Chapter 14

TABLE 49.—CONJUGAL CONDITION OF FAMILY GROUPS RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION[157]

[157]Of the 894 family groups investigated, five consisted of men who failed to supply information relative to conjugal condition.

The table shows that there were 394 married couples among these families that had received aid. Man and wife were of the same nativity in 360 cases, and of differing nativities in 34 cases.

The average size of the family groups aided with business grants was relatively small, being but 2.8 persons per family. The average number of children per family was low, partly because of the large number of single persons aided; but the average number per marriage was low, too, being 1.37. Of the 394 married couples, 124 had no children at all, or none living at home; of the 286 widowed, divorced, or separated women, 128 had no children at home; of the 55 widowed, divorced, or separated men, 33 had no children with them.

The ages of all but 19 of the applicants who received aid are known. Of the 875 concerning whom information is available, only 3 per cent were over seventy; 45 per cent not more than forty; 60 per cent not more than fifty; and 77 per cent, over three-fourths, not more than sixty. More than one-half were between thirty-five and fifty-five years of age.

The 894 family groups aided included, at the time of the re-visit, 2,270 individuals. Of these, 1,138, or 50.1 per cent, were fully self-supporting; 113, or 5 per cent, were partially self-supporting; and 1,019, or 44.9 per cent, were dependent. The burden on the breadwinners is thus seen to have been relatively light. However, the income from most of their businesses was very small. It was less than the wages earned in the organized trades and fluctuated so that it was found impossible to reduce net receipts to dollars and cents.

In many cases when grants were given to persons who had no young children, they were given in consideration of the fact that there were others, often aged parents, depending upon them. This is true of one-third of the single women and about two-fifths of the single men.

Partly as a result of the fire, and partly, no doubt, from other causes, the situation of the families aided with respect to membership, manner of living, and business arrangements, was somewhat different at the time of the re-visit from what it had been before thefire. The families aided had been composed, previous to the fire, of exactly 2,500 individuals. When the re-visit was made, 29 of these individuals had died and 201 had disappeared, leaving 2,270 individuals in the families studied.

Of the 894 families, 691, or 77 per cent, were found not to have changed in membership. For 83 families no data on this subject could be secured. Changes of membership in the remaining 120 families are shown inTable 50.

TABLE 50.—CHANGES IN FAMILY COMPOSITION BETWEEN PERIOD BEFORE FIRE AND THE RE-VISIT IN 120 FAMILIES RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION

A further classification of the 120 families shows that in 16 families, consolidation, instead of separation, had taken place. Any tendency of families to stay together or of related families to consolidate, was fostered by the policy of the Rehabilitation Committee, which was to treat the family group, if possible, as a unit, and to give but one grant and that to one member on behalf of the whole family.

Of the families aided, some had living quarters connected with their places of business, while others lived away from their offices or stores. Some families owned the premises which they occupied, but the great majority paid rent for business accommodations, for residences, or for both. For 197 of the 894, data could not be secured upon this subject. The situation of the remaining697 families with respect to the payment of rentals, both before the fire and at the time of the re-visit, is shown byTable 51.

TABLE 51.—NATURE OF PREMISES OCCUPIED AND OF RENTALS PAID BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIRE, BY FAMILIES RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION

The table shows that there were many changes in the rental situation of the families. Before the fire, 658 families paid a business rent; that is, hired either a separate place of business or quarters in which business and residence could be combined. The latter plan was followed by 481 families, the separate rental plan by 161. The remaining 16 paid a business rent only, as they owned the house they lived in. After the fire, only 464 of the families were paying a business rent. The falling-off is most marked in the group of persons following the more ambitious plan of renting a place of business separate from the residence. Note the six families that before the fire owned premises for business and residence combined. This number was raised through the disaster to 34, most of whom were found, however, to be carrying on some small enterprise in a cottage taken from a camp to a cheap suburban lot. The 33 that paid only residence rent before the fire are among the families that were given money for business though not in business before the fire. The 152 families that, since the fire, had been paying residence rent only, and the 47 that were paying no rent, were the families that had utterly failed to recover their ground. Some were working for wages; the rest were dependent on relatives or the public.

