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Title: San Francisco Relief Survey; the organization and methods of relief used after the earthquake and fire of April 18, 1906

Author: Charles James O'Connor

Release Date: December 21, 2017 [EBook #56217]

Language: English

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See illustration facing p. 361

The Ruins Framed in Marble

Copyright, 1913, by
The Russell Sage Foundation

PRESS OF WM. F. FELL CO.
PHILADELPHIA

[iii]

PREFACE

This Relief Survey is a compilation of studies made for the Russell Sage Foundation by a group of persons each specially qualified to conduct the inquiry and to analyze the issue. The contributors are:

Part I. Charles J. O’Connor, Ph.D., secretary of the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red Cross Funds, who was appointed on the relief force soon after the disaster.

Part II. Francis H. McLean, now secretary of the American Association of Societies for Organizing Charity; at the time of the study, field secretary of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation. He was superintendent for the Rehabilitation Committee in July and August, 1906.

Part III. Helen Swett (now Mrs. Gregorio Artieda), who was secretary of Sub-Committee VI, the business committee of the Rehabilitation Committee, from its organization November 1, 1906; before that date connected with the Associated Charities of Oakland, California. Now resident of the People’s Place settlement, San Francisco.

Part IV. James Marvin Motley, Ph.D., now associate professor of economics at Brown University; at the time of the investigation, assistant professor of economics at Leland Stanford Junior University.

Part V. Jessica Peixotto, Ph.D., assistant professor of social economics, University of California, and a member of the Central Council of the Associated Charities of San Francisco.

Part VI. Mary Roberts Coolidge, formerly associate professor of sociology, Leland Stanford Junior University; reviser of Warner’s American Charities; author of Almshouse Women, and other works.

When the six separate studies were completed, a perplexing situation was disclosed. The purpose in preparing the survey was to offer a book of ready reference for use on occasions of special[iv] emergency. The six studies would have formed a set of volumes valuable as a contribution to the literature of relief work but not adapted to the particular purpose in view. It therefore became necessary to condense the studies at the cost of cutting out material. In order to preserve certain facts in proper sequence, subject matter in a few instances has been transposed from one part to another.

The authors of the various parts have wished to express their appreciation of the help rendered by university colleagues and students. A study made by Lilian Brandt of the first registration after she had worked at relief headquarters in the late spring and early summer of 1906, has been used in part. An article by Colonel C. A. Devol, extracts from which appear in Appendix I, furnished valuable data concerning the part taken by the army, especially in receiving and distributing the relief supplies. Charities and the Commons has been drawn upon for data from articles which have not been noted in the text because their authors were so a part of the relief work itself that specific mention seemed uncalled for.

The statistics of this volume require, perhaps, a word of explanation. The quantitative material upon which the study is so largely based is derived from records, many of which were compiled in haste and under great pressure of work. The record forms themselves were properly devised primarily to aid the relief workers in abating distress, rather than as possible sources of social statistics to be compiled at some future time; and it was necessary to entrust the filling out of the records to persons most of whom were wholly without experience in work of this character. The data for the several parts of the study were, moreover, compiled by a number of persons working quite independently of one another.

Under these circumstances it is but natural that there should have been embodied in the report various minor inaccuracies and some real or apparent inconsistencies. Every possible effort has been made, in preparing the material for publication, to correct errors, to remove inconsistencies, and to harmonize the plan of statistical presentation as far as this could be accomplished by means of the information available.

[v]

No attempt has been made to present a comprehensive statement covering the complete disposition of the Relief Funds. It is understood that such a statement will be prepared under the direction of the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red Cross Funds. The figures showing receipts and disbursements, which appear in this volume, have been presented solely because of their bearing on the relief problems dealt with, and not by way of an accounting.

[vi]
[vii]

INTRODUCTION

The San Francisco earthquake and resultant fire ranks with the great catastrophes of the world’s history. Comparatively insignificant as was the list of the killed and injured, the annihilation of the business section of the city and of the most thickly populated residence districts brought to the bread line virtually the city’s whole population. The response of the nation and of other nations was in proportion to the magnitude of the disaster.

By a series of favoring circumstances the administration of the large fund donated fell into the hands of a committee, afterwards transformed into a corporation, on which were some of San Francisco’s ablest and broadest-minded men of affairs, as well as representatives of the rejuvenated and re-organized American National Red Cross. How at first the distinguished services of Dr. Edward T. Devine as the representative of the American National Red Cross were utilized by the local committee, and later, the no less valuable services of Ernest P. Bicknell, is told in the following pages along with the account of the splendid part played by the United States Army.

If for no other reason than that the disaster was of tremendous proportions, with relief funds correspondingly large, the value of an intensive study of the problems, methods, and results of the relief work must be very great. No such intensive study of any other American disaster of like proportions has been made. The report of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society on the relief work of the Chicago fire is the nearest approach. If one, however, reads that report he will find it to be largely a description of general methods with a thorough accounting of expenditures. The value of such an investigation as this Relief Survey inheres not only in the fact that no previous intensive study has been made of any large disaster but also in the fact that the time and the persons[viii] engaged combined to give the San Francisco relief work exceptional significance.

Since the Chicago fire, in this, as in other civilized countries, there has been a rapid evolution of social thought and action. We have become impatient of philanthropic endeavors that do not promise permanently to better conditions. In the field of relief we are discounting mere almsgiving and are fighting for constructive treatment and permanent betterment, which often involve larger relief expenditures. In serious disasters, from the Chicago fire to the San Francisco earthquake and conflagration, this spirit has more and more characterized the relief work. The idea that all moneys should be spent merely to keep the victims of a disaster from the starvation and exposure which confront them in the weeks immediately following the catastrophe is directly opposed to the spirit of modern relief measures. In other words, the idea of rehabilitation, of giving to those who have been left with the least a reasonable lift on the road to a recovery of the standard of living maintained before the disaster, constantly has grown clearer and more definite, a natural fructifying of the modern philosophy of charity.

Attention was given to rehabilitation after the Chicago fire by a special committee on housing and by one on “giving aid to persons in the purchase of tools, machinery, furniture, fixtures, or professional books.” A large part of this special work of relief consisted in aiding destitute sewing women who had lost their machines to obtain others. But in San Francisco we find the first large attempt to emphasize and develop rehabilitation.[1]

The circumstances that so happily combined to magnify the principle of rehabilitation have already been alluded to. Funds of generous proportions, capable army officers, the reorganized Red Cross, and an exceptional group of keen and broad-minded San Francisco business men,—the last a group which knew its own mind but was willing to take the advice and accept the assistance of experienced social workers,—constituted a force permeated by the spirit of modern philanthropy which wrought out the first large undertaking in rehabilitation in the United States.

[ix]

Having made clear the reasons for this Relief Survey, let us consider its several parts.

Part I presents a general picture of the emergency period following the fire, together with a description of the structure of the relief organization and the different phases through which it passed. This part serves as a background for the rehabilitation studies that follow.

Part II is a presentation of the methods of rehabilitation, followed by some facts obtained from a tabulation of the case records of the Rehabilitation Committee.

Two of the most important forms of rehabilitation, business and housing, are analyzed in detail in Parts III and IV. These parts illustrate methods, and they also show actual results of rehabilitation, which were learned by following into their homes at a later period a certain number of the families helped.

A study of the families under care of the Associated Charities since the work of the Rehabilitation Committee ceased gives the data for Part V. This was made to determine the character of the dependency, how much was due to the disaster itself, how much to faulty rehabilitation work, how much was inevitable. The work of the Associated Charities is indeed only a prolongation of the rehabilitation effort.

The last inquiry, Part VI, was into that saddest and least hopeful of all forms of rehabilitation, the permanent care of the aged and infirm. To call it rehabilitation seems a misnomer. The methods, the number of persons involved, their character, and other items are considered. Also the attempt is made to determine how far present dependence was inevitable, or accelerated, or actually caused by the change of circumstances due to the fire and to the additional burdens put upon relatives and friends who in the ordinary course of events would themselves have assumed the duty.

This summary reveals not alone what these studies contain but also what they omit. They do not comprise a complete history of the San Francisco relief work. A bird’s-eye view of that work is given in the Sixth Annual Report of the American National Red Cross. They present, rather, certain important and significant phases of rehabilitation with a sketch of the organization[x] structure. And they present these not primarily for any reason of historical interest but in the hope that they may help concretely and suggestively in solving problems of family rehabilitation in connection with disasters, small and large, which in the future may confront the American National Red Cross, citizens’ committees, and relief agencies of every kind.

The full measure of results cannot be given in this Relief Survey. The acumen of no group of investigators, no matter how broad in their sympathies, or how trained to their work, can probe to the heart of a community to find the main arteries through which it has drawn its full life. The people were sound at the core. They had an instinct for adventure. Their own sanity, their self-reliance and faith in the future made them ready to rebound from fortune’s sudden blow. But in the wearying days that followed in the wake of the first efforts at recuperation, the adventurous spirit flagged under the strain and the ugliness of life. It was then that the city called on men whom it had bred, to uphold the courage and maintain the spirit of independence of its weaker citizens. The men who responded because they treasured San Francisco, their city, have shown, as this study proves, what sustained and co-operative effort can achieve.

[xi]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

(A detailed Table of Contents precedes each part)

[xv]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[xviii]
[xix]

LIST OF TABLES

[xxv]

ORGANIZATION OF THE RELIEF WORK
Showing committees, departments, and bureaus created from April 18, 1906, to February 4, 1909[2]

Organizational chart as illustration.

PART I
ORGANIZING THE FORCE AND
EMERGENCY METHODS

Part I
ORGANIZING THE FORCE AND EMERGENCY METHODS

Large map (700 kB)

[3]

I
ORGANIZING A RELIEF FORCE

1. THE DISASTER

San Francisco is at the head of one of two narrow peninsulas which, held apart by the Golden Gate, landlock a fifty-mile length of harbor. To the west of the city is the Pacific Ocean itself and to the east, beyond the six to eight-mile reach of San Francisco Bay, such residence towns as Alameda, Oakland, and Berkeley, which merge almost into one another. Many thousands of people who use San Francisco as the center for their business, travel daily along the city’s principal thoroughfare, Market Street, to take at its foot one of the ferries which make frequent runs to the east shore and to Sausalito and Tiburon on the north beyond the Golden Gate. A smaller number go by rail to San José and other residence towns on the peninsula, and each stream is met morning and evening by one of less volume of those who reverse the process to find residence in the large city and employment beyond its boundaries.

On Wednesday morning, April 18, 1906, at twelve minutes past five o’clock, San Francisco, this city of wonderful setting, suffered an earthquake whose sensible duration was about one minute. The shock left her powerless to supply light, heat, water, drainage, to convey her people or to carry their messages; but it would not have paralyzed her activities had it not been that because of the breaking of the main water conduits, the fires, thirty of which were said to have started immediately, could not be controlled.

The fires started on both sides of Market Street, and within three hours after the earthquake, made a continuous line of flame from north of Market Street, along the water front, past the Ferry Building, south of Market Street, and along Mission Street to beyond Third Street, where was the main station of the only railroad that ran out of the city. As the fire spread to the southwest and the north, the whole population seemed cut off from escape except by going west and south within the city. Comparatively few knew during the first two days that there was a narrow but[4] safe way around the fire to the Ferry Building from which the boats were running. Many of those who did learn of this opportunity, or who wished to hazard a chance, reached the ferry and crossed the bay, but many more failed to use this means of reaching their friends and acquaintances without the city. On the second and third days small supplies of water were brought to play upon the fire, but not until the morning of Saturday the twenty-first, by the use of dynamite, was the advance of the flames stopped.

Along the general line of the city’s own growth in wealth and breadth the fire moved, destroying the larger part of the wholesale district, practically all of the retail and the shopping section, the chief financial centers, the leading hotels, and some of the public buildings. Large portions of the most expensive residence sections and multitudes of small hotels and lodging houses, together with great numbers of less expensive residences and quarters for working people, were devastated. Thickly populated districts, such as the “Latin Quarter,” Chinatown, and the section largely inhabited by the Irish, were entirely burned out.

The burned area, the very heart and vitals of the city, covered 4.7[3] square miles, on which were located 521 blocks, 13 of which were saved, 508 burned. The number of buildings destroyed was 28,188,[4] the number of persons made homeless about 200,000[5] of San Francisco’s estimated population of 450,000.

Striving to reach the Ferry Building

In Union Square, soon to be swept by flames

The Morning of the Disaster

[5]

The burned area[6] had a land front of 49,305 feet, or 9.34 miles, and a water front of 9,510 feet, or 1.80 miles, the total being 58,815 feet, or 11.14 miles. Facing this line on the unburned side were 527 buildings, of which 506 were wood, 18 brick, one stone, one adobe, and one corrugated iron. Thus the fire was stopped against a wall of buildings, 96 per cent of which were wood. About 20 per cent of the frontage was on wide streets, and the remainder, 80 per cent, on streets of ordinary width.

Apart from the larger business houses, the public buildings, and some of the residences of the wealthier citizens, the burned buildings, including the smaller hotels and lodging houses, were built of wood. Their destruction was complete. There was practically no salvage of value from the small wooden dwellings, destroyed as they were by the fire and not by the earthquake.

The loss of real and personal property has been estimated at $500,000,000,—about $1,100 per capita of the city’s population. As only $200,000,000 of insurance money is estimated to have been collected, there was a net loss of over $650 per capita. The great loss of income from non-employment, from unrentable property, and from the general cessation of business, cannot be estimated. There was quick compensation for the day laborers and other workmen connected with the building trades, but the recovery for most of the business men was to be slow and is not yet complete.

The loss of life as a result of both earthquake and fire was reported by General Greely, after careful inquiry, to be: known dead, 304; unknown dead, 194; total, 498; number seriously injured, 415. All persons within the fire zone who were lying sick either in hospitals or in their own homes were carried to places of safety. There were, of course, many unwarranted reports of tragic deaths, such as for instance that numerous men had been shot for looting and that physicians had put their patients to death rather than let them die in the flames. The federal troops arrived so promptly, and with the aid of the militia and the police patrolled the city so thoroughly, that there were few opportunities to loot. To the end of June there were but nine deaths by violence in the whole city, three of which appear to have been brought upon unoffending men by over-zealous patrols.

[6]

It can never be reckoned what it meant to the devastated city that its own people as a welded body should have manifested under the shock of the great disaster that quality of the hero which lifts him, the psychic man, above the physical and leaves him freed from himself to be spiritually at one with his community. A witness who lives in Berkeley came to the city early on the morning of the earthquake and spent that and the following day in the thick of the refugees. Nowhere along the fire lines was to be seen the least sign of panic. Women and children without a tear and with scarcely a murmur trudged weary miles, carrying handfuls of possessions, or stood silent to watch their homes destroyed. The chief signs of excitement were shown by those who were fighting the fire or who were hurrying from one place to another on official business. At the end of the second day he saw tears for the first time, the tears of a woman who may have been worn out by long tramping and by loss of sleep.

How the great deep of the common human heart was broken up when that sudden disaster came unawares on the people is borne witness to by many who had their portion of loss and by many others who came from the outside to help carry the load. One of the latter wrote to Charities and the Commons[7] a month afterwards:

The even temperature of the San Francisco region which assures mild winters and cool summers and the cessation of rains from March to October, made climatic conditions that were peculiarly favorable. There was on April 22 and again in June some inconvenience from unseasonable rain, but there was no complaint of serious discomfort by those living in the temporary shelters. The health of the refugees in general, it was frequently stated, was improved by the outdoor life. Probably thousands lived during the summer of 1906 under improved physical conditions; and even during the rains of the following winter thousands were better off in the refugee shacks than they had previously been in the poorer grade of tenements. A winter that brings but little frost and ice and that accustoms people to live with open doors and to do without artificial heat is one that simplifies the task of providing shelter for the homeless, lessens the cost, and causes but few serious delays to building work. The even temperature is also favorable for the handling of perishable food supplies, which do not need to be kept on ice.

San Francisco had an additional advantage in being an important military and naval center. As the headquarters of the department of California and of the Pacific Division of the army, it has within its boundaries three garrison posts with their reservations,—the Presidio, Fort Mason, and Fort Miley; and without, Fort Baker opposite the Presidio on the north side of the Golden Gate, Alcatraz Island facing the Golden Gate, Fort McDowell within the bay on Angel Island, and Benicia Barracks at the head of the bay. The United States Navy Department has Mare Island Navy Yard at the north end of the bay and the Naval Training Station on Yerba Buena Island. At the time of the disaster the war ships in the harbor as well as the naval stations were able to render prompt and valuable service. The army’s immediate part in fighting the fire and in guarding property, and[8] its later part in providing food, clothing, and shelter was, as is shown in the following pages, of outstanding importance.

As the people in brave and solemn silence moved out of the shattered and fire-swept centers of the city, relief societies were being formed within the city itself and in suburban towns, and citizens of places as distant as Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, hurried from the south and the north to distribute money and supplies. Many agencies, with fervor but with no concerted plan, helped to carry the relief work for the first week, converting churches into hospitals, and preparing and distributing food in unlikely but convenient places. But while sporadic groups of people worked to provide immediate aid in ignorance of one another’s efforts, the organization of the Citizens’ Committee grew.

2. TENTATIVE ORGANIZATION

At a quarter before seven o’clock on that morning of April 18, the mayor, Eugene E. Schmitz, with a small group of citizens met in the Hall of Justice, a building shattered by the earthquake and nearly surrounded by fire. As he hurried to the center of the city he overtook the federal troops which had been summoned from Fort Mason and the Presidio by General Funston, who was in command of the Pacific Division of the army during the temporary absence of General Greely.[8] The troops had been told to take orders from the mayor. Under authority from him they served as police to guard property, not to enforce a military rule. The mayor assumed almost absolute control of the city government for a time, superseding all departments and commissions. His first order was to shoot, not arrest, the looters; his second, to close the places that sold liquor. The latter wise measure was for two months strictly enforced.

The fire is approaching at the right

The Hall of Justice

The mayor named a Citizens’ Committee[9] of more than 50 persons, 25 of whom came together at three o’clock in the Hall of[9] Justice, close to the edge of the roaring tempest of flame. It was difficult to conduct business, with dynamite explosions shaking the meeting place, so in an hour’s time the mayor moved across the street to Portsmouth Square where amid boxes of dynamite and in the shadow of the monument to Robert Louis Stevenson, the transaction of business continued. The memorial, a drinking fountain in a granite base with a Spanish galleon at full sail on its summit, stood untouched. The gilt of the hardy vessel still glittered and, untarnished beneath, Stevenson’s lines: “To be honest, to be kind ... to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.”

Two hours later the mayor and his assistants moved five blocks up the steep side of Nob Hill to the Fairmont Hotel only to be dislodged the next morning from what must at first have seemed an impregnable position. Their retreat carried them eight blocks farther west to the North End Police Station, and by noon still westward to Franklin Hall on the corner of Fillmore and Bush Streets, where they could finally halt. While the citizens were holding their first meetings and the army was helping to fight the fire, the American National Red Cross was sending across the continent its representative, Dr. Edward T. Devine, who reached San Francisco April 23 with Ernest P. Bicknell. Mr. Bicknell was sent by the committee formed in Chicago for the relief of San Franciscans.

At its first meeting in the Hall of Justice the Citizens’ Committee, which was recognized immediately as a representative body, authorized the mayor to issue orders for food and other supplies. The mayor did not, however, make much use of this authority but left the conduct of the relief work to the Finance Committee, which was appointed at the first meeting, and to the other sub-committees which were formed at the following meetings. The chairman of each of these was given power to complete the membership of his committee. From the first the Finance Committee of the Citizens’ Committee, with James D. Phelan elected to be its chairman, stands out as a directing agent of relief.

Interesting items in the minutes of the second meeting of the[10] Citizens’ Committee are the announcements that there would be water in the Western Addition by one o’clock of that day, April 19, and in the Mission the following day, and that there was press boat service at the foot of Van Ness Avenue.[10]

The Citizens’ Committee continued for over two weeks to hold daily meetings, to which were submitted the Finance Committee’s reports of contributions, as well as its methods of relief expenditures. Its only function in relation to the relief work came to be to confer in order to exchange information. It was but natural, therefore, for the mayor to determine to dissolve the larger committee and leave the control of the relief work, as far as he had power to determine it, in the hands of the Finance Committee, which as is shown below had on April 25 come into effective co-operation with the army and the American National Red Cross. At the meeting on May 5, the mayor notified Mr. Phelan that the work of all the relief sub-committees but his was done, and that he should make his financial statement to the Committee on the Reconstruction of San Francisco.[11]

The Citizens’ Committee with its list of sub-committees, hurriedly created, quickly to die, gives an excellent illustration of the futility of trying to effect an elaborate organization before the measure of a disaster has been taken or the extent of the means for recovery learned.

The Finance Committee represented the citizens’ choice to which had been entrusted the local subscription of over $400,000 and the contribution from the state at large of $250,000. Its authority had been recognized by the California branch of the Red Cross, by the Massachusetts Association for Relief of California, by the New York Chamber of Commerce, and by many other relief organizations and individuals throughout the country, as well as by the President of the United States who made public his recognition of the Finance Committee as official agent of relief. The relation of the American National Red Cross to the Finance Committee was not defined during the week following the disaster.

[11]

3. UNITING OF RELIEF FORCES

On April 24, before the dissolution of the Citizens’ Committee, a momentous conference was held at Fort Mason which was attended by General Greely and General Funston representing the army; by the mayor, Mr. Phelan, Mr. de Young, and Mr. E. H. Harriman representing the citizens; and by Dr. Devine, representing the American National Red Cross and Judge W. W. Morrow representing the California Branch of the Red Cross. That a meeting was to be held to determine the jurisdiction of the Finance Committee and the best method of employing the funds, had been reported earlier in the same day to the Citizens’ Committee. At this conference, after a heated argument it was decided that the military authorities should have entire charge[12] of the relief stations and the shelters for the homeless, two divisions of work that previously had been partially carried by sub-committees of the Citizens’ Committee. It was further decided to unite the Red Cross with the Finance Committee of the Citizens’ Committee under a new title: Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds. This consolidation was immediately approved by the American National Red Cross which soon afterwards remitted $400,000 to the new committee.[13]

There were nice questions of policy involved in the determining of the relation between the army, the civil and state authorities, and the voluntary relief agencies. Tact was required and a faithful compliance with the law. April 21, at a conference of the mayor, the chief of police, General Koster, then in command of the National Guard, and General Funston, the question of the effective policing of the city had been considered.

It was agreed that the northern part of the city should be assigned to the federal troops, the central part to the National Guard, and the southern to the municipal police. The northern part was divided into six military districts. On May 2 military control was extended to the whole city, which was now divided into eight military districts, with only slight changes in their[12] boundaries; and on May 8 there was a general re-districting that resulted in six districts. These military districts have special significance for this Relief Survey because they later served as the basis for the seven geographical divisions known as civil or relief sections, which played a very important part in the relief work. These were formed on April 29 and coincided practically with the six military districts of May 8, except that military district six included civil sections VII and VIII. The civil sections were later used by the American National Red Cross, by the Executive Commission, and by the departments of Camps and Warehouses and of Relief and Rehabilitation.

The boundaries of the sections, the number of refugees registered in each, the extent of the burned district, and the location of the more important camps, are given in the map.[14] The burned district was included almost entirely in Sections IV and V. Sections I, II,[15] and III contained the largest camps. Section VI had only one official camp, and Section VII none, but there were many unsupervised tents and shacks, isolated and in groups, scattered through these two sections. In extent of territory they more than equalled the other five sections. They contained before the fire a large wage-earning population, living in small homes. This population was much increased after the fire by an influx from the burned-out part of the city.

An irresistible force had pushed relief through four broad channels. Food had first to be supplied; then clothing along with bedding and common household necessities; then shelter; and last, the means to make one’s own provision for the future. The order of relief could not be altered by any committee planning. The great primary needs had first to be met. The amounts that could be held in reserve for the purpose of essential importance, rehabilitation, depended on the sum of donations being enough to[13] leave a surplus after the cost of food, clothing, and temporary shelter had been met. In the early days the number of persons that were in the bread line and that lacked shelter was so great that it looked as if the demands for food, clothing, and other primary necessities would exhaust any possible relief fund.

