which we may
even thank earthquakes and kindred volcanic forces. Manufactures compel
commerce, and the commerce of the Pacific will rule the world. The
essentials of commerce are here. Intelligence and enterprise are here
and open to enlargement.

For the late severe loss the city may find some compensations--as the
cleansing effect of fire; much filth, material and moral, has been
destroyed. Yet one is forced to observe that the precincts of Satan
retain their land values equal to any other locality. The greatest
blessing of the destruction, however, is in the saving from a life
of luxury and idleness our best young men and women, who will in
consequence enter spheres of usefulness, elevating and ennobling, thus
exercising a beneficial influence on future generations. Already work
has become the fashion; snobbism is in disgrace; and some elements or
influences of the simple life thus reestablished will remain.

When all has been said that may be regarding the present and the future,
regarding purposes and potentialities, the simple fact remains that the
city of San Francisco will be what people make of it, neither more nor
less. The fruitful interior and the pine-clad Sierra; the great ocean,
its islands and opulent shores, with their fifty thousand miles of
littoral frontage, and every nation thereon awaiting a higher culture
than any which has yet appeared; the Panama canal, the world's highway,
linking east and west, all these will be everything or nothing to
those who sit at the Golden Gate, according as they themselves shall
determine. For the glory of a city is not altogether in its marble
palaces and structures of steel, though these have their value, but
in its citizens, its men and women, its men of ability, of unity, of
energy, and public spirit, and its brave and true women. And has not
this city these? Surely, if in the late catastrophe all that is noble,
benevolent, and self-effacing did not appear in every movement of our
people, then no such qualities exist anywhere. The manner in which they
rose to meet the emergency argues well for the city's future. Before the
calamity was fairly upon them they sprang to grapple it and ward it off
so far as possible. It was owing to them and to the military that the
city was saved from starvation, anarchy, and disease. It also speaks
well for men so severely stricken to be the first to send aid to a
similarly stricken city, the metropolis of Pacific South America.