A plumber’s new startLaundry and residenceCamp Cottages Used for Business

A plumber’s new start

Laundry and residence

Camp Cottages Used for Business

Of the 894 families there were 125 that are known to have paid rental for separate residence quarters, both before and after the fire. The rents paid and the number of rooms occupied at both periods by 94 of these are known, so that the housing conditions of these families may be discussed apart from their business affairs.

TABLE 52.—RESIDENCE RENTALS PAID, BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIRE, BY 94 FAMILIES RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION, WHO PAID RENTALS FOR SEPARATE RESIDENTIAL QUARTERS IN BOTH PERIODS

The highest rent paid before the fire was $45; after the fire, $65. It will be noted that both before and after the fire, these families were able to pay rents that would seem to have assured fairly comfortable housing accommodations. Before the fire 45.7 per cent of the families paid a rental of $20 a month or more; after, 53.2 per cent were paying $20 or more.

It was found impracticable to establish the relation between rent paid and income received, for the reason that scarcely a person interviewed was able, however willing he might be, to say what his income for a year past had been. Income in most instances had been exceedingly irregular, and ordinarily the most that a man could say to the visitor was that his business had or had not met its running expenses; had or had not, in addition, furnished some sort of a living for the family; was or was not paying instalments on the principal of any debt incurred in starting. Therefore, the standard of life represented by the families in this study can be shown only by indirect means.

One of the best of the indirect indications of standards of living consists in the number of rooms occupied for residential purposes. The situation in this respect, before and after the fire, of the 94 families for which information was secured, is shown byTable 53.

TABLE 53.—NUMBER OF ROOMS IN RESIDENCES OCCUPIED, BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIRE, BY 94 FAMILIES RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION, WHO PAID RENTALS FOR SEPARATE RESIDENTIAL QUARTERS IN BOTH PERIODS

The table shows that no striking change took place in the number of rooms used for residence by these families. Individual families had their ups and downs, however. Whereas 39 families occupied the same number of rooms after the fire as before, 31 occupied fewer than before, and only 24 occupied more than before. As for outlay for rent for living quarters, 13 of these 94 families paid the same rent before and after; 27 paid less after the fire, and 54 paid more after the fire.

In some instances the disparity in the amount paid in the two epochs by the individual family is very great. Some families were found to be paying twice and some even three times as much rent as before the fire, in spite of the strong effort that people naturally made to secure quarters corresponding in size and price with those previously occupied. On the other hand, some of the childless couples did not try at once to resume housekeeping, but boarded, so that their rent dropped from the price of a flat to that of a single room. When families undertook to re-establish themselvesin 1906-1907, the city was not sufficiently rebuilt to afford every family just what it required in the way of quarters at a reasonable price; but the families showed themselves highly adaptable by taking what they could get, and making the best of it.

The list of 894 cases affords 76 instances of families who, both before and after the fire, maintained places of business separate from their residences, and the amount of rent paid by 74 of these families for business quarters is known. The residence rents of 56 of them have been discussed in the preceding paragraphs. The data relative to business rents are presented inTable 54.

TABLE 54.—BUSINESS RENTALS PAID, BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIRE, BY 74 FAMILIES RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION, WHO PAID RENTALS FOR SEPARATE BUSINESS QUARTERS IN BOTH PERIODS

Of the 74 families, 10 were paying the same rent as before the fire, 21 less rent, and 43 more rent. The premises rented were as follows: 30 shops, 23 stores, 12 offices, 3 stands, 2 restaurants, a studio, a stable, a coal yard, and a junk yard. Eight enterprising persons who took advantage of unsettled conditions to secure better quarters at a much higher rental in better locations than before the fire were doing well.

