Chapter 7

[62]Compare date with date given in heading ofTable 12. “April 26” appears in official reports as included in each of the first two periods, and probably was actually so included.

These figures are based, not on a study of individual cases, but on lists and registers kept by the various committees in charge of transportation. Although they probably are not absolutelycorrect, they are sufficiently exact for the present purpose. The term Pacific States in the following table includes the tier of states from Montana to New Mexico; all east of them is called East. Alaska and British Columbia destinations are included in Pacific States, and eastern Canadian and European points are included in East. The number of persons sent to such points was very small.

The following table shows the number carried for all periods, exclusive of those carried to suburban points.

TABLE 14.—PERSONS SENT FROM SAN FRANCISCO, BY PERIOD AND BY GENERAL DESTINATION, APRIL 26, 1906, TO JUNE, 1908[63]

[63]Exact information relative to the number of persons sent from San Francisco during the first period, from April 18 to April 26, and their destination, is not available. The figures showing the number of and destination of persons given free transportation by the Southern Pacific Railroad are given inTable 12,p. 58.[64]Sent to Porto Rico in October, 9; in November, 50.[65]Fewer than 1 per day.

[64]Sent to Porto Rico in October, 9; in November, 50.

[65]Fewer than 1 per day.

TABLE 15.—TERMS OF TRANSPORTATION OF PERSONS SENT FROM SAN FRANCISCO IN SECOND AND THIRD PERIODS

TABLE 16.—DESTINATION OF PERSONS SENT FROM SAN FRANCISCO IN SECOND AND THIRD PERIODS

TABLE 17.—VALUE AT REDUCED RATES OF TRANSPORTATION FURNISHED THROUGH THE COMMITTEE

In April in San Francisco, the weather being temperate and dry, shelter for the homeless may properly be considered an easy third in order of importance in the supplying of relief. The first night after the earthquake the people who had been driven from their homes by fire or by fear of another shock, sought rest in the public squares and parks, in vacant lots and in military reservations. Bedding was the necessity carried from their homes by many refugees who expected to return to them after the danger was past. Each family took possession of the first spot available. The more fortunate separated themselves from other families by means of trunks or boxes, or by a sheet or blanket thrown over a pole that rested on two stakes driven into the ground. As the hours passed a few real tents were secured, and shacks were made out of loose boards, tin cans, and sheet iron. Soon, tents from the army stores and from private sources were provided in increasing numbers and were set up with varying degrees of order.

Two hundred thousand persons came out from the burned district homeless, of whom possibly 75,000 left the city. These latter are included in the number of refugees that sought transportation, as shown in the preceding section. Shelter was found in some parts of the city for a large number through the hospitality of friends or strangers, through payment for lodging in cash or credit, or through the use of unoccupied houses. Two thousand persons found shelter in vacant houses through the efforts of the police. The capacity to house the needy was swelled by the use of basements,attics, and barns. The number of the homeless was increased to some extent by the general rise in rentals, which was great in certain parts of the city and which forced a small number of people into the ranks of applicants for shelter. During the first two weeks perhaps a thousand persons had no shelter but what they could find in the burned district amid the ruins or on wharves.

Tents were provided in the first days by voluntary agencies, by the sub-committee on housing the homeless, by the army, and by the American National Red Cross. The first named committee, which was one of those hastily appointed by the Citizens’ Committee immediately after the disaster, also built barracks. It set to work with great energy, but with complete independence of any other committee, especially of the Finance Committee and of the committees on relief of the hungry and on transportation, whose work it therefore overlapped. It appointed another sub-committee, on roofing the homeless, which canvassed the city for vacant houses and rooms and then induced but few persons to make use of its finds. It formulated plans for the construction of two permanent camps and made recommendations to the army to place all the homeless in Golden Gate Park, to which park it had as early as April 20, assisted by an army officer, hauled lumber for the building of barracks, for the flooring of tents, and for latrines.

