco would be grateful,
+ and it would be a graceful thing for the government to do, to keep away
+ the sharks until the people should get their heads above water again, not
+ as charity, but for the general good. The exaction of duties on lumber
+ from British Columbia was simply taking money from the San Francisco
+ builders and thrusting it into the plethoric pockets of the Puget Sound
+ people, who at once advanced their prices so as seriously to retard
+ building and render it in many cases impossible. Even as I write word
+ comes of another advance in the price of lumber, owing to the apathy at
+ Washington and elsewhere, after twice before raising the price to the
+ highest limit.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Meanwhile, in and around the burned district, traffic never ceased. The
+ inflow of merchandise from all parts continued. Upon the ashes of their
+ former stores, and scattered about the suburbs, business men established
+ themselves wherever they could find a house to rent or a lot to build
+ upon. Shacks were set up in every quarter, and better structures of one or
+ two stories were permitted, subject to removal by order of the city at any
+ time they should appear to stand in the way of permanent improvement. Some
+ business houses were extinguished, but other and larger ones arose in
+ their stead. Rebuilding was slow because of the debris to be removed and
+ the more substantial character of the permanent structures to be erected.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Around the bay continues the hum of industry. The country teems with
+ prosperity. Never were the services of the city needed so much as now.
+ There are no financial disturbances; money is easy, but more will be
+ required soon; claims are not pressed in the courts. Any San Francisco
+ bonds thrown upon the market are quickly taken by local capitalists.
+ Customs receipts are larger than ever before, and there is no shrinkage at
+ the clearing house. Land values remain much the same; in some quarters
+ land has depreciated, in other places it has increased in price; buyers
+ stand ready to take advantage of forced sales.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Labor is scarce in both city and country; wages are high and advancing.
+ Five times the present number of mechanics can find profitable employment
+ in the city, and it will be so for years to come, as there is much to be
+ done.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ With the advance of the labor wage and of lumber, rents are advanced.
+ Mills and factories are running at their full capacity. Orchards and grain
+ fields are overflowing, and harvesters are found with difficulty.
+ Merchants' sales were never so large nor profits so good. Prices of
+ everything rule high, with an upward tendency, the demand at the shops
+ being for articles of good quality. Oriental rugs and diamonds are
+ conspicuously in evidence. Insurers are paying their losses to some
+ extent, and many people find themselves in possession of more ready money
+ than they ever had before. They are rich, though they may have no house to
+ sleep in. It is a momentary return to the flush times of the early
+ fifties, though upon a broader and more civilized scale, and without their
+ uncertainty or their romance.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In view of the facts it seems superfluous to discuss questions regarding
+ the future of San Francisco. That is to say, such questions as are
+ propounded by chronic croakers: Will the city be rebuilt? If so, will it
+ be a city of fine buildings? Will not the fear of earthquakes drive away
+ capital and confine reconstruction to insignificance?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Let us hasten to assure our friends that the day of doom has not yet come
+ to this city; that the day of doom never comes to any city for so slight a
+ cause, or for any cause short of a rain of brimstone and fire, as in the
+ case of Sodom. Whether of imperial steel or of imperial shacks; whether
+ calamities come in the form of such temblores as are here met occasionally
+ in a mild form, or in the far more destructive form of hurricanes, floods,
+ pestilence, sun&mdash;striking, and lightning, so common at the east and
+ elsewhere, and from which San Francisco is wholly free, there will here
+ forever be a city, a large, powerful, and wealthy city.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Every part of the earth is subject at any time to seismic disturbance, and
+ no one can truthfully say that California is more liable to another such
+ occurrence than any other part of the United States. Indeed, it should be
+ less so, the earth's crust here having settled itself, let us hope, to
+ some centuries of repose. Never before has anything like this been known
+ on our Pacific seaboard. Never before, so far as history or tradition or
+ the physical features of the country can show, has California experienced
