Read The Immigrants for Free Online Page A

days, but not even the threat of guns and bayonets could deter the homeown ers from claiming their particular bit of ashes.
    In the Tenderloin, saloon operators, pimps, and pros titutes picked among the ashes looking for coins or cashboxes that might have survived the holocaust, for there not a building had been spared.
    The tall hills that only a few days before had sparkled with light and re flected the rising sun so cheerfully from their thousands of white clapboard houses were now somberly black, but not dead; indeed they had taken on a strange and grim majesty, and the still half-naked citizens, soot-blackened and homeless, greeted the ruin as they had always greeted their city. Had the world ever seen such a sight before? Go elsewhere? Live in another place? Be damned if they would!
    The next day, it rained, and the fire was out for good. A week later, teams were hauling the rubble down the steep hills and
     
    3 4
    H o w a r d F a s t
    dumping it into the bay. Tents sprang up on the blackened lots.
    Thousands of ordinary citi zens joined in the effort of clearing the rubble, and cots appeared in the foundations of burned houses with makeshift lean-tos to keep out the weather. Men who had never handled a hammer or saw before turned car penter. For almost nine weeks, the shattered city, known not only as the “Queen of the Pacifìc” but as the “queen of larceny” as well, entered into a period of benign brotherhood, common effort, good humor, and goodwill; and during this time, crime almost disap peared from the streets of San Francisco. Money in the form of relief as well as paid insurance poured into the city, and every out-of-work carpenter and mason from a thousand miles around descended upon it. Ships loaded with food made the journey across the bay from Oak land and from southern California and from the states of Washington and Oregon, and the common kitchens and the breadlines were orderly and good-humored.
    And then, as the rebuilt city began to take shape, people re-verted to the habits of civilization. The total destruction of Chinatown had given the Oriental popu lation of the city a brief respite from that peculiar racial hatred that marked this city. For a matter of weeks, whites were kind to the Chinese. That came to an end. For three weeks, San Francisco was a city without saloons or prostitutes; that too came to an end, and no where in the city was that marvelous American aptitude for organization and construction better exhibited than in that area which had once been the Barbary Coast. Within three months after the great fire, almost a thou sand saloons and whorehouses had risen, phoenix-like, out of the ashes. At the same time charges were brought against Abe Ruef, the city boss, and Mayor Schmitz, his friend and co-worker, that, in taking advantage of the earthquake and fire, they had granted monopolies in transportation and utilities in return for enormous bribes.
     
    t H e I m m I g r a n t s
    3 5
    Life had returned to normal in San Francisco. City planners had drawn up splendid projections for the re building of the city, holding that never again would a city such as this have such an opportunity to rebuild from ashes. The people ignored the plans; they wanted homes, not Utopia, and if they were warned against the conse-quences of pushing a million tons of rubble into the bay—well, where else could it go? The city mush roomed. Rebuilding became a race, and the area around Powell and Market earned the name of the “up town Tenderloin” with an overnight, jerry-built creation of saloons, restaurants, and music halls. The cable cars were put back into service, and once again they crawled up and down the steep hills. A month after the earth quake, the Orpheum Theatre opened, a month later the Davis Theatre, on McAllister near Fillmore, and then, in reasonably quick succession, the Park Theatre, the Colonial, the Novelty, the American. During the follow ing year, there were seven strikes, the