San Francisco Ruins.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43066, 9 March 1907, Page 2

San Francisco Ruins.

Thespecial correspondent of tbeLondoii “Times ”at San Francisco says that theexorbitant wages asked by workmen, : which are preventingthe rebuilding of the city, are really due* to the capitalist*. . 5 When work was begun on the few buildings that had been left by the fire in a conditien in which reconstruction was not necessaiy, the owners of these buildings, seeing their opportunity to. obtain almost fabulous rents as soon as they could make the offices habitable, began* through the contractors, to bid against each other for labour. Men at work on one building, for instance, w;ould be asked £ to leave it and go to another, bribes of 20, 30, or 40 per cent increase in wages be-, ing offered. It was not in human v nature to withstand such offers. The result of it all is seen in the present condition of San Francisco. Approaching the city on one of the ferry, boats from the towns across the bay, an amazing transformation seems to have been wrought since , last April, In place of the hideous masses of yellow debris one sees pleasant - green spaces ■ dotted with white objects that.-look like pretty low houses. On lard,ingG,at the Ferry Building one looks up Marketstreet and sees activity every where. Two or three of the big office buildings have b *en so far reconstructed that they are full of tenants. The great Call building, which after the fire was only a shell, will soon be habitable again. On the sites of other well-known structures temporary -• buildings of wood or brick have been finished or are being hurried to completion. It is when one leaves Market-street and examines the rest of the burned dis- ' trict that one realises how little has been done. Whole blocks remain exactly as they were in April. One can walk miles and see hardly any evidence of effort to repair the destruction. This is bad enough, but the many notices^ of “This Plot for Rent” are more ominous stilL {;-; •« That San Francisco will be rebuilt one dayiß assured by already been . y done, but the task that confronts the people is a terrible one. And the pleasant green spaces that one s- i-v; sees from the ferry boat ? Nature ii beginning to cover up some of. the dences of ruin. And the low white buildings ! Not buildings, but hoardings with a Ivertisements, whioh hide the debris as one approaches the city.