MR ANTHONY TROLLOPE IN SAN FRANCISCO.

Evening Star, Issue 4109, 28 April 1876, Page 3

MR ANTHONY TROLLOPE IN SAN FRANCISCO.

The following is the last of the series of interesting letters from Mr Trollope New York. I do not know that in all my travels I ever visited a city less interesting than San Francisco to the normal tourist, who, as a rule, does not care to investigate the ways of trade, or to employ himself - in ascertaining how the people around him earn their bread. There is almost nothing to see in San Francisco that is worth seeing. There is a new park in which yon may drive for six or seven miles on a well-made road, and which, as a park for the use of the city, will, when completed, have many excellencies! There is also there the biggest hotel in the world—so the people of San Francisco say—which has cost a million sterling—five millions of dollars—and is intended to swallow up all the other hotels. It was just finished, but not opened when I was there. There is an inferior menagerie of wild beasts! and a place called the Cliff House, to which strangers are taken to hear seals bark. Everything, except hotel prices, is dearer here than at any other large town I know, and the ordinary traveller has no peace left him, either in public or private, by touters who wish to persuade him to take this or the other railway route into the Eastern States. There is always a perfectly cloudless sky over head, unless when rain is falling in torrents, and perhaps nowhere in the world is there a more sudden change from heat to cold on the same day. I think I may say that strangers will generally desire to get out of £an Francisco as quickly aa they can, unless, indeed, circumstances may have enabled them to enjoy the hospitality of the place. There is little or nothing to see, and life at the hotels is not comfortable. But the trade of the place, and the way in which money is won and lost, are alike marvellous, I found 10s a day to be about the lowest rate of wages paid to a man for any kind of work in the city, and the average wages of a housemaid, who is, of course, found in everything but her clothes, to be over L7Q per annum. All payments in California are made in coin, whereas in the other States of the Union except California, Oregon, and Nevada, moneys arc paid in depreciated notes, so as the two dollars and a-half per day which the laborer earns in San Francisco, are as good as three v. a garter hi New York, No doubt this rate of pay is met by an equivalent in tne nigh cost of many articles, such as clothing and rent; but it does not affect the price of tood, which to the laboring man is the one - of expenditure. Conaequently, the laboring man in California has not W wv, trad l^ ere i 8 a s P e ™lative rashness which ought to ensure ruin, according to our

old world ideas, but which'seems to be rewarded by very general success. The stranger may, of course, remember, if he pleases, that the millionaire who builds a mighty palace is seen and heard of, and encountered at all corners, while the bankrupt will probably sink unseen into obscurity. Hut in San Francisco there is not much of bankruptcy, and when it does occur, no one seems to be so little injured as the bankrupt. There is a good nature, a forbearance, and an easy giving of trust which to an old-fashioned Englishman like myself, seems to be most dangerous, but which I was assured there form the readiest mode of building up a great commercial community. The great commercial community is there, and I am not prepared to deny that it has been built after that fashion. If a young man there can make friends, and can establish a character for honesty to ms friends, and for smartness to the outside world, he can borrow almost any amount of money without security, for the purpose of establishing himself in business. x /i e lender, if he feel sure that he will not be robbed by his protege, is willing to run the risk of unsuccessful speculation. As we steamed into the Golden Horn the news reached us that about a month previously the leading bank in San Francisco, the Bank of California, had “ burst up ” for some enormous amount of dollars, and that the manager, who was well known as one of the richest men, and as perhaps the boldest speculator in the State, had been drowned on the day following. But we also heard that payments would be resumed in a few days—and payments were resumed before I left the city; that no one but the shareholders would lose a dollar, and that the shareholders were ready to go on with any amount of new capital; and that not a single bankruptcy in the whole community had been caused by this stoppage of the bank, which had been extended for a period over a month! How came it to pass, I asked, of course, that the collapse of so great a monetary enterprise as the Bank of California should pass on without a general panic at any rate in the city? Then I was assured that all those concerned were goodnatured, that everybody gave time, that bills were renewed all round, and that in an hour or two it was understood that no one in San Francisco was to be asked for money just at that crisis. To me all this seemed to be wrong. I have always imagined that severity to bankrupt debtors-that amount of severity which .requires that a bankrupt shall really be a bankrupt—is the best, and indeed the only way of ensuring regularity in commerce, and of preventing men from tossing up with other people’s money in the confidence that they may win and cannot lose. But such doctrines are altogether out of date in California. The money of depositors was scattered broadcast through the mining speculations of the district, and no one was a bit the worse for it, except the unfortunate gentleman who had been, perhaps happily, removed from a community which had trusted him long with implicit confidence, and which still believed him to be an honest man, but which would hardly have known how to treat him had he survived. To add to the romance of the story, it should be said that though this gentleman was drowned while bathing, it seems to be certain that his death was accidental. It is that he was struck with apoplexy while in the water.

I was taken to visit the Stock-brokers ’ Board in San Francisco—tVat is, the room m which mining shares are bought and sold. Tne reader should understand that in California, and, still more, in the neighboring State of Nevada, gold mining and silver mining are now very lively. The stock-job-bing created by these mines is carried on in San Francisco, and is a business as universally popular as was the buying and selling of railway shares during our railway mania. Everybody is at it. The housemaid of whom I have spoken as earning L7O per annum, buys consolidated Virginia or Ophir Stock with that money; or perhaps she prefers Chellar Potosi, or Best and Belcher, or Yellow Jacket, or Buckeye, She probably consults some gentleman of her acquaintance, and no doubt in nineteen cases out of twenty loses her money. But it is the thing to do, and she enjoys that charm which is the delectation of all gamblers. Of course, in such a condition of things there are men who know how the wind is going to blow, who make the wind blow this way or that, who can raise the price of shares by fictitious purchases and then sell, or depreciate them by fictitious sales and then buy. The housemaids and others go to the wall, while the knowing men build palaces, and seem to be troubled by no seared consciences. In the meantime the brokers drive a roaring trade—whether they purchase legitimately for others, or speculate on their own account. The Stock Exchange in London is, I believe, closed to strangers. The Bourse in Paris is open to the world, and at a certain hour affords a scene to those who choose to go and look at it of wild noise, unintelligible action, and sometimes apparently of demoniac fury. The uninitiated are unable to comprehend that the roaring herd in the pen beneath them are doing business. The Stock Exchange Board in San Francisco is not open to strangers as it is in Paris, but may be visited with an order, and by the kindness of a friend I was admitted. Paris is more than six times as large as San Francisco ; but the fury at San Francisco is even more demoniac than in Paris. I thought that the gentlemen employed were going to hit each other between the eyes, and that the apparent quarrels which I saw already demanded the interference of the police. But the uproarious throngjwere’always obedient, after slight delays, to the ringing hammer of the chairman; and as each five minutes’ period of internecine combat was brought to an end, I found that a vast number of mining shares had been bought and sold. Perhaps a visit to this chamber, when the stockbrokers are at work between the hours of eleven and twelve, is, of all the sights in San Francisco, the one best worth seeing.