+ a serious earthquake shock&mdash;that is to say, one attended by any
+ considerable loss of life or property. Nor was the earthquake of April
+ last so terrible as it may seem to some. Apart from the fire there was not
+ so very much of it, and no great damage was done. The official figures
+ are: 266 killed by falling walls, 177 by fire, 7 shot, and 2 deaths by
+ ptomaine poisoning&mdash;452 in all. The property damage by the earthquake
+ is scarcely worth speaking of, being no more than happens elsewhere in the
+ world from other causes nearly every day; it would have been quickly made
+ good and little thought of it but for the conflagration that followed.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Compare San Francisco casualties with those of other cities. Two hundred
+ and sixty-six deaths as the result of the greatest calamity that ever
+ happened in California! Not to mention the floods, fires, and cyclones
+ common to St. Louis, Chicago, Galveston, and all mid-continent America,
+ the yellow fever at New Orleans and along the southern shore, or the
+ 25,000 deaths from cholera in New York and Philadelphia in less than
+ twenty-five years, or the loss of 1,000 ships on the Atlantic coast in the
+ hurricane of August, 1873-not to mention the many extraordinary displays
+ of vindictive nature, take some of the more commonplace calamities
+ incident to most cities except those along the Pacific coast.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Every year more people and more property are destroyed by lightning,
+ floods, and wind-storms on the Atlantic side of the Rocky mountains than
+ are affected by earthquakes on the Pacific side in a hundred years. Every
+ year more people drop dead from sunstrokes in New York, Baltimore,
+ Philadelphia, and other eastern cities than are killed by earthquakes in
+ San Francisco in a thousand years, so far as we may know. Yet men and
+ women continue to live and build houses in those cities without thought of
+ running away.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Nor can California claim the whole even of United States earthquakes. In
+ 1755 all New England was shaken up, and Boston housetops and walls were
+ set dancing, the horror coming in "with a roaring noise, like that of
+ thunder," as the record has it, "and then a swell like the roaring sea";
+ and yet, and notwithstanding the great fire later, the city still shows
+ vitality, the people are not afraid, and property is valuable. And so in
+ regard to New York and London and all cities. In Missouri, in 1811, the
+ earth shook almost continuously for several months along a stretch of
+ three hundred miles, throwing up prairies into sand hills and submerging
+ forests. Chicago and New York, and all the country between, were visited
+ by earthquakes in 1870. Then there are Virginia and the Carolinas, Alabama
+ Texas and Colorado&mdash;there is not a state in the union that has not
+ had a touch of well-authenticated earthquakings at some time in its
+ history.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ To one who knows the people and the country, the people with their
+ magnificent energy and ability, their indomitable will and their splendid
+ courage; the country with its boundless natural wealth and illimitable
+ potentialities; the city, key to the Golden Gate, which opens the East to
+ the West and West to East; the bay, mistress primeval, through which flows
+ the drainage of six hundred miles in length of interior valley, the garden
+ of the world; to one who has here lived and loved, assisting in this grand
+ upbuilding, thoughts of relinquishment, of lesser possibilities, of meaner
+ efforts, do not come.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ What would you? If there is a spot on earth where life and property are
+ safer, where men are more enterprising and women more intelligent and
+ refined, where business is better or fortunes more safely or surely made,
+ the world should know of it. The earth may tremble now and then, but
+ houses may be built which cannot be destroyed, fires are liable to occur
+ wherever material exists that will burn, but fires may be controlled.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ As for the city, its life and destiny, there is this to be said. The few
+ square miles of buildings burned were not San Francisco, they were only
+ buildings. Were every house destroyed and every street obliterated, there
+ would still remain the city, with its commerce, its manufactures, its
+ civilization, a spiritual city if you like, yet with material values
+ incapable of destruction&mdash;an atmosphere alive with cheerful industry;
+ also land values, commercial relations, financial connections, skilled
+ laborers and professional men, and a hundred other like souls of things.
+ In a thousand ideas and industries, though the ground is but ashes, the
+ spirit of progress still hovers over the hills awaiting incarnation.
