Michael Helquist

Portland to the Rescue

The Rose City's Response to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

APRIL 18 BEGAN IN PORTLAND much the same as other days. In copies of the Morning Oregonian that landed on front porches and lay stacked at newsstands, readers found stories about the state primary, in which candidates sought nominations for U.S. senator, representative, governor, and state treasurer, and an account of the previous evening's meeting during which the intrepid Abigail Scott Duniway had rallied volunteers for the ongoing woman suffrage campaign.¹ And then the day changed completely.

The night operator of the Postal Telegraph Company, F.W. Wegner, first suspected trouble at 5:12 a.m. He was on the San Francisco wire when the connection went dead. Eighteen minutes later, the Sacramento office relayed a report by way of Chicago: San Francisco had been struck by the worst earthquake in California history, causing "a raging hell of fire, ruin and death."² During the next several hours, word of San Francisco's fate traveled person-to-person, because few businesses or individuals owned telephones. Anxious Portlanders crowded outside the telegraph offices and pleaded to send messages to loved ones in the Bay City. None were accepted; too few lines were open.³ During the first hours of the disaster, the only contact with San Francisco was via one military telephone line, two commercial lines based in Oakland, and the trans-Pacific cable to Manila.⁴

Although the Oregonian missed the biggest story of the new century with its early edition, the afternoon papers — the Portland Evening Telegram and the Oregon Daily Journal— published harrowing accounts of the disaster. "San Francisco in Ruins; 2,000 Dead in Earthquake; Flames Following Shocks Threaten to Destroy the Entire City" headlined the Oregon Daily Journal. That day, the Portland Evening Telegram sold 60,000 extra copies, distributing them still wet from the presses.⁵ Based on the first reports alone, the California disaster would require a degree of relief organizing never before attempted in Portland.

Three days of firestorms devastated San Francisco far more than the 1906 earthquake itself. Fires lit the evening sky for fifty miles, and the heat generated cyclone winds. Fleeing residents found pavement too hot for walking, and falling cinders ignited their clothing.

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The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 remained the greatest natural disaster in the United States for nearly one hundred years. The tragedy caused 3,000 fatalities, leveled much of the nation's ninth largest city, and left more than 200,000 people homeless.⁶ San Franciscans required immediate and massive aid, including food, clothing, medications, treatment, and housing; but there was no federal agency or national Red Cross experienced with providing relief of that magnitude.⁷ As firestorms raged across the Bay City, communities beyond the disaster zone rallied to help earthquake sufferers. The people of Portland, Oregon, were among the first to organize a comprehensive relief campaign.

Public reaction to the calamity virtually halted Portland's business and social life. Shock and worry distracted voters from a primary election and disrupted the campaign for woman suffrage. Portlanders roused themselves to help San Francisco with a degree of compassion and commitment unparalleled in the city's first fifty-five years. This chapter in Portland's history has been overshadowed by larger events of the time, including a surge in the city's population, significant commercial expansion, and a push for political reform. Yet an examination of the episode reveals not only the impressive performance of relief operations but also the degree of community groups' preparedness for such an emergency. Women's organizations, already active in what social reformer Jane Addams described as "civic housekeeping," were especially primed for the challenge.⁸

Alfred Myer studios of Portland distributed this photograph of aid workers handing out food to refugees in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Homeless San Franciscans waited two hours in quarter-mile lines to receive a loaf of bread. Portland bakeries shipped 36,000 loaves during the first two days after the disaster.