An administration headquartersCamp No. 6, The Speedway, showing barracksCamps in Golden Gate Park

An administration headquarters

Camp No. 6, The Speedway, showing barracks

Camps in Golden Gate Park

This committee was discharged from duty, on request of its chairman, two weeks after its appointment, but its members continued to incur unauthorized expense for at least four weeks longer. The committee made such a fine showing for speed that its work got ready recognition, speed in those first days being at a premium; but its lack of deliberation led to the embarrassment of the relief authorities. The barracks could not be connected with street sewers because they were situated on low ground, so later there was difficulty in disposing of waste and surface water. One of the camps, Camp 6, could not be given fire protection, and both camps had to have heavy additions made to the initial expenditures to secure greater privacy and protection against drafts. In them the refugees were brought into an association so close as to be either demoralizing or humiliating. Both camps would probably soon have been closed if the authorities had felt justified in abandoning them after the largeexpenditure made. The initial mistake was to erect barracks during the emergency period. Tents, which the army and the American National Red Cross stood ready to provide, were much more practical. They could be moved at small expense from place to place, and until the rainy season set in they furnished sufficient shelter. Tents, not barracks, were the need of the emergency period.

The two barracks built in Golden Gate Park by the committee on housing the homeless were No. 1, known later as Camp 5, near the Children’s Playground, and No. 2, known later as Camp 6, or the Speedway Camp. Camp 5 consisted of 18 buildings with 16 two-room apartments in each, separated by a partition only 8 feet high. The rooms were 10 feet square—a front room with a window and a door and a rear room with no window or outside door. Camp 6 was of the same type of construction and consisted of 10 barracks and separate buildings for hospital, laundry, and other general purposes. The barracks of Camp 5 were occupied from the first of May to the middle of December; those of Camp 6 from June 1 to the latter part of August of the following year.

As late as the end of May General Greely reported that he could not get sufficient data on which to base housing recommendations. The first registration had shown that a little over a fourth of the applicants to the food stations were living at the same address when they were registered as on April 17, the day before the earthquake. In a few cases these people were no doubt housed in tents or shacks on the site of their burned homes. But most of them had not lost their homes or personal effects, though they had been affected by the disaster in other ways. They had lost their work, or had suffered some injury in health from the shock, or, merely demoralized by the general confusion and the abundance of free provisions, had assumed a mental attitude of dependence not really justified. Most of this last class, to be sure, did not survive the registration, but there were no doubt some who were not weeded out until after the canvass had been made. Sixteen per cent more are known to have been living in houses at the time of the registration, but as their addresses on April 17 were not given, it is impossible to know whether or not they had been driven out of their homes by the disaster.

TABLE 18.—HOUSING OF REGISTERED FAMILIES, BY CIVIL SECTIONS, MAY, 1906. NUMBERS

TABLE 19.—HOUSING OF REGISTERED FAMILIES, BY CIVIL SECTIONS. PERCENTAGES, BASED ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF FAMILIES WHOSE ADDRESSES IN MAY, 1906, WERE GIVEN

Less than a fourth of the 19,438 registered[66]were living in tents or shacks. These 4,365 families or parties included some19,000 individuals. As the population of the “official camps”[67]outside of Golden Gate Park (which was not included in the registration) was less than 8,500 at the time, and as it was wellknown that some of the people in the permanent camps were already providing their own food, it is evident that in the early days of May about one-half of the registered tent and shack dwellers were in the unofficial, unsupervised camps and isolated makeshifts for shelter which were one of the most difficult problems of the situation. The registration card did not ask what the character of the dwelling was, and for this reason, as has already been said, the proportion of persons in tents and shacks was no doubt understated, since the description given by the enumerator of the “permanent location” of the family may not always have suggested, when it should, a tent or a shack to the tabulator.

[66]SeeTable 7,p. 45.[67]SeePart I,p. 78ff.

[66]SeeTable 7,p. 45.

[67]SeePart I,p. 78ff.

In May about a third of all were living in houses which were not their homes on April 17. These families, together with those who were living in tents and shacks, made up 55.8 per cent of the total. Considerably over half, therefore, of those who were receiving rations in the middle of May had presumably been burned out of their homes, or “shocked out,” as one of them put it. Many of those who had found house shelter were living under very unfavorable conditions. Overcrowding does not show on the registration card, and bad sanitary conditions can only be guessed at. In 206 cases it was stated that the “house” was a basement or rear building; occasionally it was a barn.