+ Dependent on this pile of ashes, or the ghosts thereof, are fleets of
+ vessels sailing every sea; farms and factories along shore and back to and
+ beyond the Sierra; merchants and mechanics here and elsewhere; mines and
+ reclamation systems, and financial relations the world over.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The question now is not as to the existence or permanency of a central
+ city on the shores of San Francisco bay. That fact was established beyond
+ peradventure with the building of the bay, and nothing short of universal
+ cataclysm can affect it. It is rather to the quality of that city that the
+ consideration of the present generation should be directed. The shell has
+ been injured, but the soul of the city is immortal; and in the restoration
+ it would be strange if our twentieth-century young men cannot do better in
+ artistic city building than the sturdy gold-seekers and their successors
+ of half a century ago.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ If history and human experiences teach anything; if from the past we may
+ judge somewhat of the future, we might, if we chose, glance back at the
+ history of cities, and note how, when the Mediterranean was the greatest
+ of seas, Carthage and Venice were the greatest of cities; how, when the
+ Atlantic assumed sway, Ghent, Seville, and London each in turn came to the
+ front; or how, following the inevitable, as civilization takes possession
+ of the Pacific, the last, the largest in its native wealth as well as in
+ its potentialities the richest of all, it is not difficult to see that the
+ chief city, the mistress of this great ocean, must be mistress of the
+ world.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ But this is not all. A great city on this great bay, beside this greatest
+ of oceans, centrally situated, through whose Golden Gate pass the waters
+ drained from broad fertile valleys, a harbor without an equal, with some
+ hundreds of miles of water front ready for a thousand industries, where
+ ocean vessels may moor beside factories and warehouses, with a climate
+ temperate, equable, healthful, and brewed for industry; a city here, ugly
+ or beautiful, fostered or oppressed, given over to the sharks of
+ speculation or safeguarded as one of the brightest jewels of the nation,
+ is an inexorable necessity; its destiny is assured; and all the powers of
+ graft and greed cannot prevail against it. It is a military necessity, for
+ here will be stationed the chief defenses and defenders of the nation's
+ western border. It is an industrial necessity, for to this city three
+ continents and a thousand islands will look for service. As the Spanish
+ war first revealed to America her greatness, so the possible loss of San
+ Francisco quickly demonstrates the necessity of her existence to the
+ nation. It is an educational necessity, whence the dusky peoples around
+ the Pacific may draw from the higher civilization to the regeneration of
+ the world. In the University of California, standing opposite the Golden
+ Gate, with its able and devoted president and professors, this work is
+ already well established, the results from which will prove too vast and
+ far-reaching for our minds at present to fathom.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ And in all the other many byways of progress the results of the last
+ half-century of effort on our sand-dune peninsula are not lost.
+ Earthquakes cannot destroy them; fire cannot burn them. San Francisco grew
+ from the Yerba Buena hamlet in sixty years. In a new and untried field
+ city-building then was something of an experiment; yet population grew to
+ half a million, and wealth in proportion; and never was improvement so
+ marked as just before the fire. With wealth and population but little
+ impaired, and with the ground cleared for new constructive work, there
+ would be nothing strange in a city here of three or four millions of
+ people in another sixty years. Actual progress has scarcely been arrested.
+ We are rudely hustled and awake to higher and severer effort. No house or
+ store or factory or business will be rebuilt or established except in a
+ larger and more efficient way, and that is progress.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ In and around the city are already more people than were here before the
+ fire, and soon there will be twice as many, for from every quarter are
+ coming mechanics and business men, attracted by high wages and the
+ material requirements of the city. Hundreds of millions of money from the
+ insurance companies and from local and outside capitalists are finding
+ safe and profitable investment. And this is only the beginning.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ San Francisco is already a large manufacturing city; it will be many times
+ larger. Around its several hundred miles of bay shore and up the Carquinez
+ strait will be thousands of industries to-day not dreamed of, and all
+ ministering to the necessities of the thousand cities of the Pacific.
+ There is no place in the world better adapted for manufacturing. All sorts
+ of raw material can be gathered here from every quarter of the earth at
+ small cost, lumber, coal, iron, wool, and cotton for a hundred factories,
+ and mineral ores for reduction. Likewise labor at a minimum wage, congress
+ and the lords of labor permitting. Add to these advantages a climate cool
+ in summer and warm in winter, where work can be comfortably carried on
+ every day in the year, and a more desirable spot cannot be found.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Industrially San Francisco should dominate the Pacific, its firm land and
+ islands, upon whose borders is to be found more natural wealth, mineral
+ and agricultural, than upon those of all the other waters of the earth
+ combined, and the exploitation of which has scarcely begun. Here in
+ abundance are every mineral and metal, rich and varied soils, all fruits
+ and native products, fuels and forests, for some of which we may even
+ thank earthquakes and kindred volcanic forces. Manufactures compel
+ commerce, and the commerce of the Pacific will rule the world. The
+ essentials of commerce are here. Intelligence and enterprise are here and
+ open to enlargement.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ For the late severe loss the city may find some compensations&mdash;as the
+ cleansing effect of fire; much filth, material and moral, has been
+ destroyed. Yet one is forced to observe that the precincts of Satan retain
