der the
new board expenditures were reduced to $353,000. The People's Party had
a long lease of power, but in 1876 McCoppin was elected mayor. Later
came the reigns of little bosses, the specter of the big corporation
boss behind them all, and then the triumph of decency under McNab, when
good men served as supervisors. Then came the sinister triumph of Ruef
and the days of graft, cut short by the amazing exposure, detection, and
overthrow of entrenched wickedness, and the administration of Dr.
Taylor, a high idealist, too good to last.

Early in 1904 twenty-five gentlemen (five of whom were members of the
Chit-Chat Club) formed an association for the improvement and adornment
of San Francisco. D.H. Burnham was invited to prepare a plan, and a
bungalow was erected on a spur of Twin Peaks from which to study the
problem. A year or more was given to the task, and in September, 1905, a
comprehensive report was made and officially sanctioned, by vote and
publication. To what extent it might have been followed but for the
event of April, 1906, cannot be conjectured, but it is matter of deep
regret that so little resulted from this very valuable study of a
problem upon which the future of the city so vitally depends. It is not
too late to follow its principal features, subject to such modifications
as are necessary in the light of a good deal that we have accomplished
since the report. San Francisco's possibilities for beauty are very
great.

The earthquake and fire of April, 1906, many San Franciscans would
gladly forget; but as they faced the fact, so they need not shrink from
the memory. It was a never to be effaced experience of man's littleness
and helplessness, leaving a changed consciousness and a new attitude.
Being aroused from deep sleep to find the solid earth wrenched and
shaken beneath you, structures displaced, chimneys shorn from their
bases, water shut off, railway tracks distorted, and new shocks
recurring, induces terror that no imagination can compass. After
breakfasting on an egg cooked by the heat from an alcohol lamp, I went
to rescue the little I could from my office, and saw the resistless
approaching fire shortly consume it. Lack of provisions and scarcity of
water drove me the next morning across the bay. Two days afterward,
leaving my motherless children, I returned to bear a hand in relief and
restoration. Every person going up Market Street stopped to throw a few
bricks from the street to make p