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What San Francisco has to Start With." Entrance gate of Presidio Terrace.

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ness calling for shelter than to have commodious houses and extensive docks call

ing for business. The necessity of a metropolis is the guarantee of its future. The extensive and varied wealth of this richest of lands, highly developed after fifty years of discovery, enterprise and industry, laboring side by side in the work of exploitation and experimentation, crowned as they have been with accomplishment and success, looks to the bay of San Francisco for its mart and emporium, and inevitably must the city rise to meet an existing demand. The water front has been spared from the ravages of the flames, and the ships of the world, as in the stirring days of old, will revisit the port in increasing numbers to supply the newly created needs. Tremendous activity will mark the next decade and the spirit of the pioneer will find a field much more inviting and profitable than the San Francisco of 1849, when the world was young. Maturity has taken the place of inexperience and the proved value of this historic site silences doubt and hesitation. Confidence is a plant of slow growth and confidence in San Francisco is an accomplished fact. A sturdy tree has grown where the good herb found but feeble nourishment in the sand dunes of the early city. We know now what San Francisco is capable of producing and in the absolute belief in its capacity for great things we can sow and plant in the firm expectation of reaping an abundant harvest.

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The associations of the past are a dear possession, but the spirit of the age brooks no looking backward. The affection which San Francisco has inspired has caused friends to rise up in all parts of the world, and their sympathy was not only sentimental but as you well know, it was helpful and substantial. But the good will of the world is no mean endowment with which to begin the work of rebuilding. San Francisco found pleasure in its hospitality and was never happier than when welcoming soldier and civilian, artist and actor, Presidents and the potentates of commerce and industry within its gates, and they in turn sang its praises, participated in its joyous life and found in it an atmosphere unknown to other places.

Now in the rebuilding of the city we must have a care for character of our guests. We must not be staggered by the sudden blow and plead the necessity for haste against our manifest duty to re-construct a city on correct lines. We do not live for bread alone. A great opportunity presents itself for encircling our hills with roads, from whose tops enchanting views of land and bay and sea give unique distinction to our peninsular location. Broad avenues should bind all parts of our city together, so that traffic may be facilitated and convenience and pleasure enter into our daily lives. The entertainment of the stranger must not be overlooked in the construction of hotels and theaters and the improvement of our suburbs. The dignity and importance of our city must not be subordinated to a false economy in the construction of public works and in the erection of municipal buildings. We must realize that San Francisco is on the line of the world's travel, the chief port of the United States on the greatest of the world's oceans, and we must not now show ourselves unworthy of the trust which nature and fortune have put into our hands.

I

Melaw

"A City of Incomparable Opportunity.”

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AM asked by the editor of the Overland Monthly for an expression of views about San Francisco, with "special regard to the immediate and ultimate prospects of the city." The question goes rather too far. Nothing in my view is less profitable than speculation about things which lie beyond the range alike of information and of demonstration. I cannot assume the character of a prophet; I must be excused from any attempt to point out definite things likely to be achieved in the future of San Francisco. Yet it may not be wholly futile to glance briefly at conditions as they may be traced by any considerate observer, and to point out forces and tendencies likely to be effective in their relations, immediate and ultimate, to the future San Francisco.

It was no accident that there grew up

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upon the Yerba Buena peninsula a very considerable commercial city. San Francisco as we have known it in times past vas a product of causes fixed in the character and conditions of the country. It was inevitable that there should arise in the richly productive country of California a general mart. It was inevitable that it should be at a spot where domestic production should meet the commerce of the ocean. The existence of San Francisco bay fixed the location of the commercial city of California.

The geographical relationship of San Francisco Bay to the interior regions of California were, and are, most fortunate. All the valley systems of interior California are connected by level routes with the bay, whereas they are severally separated by ranges of hills or mountains. For the products of each valley the line of least resistance is downward to the bay.

No less fortunate is the position of San Francisco bay in its relations to the wide-spreading commerce of the Pacific Ocean. It lies practically midway between the northern and southern Pacific regions. It lies directly opposite to the most populous countries of the Orient. Taking all the countries on the Pacific Ocean together, San Francisco Bay is more easily accessible than any other harbor of the American continent.

It is upon these great and essential facts that the commercial character of San Francisco, with the other elements of her character, were founded. No possible development of artificial conditions could have stopped or seriously limited the operation of forces which combined in the making of San Francisco, and which in times past have steadily and vitally supported her growing power in the commercial world.

The fateful day of April 18, 1906, came upon San Francisco at a time when all the forces of her life were at high tide. Production in California had attained a magnitude which made San Francisco a center of domestic distribution alone, a prominent factor in the world's commerce. Great events in the comparatively new world of the Pacific Ocean had given a prodigious impetus to seagoing commerce. San Francisco had

become a cross-roads into which there poured day by day such volume of traffic as fixed her rank among the great capitals of trade. In a twinkling, nearly all of that prodigious organization of facilities which had served in the transaction of San Francisco's traffic, internal and foreign, was wiped out of existence. Only a fraction of what was the City of San Francisco remains. But the conditions which originally fixed the location of San Francisco, which tended at first slowly, and later more rapidly, to her development, were not in the least degree affected by the calamity which swept over the city. The position of San Francisco is everything that it ever was; the resources of production which lie back of her are as great as before; the commerce which passed through San Francisco as a clearing house is undiminished by disaster. All the general activities tending immediately to the support of San Francisco are normal-everything that they were prior to the 18th of April.

If we look oceanward we find no diminution in the broader resources of San Francisco. Alaska yields her treasures of gold, and the wants of the Alaskan people struggle to supply themselves amid the ruins of San Francisco's wholesale district. Washington continues to yield her wealth of forest, and Oregon the wealth of her grain fields. If we look to Japan, to Siberia, to China, to Hawaii, to the Philippine Islands, to Australia, to Central America — everywhere it is the same. Whatever services San Francisco has performed for these countries in the activities of commerce are now waiting impatiently for the restoration of facilities which the disaster swept away. There is no turning away from San Francisco of the things that made San Francisco, and that sustained her; there is no loss at the point of vital resource; there is no threat of diversion. All the forces that entered into the making or into the maintenance of San Francisco remain to her, and to-day are struggling to recover their customary paths amid her ashes and broken walls.

San Francisco has another resource which must serve her well in this crisis of her fortunes-that of established interests. How vast and how potent a re

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'What San Francisco has to Start With." Looking east from Alta plaza.

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