+ their land values equal to any other locality. The greatest blessing of
+ the destruction, however, is in the saving from a life of luxury and
+ idleness our best young men and women, who will in consequence enter
+ spheres of usefulness, elevating and ennobling, thus exercising a
+ beneficial influence on future generations. Already work has become the
+ fashion; snobbism is in disgrace; and some elements or influences of the
+ simple life thus reestablished will remain.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ When all has been said that may be regarding the present and the future,
+ regarding purposes and potentialities, the simple fact remains that the
+ city of San Francisco will be what people make of it, neither more nor
+ less. The fruitful interior and the pine-clad Sierra; the great ocean, its
+ islands and opulent shores, with their fifty thousand miles of littoral
+ frontage, and every nation thereon awaiting a higher culture than any
+ which has yet appeared; the Panama canal, the world's highway, linking
+ east and west, all these will be everything or nothing to those who sit at
+ the Golden Gate, according as they themselves shall determine. For the
+ glory of a city is not altogether in its marble palaces and structures of
+ steel, though these have their value, but in its citizens, its men and
+ women, its men of ability, of unity, of energy, and public spirit, and its
+ brave and true women. And has not this city these? Surely, if in the late
+ catastrophe all that is noble, benevolent, and self-effacing did not
+ appear in every movement of our people, then no such qualities exist
+ anywhere. The manner in which they rose to meet the emergency argues well
+ for the city's future. Before the calamity was fairly upon them they
+ sprang to grapple it and ward it off so far as possible. It was owing to
+ them and to the military that the city was saved from starvation, anarchy,
+ and disease. It also speaks well for men so severely stricken to be the
+ first to send aid to a similarly stricken city, the metropolis of Pacific
+ South America.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ All this leads us to the highest hopes for the future. What we need most
+ of all is a centralization of mechanical industries around the shores of
+ this bay. Let everything that is made be made here, and the requirements
+ of all the peoples facing this ocean here be met. The Panama canal will be
+ a blessing or a curse to California in proportion as she rises to the
+ occasion and makes opportunities. Manufactures and commerce tell the whole
+ story. Let us have the city beautiful by all means&mdash;it will pay;
+ Paris makes it pay; but we must have the useful in any event&mdash;this,
+ and a municipality with its several parts subordinated to a general
+ scheme. What we can do without is demagogism, with its attendant labor
+ wrangles, and all the fraud, lying, and hypocrisy incident to a too free
+ government. We want a city superior to any other in beauty, as well as in
+ utility, and it will pay these United States well to see that we have it.
+ If we build no better than before, we gain nothing by this fire which has
+ cost many a heartache.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ The game of the gods is in our hands; shall we play it worthily? Two
+ decades of inaction at this juncture, like those which followed the advent
+ of the overland railway, would decide the fate of the city adversely for
+ the century, and the effect of it would last for ten centuries. When the
+ shores of the Pacific are occupied as the shores of the Atlantic now are,
+ when all around the vast arena formed by America, Asia, and Australia are
+ great nations of wealth and culture, with hundreds of Bostons and
+ Baltimores, of Londons and Liverpools, the great American republic would
+ scarcely be satisfied with only a porter's lodge at her western gateway.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ It is not much to say that the new city will be modern and up to date,
+ with some widened streets and winding boulevards, gardens banging to the
+ hillside, parks with lakes and cascades, reservoirs of sea water on every
+ hilltop; public work and public service, street cars telephones and
+ lighting being of the best. Plans for such changes were prepared before
+ the fire; they can be extended and carried out with greater facility since
+ the ground has been cleared from obstructions. All this and more may
+ easily be done if the government can be made to see where the true
+ interests of the people lie, to regard a west-coast metropolis with an eye
+ for something of beauty as well as of utility, an eye which can see
+ utility in beauty, and withal an eye of pride in possession. A paltry two
+ or three hundred millions judiciously expended here by the government
+ would make a city which would ever remain the pride of the whole people
+ and command the admiration and respect of all the nations around this
+ great ocean.
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ Of what avail are art and architecture if they may not be employed in a
+ cause like this? Here is an opportunity which the world has never before
+ witnessed. With limitless wealth, with genius of as high an order as any
+ that has gone before, with the stored experiences of all ages and nations&mdash;what
+ better use can be made of it all than to establish at the nation's western
+ gate a city which shall be the initial point of a new order of
+ development? Away back in the days of Palmyra and Thebes the rulers of
+ those cities seemed to understand it, if the people did not&mdash;that is
+ to say, the value of embellishment. And had we now but one American
+ Nebuchadnezzar we might have a Babylon at our Pacific seaport. For a
+ six-months' world's fair any considerable city can get from the government
+ five or ten millions. And why not? There's politics in it. Can we not have
+ some of "those politics" for a respectable west-coast city? Would it not
+ be economy to spend some millions on an industrial metropolis which should
+ be a permanent world's fair for the enlightenment of the Pacific? The
+ nation has made its capital beautiful, and so established the doctrine
+ that art, architecture, and beautiful environment have a value above ugly
+ utility. May we not hope for something a little out of the common for the
+ nation's chief seaport on the Pacific, a little fresh gilding for our
+ Golden Gate?
+ </p>
+ <p>
+ THE END <br /><br /><br /><br />
+ </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+ </body>
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