There are no such striking cases of retrenchment in business rent as appeared when families gave up housekeeping and went to board. Unless a man could resume business on a scale corresponding in some degree with the scale on which he had done businessbefore the fire, he often became a wage-earner. Where he did drop from a relatively high to a relatively low rent, his business usually suffered a corresponding decline. Many people evidently failed to secure advantageous locations, and though their actual rent was less than it had been, it was harder to meet.

The simplest and cheapest arrangement for a family engaged in business is to live in the house in which the business is carried on. Except in the case of lodging houses, this presupposes smaller rental and in most instances, smaller income, because places of business with living quarters attached are usually remote from the business centers of the town, and attract therefore a smaller volume of trade. The list of combined quarters is a long one. Of the families re-visited, 302 are known to have lived in combined quarters both before and after the fire. Data are complete for 285 of the 302 cases, and the amounts paid are given inTable 55.

TABLE 55.—COMBINED BUSINESS AND RESIDENTIAL RENTALS PAID, BEFORE AND AFTER THE FIRE, BY 285 FAMILIES RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION, WHO PAID COMBINED RENTALS IN BOTH PERIODS

The quarters secured by the payment of the above rentals include 200 premises with from 1 to 120 rooms; 37 stores with from 1 to 8 rooms attached; 25 shops with from 1 to 7 rooms; 12offices with from 1 to 9 rooms; 3 studios with from 1 to 3 rooms; 2 saloons with rooms; 2 stables with rooms; and a factory, a restaurant, a stand, and a theater, each with a room or rooms attached.

To secure these quarters, 34 families were paying the same rent as before the fire, 110 were paying less, and 141, or 49.5 per cent, were paying more than before. Of the 33 families who paid less than $10 a month after the fire, 15 had before paid higher rents. Subsequent to the disaster each of these families rented ground in an out of the way place, and had put up a shack for a factory or utilized a refugee cottage for shop and residence.

Rents have been gone into in detail because, more than any other item, they show the far-reaching family changes brought about by the disaster. Astonishing, indeed, is the adaptability of families whose quarters, from being one room, became seven; or from being eight, became one; whose rent jumped from $20 for a restaurant and two rooms before the fire, to $175 for a restaurant and one room afterwards; or who, having lived for years in a twelve-room house for $35, dropped after the fire, to a $7.50 ground rent for space for a three-room shack.

As conditions in San Francisco approach more and more nearly what they were before the fire,[158]it is to be hoped that the families can better see how to adjust their efforts so that business will yield at least a fair living. The details of many of these long-continued struggles of adjustment are striking, not to say dramatic, and it is to be regretted that the following pages must deal rather with the general features of the contest and, for sake of compactness, omit much that would serve to clothe the dry bones of statistics with living flesh.

[158]It may be that the steady growth which San Francisco is destined to make will prevent the rent of business premises ever falling to before-fire levels.

The Rehabilitation Committee made 4,736 grants to as many families to enable them to resume business of 219 different kinds. The 894 families re-visited are a little less than 20 per cent of the whole number. In the grants made to these, 126 occupations are represented.

Grants were confined almost entirely to re-establishing families in a line of business in which they had been engaged as proprietors. A departure from this rule was for good cause, such as the death or injury of the former head of the business, or a change in trade conditions. The number of exceptions is 75, or 8.4 per cent of the whole number of re-visited families receiving grants. They are: 28 wage-earners and six housewives given grants to enter business; and 41 former proprietors aided to re-engage in business in an entirely different line.

In 79 cases it was recognized at the time the grants were made that it would be impracticable to reinstate the applicant on the before-fire scale. In such cases it was hoped that business would be successful enough on a small scale to admit of gradual expansion.Table 56shows the occupations for which grants were most frequently given.

TABLE 56.—PROPOSED OCCUPATION OF APPLICANTS RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION

Among the 267 cases entered in the table opposite “other occupations,” there were 61 occupations with only one representativeeach, and 49 with from two to thirteen representatives each.

