Читать книгу "The System," As Uncovered by the San Francisco Graft Prosecution - Franklin Hichborn - Страница 6

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The decade ending 1910 was for California an era of extraordinary enterprise and development. A third transcontinental railroad, the Western Pacific, was completed; vast land-holdings as large as 40,000 acres in a body were cut up into small tracts and sold to settlers; waters brought to the land by vast irrigation enterprises increased the land’s productiveness three and even ten fold; petroleum fields, enormously rich, were opened up and developed; the utilization of the falling waters of mountain streams to generate electric power, brought cheap light and power and heat to farm as well as to city factory. The Spanish war had brought thousands of troops to the coast. Practically all of them passed through San Francisco. This particular activity had its influence on local conditions. The State’s population increased from 1,485,053 in 1900 to 2,377,549 in 1910.

Up to the time of the San Francisco fire, April 18, 1906, San Francisco, of the cities of the State, profited most by this development. San Francisco bank clearances, for example, increased from $1,029,582,594.78 for the year ending December 31, 1900, to $1,834,549,788.51 for the year ending December 31, 1905, a gain of 80 per cent.

San Francisco’s increase in population during those five years, can, of course, only be estimated. On the basis of the registration for the 1905 municipal election, approximately 98,000, San Francisco had, at the time of the 1906 disaster, a population of about 500,000, an increase from the population of 342,782 shown by the 1900 census of practically 50 per cent. in five years.[26]

The rapid increase in population, the sustained prosperity of the community, and its prospective development made San Francisco one of the most promising fields for investment in the country.

The public service corporations were quick to take advantage of the San Francisco opportunity. Those corporations already established sought to strengthen their position; new corporations strove for foothold in the promising field. Thus, we find the Home Telephone Company, financed by Ohio and Southern California capitalists, seeking a franchise to operate a telephone system in opposition to the Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company, which was already established. And we find the Pacific States Company taking active part in municipal politics to prevent the Home franchise or any other opposition telephone franchise being granted. The corporation holding the light and power monopoly, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, had by the time of the third Schmitz inaugural, practical control of the San Francisco field. But it was face to face with a clamor for reduction of gas rates. The company was charging one dollar a thousand for gas. The Union-Labor party platform of 1905 pledged the Board of Supervisors to a seventy-five-cents-per-thousand rate.

Another matter of tremendous importance to the growing municipality was that of the supply of water. The Spring Valley Water Company had a monopoly of this necessity, but demand for municipal water to be brought from the Sierras was strong. A committee of experts had been appointed to pass upon the various sources of supply. Ruef appeared before them as spokesman for the Supervisors. The experts resigned when it was made clear to them that instead of being permitted to make an adequate study of all available sources of supply they were to report upon the Bay Cities project alone.[27] After the ousting of the Schmitz-Ruef administration the Bay Cities project was ignored and bonds authorized to bring water from Hetch-Hetchy valley. The Spring Valley Water Company, however, has been successful in blocking this project, and in 1914, San Francisco seems almost as far away from realizing her ambition for a supply of pure water as in 1905-6 when Ruef and his followers were at the height of their power.

The public-service problem which was attracting the most attention at the time of the great fire, was that of street-car transportation. The principal lines had passed into the hands of the United Railroads.[28] The corporation had, at the time of Schmitz’s election in 1905, practically a monopoly of the San Francisco street-car service.

The company’s principal lines were operated by the cable system. But fully five years before the fire, all traction officials as well as the general public, recognized that San Francisco had outgrown the cable road. It was admitted that electric lines must be substituted for the cable, but there was sharp division as to the character of the electric lines which should be installed. The officials of the United Railroads proposed the overhead trolley method of propulsion; the public, so far as it could find expression, declared for the underground conduit system.[29] In taking this position, the public was in reality backing up the municipal engineers, who had been sent to Eastern States to investigate electric transportation systems, and who had found in favor of the conduit and against the trolley.[30]

The San Francisco Merchants’ Association, however, apparently dissatisfied with the reports of the engineers employed by the municipality, employed Mr. William Barclay Parsons to report on the relative merits of the trolley and the conduit systems.

Mr. Parsons took issue with the city’s engineers, and recommended the trolley as against the conduit.[31] The directors of the Merchants’ Association thereupon declared for the trolley system.

Criticism of this action of the directors was followed by submission of the question to a referendum vote of the Association membership. The members voted in opposition to the directors, declaring against the trolley and for the conduit.[32]

But the most determined opposition to the installation of the trolley system came from improvement clubs, whose purpose was to promote the best development of San Francisco.

