HEN the news of the great earthquake and fire spread over our land, with electric speed, the first thought of the American people was for the safety of human life in the devastated district, and for the relief of the refugees from suffering. The good in man was instantly to the fore, everywhere, and in San Francisco it came out in heroic proportions. Many thousands of successful men of affairs devoted their energies to the public welfare during the time that their own material wealth was melting away in flames.

The second thought of the people was for the future of San Francisco. Would it be rebuilt? Would it again be the city of unlimited possibilities? Or had the disaster permanently repressed its growth? Two principal elements of destruction were engaged earthquake and fire.

Earthquake wrought perhaps five per cent of the ruin, and fire the remaining ninetyfive. In so far as fire alone is concerned, the question of San Francisco's future is not debatable. not debatable. History establishes that no well-located city is ever abandoned to its fire losses. London, Chicago, Boston and Baltimore grew up from their ashes in greater beauty and strength. That San Francisco's fire loss is the greatest in history is not a deterrent force.

The earthquake is admittedly more discouraging. Its coming is unheralded, its severer shocks are devastating to weak or ordinary structures, and it brings terror to many souls. When the very earth is no longer terra firma, but has become terra mota, one does, indeed, feel perfectly helpless; and this is a factor which must be reckoned with. Will it seriously affect San Francisco's future?

Prophecy not based on history or science is futile. What have these to say on the subject? All Americans are interest

ed in the question, for San Francisco is their natural gateway to the great Pacific Ocean. Every Californian is vitally interested, for the injured region lying within a radius of fifty miles from San Francisco, including San Jose, Oakland and Santa Rosa, contains more than half the people, and more than half the taxable property of the state.

The number of earthquakes is vastly greater than is generally supposed. In those parts of the world where records are kept, there are, on the average, two or three perceptible earthquakes every day. When we remember that in great areas of land no records are preserved, and that the all-land areas compose only one-fourth of the earth's surface, we may feel safe in saying that on the average ten or more perceptible quakes per day occur somewhere on our globe. As a matter of fact, delicate modern seismographs, which record fainter shocks than the person can perceive, show that the earth is almost constantly quaking. Earthquakes are confined largely to two extensive circles or zones, the first, running east and west in the region of the Alps, Caucasus and Himalaya mountains, includes 52 per cent of all recorded quakes; and the second, embracing nearly all lands bordering on and lying within a few hundred miles of the Pacific Ocean, includes 38 per cent. Earthquakes in the latter zone have been especially frequent and especially severe in certain parts of South America, Japan and the Malay Islands. The entire west coast of North America, from Panama to Behring Strait, is "earthquake country" of moderate intensity, with occasional severe shocks.

Although the two zones referred to experience 91 per cent of recorded earthquakes, there is really no part of the earth. that is immune from them.

New England and Old England have had their shakings in the past century. In 1811 the entire Mississippi Valley was shaken violently in the region near the mouth of the Ohio River, where a considerable tract of dry land was depressed and became a swamp. The region about the Indus River suffered frightfully in the earthquake of 1819. Central Germany had a considerable shock in 1874. Central Indiana was shaken in 1887. The Charleston earthquake of 1886 was perhaps more severe than ours of April 18; immense damage was done near its center;

chimneys were thrown down within a radius of 250 miles; some clocks were stopped at a distance of 700 miles; and it was felt in Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Central Massachusetts, and all other places lying within about 1,000 miles from Charleston. Fortunately, Charleston had but one-eighth the population of San Francisco alone.

The most destructive earthquake en record occurred in the Atlantic Ocean. west of Lisbon, in 1755. The immense wave resulting from it completed the destruction of the city and the most of its inhabitants, and the shock was felt as far away as Northern England. All these and dozens of others in recent times occurred unexpectedly, and it ill becomes any city or region to claim immunity.

History supports the view that cities which have suffered earthquake injuries. are repaired and go on with their natural life. Naples, Genoa, Lisbon, Charleston are cases in point, and San Francisco will be no exception to the rule. The earthquake alone would not have interrupted railroad traffic for more than a day, and not one business firm in a hundred would have delayed an hour in making deliveries. The strategic value of San Francisco Bay and the railroads leading to the Golden Gate, is such that they alone would compel the rebuilding of the city.