The seven civil sections[68]naturally present contrasts in the matter of housing conditions. In Section VII only 6 per cent of the refugees were living in tents or shacks, while in Sections III and V almost half of them were. Section VII shows the highest percentage of families in houses to which they had moved after the fire, and Section IV is not far behind. The facts which come out about Section IV at first seem curious. Although it included about half of the burned area, it had the highest percentage of families living in the same place as on April 17. The unburned part of Section IV at the time of the fire probably was more thickly populated than any equal area in the city, for in other sections there were great areas either not built upon or occupied by factories,etc. This was practically one solid residence section filled mostly with flats and populated by persons employed chiefly in adjacent parts of the burned district, who thus lost employment, if not property. Although it contained several permanent camps, only 10.6 per cent of those who were receiving rations were living in tents or shacks. It is probable that 43.2 per cent who were living “at the same address” included a number of Italians on Telegraph Hill who were already back on the same house lot, though in shelters improvised from tarpaulins, boards, sheets of tin, corrugated iron, and other possible, though unusual, building materials. Most of the Italians and others who lived about Telegraph Hill had taken refuge, however, in Section III, in which a part of the Italian quarter lay.

[68]For section boundaries, seemapoppositep. 3.

Section V shows the condition that would be expected in both IV and V,—half the refugees in tents or shacks, only a small percentage at their former addresses, and the rest crowded into the housing accommodations nearest to their old homes. It would have been interesting to tabulate the distance between the two addresses, but this would have involved so much labor that it could not be undertaken.

The nationality of the head of the family was given in 14,963 cases, over three-fourths of all. Over two-fifths of these were native Americans; nearly one-half were Germans and Austrians, Irish, Italians, English and Scotch, and Scandinavians, of numerical importance in the order indicated; and the rest represented many different countries. The facts are shown inTable 20.

Shelters of sheets and quiltsTents and shacksEarly Shelters in Jefferson Square

Shelters of sheets and quilts

Tents and shacks

Early Shelters in Jefferson Square

It is not possible to compare these figures closely with the nationality of the population of San Francisco as given in the United States Census of 1900, because the census figures are for individuals, while these are for families, the nationality of the family being inferred from the nationality of its head. In the census figures the native born children of a German or Irish father appear as born in the United States, while in the refugee figures such a family group appears as a unit among the foreign born. In this way it is evident that if the refugee figures could have been made up on the same basis of individuals instead of families, they would have shown a considerably higher proportion than they do of native born, and a correspondingly lower proportion of nearly all the foreign nationalities. Possibly the native born children of foreigners would raise the percentage of native born among the refugees to an even higher percentage than they had in the total population of the city. A few comparisons, however, it is safe to make. The Irish and Italians are represented much more strongly among the refugees than their proportions in the population would require; while on the other hand, a population of over 10,000 Chinese[69]was represented by only 20 families drawing rations. InTable 20the nationalities are arranged in the order of their importance in the population of the city in 1900. Only the first three groups maintained the same relative position among the refugees.

[69]SeePart I,p. 95.

TABLE 20.—NATIONALITY OF POPULATION OF SAN FRANCISCO IN 1900, COMPARED WITH NATIONALITY OF HEADS OF FAMILIES AMONG REFUGEES IN 1906

[70]Total number of families for whom the nationality of the head of the family was given; in 4,475 cases this information was omitted.

TABLE 21.—NATIONALITY OF HEADS OF FAMILIES AMONG REFUGEES, BY CIVIL SECTIONS, MAY, 1906. NUMBERS

TABLE 22.—NATIONALITY OF HEADS OF FAMILIES AMONG REFUGEES, BY CIVIL SECTIONS, MAY, 1906. PERCENTAGES BASED ON THE TOTAL NUMBER OF CASES IN WHICH INFORMATION AS TO NATIVITY WAS AVAILABLE

The distribution of nationalities varies somewhat in the different sections. Sections III and VI have a considerably smaller proportion of native born than the others. Italians are conspicuously prominent in Section III and Irish in Section V. Germans and Austrians are relatively most numerous in Sections IV and VI, and least numerous in Section III; the proportion of Italian families is less than 5 per cent in all sections except III and VI; the proportion of Irish varies from 9 per cent in Section III to 23 per cent in Section V. In Section VI the nationality of over two-thirds of the families was not given, and in Section II, as has been explained, the registration was not representative of the total body of refugees within its boundaries.

The number of persons registered as having been provided with shelter was but a part of the whole. The estimated number of persons who were living in shacks and barracks on June 1 was 40,000[71]according to the census taken by General Greely; 42,000 according to the Southern Pacific Railroad; 39,000 according to a computation made for this Relief Survey.[72]Of this last number, 34,000 were in tents, 5,000 in barracks and rough shacks. There was a slight increase in the camp population in late May and in June, due to the return of refugees from Oakland and other points, but apart from this accretion the camp population was subject to slight variation.

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