The method of distribution of emergency relief is described in the following chapter, but in order to understand the animus that underlay the efforts to form an organization that should meet with public recognition, it must be borne in mind that two strong currents, representing distinct conceptions of principles of relief, flowed beneath the surface of the relief administration, sometimes the one and sometimes the other directing the general course or impeding an even progress. Such conflict between the conceptions of the relief task was as inevitable as was the demand for relief itself, and furnished probably the amount of friction necessary to wear a deep bed along which later moved a great stream of rehabilitation. The story of the first efforts to form a compact, working relief body falls almost into dramatic form. The voice of authority one day is the civic servant’s, another day the people’s, a third the military commander’s, a fourth the expert charity worker’s. The stage in turn seems held by each. But the significant fact is that underlying the methods of each is the need, recognized at different periods of time in varying degree, of meeting the demands of the situation by a grasp of rehabilitation as the definitive aim.

4. BEGINNINGS OF REHABILITATION WORK

There was no monopoly of the conception of rehabilitation as an essential part of the relief work. Before the end of April the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds had been asked to supply tools to bricklayers and to make loans to individuals. Individual members had discussed the outstanding importance of rehousing the people. Agencies and individuals acting independently of one another had likewise been making tentative efforts to restore people to self-support.

But there was one group of workers that had been free from the first to base its initial efforts on the need to measure the disaster in terms of future rehabilitation. This group, representing the[14] American National Red Cross, reinforced by the Associated Charities, had been free to do so because the responsibility of meeting the emergency was being carried by the army and by the Citizens’ Committee. Before any distinctive rehabilitation committee was appointed the office of the Red Cross was besieged by applicants who in person and by letter begged for aid to remove their families from the camp life. To some tools were supplied; to others, transportation. Until May 9, when the Finance Committee made its first appropriation of $10,000 for special relief, Dr. Devine drew on a private fund at his disposal to meet rehabilitation expenditures. For these early expenditures he was reimbursed from the first appropriation.

May 5 is a noteworthy date. The representative of the American National Red Cross then began to form a staff of rehabilitation workers, who put the date May 5 at the head of the first case record. The secretary of the Boston Associated Charities, Alice L. Higgins, was appointed secretary to Dr. Devine. Lee K. Frankel of New York became chairman of a tentative bureau of special relief.

On May 18, when the Red Cross had formulated its plans for a registration bureau and for co-operating with the army at the seven civil sections, the Special Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, or Bureau, as it was ordinarily called, got well under way, with Oscar K. Cushing as chairman. In a separate section in the next chapter the relation of this Bureau to the transportation work is told.

The Bureau started with a force of seven field agents. The Associated Charities provided the investigators, reinforced at once by local volunteer and paid relief workers and, after July 2, by a number of workers sent from east of the Sierras by the charity organization and kindred societies that had trained them. The force as a whole represented, without discrimination, various races and creeds. The Finance Committee after July 2 made an appropriation to the Associated Charities to cover the cost of administration.

Watching the fire

The fire draws near

Refugees in Jefferson Square

During the early period of the alliance between the Associated Charities and the Rehabilitation Bureau there was difficulty in the[15] adjustment of work, but the friction was soon overcome and until July, 1907, under the various régimes, the Associated Charities continued to be an effective part of the general rehabilitation machinery. The work of the Bureau grew fast, but it grew naturally as an outcome of the demands of the situation itself, and when on June 29, as is stated on page 21, the Finance Committee appointed its own Rehabilitation Committee,[16] the new committee was able to take over the work of the Bureau without any waste of effort.

Early in May, when the Red Cross Rehabilitation Bureau was being organized, the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds, stimulated by insistent requests that it should state its plans, called on Dr. Devine, one of its members, to make recommendations for future work. The New York Chamber of Commerce, through its representative, James D. Hague, and the Massachusetts Association for the Relief of California through its representative Jacob Furth, were urging that their funds be used as far as possible to provide permanent relief.

Dr. Devine, who already had carefully considered with his staff of Red Cross workers the general question of rehabilitation, in a report submitted on May 4 made seven recommendations, which were considered by a special committee consisting of the governor, Archbishop Riordan, Rabbi Voorsanger, E. H. Harriman, and Dr. Devine. The first six recommendations were accepted by the Finance Committee; the last was rejected. They read:

In making its own report this special committee said it assumed “that the supply of food and clothing will be continued until the absolute need in these directions is met.” It was not prepared to take action on the seventh recommendation.

At the end of May, no action as a result of the recommendations having been taken, Dr. Devine urged the Finance Committee to appoint the committee of seven suggested in the fifth recommendation, which had been authorized the first of the month, so that the work of providing shelter more adequate than that provided by the tents should be begun. For consideration of more permanent forms of rehabilitation, he thought it might be necessary to have still another committee.

His advice to the Finance Committee was supplemented on June 4 by a letter to the chairman, in which he drew a general outline of the relief course that should be taken. It reiterates in more specific form the advice given in May. The points emphasized were:

[17]

To quote the letter:

The mayor, who was futilely trying to determine relief policies, in a conference with Mr. Phelan a few days later suggested the importance of appointing the committee urged by Dr. Devine. He said that he might ask the municipal board of supervisors to appoint a committee on relief and rehabilitation. This action, however, he did not take.

General Greely at this time also expressed his appreciation of the need of a change of relief policy.[19] He and Dr. Devine agreed as to the next steps to be taken, his point of view concurring with that expressed in the letter just quoted. He counseled specifically a separation of questions of administration, sanitation, and relief, and a thorough co-operation with the municipality in all matters affecting the administrative policy and sanitation of the camps. He said further that as an army officer was familiar with but two aspects of the relief problem,—the distribution of supplies and the care of camps,—the Finance Committee of the Relief and Red Cross Funds should appoint an executive committee, which should be prepared after July 1 to relieve the army of responsibility.

He asked three of his officers who had been carrying on the relief work to submit a plan for its further conduct. The resultant plan, submitted by General Greely to the Finance Committee, was necessarily a reflex of the military experience of its framers. Though it was incited by an appreciation of the fact that the emergency relief period must be superseded by the period for permanent adjustment, the plan provided for yet further distribution of necessities rather than in any comprehensive way for housing and rehabilitation. It called for the organizing of a bureau with a paid personnel. The chief of the bureau was to be accountable to the mayor, and was to have under him four sub-chiefs, three of whom should be army officers, each in charge of a department,—the departments of distribution and supply, administration, general superintendence, and finance.

[19]

General Greely, realizing the difficulty of having a suitable man appointed as chief, made later the substitute suggestion of a commission of three. The mayor and General Greely were present by invitation at a meeting of the Finance Committee when the substitute plan was considered. The attitude of the mayor during this month of June was one of serious interference. The Finance Committee naturally did not wish to have any public disagreement with him, and with the knowledge that the army was shortly to be withdrawn from control of relief work it seemed wise as a compromise to accept General Greely’s suggestion of a commission rather than a chief who should be responsible solely to the mayor. The decision was reached, therefore, for the Finance Committee to appoint an Executive Commission of three members, one member to represent the mayor, a second, the American National Red Cross, and a third, the Finance Committee itself.

5. AN INTERLUDE

On June 22, at a meeting of the Finance Committee at which 11 of the 21 members were present, announcement was made that the mayor had appointed a political friend as his representative on the Executive Commission, and the American National Red Cross, Dr. Devine. Dr. Devine at the time of the meeting was absent in the East. The Committee had therefore to make its appointment. After a discussion, which later became public, several men were nominated for appointment, two of whom possessed the confidence of the community on account of their honorable standing, native ability, readiness freely to serve the public, and knowledge gained of the relief situation through arduous volunteer work. The man elected, by a vote of six to four, was a politician with no previous experience in the relief work. A scrutiny of the records shows on the part of these local members of the Executive Commission no indication of effort to use their positions to further political ends, and one of the two returned to the Finance Committee the salary of $500 to which he was entitled as a member of the Commission. There is no record of lack of harmony, merely the indication of an ineptitude on their part to meet the needs of the distressed community.

The attitude of the Finance Committee was one of detachment[20] from, or one might say, suspicion of the Executive Commission. It refused to define the scope of the Commission’s work, but directed it to organize and submit a plan of work for approval, and, for confirmation, the names of the employes it wished to appoint. The members who had forced the election of a feeble representative, realizing the mistake of their policy, agreed to restrict the powers of the Commission, and were ready to vote to abolish it at the end of the month.

The irony of the situation lay in the fact that the chairman of the Commission, Dr. Devine (who accepted no salary), and its secretary, Ernest P. Bicknell (who likewise received no salary), presented for consideration a plan of work which in substance was the same as that submitted by the chairman early in June to the Finance Committee and to General Greely.

The plan[20] called again for a regulation of camps, warehouses, the hot meal kitchens, the care of the sick in hospitals, and for making provision for housing, loans, and special relief. Unlike a rolling stone, however, to reiterate plans meant to gather moss, so a new suggestion may be noted. It was, that the civilian chairmen of the seven sections should be men on salary, giving their entire time, and responsible to the Commission until relieved. Their duties should include distribution of clothing, meal tickets, and other relief, and the carrying out of the second registration[21] then in progress.

Recommendation was made by the Commission that all executive work should devolve on it, and that it should be held responsible for initiating relief measures.

The Finance Committee approved the plan in general, with the exception that the question of special relief be left for future decision and that no action be taken on housing until further information had been collected. It did decide, specifically, that the rehabilitation work should continue in charge of Dr. Devine as representative of the Red Cross, and should not be transferred to the Executive Commission while final decision was pending.

The first bakery rebuilt

A cheerful kitchen

Supplying Food Under Difficulties

The Executive Commission got rather beaten round the[21] bush. It was permitted to expend certain appropriations for sanitation, the care of camps, and the distribution of food, clothing, and other supplies, under direction of its chairman and a group of army officers. The relation of the army to the new Commission was practically what it had before been to the Red Cross representative. Under the military régime Major A. J. Gaston was commanding officer of permanent camps; under the new régime he was general superintendent of camps with authority to appoint all camp employes.

In the latter part of June Mr. Phelan, acting on Dr. Devine’s suggestion that the Finance Committee should appoint a Rehabilitation Committee of its own to supersede the work of the special Rehabilitation Bureau, did appoint such a committee with Dr. Devine as chairman and Archbishop Riordan,[22] Bishop Nichols,[23] Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, O. K. Cushing, F. W. Dohrmann, and Dr. John Gallwey as members. Its scope was defined as including “all aid” to be given to individuals or families other than food or ordinary clothing. It superseded, as has been already stated,[24] the Red Cross Rehabilitation Bureau and took over the latter’s unexpended balance. The Bureau had expended $18,599.70 for 840 applicants.

The Rehabilitation Committee met in Hamilton School July 2, two and a half months after the beginning of the relief work in San Francisco. Mr. Bicknell was elected secretary, Mr. Cushing, treasurer, the latter, with the chairman, having authority to sign checks in the name of the Committee. When Dr. Devine returned to New York, August 1, Mr. Bicknell was appointed a member of the Committee and Mr. Dohrmann then became chairman, a position he was to hold from the first of August, 1906, until the close of the rehabilitation work.

During June and July, to repeat, the pressure to give food and temporary shelter was yielding to the pressure to furnish permanent shelter and other means of rehabilitation. The problem of housing was very complicated. No one knew how far shelter would be provided by private enterprise; no one knew whether[22] manufacturing plants and wholesale and retail business would seek old locations; no one knew where the shifting population would settle. There was delay in collecting insurance, uncertainty as to the land, labor, and materials available and as to the future street car service and water and sewer connections. There was difference of opinion as to whether the subsidized building should be of a permanent or temporary character, of scattered individual dwellings or large blocks, as to whether financial aid should be in the form of bonuses or of loans.

One of the minor notes of irony in this mid-summer situation lies in the fact that the Finance Committee referred to its own Rehabilitation Committee for consideration and report the housing suggestion of one of its members, M. H. de Young, and that the report that followed, July 10, was signed by Dr. Devine as chairman both of the Rehabilitation Committee and of the Executive Commission.[25]

Mr. de Young’s suggestion was that a donation, or as it was commonly called, a bonus, of not more than $500[26] in any case, be made in behalf of any resident whose house had been destroyed, provided that the $500 represented not more than one-third of the value of the house to be built, and that it be paid to the contractor after the house was completed and was clear of liens.

The resultant report as submitted stated that the Executive Commission had, with the approval of the Finance Committee, appointed a board of consulting architects and builders who offered their services as expert counsel on general plans and on designs for suitable dwellings. It also stated that the matter had been carefully considered by the Rehabilitation Committee and the Executive Commission, and that the bonus plan was recommended for such workingmen as could not secure sufficient funds from banks, building and loan associations, or from other business or private sources.

Attention was called to the fact that the Rehabilitation Committee was already studying the general situation so as to estimate how many loans[27] were likely to be called for. It was[23] further stated that there was no anticipation that the bonus plan would carry far in providing shelter for the families living in tents, and that no inclusive plan could be framed to provide housing for all the homeless.

It was recognized, moreover, that first in order of importance came provision of shelter for the aged, the infirm, the invalided, and the other adult dependents who had become permanent city charges. For these the recommendation was to erect permanent buildings on the cottage pavilion plan to house 1,000 persons; the cost of building to be met from the fund, the maintenance to be left to the city. It was recognized that there were two possible alternate plans; namely, to care for the dependent group in existing private institutions, or to board its members in private families. A marked advantage of the first plan was that it provided a permanent addition to the city’s charitable institutions. The suggestion was intended to supplement what was already being done in the way of giving care to the sick in hospitals.

It was further recognized that there should be quick effort made to supply dwellings for the 5,000 persons who before the disaster had paid moderate rentals, but who were housed in tents or other temporary shelters. It was also necessary to make provision for a possible 5,000 persons who were out of the city. No accurate estimate had been or could be made of those who, independent of aid, had readjusted themselves.

The proposal made in behalf of the possible 10,000, a proposal that touched the kernel of the big relief problem, was to use money lying idle to build houses which should be sold on the instalment plan, or rented to families that had been living in San Francisco on April 17. Shelter had to be provided against the rainy season in order that there might be held in San Francisco a population of working people. The proposal was intended also to carry to a workingman the opportunity to own a house of such character as should serve to set a standard for sanitary and attractive dwellings. Through the carrying out of this scheme there were to be brought into happy co-operation the architects, the builders, the municipality, and the Finance Committee itself. The first would supply skill and taste; the second, quick and moderate priced building; the third, suitable conditions of light,[24] sanitation, ventilation, and fire protection; the fourth, capital and business security. To assure the last provision there was a suggestion of the creation of a new corporation to consist of the mayor, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the representative of the American National Red Cross, and representatives from the Executive Commission and the Rehabilitation Committee, all of whom were to be named by the Finance Committee.

The need to incorporate became more imperative when the plans to furnish shelter took, by July 15, the following definite shape:

Before passing on to the matter of the incorporation of the funds, one must record the final act of the Executive Commission. On July 31, after six weeks of precarious, and one might almost say uneventful life, the Commission voted to turn its records over to the corporation just created, and to make an inventory of its supplies and equipment for transfer to the same body.

June and July mark a clearly defined transition period. In spite of the politically directed episode of the abortive Commission, rehabilitation plans were being successfully shaped, even though the ordeals of the withdrawing of the army as a factor in[25] relief administration and the introducing of the political appointees were being faced. In spite of temporary set-backs, the work was getting on a strictly business basis. Delays meant suffering, yet ultimate community gain, because the Rehabilitation Committee, in keeping outside the province of the Executive Commission, drew to itself the best experienced service that was available, and escaped the danger of being directed or diverted by any force other than that controlled by right motives.

6. INCORPORATION OF THE FUNDS

Now to return to the suggestion of incorporation. From as early a date as May 4 the question of the incorporation of the relief funds had been discussed within and without the Finance Committee. The New York Chamber of Commerce as a large custodian of relief funds had the matter brought personally to the attention of members of the Finance Committee through its representative, James D. Hague, and in writing by its president, the late Morris K. Jessup. The latter stated, however, that the determining of the question of incorporation lay with the Finance Committee. Correspondence in early July with Mr. Hague, the returned envoy, showed that there was in contemplation the incorporating of an independent body of men, the majority of whom should be appointed by the chairman of the Finance Committee. To this proposed corporation it was suggested should be transferred the $500,000 then held by the Chamber of Commerce, with such other moneys as might be entrusted to it.

If such a plan had been carried out there would have been two authorized bodies administering relief with an encouragement to other foreign custodians of funds to create similar independent agencies. The pressure to incorporate came therefore from without because of the jealous guardianship of funds by the non-local contributors; from within because of the exigency of the situation itself.

In the month of July, as has been said, the imminent need was known to be to provide suitable shelter against the fall and winter rains. The members of the Finance Committee considered the question of incorporation from the standpoint of the provision of a body legally empowered to acquire land and to loan money[26] for building purposes. As a committee, therefore, it decided on July 13 to carry out the recommendations made in the letter written by Dr. Devine to its chairman, three days earlier, which recommendation, it should be recalled, embodied the earlier bonus plan suggestion made by one of its own members.

The certificate of incorporation[31] was issued July 20 to hold for a period of five years. The president of the corporation, the “San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, a Corporation,” was James D. Phelan; the first and second vice-presidents, F. W. Dohrmann and W. F. Herrin; the secretary, J. Downey Harvey. The president and first vice-president, with M. H. de Young, Rudolph Spreckels, and Thomas Magee, formed the Executive Committee. The personnel of the Corporation, with the exception of the governor of the state and the mayor, who were ex officio members and directors of the Corporation, was identical with that of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds which it superseded, and whose funds it immediately took over.

The newly incorporated body held its meetings at the St. Francis Technical School on Geary and Gough Streets, which took the place of the Hamilton School as headquarters for all departments of the relief work. Later a warehouse was added to the building to hold the remaining supplies. The meetings were open to the press, and to officers and employes; and others with whom the corporation had business were invited as was deemed expedient to meet with the Executive Committee. At the third meeting, held late in July, five departments were created:[32]

Each chairman was required to make an investigation of and report on any undertaking of his department that called for an appropriation. Each chairman was also a member of the Executive Committee and was responsible for the appointment of his employes.[27] He was further responsible for preparing monthly budgets and for the printing and distribution of all printed matter.

From the plan of organization it is to be seen, of course, that housing as a reason for incorporation had yielded to the pressure to make inclusive the treatment by one incorporated body of all divisions of the many-sided work.

The experiments of the preliminary and transition periods had tried out many men and methods, so that on the newly incorporated body were found men of affairs who in the relief work itself were ready to act in harmony and with method and to come together in small groups for frequent meetings. If one looks at the diagram of organization presented,[33] one sees how gradually through the trying three months there had been a shaping through experiment that made the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds itself a fruition that in germ lay in the union of official effort and private initiative.

Step by step the confidence of the public at home and abroad had had to be won. Only through the selection and trying out of generous-minded and capable men could the suspicions of those who controlled the contributions in the east have been dispelled.[34] Only after the abortive effort to make political capital out of positions of relief administration had fallen flat could the work itself get into its steady swing. The lessons are clearly written, however, that there must of necessity be in any great sudden emergency the creation of public confidence in the administration of the relief, and that along with a force of persons trained from within and without to act quickly and with definiteness must be the voluntary services of men and women on whom the community itself has learned to rely.

A few notes of later date are added here to round out the account of organization.

On August 1, 1906, Mr. Bicknell succeeded Dr. Devine as the representative of the American National Red Cross, and he in turn was succeeded on October 1 by Mr. Dohrmann.[35]

[28]

Early in the year 1907 the County Medical Society urged that the balance of the relief fund should be used for the erection and endowment of a free hospital. Impelled by this and similar requests the Corporation did in February consider seriously the possibility of closing the work.

One year after the fire (April, 1907):

The Department of Bills and Demands had completed its work.

The Department of Finance and Publicity was working with a greatly reduced force as it was relieved of the accounting connected with claims and subscriptions.

The Department of Camps and Warehouses had under care a camp population of about 17,614, but no longer distributed food or other supplies.

The Department of Relief and Rehabilitation had finished the bulk of its work. The general taking of applications had ceased for some time. Those on file were being passed upon and closed as rapidly as possible. The final estimates and appropriations for this work had been made. From this time on only exceptional cases, and those few in number, were received. The Housing Committee still had some work to do in connection with the completion and inspection of houses granted by it, and with the payment of the bonuses which it had guaranteed to pay to certain applicants on the completion of houses which they were building for themselves. The work of the Bureau of Special Relief was almost finished. The work of the Hospital Bureau had to continue.

The Department of Lands and Buildings had completed its building work, with the exception of the Relief Home. The Home was expected to be finished in May.[36] A few hundred applications were on file for allotment of bonuses from the second appropriation. The first appropriation was exhausted.

Two years after the disaster (April 18, 1908):

The Department of Lands and Buildings had completed its work.

Tent camp, opened May 9, 1906

Cottages

Camp No. 10, Potrero District

The Department of Finance and Publicity, with a small force,[29] was making the settlements incidental to the closing of the camps and the refunding of instalments to tenants. It was also preparing its financial report.

The Department of Camps and Warehouses had removed cottages from all the public squares but Lobos, where but 479 cottages and 1,287[37] persons remained. This camp sheltered the poorest refugees.[38] Stricter sanitary measures could be enforced here and care be given more cheaply than if the inmates had been removed to cottages on private land. Bubonic plague in this camp as well as elsewhere in the city had made precaution necessary.

The Department of Relief and Rehabilitation had become a supervising agency. It supervised the collection of housing loans, assisted the Executive Committee in making grants to charitable institutions, and advised the Associated Charities which was administering the greater part of the relief needed in moving people from the camps.[39]

The closing chapter of the complicated story of organization was reached when, acting on the suggestion of its special representative, Mr. Dohrmann, the American National Red Cross sent Mr. Bicknell in January, 1909, to San Francisco to confer about final plans. Mr. Bicknell had then accepted the recently created position of national director of the American National Red Cross. The creation of this position may be said to be one of the results of the San Francisco relief experience. As a result of conferences[40] between these two men who had played such a determining part in San Francisco’s struggle to help its people wisely to regain their old standing, the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red Cross Funds was formed in February, 1909.

[30]

II
METHODS OF DISTRIBUTION

1. SOURCES OF CONTRIBUTIONS

The complicated story of organization seems comparatively unimportant when one’s mind is full of questions as to what was to be distributed, and how many human beings were in need of immediate relief. That there was general, quick recognition of the need is shown by the quantities of supplies hurried to San Francisco. Five thousand cars were reported April 28 to be on the road. General C. A. Devol, who had charge of receiving and unloading all supplies, states, however:[41] “The stores that arrived for the relief of San Francisco up to July 20 amounted to 1,702 carloads and five steamship loads, a total of approximately 50,000 tons. At the height of the operations about 150 carloads were delivered into the city daily, in addition to stores arriving by steamers.” The chairman of the Finance Committee reported to Mr. Taft, president of the American National Red Cross, on November 28, 1906, that the estimate of total receipts in kind was 1,850 carloads of food supplies, and 150 carloads of bedding, tenting, clothing, and so forth.

During the first two weeks after the disaster the Southern Pacific Railroad brought 1,099 carloads of relief supplies into the city. Under orders of its president, right of way was given to trains carrying these cargoes, and express time schedules were used for the sake of speed. These receipts were not all direct donations, as the contents of a number of carloads had been purchased by the Finance Committee and by the army from an appropriation of $2,500,000 made by Congress[42] to be distributed under the direction of the officers of the Pacific Division. There were also many donations that were sent to agencies other than the Citizens’ Committee, the Red Cross, and the army. These cannot be included in any estimate as there was no complete record of the amounts.