It is unfortunately a fact that the beginnings of business and residence in most American cities are under-financed. The buildings are in large measure mere shells, designed to protect solely against sun and rain. It is one of our traits to be venturesome. In nearly all of our cities a tremendous business is done in inflammable buildings, and the fire losses are immense. San Francisco, San Jose and Santa Rosa were equally venturesome as to earthquake risks. The violent shake of 1868 was forgotten. Most buildings were erected without reference to earthquake requirements. Three and four-story business houses, large two-story warehouses, with heavy, wide-span roofs, wide and high churches and schoolhouses were erected in brick without a sign of steel frame, rod or wire to bind the walls together. Hundreds of tall frame buildings were flimsily constructed, with small studding, which did not run through from one story to another, and without proper diagonal bracing. Worst of all, the foundations were generally inadequate, in some cases pretending

The wreckage on Sansom street.

few unimportant exceptions, great cities lie on or near rivers, lakes or the oceans. Nonpotable water is always near at hand as the basis of a duplicate system for fire protection. With pumping stations at the water's edge, in simple steel buildings, on rock or bonded-pile foundations, with pipe lines bedded in native soil, and with moderate-sized steel tanks of water in the attics or on the roofs of each unit of building, there would be reasonable assurance that the utterly helpless condition of April 18 would not recur to any city.

Experience in the recent disaster shows that safety in future earthquakes lies in the basic use of steel in all building structures. Its toughness and elasticity afford the requisite resistance in one sense, and the requisite yielding in another sense; and, fortunately, it endures both earthquake and fire. There are many lessons to be learned still as to the best sheathing for a steel-frame building. Brick alone, when properly bonded to the frame has suffered but little. Brick body with stone facing has fared almost equally well. And there is little doubt that cement walls, properly bonded together and to the steel frame by means of steel wire, would be satisfactory. The Call, Chronicle, St. Francis, Kohl, Merchants' Exchange, Union Trust and many other buildings are standing evidence that they have solved the earthquake problem. And a city of

such buildings would have little to fear from fire. It is the great wall area of a burning wooden building, and not the small window area of a burning brick, stone or cement structure, that heats a building across the street to the ignition point. Flying cinders have no terrors for a "fire-proof" building. Little is to be gained from fire-proof window frames and sash, for heat breaks glass windows before wood burns; but much should be expected from metal door frames and doors in preventing a burning room froni setting fire to the entire building.

It was the experience in San Francisco, as well as in Charleston, that the destructive effects of the earthquake were greater on "made ground" than on firm native soil. This is largely a question of foundation; but it is also a fact that when a wave passes from firm soil to spongy, light soil, the amplitude of the wave is increased. The lesson to be taken is that foundations on such soil should be especially deep, massive and thoroughly bonded. Steel bonding is there perhaps as necessary as in the superstructure.

Sober second thought will be clear on the point that the earthquake will not be a serious factor in limiting the population of the affected district. It is true that five hundred people were killed, but fortynine out of fifty deaths occurred in flimsy, poorly constructed buildings. A burning excursion boat in New York harbor destroys its eleven hundred souls, and a colliding French trans-Atlantic steamer carries down its six hundred; yet increasing numbers go over the sea in ships. The cyclones of the Mississippi Valley, e. g., that of St. Louis, are more destructive of human life in almost every year. Railway accidents claim their thousands of victims annually, yet people will not stay at home. Galveston has recovered from the great storm that claimed its thousands of lives. The destructive floods of Kansas and other states, the fatal heats of the Eastern summer, and the blizzards of the Middle West winter destroy lives innumerable, yet they are endured by a happy, prosperous population. If the residents of the Pacific Slope should devote to the strengthening of their buildings such sums as the mildness and uniformity of their climate enable them to save during ten years on the winter's fuel and the summer's ice, earthquakes would soon have few terrors for them.

HE nascent spirit of the West is noblesse oblige. Inherited a dvantages in race, traditions and land impose this obligation of nobility upon the people of the west. As a community, it is yet too young to have become conscious of what is in its nature, and it is too immature to be able to exhibit its true spirit. It does not yet command and utilize any considerable portion of its inheritance and resources and is therefore poor. Its habiliments are

mean, its ways rude, and its thought and energies have been and still are largely absorbed in the exigencies of frontiering. Disencumbered of these impedimenta, as it soon will be, the spirit of the West will manifest itself in its real character.

Already we have intimations of what this spirit revealed will be. The original San Francisco is in ruins and its people are bereft and stunned by a most disheartening calamity, yet they exhibit a token of what is fundamental in their spirit in the proposed rebuilding of their city as one of the most beautiful of the world, with a grand civic center set with radiating and encircling boulevards. A like unfolding of the inner life of the people throughout the West will come as soon as they have respite from the engrossing demands upon their energies and thought incident to establishing themselves in a