Part 8 (1/2)
It went. The soldier fixed the schedule of prices a little higher than in ordinary times, and to make up for that he forced the storekeeper to give free food to several hungry people in line who had no money to pay.
In several other places the soldiers used the same brand of horse sense.
A man with a loaf of bread in his hand ran up to a policeman on Was.h.i.+ngton Street. ”Here,” he said, ”this man is trying to charge me a dollar for this loaf of bread. Is that fair?”
”Give it to me,” said the policeman. He broke off one end of it and stuck it in his mouth. ”I am hungry myself,” he said when he had his mouth clear. ”Take the rest of it. It's appropriated.”
As an example of the prices charged for food and service by the unscrupulous, we may quote the experience of a Los Angeles millionaire named John Singleton, who had been staying a day or two at the Palace Hotel. On Wednesday he had to pay $25 for an express wagon to carry himself, his wife and her sister to the Casino, near Golden Gate Park, and on Thursday was charged a dollar apiece for eggs and a dollar for a loaf of bread. Others tell of having to pay $50 for a ride to the ferry.
One of the refugees on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Herced Thursday morning spied a flock of ducks and swans which the city maintained there for the decoration of the lake. He plunged into the lake, swam out to them and captured a fat drake. Other men and boys saw the point and followed. The munic.i.p.al ducks were all cooking in five minutes.
The soldiers were prompt to take charge of the famine situation, acting on their own responsibility in clearing out the supplies of the little grocery stores left standing and distributing them among the people in need. The princ.i.p.al food of those who remained in the city was composed of canned goods and crackers. The refugees who succeeded in getting out of San Francisco were met as soon as they entered the neighboring towns by representatives of bakers who had made large supplies of bread, and who immediately dealt them out to the hungry people.
THE FOOD QUESTION URGENT.
But the needs of the three hundred thousand homeless and hungry people in the city could not be met in this way, and immediate supplies in large quant.i.ties were necessary to prevent a reign of famine from succeeding the ravages of the fire. Danger from thirst was still more insistent than that from hunger. There was some food to be had, bakeries were quickly built within the military reservation there, and General Funston announced that rations would soon reach the city and the people would be supplied from the Presidio. But there was scarcely any water to relieve the thirst of the suffering. Water became the incessant cry of firemen and people alike, the one wanting it to fight the fire, the other to drink, but even for the latter the supply was very scant.
There was water in plenty in the reservoirs, but they were distant and difficult to reach, and all night of the day succeeding the earth shock wagons mounted with barrels and guarded by soldiers drove through the park doling out water. There was a steady crush around these wagons, but only one drink was allowed to a person.
Toward midnight a black, staggering body of men began to weave through the entrance. They were volunteer fire-fighters, looking for a place to throw themselves down and sleep. These men dropped out all along the line, and were rolled out of the driveways by the troops. There was much splendid unselfishness here. Women gave up their blankets and sat up or walked about all night to cover the exhausted men who had fought fire until there was no more fight in them.
The common dest.i.tution and suffering had, as we have said, wiped out all social, financial and racial distinctions. The man who last Tuesday was a prosperous merchant was obliged to occupy with his family a little plot of ground that adjoined the open-air home of a laborer. The white man of California forgot his antipathy to the Asiatic race, and maintained friendly relations with his new Chinese and j.a.panese neighbors. The society belle who Tuesday night was a b.u.t.terfly of fas.h.i.+on at the grand opera performance now a.s.sisted some factory girl in the preparation of humble daily meals. Money had little value. The family that had had foresight to lay in the largest stock of foodstuffs on the first day of disaster was rated highest in the scale of wealth.
A few of the families that could secure wagons were possessors of cook stoves, but over 95 per cent. of the refugees did their cooking on little campfires made of brick or stone. Battered kitchen utensils that the week before would have been regarded as useless had become articles of high value. In fact, man had come back to nature and all lines of caste had been obliterated, while the very thought of luxury had disappeared. It was, in the exigency of the moment, considered good fortune to have a scant supply of the barest necessaries of life.