[31]

Transportation Routes about San Francisco

Larger map (200 kB)

[32]

It was found to be difficult to protect the mass of the rations in the railroad yards and in transit to the warehouse against seizure by ordinary thieves and by those who felt justified in disregarding the usual rights of property. Goods were stolen, in quantities that could not be reckoned, by those who expected to realize a profit as well as by those who considered that they had the right to seize what they felt was destined to meet their need. Some of these confiscated boxes were addressed not to the relief authorities but to specified persons and groups of persons in San Francisco or at other points about the bay. A further incentive to confiscate lay in the action of the police who, as was generally known, acting on the orders of the chief of police, had broken open about 100 grocery and provision stores that were doomed to be destroyed by fire. The police, after making a rough estimate of the value of the stock, distributed freely to the destitute.

When the cars reached San Francisco, along with the bulk of the shipments which were addressed either to the quartermaster of the army, who was designated to have charge of all supplies sent to the American National Red Cross, or to the Citizens’ Committee, were boxes addressed to the mayor, to the churches, to other organizations of all kinds, and to individuals. It would have interfered seriously with the work of relief if an effort had been made to find the persons to whom special boxes were directed. The American National Red Cross through its representative, in whose care many boxes with specific directions were sent, did all that was possible to carry out the intent of the donors, but it could not in every instance find the intended recipient. Many inquiries were received as to barrels and boxes which had not reached their destination, but the cost of tracing these and the cost of making special deliveries under the then existing conditions were often greater than the value of the packages themselves.

An illustration of the difficulty of delivering special packages is the story of eight cases of bread pans which were addressed to the “Relief Committee” and were quickly distributed among the refugees. When the manufacturing company that shipped the cases learned on inquiry of the bakers for whose use they were intended[33] that they had not received them, it threatened to file a claim for loss. The trouble, however, lay in the fact that a letter of instruction addressed to the mayor got effectually separated from the boxes.

No complete record of cash contributions can be made. Some of the committees throughout the country expended part of their funds to purchase supplies to be forwarded to San Francisco or to relieve refugees at home, or failed to collect all the money reported to have been contributed. The money reported as subscribed in the state of California is far from representing the actual value of relief contributed. Being so near the scene of disaster the California communities wisely contributed supplies in large quantities for immediate use and also cared for large numbers of refugees who came to them. The official reports of contributions cannot therefore give credit to all communities for all the relief furnished by each, nor can they show the amounts contributed by the smaller cities when these forwarded their contributions through the larger city committees. Nor can a record of contributions sent to the American Red Cross be found in the published list of contributors to the committee in San Francisco.

The total cash donations, $8,921,452.86, given in Table 1, do[34] not include the $2,500,000 appropriated by Congress, which was disbursed in the first two months for food, clothing, bedding, shelter, etc., nor an estimate of the numerous independent funds which were probably expended within the first month, nor of the enormous quantity of supplies donated by the people of the country. These supplied the first needs of the destitute and enabled the Committee to save its cash for later and more permanent forms of relief.

The donations mentioned in Table 2 do not include $100,000[35] given to the University of California Hospital by the Massachusetts Association for the Relief of California.

It appears from the figures of the two preceding tables that while on June 1, 1909, money to the amount of $9,116,944.11 had been contributed for the relief of San Francisco, $8,921,452.86 had been received by the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds and by the Corporation. This difference between the amount donated and the amount received by the local organizations to which the work of relief had been entrusted is explained by the fact that not all the money contributed through the American National Red Cross had been paid over to the Finance Committee or to the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds by June 1, 1909. The disposition made of the money contributed through the American National Red Cross is shown in Table 3.

The statement shows that of the $3,115,496.25 donated through the American National Red Cross up to June 1, 1909, $2,920,005.00 had been remitted to San Francisco. The balance received but not remitted was therefore $195,491.25,[45] of which $97,073.35 was disbursed directly by the Red Cross. It will be seen that this balance equals the difference between the total amount donated for the relief of San Francisco and the amount of the cash donations received to June 1, 1909.

[36]

2. DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD

Food was of course the first necessity, and out of the need to supply it grew the whole machinery of relief. Before the noon of Thursday, April 19, the Citizens’ Committee had appointed a sub-committee on relief of the hungry, with Rabbi Voorsanger as chairman, to furnish food for the entire population, which for a time fell into a series of long bread lines. In these lines rich and poor, Italian, German, Swedish, Chinese, and native fared alike. The only question was one of need. From the mayor and the military officers down to the humblest families in the Potrero, there was a good-humored acquiescence in the hardships of the situation, and an optimism that was inspiring. Supplies in sufficient quantities were rushed to the city, and the danger of suffering from lack of food was averted.

The sub-committee began the distribution of food April 20. It at once called on the army to furnish an officer, two companies of infantry, and a troop of cavalry to guard rather than to distribute what supplies had become available. It took steps to get flour from points around the bay and studied the situation as to the bakeries, some of the largest of which had been burned or damaged. Repairs were being made to some of those damaged, and a daily output of 50,000 loaves of bread was shortly to be expected.

The ruling was made that after the committee on relief of the hungry had received the quantity of bread it needed, the bakers might sell the remainder at not more than 10 cents a loaf, in quantities of not more than five loaves to one person. The committee was furthermore authorized by the Citizens’ Committee to levy on all supplies wherever found. The following notes show the general trend of the work during the first week.

All classes joined the bread line

Soldiers gave aid and protection

Relieving the Hungry

On Friday, April 20, while the fire was still spreading, the general distribution was begun. About 25 wagons were impressed which were used in the distribution of the provisions seized by order of the committee. Refugees were standing in line at the Golden Gate Park Lodge; the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, Page and Stanyan Streets; St. Mary’s Cathedral, Van Ness Avenue and O’Farrell Street; at Jefferson and Columbia Squares,[37] and at the corners of Fifth and Mission Streets and 24th and Douglas Streets, where food stations had already been established by the citizens. The committee made use of these for its own distribution, choosing the Young Men’s Hebrew Association as its base for general distribution.

The bakeries that day furnished 35,000 loaves of bread. The chief difficulty lay in transporting to the city the supplies that were available—5,000 tons of flour at Vallejo and many carloads of donated goods at Oakland.

On Saturday, April 21, the day the fire was brought under control, the city was reported to be divided into districts. Five bakeries were in operation and a committee from Fresno appeared before the Citizens’ Committee to announce that it had brought six carloads of supplies. Committees from some nearby communities put themselves under the direction of the Citizens’ Committee, but the general efficiency of the distribution was lowered by the fact that still other out of town committees undertook to make independent distributions.

On Sunday, April 22, arrangements had been made to have bread baked in the towns of the Santa Clara Valley. It was found necessary to carry into effect the committee ruling to prevent alleged exorbitant retail charges for bread.

On Monday, April 23, there was an abundance of supplies for present use and an over-supply of milk.

On Tuesday, April 24, there was a shortage of sugar and coffee. Sixty food stations had been established. No stores were found on investigation to be charging exorbitant prices for food, but some of the refugees were trying to get more than their share of food. Confusion was still being caused by the work of the independent relief committees.

When two days later the committee on relief of the hungry made its final report to the Finance Committee there had been established 128 stations and sub-stations, a warehouse in the Moulder School, Page and Gough Streets, and a branch warehouse at Spear and Howard Streets. It had had printed a card for the use of the applicant at the food station and had determined that rations, except in cases of emergency, should be issued to each person at intervals of three days. Every card carried a[38] statement of the amount of food required by a person for a day, as follows:

Special diet,—eggs, butter, milk, fruit,—was also issued.

This ration was more liberal than that adopted by the army.[46]

During the trial week the distribution of food was made to the refugees either from the stations or at the various camps or shelters. Though a fixed ration was agreed on there could be no certainty of delivery, as the quantity and variety of the food supply was indeterminate. The committee in making its report could give only an approximate estimate of the goods it had seized. It anticipated that claims would be made against it as well as against the United States army, the state militia, the police department, and the various volunteer organizations which had without authorization seized goods.

It arranged to pay the bakeries at a rate of 5 cents a loaf for the 255,630 loaves of bread which had been supplied by them to the committee, part of the payment to be made in flour, and to pay the Milk Dealers’ Association at a rate of not more than 20 cents a gallon for milk supplied by it. The committee had employed between three and four hundred men and as many trucks to transport supplies, but it did not know the extent of its obligation for the use of the latter.

During the first week after the disaster there was a growing inclination to turn to the army for the direction of the relief work. Though the army in common with every other body of persons had suffered serious losses, its efficiency as an organization could not be impaired even though the extent of the aid it could immediately give were lessened.

[39]

To the military reservations which lay outside the burned district refugees immediately fled in numbers, and on April 19, the day the committee on relief of the hungry began its work, Major Krauthoff issued from a depot established by him in the Presidio such food as could be spared from the Presidio itself and from Forts Mason and Miley. The great army warehouses, which had stored $2,000,000 worth of supplies, were burned, but along with the committee on relief of the hungry the army began to confiscate supplies for use on the reservations. It also purchased from the posts in the Departments of California and the Columbia 900,000 rations, the first shipment of which arrived on April 21. On that same day a steamer from Stockton put in at Fort Mason with donations of provisions and blankets. These were immediately distributed among 20,000 refugees.

The committee on relief of the hungry had not been given full authority nor had its powers been defined. It had no machinery adequate for the handling of a great bulk of supplies, and it was hindered by the crossing of efforts on the part of unauthorized agencies.

The Finance Committee, as has been said in Chapter I, was the committee of power, and might have assumed responsibility for perfecting an adequate relief organization, but as it realized that its efforts could not be as quickly effective as those of the army, it, as well as the mayor, called on the army to assume control of the relief work. General Greely consented and on April 29 took charge of the food issues and gradually put the work under the direction of 64 officers and 500 enlisted men.

Major C. A. Devol, depot quartermaster, who took over the tremendous task of unloading cars and boats and transporting supplies to and from warehouses,[47] quickly introduced order and economy into the work. Major C. R. Krauthoff, in charge of the commissary department, was also able soon to reduce to an efficient routine his work of receiving donated supplies, of purchasing, selling, and storing supplies, and of issuing properly balanced rations.

In the report made in July, 1906, to the War Department, Colonel Febiger, who from April 29 had charge of the organization[40] of relief stations, and later became chief of the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations, which had been established by the army to facilitate the relief work, said that on taking charge he had found, after a most thorough investigation, no instance of extreme suffering from lack of food or shelter, but many instances of repeating, so that the number of rations issued was in excess of the needs of the population. With no accepted general organization bringing about the co-ordinating of relief, there was of necessity an exaggerated estimate of the needy.

General Greely, who during his Arctic explorations had learned what extreme suffering from hunger and cold meant, had the city canvassed on May 13 in order to find any case of destitution which might have been overlooked. All of his inspectors, with 30 officers in addition to the officers directly connected with the relief work, were ordered to make a special effort to learn of persons in absolute need of food and decent clothing or of bed and shelter. The result was that but two such cases were reported.

During the early days orders were issued forbidding all householders to light fires in their houses. Cooking, in consequence, was done in the street over open fires or on rusty stoves which belched smoke out of short sections of pipe. In those days only candles were permitted for light and they had to be extinguished at 8 p.m.

Relief Stations and Registration

As stated in Chapter I,[48] the northern part of the city was, for purposes of policing, put under military control the third day after the disaster. Later, for purposes of relief, the city was divided into seven sections, whose boundaries were made coterminous with those of the army districts. On May 8, each section was supplied by the army with an officer who made regular reports to the headquarters of the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations, and with a physician who was responsible for sanitation and for diet prescriptions. Nine depots and sub-depots were open for storage of food supplies.

Preparing meals in the street

A row of street kitchens

Fires in Houses were Prohibited

To give some idea of the character and origin of the relief stations a table of the relief stations of Civil Section VI is given:

[41]

[42]

There is no information to show that any one of these sub-stations had been established by the committee on relief of the hungry. As may be borne in mind, the number of stations in use on April 26 was reported by the committee on relief of the hungry to be 128; three days later, on taking charge, the army reported 177; early in May the number dropped, as is shown by Table 5, to 112.

Dr. Devine as representative of the American National Red Cross had appointed a civil chairman to be responsible for the receiving and investigation of applications. After May 1, the responsibility for the distribution of supplies was divided at each section between the military officer and the civil chairman. The civil chairman determined who should receive relief and the military officer made the necessary requisition on the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations.

The records of relief distribution are incomplete and there is no means of determining accurately from week to week the number of persons who received food, clothing, and other supplies, medical care and shelter. The most complete records[50] are furnished by the official camps. Colonel Febiger in his July report, already quoted, says that “313,145 persons were on May 2 estimated[43] to be receiving rations, though this number should probably be reduced to 300,000 to make allowance for repeaters.” General Greely made estimate that the number of cases of fraudulent repeating was not more than 3 per cent of the whole.

Care has been taken to verify the estimate of the issues, which has called for some reduction of the totals as given in earlier reports. This accounts for the slight discrepancy between Colonel Febiger’s figure for May 2 and that given in the table.

The reason for the large increase in numbers in the bread line in the days immediately after the disaster is that householders had by then exhausted their private stock and could not make purchases, as most of the goods in retail stores had been confiscated; nor could food be prepared in private houses until chimneys had on inspection been found safe. From a week to two or three months, according to the location and the activity of the inspection, the fire prohibition held. In towns across the bay people with money in bank had difficulty in securing food because the banks were temporarily closed and the retail stores could not determine when they would be able to replenish their stock.

[44]

As the number in the bread line in the early part of May represented two-thirds of the population of a city that had been raised to a high degree of prosperity by the industry and thrift of its citizens, there would have been rapid decrease in the number of applicants for rations even had there been no concerted plan to reduce numbers. Pressure was brought from without, however, which, as is shown in the following paragraph, did accelerate the citizens’ return as a body to the normal means of making provision for creature needs.

In order that the smaller traders might be encouraged to resume business and the funds be reserved in a great measure to give permanent relief, the representatives of the army and the American National Red Cross co-operated during late April and early May in a strenuous effort to lessen the number supplied with rations. The attractiveness of the free food issues was diminished by reducing the ration items to meat, bread, and vegetables for all applicants in sound health except such as were living in the camps under military control. The number of the stations was rapidly reduced, as shown by Table 5. After the middle of May, except in cases of invalidism, rations were issued but three times a week, and an offer was made of a final issue of a month’s rations to any one who would accept that in place of the regular allowances. These measures served to concentrate in the permanent camps those refugees who were to continue as charges on the relief administration. The work of concentration was hindered, however, by the numerous private relief stations throughout the city which could be persuaded only gradually to send their patrons to the public relief stations. An Associated Charities worker who knew well the people in one large section of the city went through the tents with a soldier and demanded the return of extra bacon, canned goods, and potatoes, which had been laid in by thrifty refugees who had made use of both public and private food stations.

The Red Cross began within the first week of the disaster a general registration of the refugees. As substantially every one in the city was at that time dependent on the relief stations for food, the natural way of getting access to the refugees was through the distribution of rations. Carl C. Plehn, professor of finance[45] in the University of California, whose experience as director of the census of the Philippine Islands suggested special fitness for the work, undertook to prepare a plan, organize the force, and superintend the work of a registration bureau. The force consisted of some 200 volunteers from among the public school teachers, an intelligent and capable, even though inexperienced, group of enumerators. Their regular employment stopped on April 18, but their salaries were paid to the end of the school year. Though the service given was very unequal and largely unsatisfactory, if judged by the standard of a census bureau or a charity organization society, it is doubtful whether at the time so high an average of efficiency could have been obtained in any other way.

On April 27 Professor Plehn submitted a tentative plan for the registration. By May 7 the cards[51] and instructions had been printed, a force of 175 persons was in the field, and the work was well under way. Ten days later 20,000 cards had been filled out and the canvass was practically completed as far as it could then be carried.

After excluding duplicates as far as they could be detected, the 19,438 cards, which represented the same number of families or household parties, distributed the 84,703 persons included among the seven sections as follows:

[46]

The 84,703 individuals were 28,319 men, 32,650 women, 22,795 children, and 939 persons who were entered under the heading, “Aged, etc.”[52]

The information recorded on the registration cards varies in completeness and value on account of the great diversity in carefulness and capability among the persons who collected it. Many of the cards were filled out intelligently and conscientiously; many are wholly unsatisfactory. Taken together, however, they give a rough picture of that quarter or third, whichever it may have been, of the city’s population which was still, in the middle of May, dependent on the general distribution of food for its daily supplies; and they reflect to some extent the dislocations that were brought about by the disaster, in residence, occupation, and circumstances.

It was not the primary object of the registration to furnish material for a description of the refugees, but to establish a uniform system of food distribution which should prevent waste by cutting out repeaters, apportioning the number of rations to the size of the family, and cutting off persons as they reached a position where they no longer needed to be dependent. Other purposes were also in mind. At the beginning, in fact, the efforts seem to have been made to provide a record of the persons who received relief, for historical purposes and for aid in determining their future needs. It was also hoped that the registration could be made of practical value to the state labor[47] commissioner, in the free employment bureau[53] which had been opened. In part for this last reason, information was asked about former occupation and former employer, union membership, and present employment.

The bread line, Mission District

Relief station, Mission District

Distribution of Relief Supplies

The registration was made at the relief stations, the cards being filled out when applicants came for rations. If the applicant did not live within the boundaries of the section served by the station to which he had come he was referred to the proper station. When the applicant had been registered he was given a food card[54] bearing a serial number, good for ten days, which stated conspicuously, so that the attendants could see, even before he reached the counter, the number of rations to which his family was entitled, and showed uncanceled the dates on which the card would be honored. The food card number was entered on the registration card, which was kept at the relief station. Each time rations were drawn the date for which they were drawn was canceled on the card. After the registration had been completed at any station no rations were issued except on presentation of a food card.

By this system abuses were controlled: no one could draw supplies from two or more stations, nor two or three times on the same day from the same station, nor for more persons than he represented; able-bodied men, for whom by this time there was abundant opportunity of employment, could be cut off; and at the expiration of the ten-day period the merits of the case could be reviewed before granting a renewal of the food card.

It was through its success in establishing a uniform and workable system of food distribution that the first registration was most valuable. It did not prove to be of much service in aiding applicants to find employment, in giving a record of the entire work of relief, or in furnishing a basis for the rehabilitation work. That it failed in realizing all that was hoped from it in these directions was due partly to changes in the labor situation, which soon made efforts to supply employment superfluous;[48] partly to some ambiguity and lack of definiteness in the headings on the card, and the omission of some essential items; but chiefly to the many omissions on the part of the enumerators, the lack of uniformity in their interpretation of the headings on the card, and the large amount of carelessness they exhibited in recording the information that was secured. The inexperience of the enumerators in investigation, the immense difficulty of supervising them adequately when the automobile and the wagon were the only means of transportation between the far-scattered stations, and the necessity for getting the whole work done as speedily as possible, so that there was no time for correcting mistakes or training investigators, are the simple explanations of these defects.

If all the circumstances are taken into consideration—the number of persons affected by the disaster, the extent of the territory to be covered, the difficulty of getting about, the confusion which still existed among the many elements of the relief organization, and the inexperience in relief work of those who made the registration, both university professors and public school teachers—the results obtained were surprisingly satisfactory. The registration would have justified itself if it had done nothing more than systematize the food distribution and contribute toward the reduction of the bread lines. This it undoubtedly did.

An indication of the effectiveness of the first registration, as may be seen in Table 11,[55] is the sudden drop in the number of persons who received rations after May 12, a decrease of 21 per cent on that day against an average daily decrease for the five preceding days of slightly over 7 per cent. The marked drop of May 16 is, however, in part due to the stimulation to self-help caused by putting into effect the order that rations should be issued only three times a week. The general use of the food card was an important factor in bringing about the reduction; another, the rapid increase in the number of persons gaining self-support. One special use to which the so-called first registration was put was to determine who should receive special diet. The diet included meat, fresh milk, butter and eggs, vegetables, and fruit, and was prepared for the sick, the aged, and for mothers with infants. The method of its distribution varied in the different sections and from time to[49] time, but the policy was to subject its distribution to more direct control from the central office than the ordinary rations. Issues of special diet were not finally discontinued until October 1, a few days before the closing of the last kitchen.

A second general registration[56] was made in June by the American National Red Cross staff of workers with the aid of the camp commanders. General Greely appreciated the need of having a more complete case record of the individuals who were making use of the camps, in order that a restriction of numbers might be judiciously and expeditiously made. The relief workers outside the camps, also, realized clearly the need of a more adequate registration as a basis for intelligent rehabilitation work.

Hot Meal Kitchens

The Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations, acting on the advice of the Finance Committee, opened its first kitchen in Lobos Square about the middle of May to serve hot meals both to refugees and to persons able to pay for their food. From immediately after the disaster kitchens had been established by voluntary relief committees as the best means of feeding the people living in or near the camps. One such committee, that of Los Angeles, sent equipment to furnish five kitchens, with a representative, Mr. Desmond, of the Desmond Construction Company, to put them in operation. They were intended freely to furnish food and they gave timely aid in the early days.

When the Bureau opened its own community kitchens,[57] the experiment was made as a distinctive part of the effort to reduce the long bread lines. The kitchens were intended to test the needs of those applying for free food, because the number of those willing to accept relief in food was expected to suffer diminution when a common eating room was offered. They were also to give a convenient eating place to persons able to pay but not able to provide their own food, with the privilege of sitting at separate tables and of ordering a better quality of food than that furnished at the free tables. They were also to serve to the aged and infirm[50] better food than had been supplied to them before. The kitchen system was intended to be economical and sanitary. Sanitary inspection could be made more thorough when in each encampment there should be one general kitchen rather than scattered individual kitchens for the preparing of free rations. Insistence on the first article of the new experiment—the common eating room—made Section VII, in the part of the city known as the Mission, unwilling to open a kitchen. It successfully opposed the step because it was one that the Mission workers felt would degrade the people and tend to destroy the privacy of family life.

It must be borne in mind that the kitchen system was introduced after the bread line had been reduced to less than one-half its greatest length, and that it threw into conspicuous relief those who were without power to re-establish themselves or unwilling to try to do so.

The hot meal kitchens caused no sudden drop in the amount of food distributed. On May 12 when, as has been already commented upon, there was a marked decrease in the number of persons receiving rations, there were but five kitchens in operation; but the new method did effectively help to weed out those who no longer needed free rations. Colonel Febiger wrote late in June that “by the operation of these hot food camps thousands of dollars were saved for future relief; probably 95 per cent of the 15,000 persons now being supported by food relief were absolutely in need of it, those not in need either having withdrawn or having been forced out.”

The kitchens were at first run exclusively by the Desmond Construction Company under contract with the Bureau of Consolidated Relief Stations; that company, which had already made its experiment, having been the only one willing to undertake what was considered by the contractors to be an undesirable job. When by June 21 the number of kitchens had been gradually increased to 27, two other contractors were operating under the Bureau.

The Bureau and the Red Cross provided police protection, furnished sites for the kitchens, and supplied fuel and water. Each contractor provided his own buildings or tents, equipment, and service. The contractor agreed to furnish a wholesome meal, and to submit his daily menu to the relief officials for approval.

An open air dining room

In Golden Gate Park

Hot Meal Kitchens

[51]

The following is a typical daily menu:

Meals were supplied to any person who was ready to pay cash or who possessed a meal ticket. The meal tickets were issued daily by the Red Cross and were redeemed by it by payment made to the contractor in cash or in kind from the relief supplies. The original plan was to serve ten-cent free meals with provision for granting an extra five-cent purchase to such persons as might be considered in need of extra food.

Certain kitchens within the Presidio reservation are not reported on later than July 11, when they were furnishing about 1,200 meals a day. One thousand meals a day would probably be a liberal estimate for the remainder of the time, thirty days, that these Presidio kitchens were to remain open, but such an estimate is not included in Table 8.

From the data on hand we can estimate the proportion of ten-cent meals at 12.1 per cent and fifteen-cent meals at 87.9 per cent.

[52]

The first report of meals paid for is for June 28. Those who patronized these restaurants paid from 10 to 20 cents for their meals, the average price being 15 cents. The extent to which this opportunity was utilized is shown in Table 9.

