I 
OF Frame Buildings, even in the Down-town District 
shown a willingness, an anxiety, to gamble with us 
in the “ heads-I-win, tails-you-lose” game on the fire 
question. Meanwhile, those same companies have 
absorbed ^1,610,883,242 of the people’s money in 
premiums on the gamble, of which sum much less 
than half has been returned to the people in paid 
losses, and the rest has necessarily “gone to the 
house. ” 
Besides that, we are paying $130,000,000 or so in 
salaries for the maintenance of expensive fire depart¬ 
ments, another $100,000,000 or more for fire water- 
supply, and probably another $100,000,000 more 
for other fire incidentals. It is not exceptional when 
we destroy over 6,000 lives by fire in a year’s time. 
Every day in the year 36,000 
lives are directly endangered 
by fire, while, of course, every 
mother’s son of us is in that 
indirect peril every moment 
he is in or near a burnable 
building. New York averages 
8,700 a year, Chicago 4,100; 
or, we average up three thea¬ 
tres, three public halls, twelve 
churches, ten schools, two 
hospitals, two asylums, two 
colleges, six apartment houses, 
three department stores, two 
jails, six hotels, 140 flat- 
buildings, and 1,600 homes, 
actually burned every normal 
week. 
Our latest disaster is an 
object lesson demonstrating 
the folly of our mode of con¬ 
struction. Over $300,000,- 
000 worth of property was 
destroyed, not a case, as 
with most “losses,” of a 
mere change, of hands, but 
property actually consumed in smoke, while the 
city’s and country’s indirect loss in business by that 
fire can only be told in a figure of ten digits. A sec¬ 
tion nearly three miles wide by four miles long was 
swept almost clean, 700 blocks in extent, prob¬ 
ably over 10,000 buildings! The real story of that 
fire has not yet been told; the people are living 
in an abnormal state, buoyed up by excitement and 
the sympathy of the nation. By and by they will 
realize their awful plight. They seek to minimize 
the earthquake part of the catastrophe, and quite 
natural is it that they should. And the official 
records fall far short of the actual total of lives lost. 
Only a personal investigation of the ruined city can 
give one anything like an ade¬ 
quate idea of the awful havoc 
wrought by quake and fire. 1 
will never forget the blood- 
chilling eft'ect of my first 
bird’s-eye view from the top 
of the Fairmont Hotel. A 
hundred Pompeiis gathered 
upon one site; the appalling 
Baltimore wreck,still fresh in 
my mind, was relegated to the 
realm of insignificant triviali¬ 
ties! We knew it as a “ninety 
per cent frame city.” To¬ 
gether with New Orleans, it 
ranked the lowest in the scale 
of building qualities. Yet 
tbe insurance companies, 
knowing this as well as any 
of us, wrote an exceedingly 
low fire rate, because, for¬ 
sooth, San Francisco main¬ 
tained such an excellent fire 
department! I'hey are now 
litigating, (juibbling and 
endeavoring to discount their 
San Marco Apartment. Note the condition of 
the stone jiiers while tlie brick and terra¬ 
cotta above are unaffected by fire 
133 