Of the 2,032 applicants for business rehabilitation considered by the business committee, 464, or about 23 per cent, were refused business aid, though many who were judged not to be suitable candidates for business rehabilitation were given aid for other purposes. This severe weeding out of candidates for one definite, specialized form of aid had this result, that those aided were a group homogeneous to a high degree. This fact was voiced often by the investigators during the progress of the work and by the staff that did the re-visiting in 1908, and was mirrored in the uniform reports filed by all these visitors. The uniformity shown in the records was not due to superficial inquiries, for data were unusually full and often included side-lights on the situation thrown by old friends, former business associates, former landlords, and other references. A further indication that the business group was looked on as being practically homogeneous is the fact that there were so many unconditional grants of $250. The phenomenon of so many of the grants being for exactly $250 may have been due in part to the effort to make the average grant not more than one-half[159]of what was the established $500 maximum grant, or may have been a reflection of the committee’s impression that there was little to distinguish many of the applicants, one from another, either as to plight or as to recuperative power.

[159]SeePart II,p. 129, for the result of limiting a committee’s power to make grants larger in amount than $500.

The applicants that received aid were almost uniformly persons who had had successful business experience. Most had founded their own enterprises; none, as far as the records show, had come into his holding by inheritance, as might have been the case in an older city; and few by purchase of an established business. There were but few of the applicants who had occupied for any great length of time the place burned out. A shifting population and the resultant changes in minor business centers had been the instruments by which the less fit had been to a great extent eliminated in the years preceding the disaster.

The nature of the occupations which the 894 re-visited families that were given aid proposed, with the assistance of the committee, to re-enter, or, in a few cases, to enter for the first time, has already been shown. How many of these families, at the time of the re-visit in 1908, nearly two years later, had succeeded in getting into and continuing in business? The answer to this question will go far toward showing the success or failure of the work of business rehabilitation.

Data showing the status of the grantees in 1908 are presented inTable 57and thechartwhich follows.

TABLE 57.—BUSINESS AND EMPLOYMENT STATUS AT THE TIME OF THE RE-VISIT, OF APPLICANTS RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION

[160]This group includes 29 applicants who were known to have died before the time of the re-visit.

Thetableandchartshow what the Relief Survey visitors found in 1908. They found 543, or 60.7 per cent, of the families in business; 507 in exactly the kind of business contemplated by the grant, and 36 in business of another sort. A much smaller group, 95, or 10.6 per cent of the total, were engaged in gainful occupations, but not as proprietors. Of these 95, 66 were employed in the same business, and 29 in a different line of business than before the fire. There remain 256, or 28.7 per cent of the total number, who were not in business or employed. The visitors found that of this last group 36 were housewives; eight were unsettled, their affairs being in a transition state; 33 were dependent; 31 were known to have left San Francisco; 29 wereknown to have died; and 119 were not to be found for a personal interview by the visitors. Of this latter number, 75 had dropped completely out of sight.

BUSINESS AND EMPLOYMENT STATUS AT THE TIME OF THE RE-VISIT,OF 894 APPLICANTS RECEIVING BUSINESS REHABILITATION

Of the 351 found not to be in business at the time of the revisit, 140 are known to have started in business and then dropped out. The remaining 211, as far as the records show,—some no doubt for the best, and others for the flimsiest of reasons,—failed even to get into business.

As has been shown in the preceding section, some of the families aided were as a result of rehabilitation successfully established in business, while others either did not embark at all in business ventures or began business only to discontinue. It is important to determine as far as possible the causes that resulted in success in some cases and in failure in others. Among the questions which, in the judgment of the writer, should be considered in this connection, are the following:

1. Was the grant made in a manner suited to the need of the case?

2. Was the grant timely?

3. Was the grant adequate?

4. Was the location chosen for business a good one?

5. Was the applicant handicapped by ill health of himself or family?

6. Did the applicant begin business with sufficient capital?

It will be noted that the first three questions relate to the deliberate action of the Committee, and involve a judging of its work by the reviewer. Question 4 relates to the applicant’s ability to secure or his own good fortune in securing proper quarters, and also involves a judgment by the reviewer. Questions 5 and 6 relate to the circumstances of the applicant.

