Correspondence
A LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO. [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—From across the bay San Francisco has the fantastic appearance of New York from the river, or Chicago across the Lake. Seen closer in, its fantasy is of another world, akin to nothing except those early films in which Harold Lloyd drives a runaway tramcar up and down switchback streets.
The fourteen-storey buildings which in the distance had seemed skyscrapers are now of human size, though perched crazily on the summit of steep hills. The checker-board
layout (which by frequent repetition had elsewhere become monotonous) is accomplished here by running streets over
hills with an angle of 45 degrees or more. There are stairways on the sidewalk for pedestrians, suicidal hills for motor-cars, and (insurance rates being high), seats in the cable cars are arranged jaunting-car fashion, so that passengers shall not fall off.
Like Chicago, San Francisco is a bidder for national conven- tions : as its citizens will tell you, there are in the city 2,000 hotels, 7,000 apartment houses, and over 3,000 lodging-houses. Like Pittsburgh or New York or Philadelphia, the city has its slums (advertised with pride as : SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO : THE INDUSTRIAL CITY). But in place of the dreary tenements of the East, slum-dwellers here have little wooden shacks, open to sea and sky and air. And their children have the Pacific coast as their playground.
San Francisco has a wonderful setting : Mediterranean sea and sky ; grass of an English green ; a climate which allows open-air life all the year round. Like Los Angeles it has houses in every style of architecture : classical, Spanish, modern American. But on these crazy hills and against this
lovely background nothing looks incongruous. There is colour everywhere : even the military prison of Alcatraz Island, with its Renaissance tower and the patches of vivid purple ice-plant beneath, looks a desirable residence.
Other Californian cities are of equal beauty, and many of greater age. Modern San Francisco dates from the earth- quake of 1906: old San Francisco from some fifty years before. The gold rush brought population, and to the gold rush the city owes its special character. No crowd is so cosmo- politan as that of gold-seekers, and of all gold-seekers those of San Francisco were the most varied. Few of them came overland, for the overland trail was beset with the hardships of climate and country, and the dangers of Indian warfare. But thousands came by sea, from South, and East, and North.
Like any other prospecting centre, San Francisco of the 'fifties was a city of gamblers, cut-throats, and thieves. But the thieves went with the gold, and those who stayed on found consolation for their vain prospecting in a perfect climate and a soil which yielded a decent living, even to honest men. They had, of course, to face the same difficulties as other cities of the West, and drastic methods were needed to " clean up " the town. On more than one occasion " Hounds " and ruffians of equal calibre were hung from gallows erected for the purpose in the main streets. But the citizens did their work quickly, and their " Society of California Pioneers " is now over seventy years old—a great age for the West, but not so great as that of New York, of Boston, or even San Diego. Yet San Francisco is older than them all, and combines with the freedom and chivalry found only in the West, a sophistication which we are accus-
tomed to consider European. I was taken " round the town " by a man who knew. its history, its good restaurants, and its
beauty spats. He was a perfect guide and perfect host, but he apologized for showing me the town's attractions. Inevitably I recalled Chicago and New York.
San Francisco is alone : physically, because it is cut off by a bay which makes it impossible for it to incorporate all the flourishing towns on the mainland which are rapidly becoming its rivals in business and industry ; spiritually, because it is the only cosmopolitan city in this new world. Other cities have their foreign populations, and in many States the foreign element dominates (" My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin "). But in San Francisco, unlike the cities of the East where there was always a dominating Anglo-Saxon strain, and the other cities of the West which derived their strength mainly from Puritan New England, the people here have always been cosmopolitan. - To-day the young Chinese attend American schools, wear American, clothes, and speak in American slang. But they retain an Oriental manner, and their Chinese quarter is still so real that it looks like a creation of the films. The Spaniards and Italians are proud of. heir American citizenship, but they
keep their food, their Latin houses, and their Latin way of life. Motor-cars are to be seen in hundreds on every street, but the rush of the East is here tempered by the certain knowledge that tomorrow also will be a glorious day. The colour in the clothes of the Chinese girl is not that of her native Canton, but it is one which well becomes her complexion. Either from her proximity or from a stronger sun, the European
woman, too, has half-closed eyes, and slow and languorous movements which come as a shock after the restlessness of towns less than a day's journey behind. - ;
Even in Oakland, twenty minutes by ferry across the bay, the pedestrian unable to obtain a seat in the street car is advised to : " Take next car.". In San Francisco, busiest seaport of the Pacific coast and twelfth largest city of the United States, he is free to choose. Ile may take the next car if he should wish : it will not be long, for the service is excellent. But, if he can stand the stiff climb up Telegraph Hill, he may also walk. And—marvel of marvels—on arriving at the top he may even, without fear of being mistaken for a hobo or worse, sit down and rest.--I am, Sir, &c., A VISITOR.
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