Prominent among these organizations were the Improvement and Adornment Association,[33] the Sutter Street Improvement Club[34] and the Pacific Avenue Improvement Club. The membership of these organizations consisted of some of the largest owners of San Francisco properties. The leaders were comparatively young men, natives of San Francisco, whose interests were inseparably wrapped up in the community, and who aimed to promote the best possible development of the city of their birth and fortunes.

Prominent in this group were Rudolph Spreckels[35] and James D. Phelan,[36] rated among the heaviest property-owners of San Francisco. These men were ready to join with the United Railroads in any plan which proposed the highest development of the street-car service.[37] On the other hand, they were prepared to oppose any attempt to exploit the service to the detriment of San Francisco.[38]

A conference of the directors of the Improvement and Adornment Association with officials of the United Railroads was finally arranged.[39] The meetings were held in March, 1906, less than a month before the great fire. There were, before the attempted adjustment was abandoned, several sessions.

The citizens urged Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railroads, to give up his trolley design for Market and Sutter streets. As a compromise, he substantially agreed to build the underground conduit as far as Powell on Sutter, and as far as Valencia on Market, picking up the trolley on Valencia, McAllister, Hayes and Haight streets. The Adornment Committee directors wanted the conduit system on Sutter street extended as far as possible, and held out for Van Ness avenue. Calhoun would not consent to install the conduit beyond Powell.

In the midst of this deadlock, the San Francisco Chronicle published what purported to be reports of the several conferences. Up to that time there had been no publication of the meetings.

Following the Chronicle publication, Calhoun, in a letter to members of the Adornment Association, declared the information contained in the Chronicle article to be inaccurate,[40] and offered to let the people decide whether they wanted a conduit system on Market street to Valencia, and on Sutter street to Powell, or a uniform all-trolley system throughout the city.

Mr. Calhoun’s suggestion seemed reasonable until he stated in an interview that by the people he meant the Board of Supervisors.

He was asked how he proposed to ascertain the wishes of the people.

“I should suggest,” he is reported as replying, “that the matter be referred to the decision of the Board of Supervisors. The Board of Supervisors is a public body selected by the people, and represents the ideas and wishes of the people of the city.”

The reply was not well received. The Supervisors were even then under suspicion of corruption. Less than a fortnight before, March 10, the Examiner had called the board’s action on an ordinance which was supported by the Home Telephone Company “suspicious,” and had stated that the board had “made the mistake of acting as a bribed Board of Supervisors would have acted.”[41]

Later on, the Supervisors themselves confessed to having been bribed to grant the telephone franchise. The public, not at all blind to what was going on, believed, even at the time Mr. Calhoun made his suggestion, although there was no proof, that the Supervisors had been bribed.

San Francisco was opposed to any plan that would put trolley cars on the city’s best streets. Submission of the issue to the people would have been popular. Mr. Calhoun’s proposal that it be left to the Supervisors was met with suspicion, and open distrust of Mr. Calhoun’s motives.

In answer to the criticism which Mr. Calhoun’s suggestion had aroused, Mr. Calhoun, in a second letter to the Adornment Association, withdrew his offer to submit the question to the people, and announced the intention of his company to proceed with preparation of a plan for a uniform trolley system to be installed wherever the grades would permit.[42]

This second letter was made public in March, 1906, less than a month before the fire. The position taken by the United Railroads was generally condemned.[43] But the opposition took more practical form than mere denunciation. A group of capitalists, headed by Claus Spreckels, father of Rudolph Spreckels, Rudolph Spreckels and James D. Phelan, announced their intention to organize a street-railroad company, to demonstrate the practicability of operating electric cars in San Francisco, under the conduit system.

The plan was given immediate endorsement both by press and general public. The project was explained in detail to Mayor Schmitz, who in a published statement gave the enterprise his unqualified approval.[44] But when the incorporators sought further interview with Mayor Schmitz, they found themselves unable to secure a hearing.

The company, under the name of the Municipal Street Railways of San Francisco, was formed with Claus Spreckels, James D. Phelan, George Whittell, Rudolph Spreckels and Charles S. Wheeler as incorporators. The capital stock of the company was fixed at $14,000,000. Of this, $4,500,000 was subscribed, ten per cent. of which, $450,000, was paid over to the treasurer.[45]

With this $450,000 an experimental line, under the conduit system, was to be built on Bush street.[46]

The articles of incorporation provided that the franchises acquired under them should contain provisions for the acquisition by the City and County of San Francisco of the roads thus built.[47]

The new company filed its articles of incorporation with the Secretary of State at Sacramento on April 17, 1906.

In the early morning of the day following, April 18, came the San Francisco earthquake and fire. For the moment the public forgot all differences in the common disaster. But the lines of division between exploiter and builder could not be wiped out, not even by the destruction of the city. The contest, which had, without any one realizing its full significance, been fast coming to a head before the fire, was to take definite shape after the disaster.