The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire by Charles Morris

Author:Charles Morris [Morris, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Modern, 20th Century, United States, State & Local, West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY)
ISBN: 9780486810102
Google: rIxuCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
Published: 2016-01-14T22:24:14+00:00

CHAPTER VI.

Facing Famine and Praying for Relief.

FRIGHTFUL was the emergency of the vast host of fugitives who fled in terror from the blazing city of San Francisco to the open gates of Golden Gate Park and the military reservation of the Presidio. Food was wanting, scarcely any water was to be had, death by hunger and thirst threatened more than a quarter million of souls thus driven without warning from their comfortable and happy homes and left without food or shelter. Provisions, shelter tents, means of relief of various kinds were being hurried forward in all haste, but for several days the host of fugitives had no beds but the bare ground, no shelter but the open heavens, scarcely a crumb of bread to eat, scarcely a gill of water to drink. Those first days that followed the disaster were days of horror and dread. Rich and poor were mingled together, the delicately reared with the rough sons of toil to whom privation was no new experience.

Those who had food to sell sought to take advantage of the necessities of the suffering by charging famine prices for their supplies, but the soldiers put a quick stop to this. When Thursday morning broke, lines of buyers formed before the stores whose supplies had not been commandeered. In one of these, the first man was charged 75 cents for a loaf of bread. The corporal in charge at that point brought his gun down with a slam.

“Bread is 10 cents a loaf in this shop,” he said.

It went. The soldier fixed the schedule of prices a little higher than in ordinary times, and to make up for that he forced the storekeeper to give free food to several hungry people in line who had no money to pay. In several other places the soldiers used the same brand of horse sense.

A man with a loaf of bread in his hand ran up to a policeman on Washington Street. “Here,” he said, “this man is trying to charge me a dollar for this loaf of bread. Is that fair?”

“Give it to me,” said the policeman. He broke off one end of it and stuck it in his mouth. “I am hungry myself,” he said when he had his mouth clear. “Take the rest of it. It’s appropriated.”

As an example of the prices charged for food and service by the unscrupulous, we may quote the experience of a Los Angeles millionaire named John Singleton, who had been staying a day or two at the Palace Hotel. On Wednesday he had to pay $25 for an express wagon to carry himself, his wife and her sister to the Casino, near Golden Gate Park, and on Thursday was charged a dollar apiece for eggs and a dollar for a loaf of bread. Others tell of having to pay $50 for a ride to the ferry.

One of the refugees on the shores of Lake Herced Thursday morning spied a flock of ducks and swans which the city maintained there for the decoration of the lake.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.