Title:
Nothing to See in San Francisco (1946)

Author:
Anthony Trollope

Publisher:
Colt Press

Place:
The city in San Francisco

Read by:
-

Registered by:
User:Anderssl

The 19th-century novelist Anthony Trollope visited San Francisco in 1876 and wrote the following text about the city. Apparently he was not particularly impressed...

My way home from the Sandwich Islands to London took me to San Francisco, across the American continent, and New York,-whence I am now writing to you my last letter of this series. I had made this journey before, but had on that occasion reached California too late to visit the now world-famous valley of the Yo Semite, and the big pine trees which we call Wellingtonias. On this occasion I made the excursion, and will presently tell the story of the trip,-but I must first say a few words as to the town of San Francisco.
I do not know that in all my travels I ever visited a city less interesting to the normal tourist, who, as a rule, does not care to investigate the ways of trade or to employ himself in ascertaining how the people around him earn their bread. There is almost nothing to see in San Francisco that is worth seeing. There is a new park in which you may drive for six or seven miles on a well made road, and which, as a park for the use of a city, will, when completed, have many excellencies. There is also the biggest hotel in the world,-so the people of San Francisco say, which has cost a million sterling,-5 millions of dollars,-and is intended to swallow up all the other hotels. It was just finished but not opened when I was there. There is an inferior menagerie of wild beasts, and a place called the Cliff House to which strangers are taken to hear seals bark. Everything,-except hotel prices,-is dearer here than at any other large town I know; and the ordinary traveller has no peace left him either in public or private by touters who wish to persuade him to take this or the other railway route into the Eastern States.
There is always a perfectly cloudless sky over head unless when rain is falling in torrents, and perhaps no where in the world is there a more sudden change from heat to cold in the same day. I think I may say that strangers will generally desire to get out of San Francisco as quickly as they can,-unless indeed circumstances may have enabled them to enjoy the hospitality of the place. There is little or nothing to see, and life at the hotels is not comfortable. But the trade of the place and the way in which money is won and lost are alike marvellous. I found 10/a day to be about the lowest rate of wages paid to a man for any kind of work in the city, and the average wages of a housemaid who is, of course, found in everything but her clothes, to be over £70 per annum. All payments in California are made in coin, whereas in the other states of the Union except California, Oregon, and Nevada,
monies are paid in depreciated notes,-so that the two dollars and a half per day which the labourer earns in San Francisco are as good as three and a quarter in New York. No doubt this high rate of pay is met by an equivalent in the high cost of many articles, such as clothing and rent; but it does not affect the price of food which to the labouring man is the one important item of expenditure. Consequently the labouring man in California has a position which I have not known him to achieve elsewhere.
In trade there is a speculative rashness which ought to ensure ruin according to our old world ideas, but which seems to be rewarded by very general success. The stranger may of course remember if he pleases that the millionaire who builds a mighty palace is seen and heard of and encountered at all corners, while the bankrupt will probably sink unseen into obscurity. But in San Francisco there is not much of bankruptcy; and when it does occur no one seems to be so little impressed as the bankrupt. There is a goodnature, a forbearance, and an easy giving of trust which to an old fashioned Englishman like myself seem to be most dangerous, but which I was assured there form the readiest mode of building up a great com­mercial community. The great commercial community is there, and I am not prepared to deny that it has been built after that fashion. If a young man there can make friends, and can establish a character for honesty to his friends and for smartness to the outside world, he can borrow almost any amount of money without security, for the pur­pose of establishing himself in business. The lender, if he feel sure that he will not be robbed by his protege, is willing to run the risk of unsuccessful speculation.
As we steamed into the Golden Horn (sic) the news reached us that about a month previously the leading bank in San Francisco, the bank of California, had "burst up" for some enormous amount of dollars, and that the manager, who was well known as one of the richest men and as perhaps the boldest speculator in the State, had been drowned on the day following. But we also heard that payments would be resumed in a few days; and payments were resumed before I left the city: that no one but the shareholders would lose a dollar, and that the shareholders were ready to go on with any amount of new capital; and that not a single bankruptcy in the whole community
had been caused by this stoppage of the bank which had been extended for a period over a month! How came it to pass, I asked of course, that the collapse of so great a monetary enterprise as the bank of California should pass on without a general panic, at any rate in the city? Then I was assured that all those concerned were goodnatured, that everybody gave time,-that bills were renewed all round, and that
in an hour or two it was understood that no one in San Francisco was to be asked for money just at that crisis. To me all this seemed to be wrong. I have always imagined that severity to bankrupt debtors,-that amount of severity which requires that a bankrupt shall really be a bankrupt,-is the best and indeed the only way of ensuring regularity in commerce and of preventing men from tossing up with other people's money in the confidence that they may win and cannot lose.
But such doctrines are altogether out ofdate in California. The money of depositors was scattered broadcast through the mining spec­ulations of the district, and no one was a bit the worse for it,-except the unfortunate gentleman who had been, perhaps happily, removed from a community which had trusted him long with implicit confidence, which still believed him to be an honest man, but which would hardly have known how to treat him had he survived. To add to the romance of the story it should be said that though this gentleman was drowned while bathing it seems to be certain that his death was accidental. It is stated that he was struck by apoplexy while in the water.