The last paid meal was served on September 19, 1906. The last kitchen closed was that at Speedway Camp, where the final meal was served October 10, 1906.

Frequent complaints were made that the kitchens supplied food which lacked in quality and variety, was poorly cooked, and served on fly-infested tables in unsanitary rooms. In some instances the complaints were justified, but the army inspections were thorough, and the contractors on the whole lived up to the contracts. Some of the complaints were made not by those who were using the kitchens but by those who were critical of the kitchen system itself.

It is not possible to estimate the total value of the food distributed. For food and its distribution the Relief and Red Cross Funds expended $1,226,567.16. The army report gives $259,811.20 as expended for subsistence stores, but this is not a complete statement of the disbursements made by it from the appropriation from Congress. These sums do not include an estimate of the value of donations in kind that were used as such and not sold. General Greely in his report stated that in the food donations distributed by the army there were about 2,000,000 complete rations, which had to be increased by substitutions and by purchase to supply the 3,873,745 rations distributed by[53] the army during May and June. Two commodities that had been donated in excess of need were flour and potatoes.

[54]

CHART 1.—PERSONS TO WHOM RATIONS WERE ISSUED IN MAY AND JUNE, 1906

[55]

Among the persons who received rations, as indicated in the table and chart, are included both those to whom raw rations were issued and those who were served with free meals at the hot meal kitchens.

3. DISTRIBUTION OF CLOTHING

Of secondary urgency was the demand for clothing. The requests for clothing were fewer than those for food, though many refugees fled from the burned areas with no clothing except nightgowns or calico slips, a poor protection from the cold nights and chilly April mornings and evenings.

The records of distribution are incomplete. General Greely estimated the number of persons who received clothing at 200,000. Much of the clothing donated bore the wellknown mark of the charity gift in kind. The second hand clothing in many cases was, to repeat General Greely’s comment, “more or less of a burden on the Red Cross.” Some was useless; some required to be cleaned and disinfected. The new clothing was, in the words of Captain Bradley, who had charge of its distribution, “of old and dead stock of mediocre and poor quality.” Part of the shoes and articles of clothing supplied from the army stores and charged against the appropriation from Congress were of obsolete pattern. The same criticism was made of some of the household goods donated. A large number of the cots, for instance, were worthless or of poor quality. There was the further handicap to the distributor, of not knowing what donations were to be expected or when they were to be received. This uncertainty meant serious delays in supplying the need and severe criticism of the administrators, but the latter did not feel themselves justified in making purchases of clothing in large quantities when clothing similar to that ordered might, later, be received as a gift.

The memory is vivid to some of those who worked in the refugee camps during the midsummer of 1906, of the children in striped sweaters and gay Tam-o’-Shanters. The caps were not suitable for summer wear, but they had been sent in large quantity with the sweaters to be distributed. The mental picture of Golden Gate Park with its scattered barracks and tents pitched close to ornamental lakes and neglected flower beds is accentuated by the note of high color given by the sweaters and caps.

[56]

Distribution of clothing, like the distribution of food, was quickly undertaken by independent groups of volunteers, who collected and gave out what could be got in the city itself. While the fire was spreading the army from its stores in the Presidio gave blankets and quantities of shoes, shirts, ponchos, and other clothing for men. As the donations from abroad began to arrive in large quantities they were quickly handed out without careful discrimination in sorting or adapting to individual needs.

On May 4 the army, in consultation with Dr. Devine, took charge of the organization of the clothing and household distribution. The Crocker School on Page Street was taken for use as a warehouse. A warehouse for second hand clothing exclusively was established ten days later in the Everett Grammar School, on Sanchez Street. Neither was adapted for use as a department store, but nine departments were organized, each in charge of an experienced clerk:

From the departments went during May a daily average of twenty truckloads; during June, eighteen. Among the household goods that had to be handled were towels, sheets, pillows, pillow cases, blankets, comforters, mattresses, stoves, cooking utensils, cutlery, dishes, brooms, wash tubs, washboards, boilers, irons, clotheslines, axes, chairs, tables, and sewing machines.

The method of distribution was similar to that for food. Each civilian chairman made requisition for the articles that were found by the superintendents of the stations to be needed within his section, and each requisition was filled so far as the warehouse stock would admit. The articles were sent to the separate stations for distribution. The army had charge of reception and distribution of goods; the Red Cross, of determining who should be entitled to aid. The first registration was used as a basis for determining[57] need, but there was no uniform system of record and various forms are found to have been in use,—an instance of the necessity for a general, accepted form of registration and record.

Soldiers guarding the supply wagons

Warehouse for Second Hand Clothing

It was planned to complete by the middle of July the general distribution of clothing and household goods by determining whether each refugee at that time had a decent supply which would prevent present suffering. After that date the Rehabilitation Committee was to consider further need of clothing and household goods in relation to general need of rehabilitation. The distribution did end practically on August 1, when those who had requisitions for articles that had not been furnished were given by the Rehabilitation Committee the cash value of the articles called for on their requisitions as far as approved by the civilian chairmen of their sections.

The later development of the methods of distributing clothing shows increased efficiency as greater experience was gained.

After August 15 the Bureau of Special Relief[58] had charge of filling orders for clothing for those living outside the camps whose needs were urgent but not great; the more important cases of need of clothing and household goods were cared for by the Rehabilitation Committee. From August 6 the residents of the camps were supplied with all necessary clothing through the Department of Camps and Warehouses, an arrangement which continued until the middle of October, after which issues of clothing were made by requisition through the department headquarters on the supply of clothing kept in Golden Gate Park. From December, 1906, the Department of Camps and Warehouses sent individual requisitions for clothing to the Bureau of Special Relief. Possibly these were such as it could not itself fill.

All issues of clothing were stopped on May 16, 1907, and the supply on hand was turned over to the Rehabilitation Committee, which distributed it among a number of institutions. It is probable, however, that for a long time only a very small quantity of clothing had been issued to meet the needs of the aged, infirm, and sick at Ingleside.[59] It is to be noted further that as early as August, 1906,[58] issues were limited, and were made only to destitute persons whose circumstances could easily be investigated.

4. FURNISHING TRANSPORTATION

The rapid exodus of refugees from the city during the first week after the disaster meant a desirable lessening of the task of providing food, clothing, and shelter. The transportation work, which divides itself into four administrative periods, began the first day of the fire, when refugees were given free passage across the bay, down the peninsula, and to points far inland. No special arrangement was made. The transportation companies merely threw open their gates and let the people crowd into the boats and trains. The committee on transportation of refugees, a sub-committee of the Citizens’ Committee, had comparatively little work to do. It told the public that the railroads were ready to carry the people and it made inquiry as to the ability and willingness of other communities to care for refugees. From many communities, some distant, came quick, generous offers to care for definite numbers of people.

When the first period, the period of indiscriminate free transportation, ended on April 26, the Southern Pacific Railroad, the only railroad running out of the city and the one that in normal times carried the greater part of the suburban traffic by ferry and train to towns across the bay, had transported, according to an official report, the following number of free passengers:

The value of this service, according to the official report, was $456,000. The report states that on April 19 the refugees,[59] most of whom went to Oakland and adjoining communities, left San Francisco at the average rate of 70 per minute. There is no report from any other transportation company. The 226,000 passengers carried to points around the bay included some thousands of persons that crossed more than once, many to go back and forth daily on public or private business, others, a considerable number, to view the fire and ruins.

On April 25, a committee on transportation was organized informally by the officials of the various railroads and the men in charge of relief work, in order to prevent an abuse of free transportation. The new committee, which was recognized as authoritative by the Citizens’ Committee, had for chairman William Sproule of the Southern Pacific Railroad, for secretary and executive, Oscar K. Cushing. On April 26, a transportation bureau was opened in a small office on Fillmore Street near Franklin Hall. The secretary was given power to issue orders for passes and part-rate tickets, which because of his experience in railroad business and in social work he could be relied upon to do with discretion. Each applicant in the long file which day by day stretched down Fillmore Street and around the corner to Sutter, a perplexed, restless file of men, women, and children, eager to be out of the city, was interviewed personally by him to determine whether the applicant were able to pay any part of his fare, whether the best way to restore him to self-support was to grant him transportation, and whether he would be a charge upon the community to which he wished to go. When letters of recommendation or personal interviews failed to give the information desired, a quick investigation was made. If the applicant were able he paid something toward his ticket but never more than at the rate of half fare.

On May 10 the railroads stopped the issue of free and reduced rate tickets as a relief measure. This marked the end of the second short period of regulated free transportation work. A week later, on May 18, the transportation work was merged with that of the Bureau of Special Relief and Rehabilitation,[60] and when Mr. Cushing became executive head of the joint work no material change was made in the method of caring for transportation cases.

[60]

During the third period, beginning May 10, the period of united effort, the committee guaranteed to pay in certain cases reduced railroad rates, at first a half-fare rate, later a one-cent-a-mile rate. The railroads in their discretion gave in other cases free passage provided the committee made a brief statement of the circumstances of the applicant with a recommendation for free passage.

When the permanent Rehabilitation Committee was organized, July 2, 1906, the transportation bureau was again merged, which marked the beginning of the fourth period of its work, the period of completed organization. During the fourth and last period, which ended June 2, 1908, when the last transportation grant was paid, the transportation methods held unchanged with but occasional variation of rates and with a rapidly decreasing number of cases to be considered.

The relative importance of the transportation work to the other rehabilitation work, on the basis of the number of individuals concerned, steadily decreased from one-half in the first two weeks to about one-eighth in the middle of July.

Many a case was brought to the attention of the Committee by a distant relative or friend. For instance, a man wrote from a little town in Illinois as follows:

“Aunt Clara” could not be found.

An inquiry addressed to a man in whose behalf the Committee had been asked for help by a Chicago clergyman brought this terse and satisfactory reply:

[61]

Vague plans, or plans that did not commend themselves, led to refusal. There were, for instance, a man who thought he would like to try his fortune in Nome; a Syrian who had an idea he might get on better in Portland, Oregon, though he had no relatives there and no prospect of work; a Scotch Australian with a large family, known to the Associated Charities for years, who looked hopefully to Australia, though he had left it because he was a failure there; two girls, domestic servants, who wanted to go back to Ireland because they “were afraid of the shakes”; an old man whose only reason for returning to Europe was his desire to see his son ordained a priest; a widow, “saleslady” by occupation, who asked to be sent to Los Angeles on the strength of a letter from a friend, apparently a traveling man living in a hotel, whose mildly expressed concern for her welfare she took as a promise to provide a home. A stonemason wanted to leave his family without resources and try his fortune in Canada. A man whose family had been sent to Massachusetts in the early days to leave him free to get a start got tired of trying and wanted to join them. Another man merely wanted to go away on a visit, leaving his family behind. After the middle of June, requests that wife and children be sent away for a visit while the man stayed behind at work, were refused, though in the abnormal conditions of the earlier days they were frequently allowed. In a considerable number of cases, as of carpenters, shoemakers, domestic servants, and laundresses, transportation was refused because it was known that nowhere else in the country was the opportunity so good for work and good pay in those occupations.

In looking over the records one finds many reasons given for leaving San Francisco. Jewelers, inventors, masseurs, hair dressers, producers of “art work,” said they could find little demand for their services in the first few weeks after the fire. Acrobats, mental science lecturers, teachers of elocution, music, Hebrew, religion, and higher mathematics, could find no one to demand their teaching. Saloonkeepers and barmen had lost their shops through the closing of the saloons, and when they opened July 5, conditions would be hard because a higher license was to be asked. It seems like a jest of fate that at a time when thousands of people were living in tents a tent-sewer could find[62] no occupation. It also seems curious that physicians and nurses should have wished to leave the city, but it is a fact that the demand for their services was decreased rather than increased by the disaster. Physicians suffered perhaps as much as any other class of persons, for they lost not only their offices, libraries, and instruments, but also a large proportion of their patients,—the profitable, well-to-do ones left town, and the poorer ones were stimulated by the out-of-door life, plain food, or by necessity, into unusual good health.[61] Bakers, grocers, and lodging-house keepers asked for transportation because, though there was a demand for their services, they had no capital with which to make a new start. Tailors, dressmakers, milliners, printers, and a number of others could not, or would not, wait for the demand which came for them a few weeks later. In the middle of May, for example, it was thought that ladies’ tailors could not expect to make a living for six months; early in June employers could not begin to get the number they wanted. In but few cases could lack of occupation be accepted as the sole justification for leaving the city. Carpenters and laborers who could not get work in San Francisco in June could hardly be expected to get it anywhere.

Sickness was a reason for transporting some of the refugees. A man who had been hurt in the earthquake was sent to relatives as soon as he was able to leave the hospital. Another man, whose little store had been wrecked by the earthquake, he himself injured, and his wife and one child killed, was sent to his sister in Chicago, his other children having been provided for by a charitable organization. A woman suffering from cancer was taken to her sister in Brooklyn by a nurse who was also being assisted to reach her destination. It was not uncommon in the earlier days to find a woman so nervous that her physical condition was a menace to the prospects of her family. One such woman would not allow her husband to do any regular work; another was so irritable that desertion seemed imminent. In such a case as the last the only hope of saving the family seemed, paradoxically, to[63] lie in temporary separation. More than one woman who begged to be sent away for a visit was told, “We are doing this, you understand, because we are sorry for your husband and want to give him a chance to get on his feet here; but please encourage him by writing every week.” The policy, in spite of these instances, was definitely laid down that families should be kept together.

There were numerous examples of that re-distributing of responsibility for dependents which takes place when losses come to families individually. An aunt or grandmother in Nevada or Missouri or New York would offer to take care of a little boy or a young girl, in order to relieve the family in San Francisco. An epileptic woman whose daughters had lost their work on account of the fire was given a home by a cousin in Massachusetts. This cousin, with unnecessary caution, wrote to the woman: “I will not let him (Dr. Devine) know you have any daughters—only that you are without a home and in poor health.” A woman had been visiting her married daughter in San Francisco, and the daughter, after the fire, could neither entertain her longer nor pay her fare home. Still another instance was that of a Roumanian, seventy-seven years old. He had had a home with his granddaughters for the previous two years, but they were burned out and his only refuge was the old home in Roumania. Unfavorable surroundings as a reason for granting transportation may be illustrated by the case of a young girl who had been living in a basement with twenty refugees, men and women. She was sent to her father in Ohio.

The willingness of relatives and friends to receive refugees determined the transporting of a large number of persons. The letters that found their way to the files of the Rehabilitation Committee as evidence that the would-be travelers would not be unprovided for at the end of their journeys form a unique body of testimony. They give a glimpse of those obscure wells of charity in which we all believe, on account of frequent individual instances, but into whose depths we are seldom allowed to look. The open-hearted offers of hospitality that went out from humble homes all over the country were, in fact, a contribution to the relief fund, though they found no place in the list of donations,[64] the quality of their mercy being too subtle. They may be given recognition by a few quotations from many letters:

From Delancey Street, New York, to a Jewish tailor with a wife and six children:

From a woman in Council Bluffs, to her sister:

From a little California town:

From a Russian woman in Chicago:

A mother in Michigan wrote to her daughters, who had been in domestic service:

Another Michigan letter, from the brother of a refugee:

A woman in Spokane who offered a home to a friend and her little girl wrote, with a naïve appreciation of her own generosity[65] and of the happy combination of disposition and circumstances to which she was able to refer:

A man in Nevada who had secured work for a former business associate, wrote to him:

There could be no doubt that the boy whose mother in Los Angeles had found work for him, and who wrote him as follows, would be looked after:

Some friends in southern California offered a home to three sisters, working girls:

The great majority of these people who were assisted to leave the city seem to have been those that could easily be spared from San Francisco during its period of reconstruction. They were, on the whole, lacking in physical vigor or in mental qualities of courage and initiative, or in attachment to their city. They did, however, give the impression that, under less exacting circumstances, they would have been able to get along creditably. It seemed fair to expect that in nearly all the cases the substitution of a more favorable environment would have results so satisfactory[66] as to justify transportation as a rehabilitation measure, while the burden of dependence, whatever it might be, would be so distributed as not to bear heavily in any one place. The policy of those responsible for decisions was not to send to other cities persons that were likely to become dependent on charity. The transportation agreement of the charity organization societies of the largest cities was respected. The prompt answers to telegraphic inquiries given by all the eastern cities was a very important help. It was reassuring to find that the plan that was satisfactory in ordinary times proved indispensable in the emergency.

For the second period of the work of transportation, which seems to represent about the average, Table 13 is given.

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 absolutely[67] correct, 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.

[68]

[69]

5. PROVIDING SHELTER

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,[70] 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 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 large[71] expenditure 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.

[72]

Less than a fourth of the 19,438 registered[66] were living in tents or shacks. These 4,365 families or parties included some[73] 19,000 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.

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,[74] 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.

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 in Table 20.

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. In Table 20 the 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.

[75]

[76]

[77]

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.

The first of June a San Franciscan wrote to Charities and the Commons[73] an account of conditions, which gives a picture of what life in the camps meant to some of the refugees:

The Official Camps

The army had control of some camps from the beginning and gradually assumed charge of others until 21[74] camps were under military discipline. These camps became known by the rather misleading title of “permanent camps.” The first to be brought under army control were four situated in the Presidio, three in Golden Gate Park, one in Harbor View, and one in Lobos Square.

During May the Franklin Square camp, those at Fort Mason, and at 19th and Minnesota Streets were taken over by the army. Early in June the camps in Jefferson Square, Lafayette Square, Mission Park, Duboce Park, Hamilton and Washington Squares were added, and in July, Alamo Square, Precita Park, and Columbia Park. Each camp was in charge of a camp commander, who according to the size of the camp, had on his staff clerks, foremen, laborers, and a nurse for the hospital department.[75] One or two of the larger camps had a camp carpenter. Plumbing and carpentry for the smaller camps were done by mechanics from headquarters.

Tent camp, opened May 9, 1906

Cottages

Camp No. 9, Lobos Square

[79]

During July and August the tents in the permanent camps were floored. Buildings were put up in each camp containing latrines and wash and bath-houses with hot and cold running water.

The unofficial camps, whose moral and sanitary condition was very unsatisfactory, harbored a large number of refugees. As late as September 1, 1906, their estimated population was from 10,000 to 15,000. The Finance Committee had tried to have the campers move into the official camps, but had failed because the police department, which was the only authority that could eject, was unwilling to remove any large number of persons. The police, of course, reflected the attitude of the general public, which seems to have classed as official, though it was not recognized as such by the Finance Committee, a large independent camp, which was a private business venture, renting land to refugees on which they might erect their own tents. General Greely, as has been described,[76] had tried to induce removal to the official camps. The importance of having all camp life under military discipline can be readily appreciated when one considers how difficult under any auspices it would be to give sanitary and moral protection to a large body of persons living under abnormal conditions.

The three essentials for camp tenants laid down as rules by General Greely were decency, order, and cleanliness. The camp commanders tried to get rid of the disorderly element as far as they could without causing hardship to others. When a person was ejected from one camp all other camps were notified and he was not allowed to enter any of them.

The following statement of the number of ejectments from May, 1906, to January, 1908, shows that there was constant attention to this problem. The dashes which appear in the columns representing ejectments, opposite June, 1906, and February and March, 1907, indicate that no ejectments were reported for these months, though it is probable that ejectments which were not reported occurred in the months mentioned and in the months between January, 1908, and the close of the relief work.

[80]

Reasons for ejectments, as stated by the camp commanders, and the number of ejectments for each reason or group of reasons, are shown in Table 24.

Where the first cottages were built, September, 1906

Camp No. 20, Hamilton Square

[81]

Table 25 shows the total population of the official camps for each month from May, 1906, to June, 1908, inclusive.

Although the data available for determining the character of the camp population are incomplete, from the weekly reports of the camp commanders we can derive figures which probably represent a fair average of the conditions. It appears that from September to December, 1906, about 39 per cent of the persons sheltered were men, about 31 per cent women, and about 30 per cent children. Approximately 55 per cent of the members of the camp population were at work. The proportion of persons who were at work was about 89 per cent among the men, about 39 per cent among the women, and about 25 per cent among the children.

The large percentage of men who were working is worthy of notice. There were numerous complaints during the existence of the camps that these were harboring a large number of idle, shiftless men. Those who offered such criticisms failed to take into account that there is even in normal times a considerable percentage of unemployed men who spend much of their time in public places. A part of the apparently well and able-bodied were in reality incapable of much work, and others though apparently unemployed were night workers. When the haunts of the idle were[82] covered with ashes, it is hardly strange that they should have been found in numbers in the public parks and squares.

In Chapter 1 the story has been told of the need felt for making some permanent provision for the refugees before the oncoming of the rainy season. The Corporation, after making a careful study of the situation in the camps, decided to adopt a separate cottage plan for temporary as well as for permanent housing, except in one locality, South Park, whose limited area gave no space for separate cottages.

On August 1, 1906, the care of the camps passed from the army to the Department of Camps and Warehouses.[77] From then until June 30, 1908, when the last camp was closed, that department had entire charge of maintenance. The Department of Lands and Buildings was responsible for the construction of the cottages built to replace the tents. The first of August, 1906, the Corporation made public its plan to build cottages[78] and let the contracts for the erection of buildings. Building began September 10, and on the sixteenth 20 cottages in Hamilton Square were completed. At least two or three months, however, intervened before any considerable number of houses could be made ready for the refugees. Before completing its work the Department of Lands and Buildings had installed in the public squares for use in connection with the 5,610 cottages which it had built, 667 patent flush closets, 247 hoppers, over six miles of gas and water pipe and over five miles of sewer pipe; also the necessary fittings, which included 325 galvanized sinks, with faucets and traps, and 624 gas brackets.[79]

Thus for the period of approximately six months those who had no resources to build found house room as best they might. Many difficulties were met by those who controlled the funds. Building had had to be delayed because of the extraordinary amount of work involved in supplying food, clothing, water, sanitary protection, and temporary shelter. The pressure on the relief machinery seemed to tax its utmost capacity. When it was necessary to push rebuilding plans, additional machinery and more workers had to be provided.

In the official camps the refugees had in large measure been[83] supplied with tents free of charge. As the time came for the removal of tents and temporary shacks and the substitution of wooden buildings, the question was raised, who would be entitled to their use, and on what terms? Cottages were assigned by the camp commanders, first, to those in the official camps; second, to those in shacks and tents outside; third, to those still in the city who were living in cellars and similar places, including those who were receiving shelter from friends, and those who were citizens but were living outside the city. Some who had not been burned out, but needed to be better housed, received cottages and moved them for permanent use to lots which they owned or leased.

For seven months the people had been furnished with tents free of charge, but when the change was made to the wooden cottages, it was thought best to charge a nominal rental.[80] The argument was that to give everything and ask nothing in return, on the one hand killed the self-respect of the efficient class and on the other gave opportunity to the idle to shirk all civic and social responsibility; that the no-rent policy had brought about serious economic disturbances, and its continuance would prepare the way for yet more serious trouble.

Finally, it was foreseen that the abnormal real estate conditions which had made it possible for the homeless to secure shelter, would not be relieved until those living in camp cottages should seek and be able to secure quarters elsewhere. Accordingly, it was definitely decided that as fast as buildings were made available in the camps, they should be leased to refugees by camp commanders at nominal rates. A special form of lease was provided which, theoretically, each applicant was compelled to sign before occupying a cottage.

The San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds, a corporation, was the lessor; and the refugee, the lessee. The lease was in effect a contract of purchase, for it provided that the tenant should become the owner of the cottage if he paid his rent to August 1, 1907. In general the applicant agreed to pay a specified rent and gas rate per month, to comply with all rules and regulations of the camp department and the camp commanders. He agreed not to assign his lease to another nor sublet without written consent.[84] He agreed furthermore to vacate the house at the expiration of his lease unless through full payment of all rents and charges he had acquired ownership. In that event he agreed to remove the house from the camp at his own expense before August, 1907. Failure to remove meant to forfeit ownership. When on account of ill-health or other disability a person was not able to pay rent, the camp commander notified the Rehabilitation Committee.