The reviewer for the Relief Survey in 1908 found in 21 case records strong internal evidence to the effect that the grant had not been made in the proper manner. Appropriate safeguards had not been provided to assure the carrying out of the plan. Of the 21 families, 12 failed to start in business, one started and gave up, and only eight were in business in 1908.

Ignoring those who managed to make a start, let us briefly consider the 12 who failed to do so. A woman who planned to separate from her husband was granted money to establish a rooming house to support herself and baby. By mistake the money was handed to the husband, who kept it and turned her and the child out of the house. She then obtained a divorce but she never recovered the money. A tailor, sixty-one, who claimed he was “afraid of the high rents,” spent his grant for living expenses. The visitor could see no reason why he should not have made a start. In the other 10 cases there was serious illness or disability in the families, so the grants were spent to meet doctors’, hospital, or undertakers’ bills. In each instance the expenditure was an error of judgment on the part of the beneficiary, as he might have made a second claim on the relief fund for medical aid until his business should be on a paying basis. It showed a hesitancy in applying for relief to be expected on the part of those whose lifelong habit was to be entirely independent. The 12 families could have been started in business if the expenditure of the grants had been supervised by a third person acting as agent of the committee.

Cigar store of an Italian crippleStore owned by a German-Swiss coupleBusiness Rehabilitation

Cigar store of an Italian cripple

Store owned by a German-Swiss couple

Business Rehabilitation

The policy of supervision should not have been extended to all business cases, for the applicants were of all the classes seeking aid the ones best fitted to put money to good use. But supervisionmight well have been extended to all the families which carried obvious burdens of illness or such handicaps as advancing years, a visionary outlook, or a lack of initiative. The advantages to be derived from adequate supervision are shown by the experience of 35 cases re-visited other than the 21 mentioned above. In all of these 35 cases the results were mutually satisfactory. In some cases the supervision was found to have gone no further than the committee’s seeing that a plan was perfected and a location secured; in others to the extent that an applicant was not allowed to handle the grant money, it being expended on his behalf by one of the committee’s visitors, by some other organization, or by a personal friend acting as trustee. Consequently, the 35 started business, and of the 33 found by the Relief Survey visitors, 23 were still in business.

Guidance in expenditure would undoubtedly have secured the permanent re-establishment of many a family that through no fault of its own had dropped hopelessly behind in the race. A supervised payment by instalments, payments subsequent to a first instalment being conditional on a square business start having been made, provided that the first instalment had been adequate for a start, would have resulted in the canceling of second instalments on grants made to persons with no original intention of re-entering business or with changed plans.

The second question, “Was the grant timely?” cannot be answered by a positive “yes” or “no,” as the elusive personal equation makes assertions fallible. In some cases the beneficiary could with reason claim that earlier aid would have been more effective.

There were a number of cases in which it seems obvious that the grants were unnecessarily and unduly delayed. Twenty-two of these families, notwithstanding the obstacle, were in business; the only comment to be made is that some enterprising and refined families were left to endure the hardships of camp life months after they might have been engaged in independent business, had the machinery and the funds been available.

Among applicants who started in business and later dropped out there was one man so old that results would probably have been the same if there had been no delay. In three other instances thegrants were, in the opinion of the reviewer, inadequate as well as delayed, a combination well calculated to bring about failure.

Among the families whose grants were delayed and who did not even start in business there was one man whose grant was delayed for six months, because the check was accidentally delivered to another person of the same name. This man claimed to have lost good opportunities for starting. Another grant was delayed forty days, not an unusual length of time, but in the interval the subjects, a refined American woman and her elderly husband, had suffered irreparably. The wife had injured herself doing unsuitable work and had died, leaving the man powerless to open the rooming house they had planned together. Another applicant, one of the many whose cases were shelved from three to four months during the dispiriting period of arrested progress, had a friend who was ready at the time of the application to loan money to add to the relief grant for starting a notion store. Three months later the friend’s circumstances had changed, and with the relief money alone the applicant dared not make the venture. The predicament of three other applicants was much the same. By the time they received their business grants, late in the winter of 1906, every cent of their insurance money had been used for living expenses. Another illustrative story is that of a German cobbler with a frail wife and two young children, who after the disaster had $100 in savings. He bought tools, but as he could not support his family by cobbling alone and his savings were gone, he asked for a business grant. When he was finally given $200 to stock a small shop with shoes to sell, he and his family had been sleeping on the floor for six months.

