REBUILDING SAN FRANCISCO

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9068, 20 April 1908, Page 3

REBUILDING SAN FRANCISCO

An optimistic and glowing article entitled, "The City of the Phoenix/' by Herman Scheffauer, appears in the Fortnightly Review, describing the great work of reconstructing San Francisco after the earthquake and the fire. This writer states that order and honesty are being established once more after the iniquitous reign of Abe Ruef and Eugene Schmitz, but it must be confessed that other accounts are not so eulogistic. Mr Scheffauer admits that "non-union workmen are frequently denied the privilege of joining the unions," and that "few new members are received." Consequently the union workman has now become a sort of dictator. Still, he says, that "San Francisco has become a place of great opportunities for men of skill and enterprise," though how that can be if they are not allowed to work remains a mystery. The average wage earned is from 12s to £1 a day. Carpenters earn £1 a day, bricklayers £1 16s, plasterers ar.d ironworkers £1 12s, plumbers £1 4s, bill-posters £2 ss, and lathers £2 10s. A steady job as a bill-poster at £l3 a week wou'd suit a good many men in Australia, but lest they should be tempted to go to San Francisco, it is well to warn them that the job is not so easy to find as one might gather from Mr Seheffauer's article. Immense steelframe "fireproof construction" buildings are being erected by armies of workers, and alongside the white men are Chinese, Japanese, Sikhs, kanakas, and Porto Ricans, all wielding pickaxe and shr.vel in the work of clearing the mountains of debris that still encumber the city. A sum of £250,000,000 is to be expended within the next five years on rebuilding the city of San Francisco. Mr Scheffauer writes with immense enthusiasm, and immense faith for the future of the city, which we read possesses a coat of arms blazoning a phoenix rising from the flames.