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Updated: May 10, 2025
I went in and lay down on a lounge in the library at 2 A. M. and slept until 5 A. M.. When I awoke and looked out the flames were pouring from every window of the Spreckels mansion. At 10 A. M. the house was thoroughly burned out. In the morning I went over to the California-Street engine-house, and found it in ruins.
I waited for the dust to settle, and I then saw the damage which had been done to Claus Spreckels's house and the church. The chimneys of the Spreckels mansion were gone, the stone balustrade and carved work wrecked.
At 12 o'clock on the beginning of the 20th I saw smoke coming out of the chimney of the Spreckels mansion. I went out and spoke to a fireman, and he said he had been into the house and that it was full of smoke and on fire. At 1 o'clock the house was on fire in the upper rooms, at 1:30 it was blazing out of the upper windows, and in a short time afterwards was wholly on fire.
Pickering was dead; his widow and her brother, R.A. Crothers, had taken over the evening paper; John D. Spreckels, sugar nabob, now controlled the Call. Newspaper policies were somewhat uncertain in these days of economic unrest. Strike succeeded strike, and with each there came a greater show of violence. Lines were more sharply drawn. Labor and capital organized for self-protection and offense.
Not only have we been enriched by this mass of sober and industrious people in the past, but Peter Mühlenberg, Christopher Ludwig, Steuben, John Kalb, George Herkimer, and later Francis Lieber, Carl Schurz, Sigel, Osterhaus, Abraham Jacobi, Herman Ridder, Oswald Ottendorfer, Adolphus Busch, Isidor, Nathan, and Oscar Straus, Jacob Schiff, Otto Kahn, Frederick Weyerheuser, Charles P. Steinmetz, Claus Spreckels, Hugo Münsterberg, and a catalogue of others, have been leaders in finance, in industry, in war, in politics, in educational and philanthropic enterprises, and in patriotism.
This calamity, terrible as it is, will mean nothing less than a new and grander San Francisco. It is preposterous to suggest the abandonment of the city. It is the natural metropolis of the Pacific coast. God made it so. D. O. Mills, the Spreckels family, everybody I know, have determined to rebuild and to invest more than ever before.
And that Julian Ralph stuff that appeared in that same weekly lately is more of that peculiar kind of news that is being constantly ground out by the capitalistic sharks to catch the unwary, and was paid for by Spreckels another Moses, that has come to the succor of our beleaguered coast.
Governor Gillette lauded this action. But Rudolph Spreckels disowned the Committee. Langdon and Heney were suspicious of its purpose. So the Committee of Seven resigned. At this juncture the Schmitz trial ended in conviction of the Mayor which was tantamount to his removal from office. It left a vacancy which, nominally, the Supervisors had the power to fill. But they were under Langdon's orders.
People failed to recognize them on the street. Even Spreckels and Phelan, despite their wealth and long established standing, suffered certain social ostracisms. Wealthy evildoers found themselves as definitely threatened by the law as were the Supervisors. But wealth is made of sterner stuff. It did not cringe nor huddle; could not seek immunity through the confessional.
From Golden Gate Avenue north the fire crossed the wide street in but one place. That was at the Claus Spreckels place, on the corner of California Street. There the flames were writhing up the walls before the dynamiters could reach the spot. Yet they made their way to the foundations, carrying their explosives, despite the furnace-like heat.
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