Inadequate aid, in the estimation of many of the applicants, was the one stumbling block in the path to satisfactory re-establishment. This question, like the two which have preceded it, must be recognized as having an illusory quality. In the opinion of the reviewer the complaint of inadequacy was justified in slightly over 100 cases, in about three-fourths of which the grants were lower than the average grant of $247.

Of the 894 grants under consideration, only 52 were for $500[161]or over, and 162 grants, or nearly one-fifth of the total,were for exactly $250, from which it appears that the latter figure was firmly lodged in the minds of the disbursers of the fund. But one in nine of the re-visited applicants who received business rehabilitation, received grants for other purposes. The average amount given to those who did receive such subsidiary aid was $83.75.

[161]SeePart II,pp. 128-129, for explanation of limitation of grants to less than $500.

The ultra-cautious policy of the initial rehabilitation work was early changed. Between June 1 and July 7, 1906, 21 checks for more than $100 each had been drawn for business rehabilitation, the two highest being each for $400. By the middle of July, four checks for $500 had been drawn for business cases. Before the end of July, a $900 business loan was made. A scanning of the early case records shows that the committeemen were careful to give the exact amount needed.

During the third rehabilitation period the size of the business grants was much smaller than in the preceding period, two-fifths of the grants being under $100 each and four-fifths less than $200. The average grant for the 123 re-visited cases which had been passed during the second period was $305.77; for the 73 passed during the third period, $191.16; for the 698 passed during the fourth period, $242.26. Of applicants who received aid in the third period, the period of arrested progress, when the grants were small, a materially smaller proportion were in business at the time of the review, than of those who received grants in the second and fourth periods.

A few examples show the fate of some applicants who were given prompt, but apparently inadequate aid.

An elderly woman who applied for $250 for a rooming house was given $100. She is doing well, but had to incur a heavy debt which by close management, hard work, and with great mental anxiety she has been able to pay off.

A family of five, the father sixty-three, the mother fifty-seven, and their children, were given $150 for a rooming house. They took a six-room flat and by subletting two rooms met their rent. But their plan was to take a larger house which would bring in enough to provide more than the equivalent of rent andwhich with the supplementary small wages of a son and daughter in their teens, would have made a fair income.

A tailor was given $125 to add to his own limited resources in order to open a shop, but as he couldn’t make good he sold his shop and is now a bushelman.

After the fire there was naturally for a time a scarcity of desirable locations for business. With ready money in hand, those applicants who were keen to judge and prompt to act secured the best places, while many were left to take locations with which they were not satisfied and which proved to be unprofitable.

In some instances locations good at first became undesirable through the shifting of the population; certain business centers proved to be but temporary and had to be abandoned like a sinking ship by all who had begun business there. The man who did not have money to move when his first location proved unfit, had to fail or discontinue.

The proportion of re-visited applicants who, having been assisted to engage in business, were still in business, was materially larger among those applicants who, in the judgment of the reviewer, secured satisfactory locations than among those whose locations seemed less favorable. As is suggested in the preceding sentence, the quality of a business location is largely a matter of opinion. If a business succeeds it is easy to conclude that its location is good; if it fails a poor location is a ready excuse. Here, again, a definite estimate is made nugatory by the intrusion of underlying queries relative to the applicants. How adaptable were they? How far sighted? How much initiative had they? To such as were lacking in any of these qualities a favorable location did not always mean success.

Serious illness in the family tended, of course, to interfere with the carrying out of a business plan. The outcome of business rehabilitation in cases where there was no serious handicap of this nature, and in those where such a handicap existed, is shown byTable 58.

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