The shelter furnished by the army and the Finance Committee was with few exceptions on public land. When the Corporation was ready to build cottages it asked the park commission for permission to use certain parks and squares. The commission having no power to give the authority agreed, on August 17, 1906, to ignore the occupation of parks and squares, on the understanding that such use was for a period of not more than one year; the cottages were then to be removed as rapidly as possible.

The parks and squares were the most suitable places in which to give temporary shelter. The damage and loss to the city from their use were insignificant, and in the camps policing and sanitation were supplied. There would have been rivalry among owners of land to secure the camps, and consequent charges of favoritism, graft, etc. The parks and squares were well situated with reference to the centers of industry and the building operations. Throughout the work the park commissioners co-operated with the Relief Corporation and rendered valuable assistance. To have followed the suggestion of the committee on housing the homeless to establish but one encampment, would have been very unwise. In the summer following the disaster many persons were hindered from becoming self-supporting because of their remoteness in Golden Gate Park from centers of work.

The camp in South Park, already spoken of as unique in character, consisted of nineteen two-story tenement buildings and a one-story bath-house and laundry building. Some of the buildings were divided into 16 suites of two rooms each and the others into 12 tenements of two rooms each. The total number of rooms was 656. The maximum population was 648. They had adequate fire protection and the occupants were required to take part regularly in a fire drill. There was steady demand for the rooms, by reason of the nearness of the camp to the shipping and manufacturing districts. The tenements were full almost all the time.

Where two-story tenements were built

Camp No. 28, South Park

[85]

Removal from the Camps

The terms of the contract signed by applicants fixed, in large measure, the conditions under which cottages could be removed from the camps and become the permanent property of their owners.[81] Whenever a person proved to the Department that he had purchased or leased a lot in the city and county of San Francisco, he was permitted at his own expense to move his house.

In June, 1907, the park commissioners requested the Relief Corporation to clear the public squares of cottages by August 17. Clearing the squares and parks of these cottages proved to be a difficult task, for many occupants sought delay on the ground of being unable to secure other quarters. In a few cases the persons had either to be evicted or to have the houses pulled down over their heads. On account of the poverty of many occupants, and in order to secure better sanitary supervision while the fear of bubonic plague lasted, the camp at Lobos Square was retained after the others had been abandoned. It was used by the poorest of the refugees from other camps, as well as by its own unusual number of dependents. This camp was not entirely abandoned till June 30, 1908.[82]

Cottages to the number of 5,343 were removed from the camps, all but a few to be used as dwellings. Real estate firms which applied to purchase cottages to establish them in groups on their own lots were refused by the Department on the ground that any such arrangement would tend to perpetuate camp life; lacking superintendence and control, such camp life would be worse than that which then existed. Despite the action of the Department, however, large vacant lots were sub-divided and rented to individual owners of cottages.[83] Seventy-four of the cottages were given to philanthropic agencies and were installed by them in various parts of the city for use as club rooms or for similar purposes.

The work of the Associated Charities in moving and repairing cottages deserves special mention. The Corporation arranged[86] with the Associated Charities to move from the camps the cottages belonging to widows with children and to families having incapacitated breadwinners. The moving of cottages, which began in July, 1907, was not ended until the latter part of June, 1908.[84] The amount of work accomplished at a cost comparatively small shows excellent business management. The greater part of the work of moving, installing, and repairing the cottages was done by unemployed carpenters, plumbers, and laborers. “Considering the number of cottages moved and made habitable, we have had very few complaints as to the workmanship,” is noted in a report of the Associated Charities,—a comment that could not be made in connection with many houses erected by the regular contractors.

The efforts being made by families permanently to own homes are shown by the following figures: The number of cottagers buying lots was 208; paying ground rent, 447; owning own property, 30; given one month’s rent to move from camp but present condition unknown, 18. Total, 703.

Under the supervision of the Associated Charities the 208 families buying lots bid fair, according to reports given in 1908, to own them in the immediate future. It is doubtless true that but for the direction of the society these families never would have seriously considered owning a house and lot.

From August 1, 1906, to June 30, 1908, there is accurate information from which to determine the cost of the camps. During this period 7,171,522 days’ shelter was furnished at a cost of $884,558.81 for construction of cottages and of $453,000.04 for maintenance, a total of $1,337,558.85, a daily per capita cost of 18.7 cents. The daily per capita cost of maintenance was 6 cents. No allowance is here made for the value of the tents in use from August 1 till they were replaced by the cottages, but their value is more than offset by that of the cottages when they were vacated.[85]

For the whole period of the relief work, the cost of the camps was as follows:

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In addition to the shelter furnished at Ingleside and the Relief Home, an estimate of 11,000,000[86] days of shelter for the entire relief period may be given, a figure that is probably too small. From it we get an average daily per capita cost of 19.1 cents.

The apparently greater cost of shelter for the early period is due possibly to too low an estimate of the number of days’ shelter furnished outside of official camps. It must be kept in mind that the disbursements given above include all disbursements for sanitation and for medical care in the camps, and also that the residents of the camps included a large proportion of aged, infirm, and dependent persons. The actual cost would be reduced if it were possible to deduct the value of the tents and cottages at the time they ceased to be used.

What is astounding in this story of giving shelter to a great displaced city population of 250,000[87] souls is not the number of days that shelter had to be provided or the sum total of cost. The astounding fact is that when Camp Lobos, the last stamping ground of the residuum,[88] was closed to refugees on June 30, 1908, the number of persons that had to be cared for by the Associated Charities and the Relief Home was so small. In June, 1906, 40,000 persons were living at the expense of the relief funds in camps[88] and shacks; two years later, leaving out of consideration those who had been given shelter at Ingleside, only 703 had to be aided by charitable agency to obtain permanent shelter.

This section may well be closed by a brief and necessarily inadequate statement of the social work undertaken in connection with the camp life. Four important settlements were swept to ashes by the fire,—the South Park Settlement, a pioneer work in San Francisco, the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association, the Nurses’ Settlement, and the Columbia Park Boys’ Club. The residents of each showed, as did the Associated Charities, their power of readjusting their work to meet the new demands for service. They transferred their activity to the camps where they, as well as groups of other volunteers, tried to improve social conditions.

Various organizations of women co-operated also to help carry on the work of the sewing center at the Hearst Grammar School, which was established the middle of May by the representative of the American National Red Cross, in connection with its employment bureau. Here volunteers met and distributed garments and taught women and girls to sew, giving materials to some in exchange for their work on garments, which were distributed to other refugees. The work grew so that sewing circles were opened in various camps and other suitable places, which furnished proper clothing and gave employment and instruction to women and girls. By July, 1907, over 75,000 garments had been made in the 75 centers that had been established in camps, churches, public schools, and settlements. The work itself had been brought under the Corporation as a part of its Department of Relief and Rehabilitation, and had been given the name of Industrial Bureau, with Lucile Eaves as director, Rev. D. O. Crowley as adviser, and six seamstresses on salary. Miss Eaves, formerly head worker of the South Park Settlement, had been in charge of the sewing circles before the incorporation of the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds. There is no account of expenditures made for this work to August 1, 1906. After that date the Corporation expended $37,895.70. The two largest items of expenditure were $28,521.09 for dry goods and other supplies and $4,464 for service.

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Temporary social halls were built at the expense of the Corporation to be used by residents of the camps as meeting places and by social workers for kindergartens, day nurseries, reading rooms, sewing classes, and improvement clubs, for religious meetings, for lectures, and for concerts.

The story of the quick recovery of the settlements themselves and of how, awaiting the building of new quarters, they by makeshifts got the people together, cannot be told here. To show in a measure what it meant to the social worker to find himself suddenly bereft of all the means to serve his end, the following paragraphs written by a probation officer are given:

6. SAFEGUARDING HEALTH

Sanitation was at once recognized to be a pressing problem. As has been told, latrines were quickly built in the camps and in other parts of the city, and a large force of plumbers was kept at work to repair leaks in sewers so as to prevent the seepage of sewage into the water supply. Citizens were ordered to boil all drinking water and the authorities took charge of all milk as soon as it was delivered to the city. Sanitary orders were cheerfully obeyed. “Obey the Sanitary Law or be shot” tacked on a partially wrecked house showed that some of the refugees held to a pioneer code. That they did so, and that the authorities were alert, the excellent health record of the months that followed bears testimony. The sanitary problem was to a small degree lessened by the fact that with the terror of the earthquake and fire in their eyes, the vicious and parasitic classes fled from the city; to a large degree by the fact that nature was kind in giving conditions that were peculiarly favorable to life in the open.

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To put emphasis on sanitation was an essential. Colonel G. H. Torney,[89] of the army medical department, was placed in charge of all sanitary work, both of the camps and of the city. By April 28 a medical officer had been assigned to each of the six military districts.[90] This officer assigned inspectors to make daily inspections of the camps in his district, to keep a close watch for infectious diseases, and to see that there was a large force of scavengers. The expense of the work was borne by the army and was drawn from the Congressional appropriation.

Because of the army’s efficiency during the first few weeks there was no serious outbreak of disease, though there was for a short time a fear that smallpox might become epidemic. As long, however, as the city authorities permitted groups of people to live in isolated camps proper sanitary supervision was impossible. The greatest danger was from the flies and from the use of water drawn in the early days from wells and other unusual sources of supply. As soon as possible sterilizers were installed in the camps and weekly tests made of the water used in each.

Early in May a physician named by the city authorities was stationed at each district headquarters to have charge of all health regulations and to be subject to the orders of Colonel Torney.

The services of the army officers were retained to make reports on conditions until the middle of May, when the division into sanitary districts was abandoned and Colonel Torney’s duties were changed so that he might become chief sanitary officer of permanent camps under General Greely, the division commander. An army medical officer was then assigned to each official camp. He was responsible for the sanitation of his camp, but not for territories beyond its boundaries. He could be called upon to advise the civil authorities who were responsible for the final removal of all camp garbage and refuse after it had been taken from the camps designated to places outside camp limits.

The board of health, acting under orders of the Executive Commission, appointed a health corps which was paid by the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds and subject to the direction of the camp commander. The personnel of the corps under the board of health in each camp consisted, varying[91] according to the camp population, of one to two surgeons, one to four nurses, a pharmacist, and from two to ten laborers. There were for service at large one surgeon, two dentists, two sanitary inspectors, one pharmacist, six laborers, and two chauffeurs. The total number in the corps was: surgeons, 24; nurses, 26; dentists, 2; laborers, 89; inspectors, 2; pharmacists, 15; chauffeurs, 2.

Taking into account the character of the camp population, a considerable part of which was of the class that does not understand the need of sanitary precautions, the freedom from epidemic during the first few months is remarkable. A report of the medical department of the army shows that 30 cases of typhoid fever occurred in April, 55 in May, and 10 up to June 23, 1906. As the average number of cases per month reported by the city to the state board of health for the two years previous to the fire was only 12, there is apparently an increase of this disease during April and May. The 30 cases which developed in April must have been due to infection previous to April 18, so that unless the statistics of either the army or the city board of health are incorrect, an increase of this disease must have threatened before the fire. Of the 95 cases which developed between April 18 and June 23 only five developed in official camps. Of smallpox there were 123 cases between April 18 and June 23. Five of these were reported by the board of health as camp cases, but none of them originated in official camps under army control.

In October and November, 1906, there was a decided increase in the number of cases of typhoid fever, the bureau of hospitals alone having charge at one time of 155 cases. The patients came from camps, official and unofficial, and from houses. The epidemic, if it can be called such, was found to be carried not by contaminated milk or water but by flies. The sanitation methods of the board of health had not been good enough to protect the refugees in the various camps. The board of health, therefore, not the Department of Camps and Warehouses, was responsible for the number of typhoid fever cases.

The care of the sick was a minor problem of the relief work. The number of persons seriously injured by the fire and earthquake was but 415. Most of the hospitals stood outside the burned section, and though some of them suffered heavy damage by the[92] earthquake, no demand had to be made for hospital facilities that could not be met fairly adequately. Some of the sick were immediately cared for in neighboring communities, and by the army in its hospitals at the Presidio and at Fort Mason, and in a field hospital established in Golden Gate Park.[91] At one time during the summer following the disaster many of the city hospital beds were vacant, even though numerous chronic cases became hospital charges when relatives and friends were no longer financially able to provide for them.

The physicians and nurses who came immediately after the disaster to San Francisco to offer their services could not be utilized, as the demand for medical and nursing service was not greater than could be supplied by local physicians and nurses. A party of fourteen nurses that came from Seattle soon after the disaster reported for duty at five o’clock one afternoon. “Have you return transportation?” asked the chairman of the committee that received them. “Yes,” was the answer. “Well, there is a train which starts for Seattle tomorrow morning at nine o’clock,” was the laconic order.

In this incident we see the need of a clearing house of information to be established as one of the very first agencies in a large work of relief. It would in this case have prevented the sending of unnecessary nurses and physicians and would have saved expense. More important, however, would have been its service in standardizing the methods of record keeping and in preventing overlapping of work of the various departments.[92]

There was immediate need of medical supplies to replace the stock destroyed by fire. But the sub-committees on drugs and medical supplies and on care of the sick and wounded, appointed by the Citizens’ Committee, could find little to do in those early days after the disaster, as the army practically took charge of the distribution of the medical supplies and was using the California Red Cross as its agent. This branch of the Red Cross not only cared for some of the sick directly, but did much more important work in collecting information as to the needs of the sick and as to the condition of the hospitals throughout the city.

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The Finance Committee, acting early in May on the advice of Colonel Torney, established 26 free dispensaries which were supplied by the army with drugs and other medical supplies. It was careful not to compete with retail trade, so closed any dispensary near which a retail drug store was later opened. The Finance Committee also appointed early in May a committee on hospitals and authorized it to make payments to designated hospitals for the care of destitute patients. The hospitals which were to receive payments from the relief funds were at first named by the board of health, later by the Finance Committee itself, which made selection of six hospitals. An executive officer, a physician, was appointed to pass on the eligibility of the patients who applied for free care and to determine the time of discharge of each from the hospital.

In July this executive officer, whose title was that of supervisor of accredited hospitals, served under direction of the Executive Commission; but after August 1 he was subject to the Corporation, an arrangement which held until July 1, 1908, when the Bureau of Hospitals of the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation was closed. The Associated Charities was then given authority by the Corporation to send destitute patients directly to the hospitals. The Corporation reimbursed the hospitals for care given. The hospitals selected to receive patients whose care was paid for from the funds were changed from time to time.

The value of the compensation to hospitals was at first equivalent to $13 or $14 a week for each patient. On July 18 the Executive Commission had fixed the maximum rate of $2.00 per day without supplies. This was to cover cost of operations and attendance. It had remained in force until the Bureau of Hospitals was closed.

The Bureau’s records, which are inadequate in some respects, show that the highest number of hospital cases for one week, 276, was reached during the period of the typhoid epidemic. Later reports show an average of about 212 patients per week from August, 1906, to September, 1907. Of the patients sent to hospitals through the Bureau 10 per cent were children, 35 per cent men, and 55 per cent women.

The financial report of the Corporation shows that the total cost for the care of the sick to May 29, 1909, was $344,165.07.[94] In addition, food, medical supplies, and furnishings were given to hospitals to the value of $97,670.16. Of the $344,165.07, there was expended previous to August 1, 1906, $107,396.43. The sum of $278,070.76 was paid directly to hospitals for the care of patients, on presentation of vouchers, while the balance of $66,094.31, though not paid directly to the hospitals, was expended in various ways for the benefit of the hospital patients. Between August 1, 1906, and June 1, 1909, $231,110.46 was paid directly to hospitals for the care of patients. This latter sum, less $1,960.25 which cannot be distributed, represents 134,373 days of hospital care at an average cost of $1.71 per patient per day. The average rates of the different hospitals varied from $1.07 to $2.00.

Although the rates paid by the relief funds were often less than the actual cost to the hospitals of caring for patients in normal times, it was to the advantage of the hospitals to care for the sick, many of whom they would have had to take in any case. The volume of business helped to lower the per capita cost of maintenance. It was also an incentive to the directors to increase their facilities and to private benefactors to give money toward their support.

7. RELIEVING THE JAPANESE AND CHINESE

The Japanese asked for very little relief, in part because many had difficulty in speaking English, but more generally because all were aware of the anti-Japanese feeling of a small but aggressive part of the community; this in spite of the fact that Japan contributed directly to the local committee and through the American National Red Cross nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

On April 20, independent relief associations were formed by Japanese residents in San Francisco and Oakland, but on the same day they wisely united under the name Japanese Relief Association to care for practically all their fellow countrymen.

Tanks for Sterilizing Water, Lobos Square Camp

The Japanese Relief Association estimated the number of their countrymen made destitute by the fire to be over 10,000, which is about 3 per cent of the total number of persons made dependent for short or long periods of time. On July 6, 1906, not over 100 Japanese were receiving assistance from the Relief and[95] Red Cross Funds. Of these about 50 were receiving shelter only, in Lafayette Square, and 50 were receiving help at relief stations. That is, the Japanese constituted not more than one-half of 1 per cent of the bread line and about a quarter of 1 per cent of the population of the official camps. Even at the beginning the number receiving help from the Relief and Red Cross Funds was probably not much greater. The Relief Survey estimates that the total value of relief of all kinds furnished by the army and the Finance Committee to Japanese did not exceed $3,000. Among the 30,000 or more persons who applied for rehabilitation, there was not one Japanese. Their own relief association, assisted by Japanese throughout the state, within ten days after the disaster sent between 7,000 and 8,000 of them to places outside of San Francisco. On July 6 some of these had returned and the number of Japanese refugees then in the city was estimated by the association to be 4,000, two hundred of whom it was supplying with provisions.

China contributed $40,000 to the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds for the general work of relief.

There is not much information available about the Chinese. They probably received altogether more food than the Japanese and they certainly received more in the way of shelter, yet the total value of all aid given them was relatively insignificant. Like the Japanese, and for the same reasons, they did not ask for much. At the beginning a separate camp was established for them,—Number 3, in the Presidio reservation. The population of this camp on May 8, 1906, was 186. Later, when cottages were built in Portsmouth Square, on the border of Chinatown, 37 out of the 153 cottages were assigned to Chinese. Not over 140 applications for rehabilitation were made by Chinese. About half of the number were assisted at an average expenditure of about $70. Nearly all these cases were brought to the notice of the Committee by social workers, as only a few Chinese applied voluntarily for relief. Ten thousand dollars is a liberal estimate of the value of relief given to the Chinese.

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III
QUESTIONS OF FINANCE

1. CLAIMS

The word “claim” as used in the relief accounting was applied to anything from a time check for a day’s work to a ten thousand dollar demand for goods seized, a usage that arose from the fact that for the first few days, when there was no available cash, many obligations were incurred that were a proper charge on the relief funds though not authorized by the Finance Committee.

Some claims were made by those who suffered a change of sentiment toward contributing relief. During the hours of urgent need men donated their goods, workmen gave their labor, and professional men, their services, who when later they saw the size of the relief funds could not resist the insidious craving to have a share of the big whole. There is the instance of men belonging to one of the building trades who did work for which they expected no pay but later were not satisfied to take the $4.00 a day offered as payment by the Finance Committee. They demanded $6.00 because other men were receiving that amount for a day’s work. Business houses within and without the city evinced the same spirit.

Day by day the flood of claims swelled. Claimants and their attorneys laid siege to the Finance Committee and tried by bribes and threats of lawsuits to collect their claims. A large force of clerks and a special committee were kept hard at work trying to learn the merits of the claims. The Finance Committee itself day after day was compelled, instead of discussing necessary relief measures, to give the greater part of its sessions to the hearing or to the discussion of these claims.[93]

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The circumstances of seizure had varied. Often when the fire was almost upon a store somebody would assume authority and break it open to give the stock to the people. In such a case the stock would have been destroyed by fire and there was no justice in the claim for seizure except where the owner as a consequence lost insurance. Irresponsible individuals who had no connection with relief committees had seized goods and impressed vehicles. Those who suffered loss through such lawless acts were unfortunate, but they had no real claim to reimbursement from the relief funds.

The same may be said of the individuals, the business houses, and the transportation companies whose goods were stolen, not seized, from freight cars and warehouses. Many claims for regrettable losses which might have been legitimate if brought against state, city, or person, were unjust when brought against the relief funds. Fraudulent attempts were also made to collect from the relief funds for losses that had no connection with the relief work and for losses that had never occurred. It was a perplexing problem to deal with these thousands of claims, the difficulties of which were increased by the insistence of those with the least valid claims.

The last report of the Department of Bills and Demands dated March 16, 1907, gives the following figures:

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After March 16, 1907, a few long pending and new claims were paid. Some law suits had been settled, and a few were still pending against the Corporation when this report was prepared.

It thus appears that the trustees of the relief funds paid over a million and a half dollars for expenditures, many of which they had not authorized and were unable to control. They tried to pay only such part of the claims as represented supplies and service used in relief work. Just claims were cut down as a rule, so that a comparatively small number of claims were paid in full.

In deciding the merits of claims the supervising and judicial committees appointed sub-committees of experienced men to supplement their own technical knowledge. Many claims for liquor destroyed by soldiers and citizens were presented, but the Finance Committee decided to pay no liquor claims. The enormous disbursements for automobile service and for transportation of supplies were made chiefly in payment of emergency claims. Claims of various sorts were paid by the War Department out of the Congressional appropriation of $2,500,000. Other claims were paid by the state. As the Relief Corporation could get no information about such claims it is possible that there were duplicate payments.

2. SYSTEM OF ACCOUNTING—A NOTE

The accounting system of the Relief and Red Cross Funds has been criticized because it did not readily yield information as to the amounts expended for various purposes, and because it was complicated. The first seems a fair criticism, for contributors to[99] funds and the public in general are more interested in the cost of various forms of relief than in the state of the appropriations. The system of appropriations to the departments for different purposes was based on carefully prepared budgets. It was good for controlling expenditures and for keeping a check on departments and bureaus. For those not directly connected with the work, additional information in simple form might easily have been given. The intricacy of the accounting, however, seems justified by the results. It was devised to make the handling of the money as secure as possible. So far as the local auditors and the auditor of the War Department have been able to discover there was only one transaction that looked like misappropriation of money. About $1,000 received by a camp employe from certain authorized sales was for a short time kept back. The apparent shortage, easily detected by the accounting department, was made good.

Considering the extraordinary conditions under which the work was organized, such a showing is remarkable. When men undertake the thankless task of handling a large relief fund, if they have a keen sense of responsibility and a realization of the difficulties ahead they will wish to disburse the fund through a system which is as safe as possible. It is worth while for them not only to prevent misappropriation but even the appearance of it. The employes of such a committee will find satisfaction, when accused of graft and stealing,—an accusation suffered many times by the San Francisco workers,—in showing their accusers just how the money is guarded and that it is impossible for them to steal. A system that insures such security is worth the extra cost.

3. THE CONTROL OF DONATIONS

As a result, primarily, of the publication of sensational stories in the press of the country, the plans of the Corporation were at times seriously embarrassed by the withholding of funds by eastern committees and by the possible danger of those funds being dispensed by independent agencies.

The studies in rehabilitation show that the suspension of grants on August 20, 1906, the period of arrested progress, had a serious effect upon the rehabilitation work. It caused a change[100] of relief policy so that families given grants in one period were treated differently from those in another. It meant for many families a long wait from August 20 to the middle of October when the embargo was lifted. The Corporation had worked out a wise, comprehensive program on the basis of estimated income and then suddenly had to question whether the income might not be $3,000,000 less. Inevitably every department suffered from uncertainty and hesitation. The results of such an intolerable condition were more clearly perceived in rehabilitation than in the other work, but what the withholding of funds meant in reduced efficiency would be hard to estimate.

The two most important funds, those of Massachusetts and the New York Chamber of Commerce,[94] were eventually transferred, the latter with the restriction that it be used for business rehabilitation. Only a number of small funds were permanently held, but the harm was done. The warning should be heeded in future disasters. It is possible for a relief committee, when its work is hardest, to be tied up because of a few newspaper stories which may or may not have foundation in fact.