As for clothing, it was in many cases of the scantiest, while numbers of the people had brought comfortable clothing and bedding. Many others had fled in their night garbs, and comparatively few of these had had the self-possession to return and don their daytime clothes. As a result there had been much improvisation of garments suitable for life in the open air, and as the days went on many of the women arrayed themselves in home-made bloomer costumes, a sensible innovation under the circ.u.mstances and in view of the active outdoor work they were obliged to perform.
The grave question to be faced at this early stage was: How soon would an adequate supply of food arrive from outside points to avert famine?
Little remained in San Francis...o...b..yond the area swept by the fire, and the available supply could not last more than a few days. Fresh meat disappeared early on Wednesday and only canned foods and breadstuffs were left. All the foodstuffs coming in on the cars were at once seized by order of the Mayor and added to the scanty supply, the names of the consignees being taken that this material might eventually be paid for.
The bakers agreed to work their plants to their utmost capacity and to send all their surplus output to the relief committee. By working night and day thousands of loaves could be provided daily. A big bakery in the saved district started its ovens and arranged to bake 50,000 loaves before night. The provisions were taken charge of by a committee and sent to the various depots from which the people were being fed.
Instructions were issued by Mayor Schmitz on Thursday to break open every store containing provisions and to distribute them to the thousands under police supervision. A policeman reported that two grocery stores in the neighborhood were closed, although the clerks were present. ”Smash the stores open,” ordered the Mayor, ”and guard them.”
In towns across the bay the master bakers have met and fixed the price of bread at 5 cents the loaf, with the understanding that they will refuse to sell to retailers who attempt to charge famine prices. The committee of citizens in charge of the situation in the stricken city proposed to use every effort to keep food down to the ordinary price and check the efforts of speculators, who in one instance charged as much as $3.50 for two loaves of bread and a can of sardines. Orders were issued by the War Department to army officers to purchase at Los Angeles immediately 200,000 rations and at Seattle 300,000 rations and hurry them to San Francisco. The department was informed that there were 120,000 rations at the Presidio, that thousands of refugees were being sheltered there and that the army was feeding them. One million rations already had been started to San Francis...o...b.. the department. But in view of the fact that there were 300,000 fugitives to be fed the supply available was likely to be soon exhausted.
FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY.
Such was the state of affairs at the end of the second day of the great disaster. But meanwhile the entire country had been aroused by the tidings of the awful calamity, the sympathetic instinct of Americans everywhere was awakened, and it was quickly made evident that the people of the stricken city would not be allowed to suffer for the necessaries of life. On all sides money was contributed in large sums, the United States Government setting the example by an immediate appropriation of $1,000,000, and in the briefest possible interval relief trains were speeding toward the stricken city from all quarters, carrying supplies of food, shelter tents and other necessaries of a kind that could not await deliberate action.
Shelter was needed almost as badly as food, for a host of the refugees had nothing but their thin clothing to cover them, and, though the weather at first was fine and mild, a storm might come at any time.
In fact, a rain did come, a severe one, early in the week after the disaster, pouring nearly all night long on the s.h.i.+vering campers in the parks, wetting them to the skin and soaking through the rudely improvised shelters which many of the refugees had put up. A few days afterward came a second shower, rendering still more evident the need of haste in providing suitable shelter.
All this was foreseen by those in charge, and the most strenuous efforts were made to provide the absolute necessities of life. Huge quant.i.ties of supplies were poured into the city. From all parts of California trainloads of food were rushed there in all haste. A steamer from the Orient laden with food reached the city in its hour of need; another was dispatched in all haste from Tacoma bearing $25,000 worth of food and medical supplies, ordered by Mayor Weaver, of Philadelphia, as a first installment of that city's contribution. Money was telegraphed from all quarters to the Governor of California, to be expended for food and other supplies, and so prompt was the response to the insistent demand that by Sat.u.r.day all danger of famine was at an end; the people were being fed.
WATER FOR THE THIRSTY.
The broken waterpipes were also repaired with all possible haste, the Spring Valley Water Company putting about one thousand men at work upon their shattered mains, and in a very brief time water began to flow freely in many parts of the residence section and the great difficulty of obtaining food and water was practically at an end. Never in the history of the country has there been a more rapid and complete demonstration of the resourcefulness of Americans than in the way this frightful disaster was met.