The investigator sent by the Massachusetts committee because of the newspaper stories, after investigation cordially endorsed the work of the Relief Corporation and made but few criticisms.

What is the remedy? It cannot be too plainly stated that there must be only one relief committee or corporation.[95] There must be no division of responsibility for distribution. If there must be reform it must be within the relief corporation itself. If one of the eastern committees in command of large funds had[101] set up its own agency in San Francisco, it would have been guilty of improper trusteeship. That much is evident. The suggestion has been made that the committees in charge of the larger funds should each have had a representative on the Finance Committee. Mr. Bicknell, for instance, came first to San Francisco as the representative of the Chicago Commercial Association and the Mayor’s committee funds. But such representation would not include the smaller fund committees. A more inclusive plan is desirable. The gradual strengthening of the American National Red Cross seems to point the way. The Red Cross should become so fully recognized as the national agency for all disaster funds that it should eventually, in any given case, receive all funds not sent directly to a local committee. Its relation to local committees will be strengthened and it can be relied upon to suggest and whenever necessary push changes in relief measures. In San Francisco and each subsequent disaster of any proportions, the American National Red Cross has been represented by its expert agents. Its strength has been materially increased by the appointment of a permanent director. The withholding of funds once subscribed for a particular disaster should become an impossibility as the status of the national agent is recognized.

We have alluded to one form of restriction, that of requiring that a specified fund be used for a specified form of rehabilitation. Such restriction must of course be accepted after an effort has been made, and has failed, to persuade the forwarding committee to lift the restriction. But restrictions upon relief in kind are doubly dangerous and ill-advised. In the San Francisco disaster the “flour” episode gives an apt illustration. Certain forms of food were donated in quantities in excess of the needs. These were flour, potatoes, and condensed milk, all three of them valuable forms of food in an emergency. The potatoes, as it was the end of the season, did not keep well in large masses and the refugees, living in tents or in basements or attics, had little room for storage. Besides, the universal practice in San Francisco and the vicinity where fresh vegetables can be bought the year round, is to buy in small quantities from day to day or week to week and not store in the fall for winter use. The Finance Committee, unable to dispose of the potatoes to refugees, decided to sell the[102] surplus stock. The sale does not appear to have been made, perhaps because they were unsaleable. At any rate large quantities spoiled and had to be thrown away.

It was natural to think that condensed and evaporated milk would be necessities of prime importance. They were valuable, but on account of local conditions were not needed in great quantities. The supply of milk from the ranches outside the city was not much diminished by the earthquake. By confiscation and by arrangement with dealers an abundant supply of fresh milk was secured for distribution to the refugees.

Many committees throughout the country sent flour as the most useful form of food. It came so fast that for lack of warehouses in which to store it (practically all city warehouses having been burned) part of it was put aboard three transports and in the army warehouses, and finally a vast quantity was stacked up in the open air. The transports were not adapted to preserving flour in good condition so they could not long be used as storehouses. The Finance Committee, confronted by the problem of finding storage for the vast supply received, and knowing that it was several times as much as could be reasonably distributed, decided on May 17 to sell 4,000,000 pounds. This was vigorously objected to by the Minneapolis committee which had sent 15 per cent of the 16,000,000 pounds received. It insisted that its flour should be distributed,—the very flour sent, not flour purchased later with cash from the sale of Minneapolis flour. This episode led to newspaper publicity and protests. The lesson is, that restrictions upon relief in kind are unsatisfactory and embarrassing and should always be placed upon a discretionary basis. The Minneapolis committee claimed that title to its flour had been transferred to the destitute of San Francisco, not to the Red Cross or to the Finance Committee, who were apparently to be considered solely as the servants of distribution. The position is an impossible one in which to place a self-respecting committee.

Many donors of money gave specific directions as to the use to which they wished it put. There was the man who sent $1.00 with a request to hand it to some worthy sufferer and let him report to the donor; and there was the refugee who, after he[103] had found employment elsewhere, sent a small sum, more than enough to pay for the three days’ rations he had received in the bread line, with the request that the balance be given to a soldier who had been kind to him. Jewelers sent money for jewelers, artists for artists, teachers for teachers, physicians for physicians, the people of one town for their fellow townsmen in San Francisco.

Money was also sent to individuals connected with the relief funds to be applied to specific purposes. Fortunately, there were enough unrestricted funds available to assist all classes and carry out the intent of all donors. It was not necessary to open a special account for each of these trusts.

No actual restriction as to the purpose of expenditure, imposed either by donors directly or by the custodians of large funds, was in itself onerous to the relief authorities, but the circumstances attendant upon the remittance of restricted funds caused more or less embarrassment during nearly the whole period of the relief work.

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PART II
REHABILITATION

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Part II
REHABILITATION

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I
BEGINNINGS OF REHABILITATION

1. GENERAL POLICY

In the beginning of the Relief Survey it has been shown how, with what seemed to be an instinctive insistence, the trend of the work was toward the formulation of a definite rehabilitation policy. The principle, one might say axiom, which determined the character of this policy was that help should be extended with reference to needs and not with reference to losses. It was not easy to hold to the relief principle in the face of a sentiment by no means weak nor voiceless that each sufferer was entitled to an equal share of the funds. That the Rehabilitation Committee did consistently act on this principle during the periods of its activity was a marked achievement—an achievement that may be counted to the good, not only for the relief of San Francisco sufferers but for sufferers from subsequent disasters.

When the Rehabilitation Committee began its work at the beginning of July, 1906,[96] it could not know what amount of money would be available for the purposes of its work. It knew that $1,500,000 had been suggested as the amount and 15,000 as the number of families to be rehabilitated. It held many conferences to consider the possibility of obtaining even the roughest sort of census of the families who would require assistance.

No solution was furnished by the population of the various camps because even if their total population had been known, it would not have given a clue to the number of families who were living with relatives or friends or as tenants in the overcrowded quarters. Unlike the ordinary relief society, the Committee could not estimate the total actual needs of its prospective applicants.[108] Therefore it had to fix definite limitations for grants[97] to those who first applied so that later applicants, with needs equally great, might not suffer injustice.

With these considerations in mind the Committee at its first meeting moved to limit the vast bulk of grants to sums of $500 or less. The decision was that a grant that did not exceed $200 could be approved by one member of the Committee, that grants of from $200 to $500 should require the signatures of two members, and that grants of more than $500 should require the action of the entire Committee. During the first few months the number of separate grants of $500 or over, exclusive of housing grants, was but 121, the general assumption in the Committee room and among the rehabilitation workers being that the number of families to receive over $500 should be small.

Eventually, of the 20,241 families assisted by the Committee, 647 families received as much as $500 each.[98] It was not realized at the beginning that in a great number of instances there would be re-openings and new applications leading to the granting of new forms of rehabilitation; that, for example, a family would be helped first to re-establish itself in business and later to build a house. Supplementary grants that increased the total allowance to a family to more than $500 were not passed upon by the Committee as a whole, though at several meetings the question of requiring the Committee to act as a whole on the issuance of a series of grants in excess of $500 to an applicant was informally discussed. No official action, however, followed the discussions. Before the middle of July the Committee sent to the newspapers and to others interested, a circular in which was outlined its general purpose. In this its aim was shown to be not to determine the size of grants by the extent of losses, but to help those to re-establish[109] themselves who were unable, even upon a contracted basis, to do so without assistance.

The wisdom of limiting the size of grants may be questioned by some, but there is no doubt of its paramount importance in giving a rough basis for work at a time when it was impossible to estimate the number of families that would require assistance. It is hard to conceive of the setting of any other standard than this. Without it the possibilities for confusion and injustice were unusually large. The decision was reached not only from motives of prudence but also from the Committee’s sense of responsibility in dealing with such large amounts of money as would undoubtedly be placed in its hands. That the feeling of personal responsibility was large was made evident by other actions of the Committee.[99]

After the Department of Camps and Warehouses was created on August 1, 1906, the Rehabilitation Committee[100] finally adopted its own policy with reference to families living in the camps, a policy which as has been seen[101] had been gradually taking shape during July. The whole question of the rehabilitation of camp families had been considered at a lunch given before his departure east by Dr. Devine to the members of the Committee and the staff. The conclusions of this informal conference did not take official form, but they may be accepted as marking the first step in the formulation of the policy. They were: That the camps should provide for the immediate needs of their inmates; that no stated sum could be set aside for the ultimate use of those who were expected to become permanent charges; and that no family living in a camp should be given rehabilitation aid until it had presented a definite plan for rehabilitation. It was felt that the effect upon applicants would be great if once they understood that it was useless for them to come to the Committee without definite and concrete plans.[110] The subject of setting aside a sum for the use of the residue came up again in the latter part of August when Mr. Dohrmann, in making his estimates of the future disposition of funds, again and again called attention to the need of reserving large sums to re-establish camp families.

By August 1 the issuing of rations had been discontinued. The Department of Camps and Warehouses had taken over the bulk of the work of the short-lived Executive Commission, and the Rehabilitation Committee had been made responsible, under the gradual centralization of all relief, for the granting of all aid other than shelter and the relief-giving incidental to camp life. The Rehabilitation Committee was, however, in accordance with the policy it had adopted, steadying the number of applications made to it by camp families, by requiring an applicant to give proof that he had an assured dwelling before his request for household aid was considered. The immediate necessity was to define the relations between the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation and the Department of Camps and Warehouses. On August 6, 1906, the chairman of the latter department, Rudolph Spreckels, met with the Rehabilitation Committee, and after prolonged consideration the following definite agreement was reached:

The Department of Camps and Warehouses agreed:

The Rehabilitation Committee on its part agreed:

Camp No. 25, Richmond District, opened November 20, 1906

Camp No. 29, Mission Park, opened November 19, 1906

Two Cottage Camps

[111]

The responsibility of the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation for relief outside the camps remained absolute, with the exception of the housing aid given by the Department of Lands and Buildings. Mr. Bicknell was appointed to carry out the plan so far as it related to the Rehabilitation Committee, to which he later presented his plan for the establishment of a Bureau of Special Relief under the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation. This new bureau, which is described elsewhere,[102] gave aid in kind; the Rehabilitation Committee gave emergency aid in cash.

2. PERIODS OF REHABILITATION WORK

By way of introduction to the following chapter, a summary may well be made of the periods of time into which the rehabilitation work naturally fell.

May 5 marked the beginning of the rehabilitation work under the direction of the Red Cross, a period when a force of workers, trained and untrained, got steadily to work, and when policies began to be shaped. It may be called the formative period.

July 7 began the second period. It was the time when the Rehabilitation Committee of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds got into the saddle, carrying with it the staff and adopting the policies of the formative period. It was marked by the rapid development of district organizations; by the rapid increase in the number of applications for relief. It may be called the period of accelerated applications.

August 20 opened the third period, when a decline in the number of applications was brought about by new restrictions upon the character of cases eligible for consideration; the time when the advisability of the district plan of organization was brought in question. Furthermore, it was the time when grants were sharply limited by the withholding of the eastern funds.[103] This may be called the period of arrested progress.

November 4 began the fourth period, when the centralized plan was in force and when a persistent effort was made gradually[112] to decrease the responsibilities carried by the Rehabilitation Committee. It was the period of centralized effort.

April 9, 1907, marked the beginning of the fifth and last period, which closed June 30, 1907, with the taking over of the rehabilitation work by the Associated Charities. It was a time of rapid discharge of committees and of readjustments,—the period of withdrawal.

[113]

II
METHODS OF WORK[104]

1. THE DISTRICT SYSTEM

Before the formation of the Rehabilitation Committee the Associated Charities[105] had assumed responsibility, under the Red Cross, for the investigation of applicants for rehabilitation. During July the Associated Charities under the direction of the Rehabilitation Committee organized in each of the seven civil sections of the city a committee of persons who were related more or less to the previous charity work of the locality. Each section or district office was supervised by a chairman[106] under whom was an agent with a corps of visitors and clerks. By securing in addition to the local charity workers the services of several experienced workers from states east of the Sierras, it was possible, as has been already stated, to have an experienced agent in each district. Four sections were in charge of agents drawn from the outside; three of agents with experience in the San Francisco Associated Charities.

The month of July was one that called for the exercise of discretion and tact, as it was a time when a large untried force had to be organized to visit families. A general superintendent of district work was appointed to bring about unity of ideals and standards in the sections and to cultivate a sympathetic understanding of the system on the part of all concerned in it. The position was held during July by one of the eastern workers and after August 1 by the general secretary of the Associated Charities. The section committees, mentioned above, made a strong and interested group of volunteers.

[114]

In one of the sections was to be found a group of workers who knew their neighborhood thoroughly,—a physician who had done active work among the poorer people previous to April 18, the president of a settlement, and the priest. These met together each day with others to go over the case work of the investigators who were studying the individual needs of refugees. Nowhere else could one get such an impression of the cosmopolitan character of San Francisco. The names of the investigators showed their origin,—Italian, Spanish, English, Scotch. These could speak to the refugees in their own tongues. One of the investigators was a trained nurse who had been at work in the neighborhood; another, an artist who had been the year before as far away from the Pacific Coast as the Albert Nyanza; the third, a student of economics. In still another section were to be found as investigators a force of college students. Seven of them were from Stanford University. They gave devoted service from April until the university opened in the autumn. They camped in the outer office and would work from early in the morning until late in the evening. They were often visiting at six in the morning and were to be found in the office writing reports at ten in the evening. Several teachers, a physician, and a trained nurse made up the rest of the group, which was guided at first by one of the most active and devoted local workers, a probation officer of the juvenile court.

In another section one felt the distinctive mark to be catholicity. The chairman of this committee was a Presbyterian minister and the assistant to the agent was a Unitarian minister who had given up his charge to devote himself for a year to the charitable work of the city. A Hebrew whose strong personal influence counted for much in dealing with the refugees of his faith; another Hebrew, a woman, who as a volunteer had done most important service in securing work for the refugees; an active worker in women’s clubs; and other men and women who had had experience as teachers and in business, completed this section committee.

In so large a group of investigators, brought into service at a time of high pressure, there were necessarily to be found many attitudes of mind toward the work and varying degrees of readiness to be instructed. What surprised those who had the task of[115] fitting the visitors to their work was their adaptability. The committees met at short intervals to review, one by one, the stories and recommendations of the investigators, and to make their own decisions to be submitted for final action to the Rehabilitation Committee at headquarters.

The investigating force of the Rehabilitation Committee reached its highest number in August, 1906, when it numbered 96 persons on full and nine on half time. Sixty-five other persons were also employed, principally as clerks and messengers. The Committee from the start took the sensible ground that as far as possible there should be investigation of each applicant. The record card used in the sections was the second registration card, which as the reader knows, superseded the one adopted in the initial relief period.[107]

The second registration was undertaken by the staff of workers gathered together by the American National Red Cross, who worked from the seven civil sections and recorded their investigations on the improved cards described below. These cards, which were kept on file at headquarters, were, from the time of the second registration to the end of the rehabilitation work, used by the various committees. They held the facts as to an individual’s own expectation of providing shelter for himself and family. Later these cards served to measure the degree of success each applicant had made in carrying out his own plan.

The second registration, though not to the same degree as the first, failed in completeness, so that many persons who applied later, not only to the Rehabilitation Committee but to the many other committees and departments, were given relief by those who were in ignorance of what help had already been extended. If registration had been accurate and complete from the beginning much saving of money and time would have been effected, and, of immeasurably greater importance, much better rehabilitation work could have been done. A thorough system of registration would have been opposed by many of the relief workers, as well as by the refugees, but the importance of securing, in beginning such a work, an accurate registration of names and references and of entering on the dated cards the facts of aid requested[116] and given, cannot be over-estimated. The outstanding need of the later rehabilitation work was for a registration so inclusive that it might serve as a general confidential exchange of information[108] of the sums of relief given and the efforts made to rehabilitate individuals or families. One of those who had partial supervision of enumeration for the first registration has said that a more carefully prepared card and a rigid supervision of investigators could have secured the desired results even if the investigators were untrained. The lack of a well ordered bureau for confidential exchange of information led to serious duplication of inquiry and of grants.

But to return to a consideration of the record card. It provided for a graphic presentation of the salient economic features of each family. When rightly filled in it showed the total present income of the family, its physical condition and the previous occupation of the breadwinner, the sum of its losses and its present resources. It gave a picture of the family’s former or present relations to its church, its lodge, its employers, its plan for rehabilitation, and the investigator’s estimate of this plan or the investigator’s alternative plan. Each visitor who had not had previous training as an investigator was given careful direction as to how an investigation should be made. Each was instructed to explain to the families that what was being aimed at was to find a way out which would be a real way out. Relief that had been already given was emergent, temporary. But now the Committee was anxious to learn of those who with a fair grant would be able to re-establish themselves.

In compiling the statistical abstract of applications for Chapter IV of this part of the Relief Survey no attempt was made to ascertain what references were seen or corresponded with, except for the business application cases. These were controlled by much stricter regulations than were the other applications. It is impossible, therefore, to state accurately the number of applications that were superficially investigated by visits to the applicants only. It is probably true that a study of the applications for household rehabilitation would show that comparatively superficial[117] investigations had been made although there had usually been some attempt to corroborate the applicants’ stories by calling for a general letter of recommendation or one written directly to the Committee. Letters from ministers bulked large in this correspondence. The experience of the Rehabilitation Committee, it can be most positively stated, confirmed that of the special relief committee of the Chicago fire that such recommendations are valueless in the vast majority of cases. It is sufficient to state here, as this question will be brought up later in the discussion of the Committee’s relation to the auxiliary societies,[109] that the Committee learned quite early in its career that some of the clergy of the city had had manifolded a stereotyped form of recommendation to give to any one who might apply.

The method of investigation in force would have been insufficient if it had been thought necessary to inquire closely into the moral character of the applicants. What the family had to say about its previous income; what its present income was; what its plans were and how it hoped with the aid of a grant to carry out these plans,—these with the visitor’s observations gave a sort of rough-and-ready gauge. There was, of course, a certain amount of deception, but the field investigations made later by the Relief Survey showed that the percentage of grants made upon actually fraudulent representations was comparatively small. Plans for rehabilitation that were inherently weak or confused or unwise had to be guarded against. The grant desideratum was practical definiteness. Illustrations of what were considered to be definite, what indefinite plans, are incidentally presented under the chapters dealing with particular forms of rehabilitation. It is well at this point to state that after October 12, 1906, before a grant for rehabilitation or aid for furniture could be obtained, an application had to be made to the Rehabilitation Committee on a printed form.[110]

The applications for tools were made the subject of a comparatively superficial investigation. Transportation cases were subjected to a gradual rise in the standard of inquiry. In the case of “general relief,” which included the permanent care of aged or invalid persons and of unsupported children, medical co-operation[118] was generally called for. Applications for emergent relief led to no extended investigation. The housing applications, as will appear,[111] were subjected to special forms of inquiry.

Applications were received at the seven section offices at any hour of the day, as well as at the central office of the Associated Charities. The rule was, theoretically, to receive no applications at the office of the Rehabilitation Committee; but so many applications, some of which called for immediate investigation and action, were referred directly to the Committee, that from one to four interviewers had to be held at the central office to attend to them. It would have been ill-advised during July and August to limit either the hours or places at which applications could be made. Any limitation might in some instances have caused actual distress. The magnitude of the task did not in itself, save in exceptional circumstances, delay the giving of emergent relief, as special arrangements were made for expediting emergency cases.

Before recommendations were brought to the members of the Rehabilitation Committee for decision they were read by trusted employes of the Committee in order that apparent injustices resulting from the varying standards of the different section committees might be done away with. The Committee itself established rough standards to govern its decisions. For household rehabilitation, for instance, its standard adopted after a careful employe had visited several furniture companies to learn the range of prices, was based upon a rate of $50 a room for each of the minimum number of rooms which would be required for an individual family. Certain fixed rules were also adopted with reference to business rehabilitation.[112] There was no little criticism of an intermediate step having to be taken between the passage of records from section committees to the Rehabilitation Committee. During the latter part of the second period, which ended in August, 1906, some members of the Rehabilitation Committee itself were inclined to doubt the wisdom of the plan. Nevertheless, the opinion of the majority of the Committee was that its rough standardizing was a great time saver. The reviewers[119] exercised no discretionary authority. They were indeed willing to present any case, in any form, to the Committee if a section committee insisted upon it. A justification of the plan lies in the fact that when a case went directly to the Committee from a section, almost without exception it was sent back. The reviewers served simply as advisers to the section committees. They had in mind the broad lines of policy that had been marked out by the Rehabilitation Committee and were in many instances able to save from one to two days in the reaching of a final decision as to a grant. An explanation made by the trained reviewer to a district messenger, an agent, or Committee member, was oftentimes much more acceptable than would have been Committee action which reversed a section decision.

Headquarters Department of Relief and Rehabilitation, Gough and Geary Streets

Another subject that called for anxious debate was as to the degree of power that should be given by the Rehabilitation Committee to the section committees to make grants of money for emergency need. On July 12, the Committee resolved that in an emergency case a requisition might be made on the treasurer for a sum not to exceed $50, provided the request were signed by two members of the section committee. The Committee reserved the right to review such grants and at any time to withdraw the privilege from the sections. At a meeting held a day or so afterward this matter was reconsidered and laid over because several members of the Committee expressed themselves forcibly as opposed to any division of responsibility. At a joint meeting of the Rehabilitation Committee with the members of the section committees, held on July 19, 1906, the question of placing small funds in the hands of the section committees was again informally considered. Some of the section members strongly urged this plan and cited illustrations of necessary delays incident upon the ordinary procedure,—illustrations which proved that the delay was a source of embarrassment. As a member of the Committee recently said, a great amount of unpleasantness was caused by complaints of delay in comparatively small matters. Objections still being made by some members, the Committee asked the Associated Charities to present a plan, but though such a plan was drawn up it was never presented for action to the Committee because of the objections that were raised against it.

[120]

This source of friction was removed in the course of events. When the Bureau of Special Relief[113] was established on August 15, 1906, applications for emergency relief in kind were referred to it. On the closing of the section headquarters, Committee I of the centralized system[114] was prepared to give small money grants on short notice. The Associated Charities, from almost the beginning of the rehabilitation work, also stood ready to make small gifts of money to persons in need, or to make immediate purchase of necessities. It was from time to time reimbursed for these expenditures, though no formal arrangement was made by which it could draw on any regular fund for petty cash expenditures.

Anyone who has had experience in a charity organization society which has district offices knows that the common rule is to empower a district superintendent or committee to make emergency expenditures of comparatively limited amounts and to draw for reimbursement on the society’s general relief fund. Such special expenditures are subject to audit. The principle underlying them is at stated periods to have their issuance made the subject of a careful review by the general secretary, the district supervisor or some other central office official. In case of continuous indiscreet expenditures the question raised is not whether the power shall be withdrawn but whether there shall be some change in the district force or some calling of volunteers to account. In other words, the principle has been recognized that though there can be no division of final responsibility as to expenditures, as a matter of practical efficiency, districts must be given a certain amount of discretion in the making of small emergency grants.

The extent of the task of investigating and reviewing cases can be measured by the following showing. When the Rehabilitation Committee settled to its task on July 7, 1906, the formative period of rehabilitation work closed. The second period was inaugurated by public announcement of the Rehabilitation Committee’s plans. During July, 1906, the work increased by leaps and bounds. Though the Committee might wish to feel its way there was no time for deliberate action as the members had simply to speed up in order to keep ahead of the applications awaiting action. By August 1 the Committee had passed upon 3,000[121] applications. On that same date there were about 9,000 applications in the sections which either were awaiting investigation or had been partially or fully investigated, but awaited action by the section committees. The original estimate of families that would need rehabilitation was 15,000. To pass on one-fifth of the whole may be considered to be fairly good progress for the first three weeks of a committee’s real work. During the next twelve days, as the news of the grants began to circulate widely, came the high-water mark of applications. On August 13, at the request of the chairman of the Committee, a complete return was made which showed that there were then 8,916 applications pending, and that the average rate of applications was somewhat over 200 a day. The danger of swamping the work was evident.

At the time when the number of applications for rehabilitation was heaviest came the uncertainty as to whether funds would be available. The chairman of the Rehabilitation Committee, therefore, at an important meeting held on August 12, requested members to present a definite plan as to the amount of money that they would request the Executive Committee to set aside for rehabilitation. Accordingly, on August 16, the following estimate was presented as the minimum amount that would be required for carrying on the work of the Department:

[122]

What the estimate for rehabilitation was based upon it is difficult to say, though the original estimate of $1,500,000 may have again been in mind. By August 16, applications to the number of 4,635 had been passed upon by the Committee, involving a total disbursement of a little over $300,000 and an average grant of about $80 a case. About 10,000 applications were pending and there were still three or four thousand families in the camps who would eventually have to be assisted by the Committee. Upon this basis a total of $1,120,000 would be required, and this may have been the basis for the estimate. Prospective applications from persons living outside the camps were not taken into account.

No action was taken when the estimate was presented, but at the meeting of the Committee on August 20 the chairman again presented a detailed report regarding funds available for the Corporation. After a very extended discussion it was agreed that it would not be safe for the Rehabilitation Committee to take further action until it knew something more definite regarding the amount of money it would receive and the amount that would be called for by the applications on file. The Committee decided therefore to notify the sections, the societies that were authorized to investigate applications for relief, and the press, that after August 20 no more applications for rehabilitation and relief would be received until all the cases pending had been investigated and disposed of. After this date no official notice was ever given of the readiness of the Committee to again receive applications.

Applications for medical aid, and in special instances for food, were to be received, however, as before, at the section stations. This action, which was momentous, inaugurated the third period of work,[116] which extended from August 20 to November 4, 1906. A large number of applications was received later and all the applications on file were in the course of time duly considered and made whenever necessary the subject of grants, the amount of money used for rehabilitation being in the end considerably larger than was estimated. August 20 is the sinister date which appears and reappears in the later chapters, when the subject of delay in the rehabilitation work is discussed.

[123]

The superintendent of the Rehabilitation Committee at that time prepared detailed instructions for the force at the main and at the section offices. These instructions were adopted later by the sub-committees of the centralized system. The instructions provided that future applications and those pending but not yet investigated, for medicine, medical aid, special diet, food, tools, and sewing machines, be referred to the Bureau of Special Relief, and that they be considered with reference to the relative disability of the applicants, in the following order:

After the four classes of cases had been investigated and reported to the Rehabilitation Committee for final action, the sections were to investigate the remaining applications. This latter group of applications[117] was to be divided into three classes:

The immediate attention of the Rehabilitation Committee, now that the general drawing of checks was suspended, was confined to those applications already on file in which emergent action was absolutely necessary or in which grants had been promised provided certain conditions were complied with by the applicants. All applications for business rehabilitation were to be laid aside for a time with the understanding that if the Committee later secured sufficient means they should be investigated and reported on. The Committee indicated that unless disablement or sickness were involved it would be most reluctant[124] to consider any family to be in urgent need if in it there were a male breadwinner earning reasonable wages.

The plan of the Rehabilitation Committee was to go over the whole mass of applications and then draw checks in favor of the first four classes. This marked a distinct limitation upon its work. By vote of the Committee on August 30, 1906, it was decided to settle at once all unpaid grants that had been approved on August 20. By September 20 accumulated applications had been investigated and the Committee was ready to pass upon them. It is not clear from the records just when the bars were lifted and when checks were issued as heretofore upon all classes of cases approved by the Committee. There appears to have been no formal action in this matter. It is interesting to note that on August 18 the total disbursements recorded were $356,773.75 and the total applications acted upon 5,241. By September 20, 1906, the total disbursements amounted to $573,337.91 and the total cases acted upon were 10,374.

2. THE CENTRALIZED SYSTEM

In October, 1906, there was a radical change of method. On September 27, the Rehabilitation Committee was notified by the Corporation that all the sections except Section II would close by the end of September. As the section offices closed, members of the paid and voluntary staffs were drawn into the work of the central office, the paid workers to continue as investigators or clerks, the members of the district committees to serve as an auxiliary committee to the Rehabilitation Committee for the review of cases. These were steps preliminary to a centralizing of the work. On October 11, when the chairman presented his plan for a division of the Rehabilitation Committee into sub-committees, 18,196 applications altogether had been passed upon. At close of business, October 11, 1906, the bookkeeper of the Committee had handled these 18,196 cases and had paid out on them $842,076.21.

The plan for the centralized system was presented by a sub-committee consisting of the chairman and the superintendent, who was the secretary of the Associated Charities and responsible for the issuing of instructions to the district workers. It was to[125] create six sub-committees. The Rehabilitation Committee was to be drawn on to provide a chairman for each and the former section committees to provide the membership. The numbers of the sub-committees and their respective fields of work were as follows:

Committee VII was formed on January 16, 1907; Committee VIII on November 17, 1906. Each was considered as a sub-committee of the older sub-committees. Two of the six secretaries already appointed served the new committees. It may be noted here that five of these six secretaries had had previous experience in charity organization work.

The following members[118] of the Rehabilitation Committee were appointed chairmen of the respective sub-committees:

The methods of investigation under the new system were the same as under the old, but the change involved radical differences in treatment. It is generally acknowledged that the[126] district system was the only one practicable in the early days, when transportation facilities were so limited. The physical difficulties that would have been involved in attempting to make an investigation from one center was not the only, if indeed the most important factor that led social leaders to determine upon the district plan. The primary reason was that the seven civil sections were known to the people when they wished to follow their early applications for clothing and other emergent needs by applications for rehabilitation. The social investigation was made to fit the civil section plan, which was based upon the theory that by working from district centers it was possible to gain more accurate knowledge of the actual needs of families and to have such brought more quickly to the attention of the workers and be followed more surely by helpful recommendations than would be the case if need were relieved and recommendations made by one or several central committees. In short, it was believed that the district plan of the larger charity organization societies could be well adapted to the rehabilitation work and would give it greater firmness, accuracy, and swiftness of action. As it turned out, however, under the district plan the hoped-for swiftness of action was not achieved, which was one of the reasons for the change to the centralized system. After the change the average period of time lapsing between application and grant was considerably reduced; however, this is partly to be accounted for by the fact that after October, 1906, the Rehabilitation Committee acted more rigorously on the policy adopted August 20 to limit the number of applications received.

During the first five months of the great relief work the most destitute had made application. This fact, and the further fact that prompt action was made possible through the creation of the Bureau of Special Relief, justified in a measure the change to the centralized system. The advantages of the centralized system as developed in San Francisco may be said to be that under it the attention of a group of workers was confined to the consideration of a specific class of grants. Such limitations brought expertness and a surer standardizing of the grants within a class. The disadvantage is that with the gain in expertness came a loss in general appreciation of the need of the individual[127] case. The individual members of the Rehabilitation Committee worked separately as chairmen of the sub-committees. They were brought much less to consider in common the reason for approving or refusing to approve the grants called for by the several section committees. In the earlier period some of the members in daily conference performed this important duty. Members of the Committee themselves believed that they lost something of the broad view of the situation and the correlation between grants when each came to have his own particular field of activity. Although they developed as specialists, they were bound by no strong unifying force.

Some of the members, and other persons experienced in the work, consider the division of cases to have been a weakness that should be reckoned with by those who may deal with similar problems in the future. Important questions of policy were of course discussed at meetings of the Rehabilitation Committee, which in the busy season were called twice a week; but after all, it was general questions of policy, not individual cases, which were then considered. The important thing was for the Committee to have on any given day a knowledge of just how the grants in each department ran; to learn by a comparative survey whether, in view of the total sum of money which the Committee expected to handle, the amounts being granted by the different departments, case by case, ordinary case after ordinary case, were too small or too large.

Another weakness of the centralized system, and a serious one, was that it necessitated the crossing of each other’s paths by the various sub-committees. It was to be expected that by no imaginable classification of applications short of an arbitrary division along geographical lines, could confusion be avoided. As all charity organization workers know, an application for a specific form of aid may upon investigation indicate that a totally different form of relief is required. In the first two months, under the centralized system, there was much referring of applications from committee to committee, as new or changed needs were revealed; but in December, to prevent delays, it was decided that the committee to whom an application was first assigned[128] should see it through to the end, no matter what form of rehabilitation was found to be required.

Considering the blurring of hard and fast lines that this decision entailed, together with the crossing of paths incident to the division of work, it is not surprising that the development of group specialists was by no means as complete as was anticipated. The sub-committees found it impossible to keep to the spheres of work outlined. There was, however, considerable variation in treatment by the different sub-committees. In the nature of the case, the first four committees had largely to do with applications for “general relief” and hence of necessity crossed paths more than the remaining committees. Among the different fields of activity, housing stands distinctive as being the most highly specialized. On the other hand, business rehabilitation and general relief were so generally cared for by the first four committees that all of them might well claim joint tenancy of these fields.

During October the policy had been adopted of making no further grants to able-bodied single people,[120] to heads of families capable of supporting those dependent on them, or to applicants to start in a business that called for a special license or that had to be put under special police supervision. This last exception was made to prohibit grants for saloons. On October 12, the Rehabilitation Committee learned officially that business rehabilitation might be resumed, as the New York Chamber of Commerce on October 2 had resolved to transfer $500,000 to the Corporation, with the proviso that the money be used for “the rehabilitation of those sufferers who by reason of the disaster have been deprived of the use of stocks or goods, utensils, tools, implements of labor, etc., and thus to help them to establish themselves in their professions or trades.”

Barber shop and shack constructed of boxes

A drinking place

Early Business Ventures

The question of who should be responsible for making final decisions as to grants was reopened in the beginning of the period of centralization, and on November 1 it was finally determined that emergency cases that involved an expenditure of less than $50 might be approved by the chairman, or in his absence, by the vice-chairman of a sub-committee, provided the action were[129] reported by the vice-chairman to the chairman if the former had acted in the absence of his superior; that grants for amounts under $500 might be approved by the chairman of a sub-committee; and that grants for amounts of $500 or more must be approved by at least two members of the Rehabilitation Committee or by the chairman and two members of a sub-committee, provided in the latter case the action was reported to and entered on the minutes of the meetings of the Rehabilitation Committee. The last restriction led to frequent drawing of checks to the amount of $499. Later the Committee made special provision for the granting of money for loans[121] so as not to embarrass the work of its sub-committee on housing.

The fourth period of the rehabilitation work, November 4, 1906, to April 8, 1907,[122] was marked by fluctuation, the tide of applications sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing. When the six sub-committees were organized it was assumed that a normal family with one or more able-bodied breadwinners should not then be in need of assistance in furniture and other household goods. Labor of all kinds was in great demand and there was no reason why families should not themselves secure for cash or credit sufficient furniture to start housekeeping. No provision[123] was made, therefore, for grants of furniture or other household goods except as called for by the working of Sub-committees I, II, and III. As soon, however, as the new committees got under way, there was considerable discussion as to the need of some committee to act on applications from heads of families for furniture. It was decided, early in November, to receive applications from heads of families who were steadily employed but who were not earning enough to furnish their homes except by incurring a burdensome debt. This action was rescinded later because there was no machinery[130] for receiving such applications and because there were other forms of application that indicated a greater need. Not until January 16, 1907, was provision made to receive applications for so-called “special furniture grants,” which were passed on by the chairmen of two of the original sub-committees. On January 17, notice that applications for aid in refurnishing homes would be received was given in the San Francisco newspapers.[124]

During this fourth period it became apparent that future applicants must be made to realize that what they were asking for was ordinary relief. On February 13, 1907, therefore, the superintendent, who it must be borne in mind was also secretary of the Associated Charities,[125] was authorized to put the work in the application bureau on a relief basis. A circular was issued which stated that no application would be received except on a purely relief basis; that is, applications would be received only from families placed unavoidably in a position where they could not support themselves and whose need would be met in ordinary times through one of the regular charitable organizations.

As a further result of the mid-winter resolution the scope of the relief work was narrowed still more definitely. Three reasons given for a limitation of scope were:

1. That there was less than $2,000,000 in the funds, a large part of which would be called for by the applications for housing and other relief already under consideration.

2. That a considerable amount of money would have to be reserved to meet the expenses incurred by the other departments and bureaus, which included medicines for the use of the patients in the hospitals and in homes for the aged.

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3. That the then prosperous condition of San Francisco precluded any legitimate need for further general relief distribution. The essential points, to repeat in part what has already been written, in a notice that was issued for the use of the sub-committees and employes, were:

The fact that the Rehabilitation Committee had entered upon the fifth and last period of its work is sharply marked by the discharge on April 4, 1907, of all sub-committees, except Committee V, the important housing committee. The fifth period is also marked by the fact that it coincides with the ending of the first year after the disaster, and that it properly inaugurates the definite establishment of the work on a purely relief basis.[126]

From the beginning of April, 1907, to the end of July, action was taken in a fairly large number of cases. The Rehabilitation Committee returned to the practice in vogue before November, 1906, of considering such current applications as did not naturally[132] go to either the housing or the confidential committee. By May, 1907, the number of cases to be daily disposed of had fallen from 200 to 25, and the average number of daily applications had decreased to a marked extent. The steady drop in the number of applications meant to the Committee that its work had reached the stage when it could be undertaken wholly by the Associated Charities.

The Associated Charities, as well as other San Francisco charitable agencies, was financially crippled because the fire had affected more seriously the class that ordinarily contributes to charitable societies than any other class in the community. The general subject of grants to institutions or societies not dealing with families in their homes is considered in a separate section, but the subject of grants to the Associated Charities fitly belongs in this chapter because to it fell the work that so far had been done directly by the Rehabilitation Committee with the steady co-operation of the Associated Charities’ force of paid and volunteer workers. The mass of the population was on a fairly satisfactory economic basis, but it was wellknown that for some time to come the charity work of the city would be very heavy.

On May 18, 1907, a decision was reached by the Rehabilitation Committee which was the fruition of much anxious discussion. Its conclusions were that as $186,850 remained of the sum of $500,000 which as originally planned was to be used to re-establish the charitable organizations in the city, $145,000 of this amount, in accordance with the recommendation made by the charity advisory committee, should be entrusted to the Rehabilitation Committee to be allotted by it to certain of the charitable and benevolent organizations.[127] The Associated Charities was asked to invite a conference of representatives of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the German Benevolent Society, and the Hebrew Board of Relief, formally to present to the Rehabilitation Committee a practical plan for the administration of the general relief work of the city. On May 30, 1907, the Rehabilitation Committee was notified by the president of the Associated Charities that the office staff of the society was to be withdrawn from the service of the Rehabilitation Committee. The proposal to[133] withdraw was approved but the society was asked to leave the date of withdrawal open until definite plans for future relief work could be perfected.

3. WITHDRAWAL

June 30, 1907, marks the close of the fifth period, when the withdrawal actually took effect. On July 18, 1907, the Corporation made an appropriation of $5,000 to the Associated Charities for the month of July, 1907, to be expended under the direction of the Rehabilitation Committee, subject to the following conditions:

As the Bureau of Special Relief had closed its work June 15, 1907, the Associated Charities assumed entire control of the relief work.

Before the end of July the Associated Charities had organized a committee, called for by section 5 of the above requirements, on which were representatives from its own society, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the German General Benevolent Society, the Hebrew Board of Relief, and the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association. At the same time a form letter was[134] issued by the Rehabilitation Committee which notified applicants that they must apply directly to the Associated Charities.

The appropriations varied from month to month, but the plan as a whole remained for one year practically unchanged. There was, however, one concession: the Associated Charities was permitted in a limited number of cases to draw on the appropriation for aid to families that had not been burned out, but in which there was severe illness or an incapacitated breadwinner.

When on July 1, 1908, the Bureau of Hospitals closed its work, the work of the Associated Charities was further enlarged by the carrying into effect of the following suggestions by Miss Felton, the general secretary of the Associated Charities:

4. CONCLUDING REMARKS

Whether the weaknesses of the centralized system as revealed by the San Francisco Relief Survey are inherent can be determined only by future experiment, for there is no way of measuring the relative value of the two systems described in this chapter.

It should be borne in mind, however, that under the district system there was severe criticism of the delay in making grants. The suggestion is offered that whenever a centralized system is desirable, a practical scheme of administration is to organize sub-committees by geographical sections while general control is retained by the central office.

By way of summary, it may be said that the district system was a natural development. It took shape when the army was in control and knew that only by the division of the city into sections could the vast problem be managed. When the social worker took hold the district system was ready to hand and was[136] availed of to bring into working relation a quickly collected force of trained and untried investigators and advisers. When the relief work came more definitely under the control of the business man, who chafed under criticism, there was a sharp reversal of method. A trade experience that had proved the value of departmental division led naturally to a recasting of the relief work on a departmental basis.

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III
CALLS FOR SPECIAL FORMS OF SERVICE

1. RELATIONS WITH AUXILIARY SOCIETIES

Upon one vital question of policy the experience of the San Francisco Rehabilitation Committee repeated the experience of the special relief committee of the Chicago fire. Upon no other point is the evidence of the relief work, following each of the fires, as clear as it is on the question here considered of the establishment of the right relation with local charitable agencies.

In the report of the special relief committee of the Chicago fire[128] the following paragraph occurs:

It appears from the review of the original plans of the Rehabilitation Committee, that the error made by the Chicago Committee of accepting recommendations in place of making investigations was avoided. The Rehabilitation Committee, as[138] the reader knows,[129] had from the beginning its own staff of paid workers, whose reports and work it could control. But early in July, 1906, considerable pressure was brought upon the Committee to change its methods so that the regular relief societies of the city might upon presenting their cases, with recommendations, have these considered by the Rehabilitation Committee without their having to be subject to investigation by the section forces. Members of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds urged concessions, and concessions were finally made. On July 12, 1906, the United Irish Societies objected to the treatment that the Rehabilitation Committee had advised for some of the families recommended by them. Their representatives were present at a meeting of the Rehabilitation Committee and urged that they be granted the privilege of having their recommendations considered as though they came from the section committees. At that time the Rehabilitation Committee told the representatives that as a trustee of the funds its duty was to gain information about cases through the special channels of information it had provided, and that all reputable organizations would be notified to refer cases to it with recommendations; that it would follow these recommendations or not as it saw fit. The Rehabilitation Committee found that it could hold this position for but a few weeks, because of the influence brought to bear not directly but through members of the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds. On July 28, 1906, therefore, a resolution was passed that any charitable organization approved by the Finance Committee might present directly to the Rehabilitation Committee the results of its investigations, with recommendations, and that these would be passed on directly without further investigation.

The United Irish Societies was given this privilege, on probation, for a period of two weeks from July 28, 1906. On July 31, 1906, the privilege was extended to the German General Benevolent Society, and on August 6, 1906, to the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul and the Italian Relief Committee.

To say that the results were unsatisfactory is but to voice the unanimous sentiment of the then created Corporation and of[139] the responsible workers in the Rehabilitation Committee office. The paid and voluntary workers of the Associated Charities had, under the instructions given them by the section agents and the Rehabilitation Committee, developed certain standards of investigation. Weak as these standards may have been in certain particulars, still they were standards. The visitors were getting, at the least, a coherent account of the condition of each family and were securing, in the main, such data as enabled the Committee to act intelligently. It is true that in a great many cases there was no time to corroborate the statements of applicants, but some picture of the family was presented and some plan that bore on its face a promise of success. The records that came from the so-called auxiliary societies were generally bare and fragmentary. The cards were not filled out and in some cases almost the only thing that the Committee got was the simple recommendation,—so much money for this purpose or for that. Paucity of facts particularly marked the recommendations of the United Irish Societies. A further characteristic was, that because of a lack of understanding of the rough-and-ready standards that had been set, the recommendations called for a higher scale of expenditure than the Committee could possibly approach. For instance, their recommendations for furniture rehabilitation ran from $300 to $500, while the cases presented by the sections ran from $100 to $300. A great many cards had to be returned to the auxiliary societies for reconsideration and additional information.

The claim had been that to receive recommendations directly from these relief societies would be to facilitate the work of the Rehabilitation Committee; instead, the work was hindered. Many applications had to be twice considered, and many were duplications. Some families were in the habit of applying at every place that would receive applications, a difficulty that developed through application by the same persons at the central office and at one or more section offices. Duplications increased when applications were received at the relief societies’ offices.

As soon as the first returns showed that the records were unsatisfactory, the Rehabilitation Committee had the superintendent prepare a circular entitled “Requirements for Satisfactory Investigations for the Rehabilitation Committee.” The[140] representatives of the different societies were then called together informally to discuss the circular. Extracts from it are:

But the time was fast approaching when the Rehabilitation Committee should be held in the dark as to the extent of its resources. With the general suspension of applications on August 20, 1906, came an end to the very unsatisfactory arrangement with the auxiliary societies. After that time applications were received from auxiliary societies, but they were treated the same as were applications from any other source.

It is well to examine a little the records of the work of the auxiliary societies. Taking the one that worked the longest, the United Irish Societies, we find 1,046 applications received directly from it. Of this number 582 were duplications of applications already received through the regular channels. The net result for the 582 was probably delay rather than speed. Grants to the number of 858 were made for a sum of $121,742.91, an average grant in round numbers of $142 to a person. The average Rehabilitation Committee grant to May 27, 1907, had been $109.44 to a person. To make a more illuminating comparison: Most of the United Irish Societies’ applications were for household rehabilitation. The average grant of the Rehabilitation Committee for such purposes to May 30, 1907, had been $105.77. An interpretation put on the discrepancy in the amount of grants is, that as the recommendations from the societies were so disproportionately large they could not be brought, even after scaling down, to the common standard set by the[141] rehabilitation workers. Certain personal elements also tended to create friction; but there is no reason to go into this aspect of the matter simply because the definitive stand taken by the Committee was, that as the responsible distributors of the funds they and their agents alone should make investigations. This important work could not be delegated and the fact was finally accepted that the work of investigation, to be well done, must be done by a salaried force. This point is one, as was said before, on which there was emphatic agreement on the part of all the members of the Committee.

An instance should be noted of work done satisfactorily with a relief society. Immediately after the calamity the possibility arose that the associations of Jewish Charities in the large cities of the country would send their contributions to San Francisco for the Jewish committee to use as a separate relief fund. Instead, however, of attempting to organize a special relief fund, the Jewish committee, upon earnest request, agreed to do its work through the Rehabilitation Committee. The Jewish committee later was merged into the Hebrew Board of Relief, whose work was most efficiently done. This Board was never officially called an auxiliary society, but from the start it made recommendations directly to the Rehabilitation Committee. Its reports were based upon a real knowledge of families, and in a large majority of cases these recommendations were acted upon directly without a supplementary investigation.

In times of emergency it will doubtless often be expedient to make a similar arrangement. Such separation or division of work is very different from leaving to a group of auxiliary societies the responsibility of making investigations and determining treatment. So far as the San Francisco experience is concerned such delegation may be set down as a failure.

2. REHABILITATION OF INSTITUTIONS

The question of the rehabilitation of institutions was considered at one time and another by the Rehabilitation Committee by request of Mr. Dohrmann, chairman of the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation. Not until December, 1906, however, were any definite steps taken in this field. The responsibility[142] for making grants rested logically upon the chairman of the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation. Early in September Mr. Dohrmann, after consultation with various persons, appointed an advisory committee on charitable institutions which was to make recommendations to him which he in turn would submit for final approval to the Executive Committee of the Corporation. Thirteen persons were chosen to form the committee, with the end in view of giving due representation to every phase of the philanthropic life of the community. In meeting with the new committee Mr. Dohrmann presented a letter of explanation, the salient points of which were:

The grants mentioned under (5) had been made “under pressure of unusual circumstances and without that calm and careful consideration which in my opinion should precede such action.” He urged that these grants be taken into account before recommendations for an additional appropriation to a society were made.

The suggestion was made that personal visits to the institutions applying would be advisable. The committee was[143] asked to visit at its own discretion. At the subsequent meeting, held September 14, the following resolutions were adopted:

The committee also informally agreed with Mr. Dohrmann’s suggestion that in recommending an institution for a grant, consideration should be given to the amount that it had already received from any special or general relief fund. At this September meeting a number of sub-committees were appointed to make investigations of the institutions applying for grants. A number of applications, as has already been noted, were on file. After careful consideration and consultation with Mr. Dohrmann the committee abandoned the plan of publishing in the newspapers a notice describing its work.

In visiting institutions the committee presented the following letter:

Without following the members of the advisory committee on their round of visits, we shall give the gist of their report to Mr. Dohrmann, which is largely a reflection of the recommendations in his September letter. In this report, dated November 7, 1906, the committee stated that in recommending the allotment[144] of the whole sum of $250,000 to the institutions whose needs and present importance were most apparent, it had agreed on certain principles, the most important of which were:

The committee selected one year as the basis of time to be covered by grants, but stated as its opinion that most of the institutions would need assistance for a longer period of time. It expressed the hope that a further sum of money would later be set aside to be divided among them in the proportion of the first allotment. The recommendation was that payment be made immediately, except to the institutions that had received grants from the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds, this latter class to be aided as soon as feasible.

The institutions aided, all of which had made application before October 10, are only a portion of those that in the judgment of the advisory committee needed assistance. The others, it was hoped, might later be given aid.

The cautious chairman of the Department of Relief and Rehabilitation, after getting advice from the outside, tested the recommendations by the following questions:

The usefulness of this report of the advisory committee in relation to other public calamities would not be increased by a reviewing of its points and suggested issues, nor could the facts which led to the refusals be given in detail, as much of the information obtained was of a confidential character. It is well to indicate the reasons that in some cases led to refusals, without mentioning the particular societies. Up to May 11, 1907, 16 institutions had been refused aid on the grounds shown in Table 30.[130]

3. BUREAU OF SPECIAL RELIEF

One of the plain lessons of the San Francisco experience is that any rehabilitation work should have as an adjunct a bureau to which may be referred cases requiring immediate relief in kind.

If such a bureau had been organized on July 1, it might have made use of the district force, the investigators sending recommendations directly from the district offices to the bureau for immediate action. True, the district offices did have small emergency funds placed in their hands by the Associated Charities,[146] which in turn was reimbursed by the Rehabilitation Committee; but the expenditures from these funds were necessarily very small and could not secure, for instance, the purchase of sewing machines. A great deal of friction also would have been avoided. The number of complaints would have been much smaller and there would have been no interruption in the efficient progress of the rehabilitation work itself.

When the Rehabilitation Committee early in July was in shape to enter on the active second period of the rehabilitation work, there remained certain shreds of the old emergency tasks. In Chapter I of this part[132] an account is given of the effort made to adjust the work of the camps and the sections after the withdrawal of food issues, when there was felt to be a gap in organization.

In order partially to meet this situation the Bureau of Special Relief was organized on August 15 following the plan made by Mr. Bicknell, of the Rehabilitation Committee, to handle applications for relief in kind, in order that these need not be delayed and that the Committee might be left free to deal with the larger problem of rehabilitation.

The Bureau, when it began its work on August 15, was prepared to give prompt medical assistance, nursing, and aid in kind to applicants throughout the city. Later in the month the Bureau was authorized to issue orders in small lots for sewing machines, tools, and furniture. The Bureau had no authority to make cash grants.

The central office was established on Gough and Geary Streets, in rooms easily accessible on the ground floor, and here were quartered the superintendent, his secretary, bookkeeper, stenographer, messengers, one or two drivers, and two or three clerks, the number varying with the volume of the work. During the greater part of the Bureau’s ten months of service, two physicians,[133][147] two nurses, as well as from three to seven investigators were visiting constantly for it. The original plan was to have an investigator at each of the section offices, with one or two in addition at the central office, to make visits at large. Applications were sometimes received at the central office in person, but the greater number came by mail or telephone direct from applicants or from those who reported instances of need. The applications were telephoned to the Bureau agent in whose district the case was located. Within a few hours the family was visited and a report was telephoned to the office. A Bureau clerk had meanwhile received a report from the Rehabilitation Committee files as to whether any action had already been taken on the case.

Many cases were reported by members of the section committees with the idea that the Bureau would in the interim give care, the Rehabilitation Committee, which of necessity worked more slowly, not being able quickly to make disposition of a case. In this way the work of the Bureau supplemented that of the Rehabilitation Committee and minimized the danger of families suffering from unavoidable delays in the forming and carrying out of a rehabilitation plan. The superintendent, with the information before him, decided whether to give or withhold aid. If aid were to be granted, definite orders for relief were immediately telephoned to merchants with whom arrangements had been previously made. The orders were later confirmed by letter. The aid given by the Bureau of Special Relief finally covered shelter, food (rations or restaurant meals), clothing, furniture, tools, sewing machines, and medical aid of all sorts including special appliances, dentistry in emergency need, and, upon a physician’s prescription, special diet.

A visitor called on each family in her charge at least once a week. On a stated day each week she sent in a report which covered all families under her care, and which stated whether the help given in groceries, meat, or milk, should be continued one week longer, with an estimate of how long in each case relief would be necessary. When a family seemed likely to require rations indefinitely, it was until October transferred to Camp 6 and after that date to Ingleside camp, as the Bureau did not provide assistance indefinitely. After the middle of January, 1907, all orders were[148] issued for two weeks so as to lessen the required visits to each family to one in two weeks. Orders for food and merchandise were placed with merchants located as closely as possible to the residences of applicants, and grocers were held to a high standard of service, both as to quality and quantity of goods and as to promptness of delivery. Special tests were set from time to time to see that the order system worked as planned. In the case of clothing orders the Bureau agent usually went with the applicant to help make selection of clothing.

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Certain items subsequently charged to the Bureau bring the total to $58,421.35.[134]

As seen in Table 31 A the volume of work increased gradually from August, 1906, to January, 1907, and then fell off steadily to June 15.

The Bureau of Special Relief was originally organized to deal only with families living outside the permanent camps, but by degrees it became necessary for it to render to residents of the camps such services as the camp commanders and their staffs were unable to give. Upon direct request from a camp commander, for instance, the Bureau would send regular supplies to applicants who were unable to eat at the camp kitchens, or would, when the camp supply was exhausted, or unsuitable, supply clothes and such emergency household needs as stoves and blankets. The camp department was able through its surgeon to give certain kinds of medical aid. The specific responsibility of the camps was to administer them so as to give suitable housing and discipline to their complex population. It was well that the Department of Camps was able to call on such an organization as the Bureau to supply the miscellaneous needs which lay outside the routine provision of camp life.

As was said above, the Rehabilitation agents sometimes called on the Bureau to give aid while cases were pending in their department. Soon after its organization the Bureau took charge of requests for tools and other articles, the Rehabilitation agents being instructed to refer directly to it without investigation all such applications. When it was soon found, however, that most of these uninvestigated cases were in fact applications for rehabilitation, the order was reversed, so that a later request received by the Department for aid in kind should be first investigated by its agent and then referred to the Bureau through the secretary of Sub-committee I.[135] In referring the case, a memorandum was[150] added, to state that it had been investigated and to specify the amount and kind of aid to be given. After February 1, 1907, the Bureau ceased to give tools and sewing machines except on the order of the Rehabilitation Committee; if applications for these articles were made by a camp resident, the approval of the camp commander had to be obtained before the application could be forwarded to the Bureau. The Bureau of Special Relief practically closed on June 15, 1907. A small force was at work until June 21, 1907, when all outstanding appeals were settled.

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IV
WHAT THE REHABILITATION RECORDS SHOW

1. INTRODUCTORY

The survey of the rehabilitation work of the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds had not gone far before the need of a tabulation of all the case records became apparent. Many questions of policy and administration were involved in accurately learning what the records indicated. Of course, in many matters of detail the records could not possibly give evidence necessary to reach absolute certainty. There would necessarily be many questions whose answers must be got from those who had had most experience in the work because they, the men, could offer stronger evidence than could any record. To other questions, however, it is plain, tabulation must give the final and convincing answer. For instance, in connection with the periods of time elapsing between application for and receipt of grants, the convincing evidence is the dates on the records.

The light that they throw upon such a point is only a small part of what the case records have to offer. Such data as the average size of the grants, and not only the average size of all grants but of grants for particular purposes,—these the enumeration furnishes. Then there are the questions involved in reopening cases and in making second grants. In short, it is believed that the returns obtained from the analysis of every rehabilitation case record will serve not only as a register of the rehabilitation work after the San Francisco fire, but as a post with many signs for those who may be called upon to do a similar work in the future,—not necessarily as the result of a catastrophe having like magnitude but of one by which the destruction of a large portion of a city, its residential and its business sections, is effected. Wherever a public calamity brings such blight the lessons and returns of the San Francisco rehabilitation work will be of value.

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In making the study upon which the following tables are based, an arbitrary but essentially true classification of grants is made. In each record the grant involving the largest amount of money is considered the principal grant; another grant, smaller in amount and given for a different purpose, is called subsidiary. Thus, for instance, a family receives $300 to put up a house and $100 for furniture or household rehabilitation. The housing grant is principal, the household, subsidiary. Analysis of principal and subsidiary grants has been made in order to learn how often one form of rehabilitation was insufficient to accomplish the desired end. The terms “principal” and “subsidiary,” it will be noted, have no reference to priority of grants but simply to amounts involved.

2. SOCIAL DATA AND TOTAL GRANTS AND REFUSALS

The table first presented shows the final disposition of all the applications recorded.

The cases “closed without action,” about 9 per cent of the whole, include applications from other members of families assisted, from persons later cared for in Ingleside Camp,[136] and from persons living in camp with no definite plans, who later were granted cottages by the Department of Camps and Warehouses and made no further application for rehabilitation.

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[154]

The “applications referred elsewhere” include those referred to other agencies, such as the Physicians’ Fund.[139] The fact that only between 1 and 2 per cent of the total applications were so referred shows that the ordinary relief work of the city had to be carried by the Corporation.

The 1,709 housing grants referred to in Table 33 do not include the grants of camp cottages, nor the $500 bonus grants.[140]

The number of grants and refusals of each kind of aid is shown in connection with the ages of applicants in Table 34. Whenever a family was normal and its income at the time of application was sufficient to meet daily needs a grant naturally was refused. The greater number of refusals were made to families having male breadwinners in the prime of life.

Table 35 shows the domestic status of the applicants for the different kinds of rehabilitation. Note the number of single or widowed women who applied for business rehabilitation. Note, also, that though the applications by married couples were but[155] 53.8 per cent of the whole, they made up three-fourths of the applications for housing.

The caution must be given that the percentage of 81.0 of ill health is a mere approximation. The return is unsatisfactory, because the records in regard to this entry were particularly vague. Too much weight should not be given to the mere handful of 80 cases in which intemperance was recorded. Only the most flagrant cases which called for medical or disciplinary treatment were so entered.

Consideration is given in Table 38 to the size of the families applying and in Table 39 to the number of families that had children under fourteen.

[156]

The interesting fact brought out in Table 38 is that 79.5 per cent had four or less in the family, and that 65.2 per cent had three or less. The table includes the families not only of married and widowed persons with minor children, but families in which there were adult children, aged parents, and other relatives. It is given in order to show the relative size of the family groups reached by rehabilitation.

[157]

We find in Table 39 that 85.9 per cent had three or less children under fourteen and 70 per cent had two or less. No particular significance should be attached to the fact that 42 per cent had only one child under the age specified, for the reason that the ages of the parents are not given. The table shows that the families with which the Rehabilitation Committee had to deal did not have a “quiverful” of children.

3. PRINCIPAL AND SUBSIDIARY GRANTS

The grants made for purposes of rehabilitation have been classified as principal and subsidiary. As was stated on page 152, the term “principal” has been used to describe the largest grant made to an applicant, “subsidiary” to describe a grant smaller in amount given to the same applicant for a different purpose. It is evident from this definition that the number of principal grants made equalled the total number of applicants who received grants. Subsidiary grants were much fewer in number than principal grants. Principal grants did not necessarily come first in point of time. Indeed, three times out of four they came last, because they followed the satisfying of a lesser emergent need by their greater rehabilitating force. In compiling Tables 40, 41, and 42, successive grants of the same nature have been considered as constituting one grant.

In Table 40 principal and subsidiary grants are classified according to the nature of the rehabilitation given.

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The next table shows the amounts disbursed in principal and in subsidiary grants, according to the nature of the rehabilitation given.

It should be mentioned in connection with these percentages, that kits of tools for mechanics and artisans were distributed by the Los Angeles Tool Fund in addition to the 376 cash grants for tools noted above; also that the amount given for housing as stated in the table does not include the camp cottages[143] given to camp families.

These two facts explain the comparatively low percentages for these two forms of rehabilitation. The 15.2 per cent of principal grants given for general relief indicates roughly the amount of relief work that had to be done by the Rehabilitation Committee in connection with rehabilitation.

Table 42 shows that under the title “Housing,” relief in sums of $500 or more was granted to a larger number of persons than under any other classification. The 450 families reached by these larger grants are 26 per cent of those aided to rebuild. With but 31 exceptions they received no aid other than housing. Business rehabilitation stands next, but the families reached under the second classification are scarcely more than 3 per cent of the number in the business group. Twenty-two of the large grants for general relief were made by Sub-committee IV.[144]

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In 576 instances the sum given was for a single purpose; in the business group, in 71 instances for two or more purposes. For example, in 28 instances the money was for business only; in 40 for business and for household furniture, for the expenses of an illness, or for some other subsidiary purpose. In the housing group, in 131, the money was for building only; in but 31 instances was it for household aid or general relief.

The highest grant for housing was $1,230.40, the highest for business, $1,100, but the latter included a tuition fee for a member of the family. The largest grant for general relief was $1,045, which included the expenses of a long illness.

In addition to the cases presented in the table there were two for household aid which came to $500 and $600 respectively as a result of duplication, in the one case through the United Irish Societies, and in the other, through the confidential committee.

To complete the picture, we present the grants and refusals passed on by sub-committees and by the Rehabilitation Committee during the fourth rehabilitation period from November 4, 1906, to April 9, 1907. The object of this presentation is to show the proportion of applications passed on without the intervention of a sub-committee.

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4. THE RE-OPENING OF CASES TO MAKE FURTHER GRANTS

It was the aim of the Rehabilitation Committee to make final disposition of each application for a specific object by means of a single grant. This it succeeded in doing in the cases of 17,560 (86.8 per cent) of all applicants aided. Before the other 2,681 applications were finally disposed of, 5,777 grants had been made, usually at the rate of two grants to a case. Three grants were rarely made, although there were exceptional cases of applicants who received three or four different kinds of aid in five or six separate grants.

Table 44 shows the extent to which re-opening occurred.[147]

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The form of aid through which the greatest proportion of cases was disposed of by a single grant was transportation. Of these but 4.6 per cent were ever re-opened.

A single grant for transportation was effective in so high a proportion of cases because the applicant as a rule was being sent where work awaited him or to relatives pledged to furnish him a home.[148] The re-opened transportation cases are mainly those of persons who could not adapt themselves to life in other communities, and who returned to San Francisco and were given household furniture or business rehabilitation. Housing was a form of aid offered principally to self-supporting families; hence those whose first grant was for housing were usually wage-earners whose income sufficed not only to furnish the house, but to pay part of the expenses of building it. Business cases were usually re-opened, not for aid for other purposes, but for additional aid for business,—a legitimate demand where circumstances showed that an applicant was threatened with failure for lack of a small amount of additional capital.

There seems to be no reason in the nature of things why a first grant of aid for household furniture should not have been conclusive in a greater number of instances. Families were required to present fairly definite plans before being given aid to re-establish their homes. If they could have been dealt with[162] more liberally in the beginning, there would have been less re-opening. Most of these first grants for furniture, however, were given between August 20 and November 1, and were inadequate. Although at the time they were treated as final, later on, especially during January and February, families who made request were given an additional grant for furniture.

General relief is in its very nature indeterminate. It is not surprising, therefore, to see that one case in six returned for additional assistance. Some of the families were given intermittent care until June, 1907, and then became charges of the Associated Charities and the other regular relief agencies.

Grants for tools were nearly all given very early in point of time, and were for small amounts. They averaged but $34.71. Such of these applicants as later applied again were considered eligible to receive grants for household furniture, or were assisted to build homes, on the same basis as though they had not previously received aid. The same is true of many families who early received small amounts of general relief. When they succeeded later in forming definite plans they were given grants for household furniture, for housing, or for business.

It is evident that in any disaster so great that months are devoted to the work of reconstruction, a number of families must be dealt with at least twice and some must be carried through the entire period that the wonted relief work of the community is superseded by the unwonted. Even though action taken on an individual application be regarded as final, there will be many re-applications, some because there is the craving for another slice, some because there is a planning to make good use of aid that is being offered in new forms, and others because there is the facing of a new family crisis. In each instance, as a rule, there must be a re-investigation, which means that the time of investigators and of committeemen is drawn in part from the consideration of current cases. All cases suffer corresponding delay. As was to be expected, the greater number of re-openings were in the first three periods of the rehabilitation work. Of 912 household grants made before the end of October, 1906, only 175 were filed away to remain “closed.”

How could the re-opening of cases have been in part obviated?

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First, by avoiding the mistake of filing a case as “closed” when it was unfinished.

Second, by supervising the expenditure of money given for a definite purpose to persons of weak wills or poor judgment, and by making the grant, if the state of the funds permitted, sufficient adequately to meet the purpose. To illustrate: 371 families received grants for furniture, and 461 for business rehabilitation, each in two allotments. In some of these cases, because of the withholding of the funds, the first grant was inadequate. In others, the money was spent to poor advantage or for purposes other than the original intention. The Rehabilitation Committee in making business grants hesitated to hand an applicant more than the average business grant of $250. If provision from the start could have been made to have business grants expended under the supervision of trained workers, larger sums could have been safely placed to the credit of the applicants, many business failures would have been averted, and the call for second grants avoided.

Third, by opening earlier the Bureau of Special Relief. If the Bureau had been started in May instead of in August to give emergency aid in money as well as in kind, it would have released the Rehabilitation Committee from the need of considering the granting of petty amounts, and would have left it free to concentrate effort in its own field. To illustrate: The Rehabilitation Committee before the middle of August made 480 small cash grants for general relief, and 373 for tools. The Bureau could have handled these quickly and effectively by giving help in kind or in cash to an amount of $50 or less. Later, when plans for permanent rehabilitation had been made on the one hand by the Rehabilitation Committee, on the other by the families themselves, the way would have been clear for the more weighty decisions. The quick exchange of records would have meant that the facts held by the Bureau were available as the basis for further investigation.

The length of time elapsing between application and grant was seriously studied by the reviewers. The results need not be given in detail. It should be noted that delays in a time of emergency must not be judged by the standards applied to the normal work of a relief society. The time elapsing between applications[164] and grants varied materially with the period of the relief work. In the first period, extending from May 5 to July 7, 1906, the proportion of grants made within three weeks of the date of application was larger than in the second, the period of accelerated applications, extending from July 7 to August 20, 1906. During the third, the period beginning August 20 and ending November 4, 1906, the proportion of grants made within three weeks of the date of application was smaller than during any other period of the relief work. The proportion of grants made six weeks or more after the date of application was at the same time much larger in this period than in the earlier periods. In the fourth period of the work, extending from November 4, 1906, to April 4, 1907, the proportion of grants made within three weeks of the date of application was smaller than in the first period, but much larger than in the second and third periods.

During the first period of rehabilitation work, the burden of care fell on the army as well as on the Finance Committee of Relief and Red Cross Funds. It was the time when the people were not ready in large numbers to make application for rehabilitation. Only 1,843 applied during the nine weeks. During the second period of six weeks, 6,479 applied to the central and to the seven section offices in which were working the newly organized force of investigators. If any standard were to be upheld, deliberation, which meant delay in dispatch of cases, had to be in order. When in the third period of ten weeks the number of applicants was but 2,872 and the force of investigators, case reviewers, and committeemen had had time to get on a sound working basis, the episode of the withholding of the eastern funds caused a partial paralysis of decision. In this period the long delay in making grants is a reflex. In the fourth period of twenty-two weeks, during which the number of applications was 10,994, when retrenchment was not the key-word, the sharp reversal of policy makes any testing of relative speed impracticable. The cumulative effect of working conscientiously together brings the power to dispatch cases. Whether the relative dispatch would have been greater or less in the fourth period if the district plan had been adhered to can be answered either way merely by a conjecture. Two facts must be borne in mind: First, no physical suffering resulted from delay.[165] The emergency cases were always handled with rapidity, first through the camp commanders and the staff at headquarters, later through the Bureau of Special Relief. Second, mental suffering did result from delay, but to be thorough, rehabilitation work must be carried out with deliberation.

5. VARIATIONS IN AMOUNTS OF GRANTS, AND REFUSALS

There is first presented a table classifying the grants for different purposes according to amount of grant.

The table indicates the amounts allotted to individuals for the various forms of rehabilitation, and brings out striking differences in the sums required for different purposes. Of the 9,958 homes furnished, 9,168 (92.1 per cent) were refurnished at less than $200 each, and 4,708 of these (47.3 per cent of the total) at less than $100. The larger sums, $200 and more, usually mean that a family having spent its first furniture grant for some other justifiable purpose was later given a second furniture grant, or that the so-called furniture grant included $50 to $100 given for clothing and[166] incidentals. Single sums given for a double purpose have been classified under the predominant purpose. Thus the numerous grants reading “Household Furniture and General Relief” have been classed as household grants; $300 or over was involved in less than 1 per cent of the grants so classified.

Grants for business were much larger than those for the household. More than one-half (56.2 per cent), to be sure, were for less than $200, but 15 per cent were for $300 or more, and of these, 3 per cent received $500. Seldom was the grant more than $500.

Grants for general relief in 82.2 per cent of all cases were for less than $200; in 50.9 per cent for less than $100.

Housing[150] is the form of aid that called for the largest individual grants. About one-fourth, 23.7 per cent, were under $200; 41.6 per cent were between $200 and $300; and one-fourth were $500 or over. The sums granted for transportation and for tools, on the other hand, were very small, 84.2 per cent of the former and 94.5 per cent of the latter being for amounts under $100.

To summarize, 77.1 per cent of all grants were for less than $200, and of these more than half, or 41.1 per cent of the entire[167] number, were under $100. The grants of $200 to $299, constituting 15.7 per cent, are made up principally of sums for housing and business. Grants of $300 and over constitute the remaining 7.2 per cent, and most of these were for business rehabilitation or housing. In the study of business rehabilitation that follows in Part III, it will become evident that the number of comparatively small business grants included some failures.

A glance at Table 46 shows that to possess resources other than income did not in itself render applicants ineligible for relief. Of the 6,232 property owners that applied, 4,958, or 79.6 per cent, received aid. Though the percentage of refusals was higher among those with the greater amount of resources, 791 persons, 62.2 per cent of those with $1,000 and over, received aid. Under the grant and loan plan[151] aid to build was conditional on ownership of a lot, and the success of a business plan was usually felt to depend on the applicants’ having something to supplement the grant asked for. Small property owners with small incomes who did not intend to rebuild, needed household or other aid, and there were some property owners who could not, if they would, have their holdings converted into cash. In fact, the persons aided who had resources were, in general, those whose resources could not or should not have been used for refurnishing or for current expenses; those refused were the few who had available cash savings or who had been so fortunate as to receive their insurance money early enough to make an independent start. A thousand and one special considerations and facts entered to make a classification of this group of cases a call for a digest of each case. Such a digest is not practicable in this limited Relief Survey. If made, it would be an index of the individualizing work done by the Rehabilitation Committee. It may be safely said that the Committee rarely erred on the side of generosity. The immediate lesson to be learned is that the presence or absence of resources is only a factor in rehabilitation. No generalizing policy of grants and refusals can be built upon it.

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In Table 47, 5,284 refusals of aid are classified by the reasons for refusal and the nature of the applications.