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Portland's response to earlier calamities was modest compared to the earthquake relief undertaken in 1906. On September 8, 1900, a terrifying hurricane with winds reaching 130 miles per hour struck Galveston, Texas, on the Gulf Coast. A fifteen-foot storm surge inundated what the winds had not flattened. Eight thousand people died. The Portland Chamber of Commerce sent five hundred dollars.⁹ In June 1903, a flash flood propelled a forty-foot wall of water through Heppner, Oregon, destroying most buildings and killing 247 people. Portlanders organized a relief station to collect donations and send goods to the survivors. The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company (OR&N) sent two rail cars — one from Portland and one from The Dalles — carrying supplies as well as doctors, nurses, and an undertaker.¹⁰ On April 7, 1906, Mt. Vesuvius in Italy erupted and triggered earthquakes that left 200,000 Neapolitans homeless and destitute. Portland businessmen launched a subscription campaign to purchase relief supplies, and the city's Italian community organized additional aid. Eleven days later, on April 18, Portland Mayor Harry Lane intended to discuss further emergency assistance with local pastors.¹¹ By midday, however, Portland's response to that disaster was sidetracked by the new one in California.

Several factors motivated Portland's more ambitious response to the San Francisco catastrophe. Primary among them were the many commercial and social bonds between the two cities. Many local business leaders began their careers in San Francisco, and they maintained trade with Bay Area merchants. At the time of the earthquake, a great many Portlanders had lived in the Bay Area or had married into families from there.¹² These personal connections were vastly stronger than those most Portlanders held with the more distant Galveston and Naples, or the much smaller Heppner.

By 1906, Portland's economy thrived as the predominant commercial center of the Pacific Northwest. The Lewis and Clark International Exposition of 1905 had attracted nearly 1.6 million visitors. The earthquake struck San Francisco just six months after the close of the Exposition. Carl Abbott characterizes the post-fair period as "the greatest economic boom that Portland has ever experienced." Impressive municipal growth accompanied the good times. From 1905 to 1909, Portland boosted its population by 80 percent and its boundaries by 30 percent.¹³ By April 1906, Portland was well-positioned as a primary responder. It had the financial strength to purchase supplies, direct rail connections to deliver material to the Bay Area, and social welfare organizations able to provide needed services. One high-profile example of Portland's direct assistance in San Francisco was the "doctor train," a team of doctors and nurses who left their practices and patients to provide medical care to the people in the stricken city. Among the volunteers were individuals who later shaped Portland's medical and political life, including Dr. Kenneth Alexander J. Mackenzie and suffragist and later radical activist Dr. Marie Equi.¹⁴

On the day of the earthquake, commerce in Portland slowed as an "oppressive atmosphere" settled over the city. As the Oregonian later commented, "The horror of it all turned men's minds from business." The Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, and the Commercial Club resolved to send whatever assistance was required. Mayor Lane wired San Francisco's mayor, Eugene Schmitz, with condolences from all Portlanders and an offer of aid. Schmitz replied that his city's needs were basic and immediate: bedding, tents, and bread, rather than cash.¹⁵ The supplies requested were not unusual, but the degree of need was unprecedented for a natural disaster in the United States. Two hundred thousand San Franciscans required shelter, food, and water, and thousands of people were likely injured and would require medical care.

Mayor Lane and the city's plutocracy set aside their differences to undertake an effective, coordinated relief effort. Lane had been elected in 1905 with the backing of a municipal reform faction, especially middle-class homeowners and small businessmen of the eastside. He proposed a radical realignment of power in Portland, one that managed municipal resources for the good of the public rather than the profit of the privileged. For its part, the mercantile elite despised the mayor.¹⁶ Historian Robert D. Johnston describes the repeated clashes between Lane and the ruling class as elements of the overall struggle for power between reform activists and the establishment during the Progressive era.¹⁷ In the midst of this political strife, a truce was required to help rescue San Francisco.

To chair the newly formed Portland Relief Committee — established specifically to address the San Francisco disaster — Lane appointed Joseph N. Teal, a wealthy attorney. Teal named prominent members of the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, and the Manufacturer's Association to the various subcommittees: finance, provisions, transportation, and supplies.¹⁸ All of the committee members were men, and many had worked together on other civic undertakings. A few held seats on the still-existing committee for Heppner flood relief, and most had helped manage the recent world's fair.¹⁹ The directors of the new committee quickly established a subscription campaign and assumed fiduciary responsibility for relief operations. Although Mayor Schmitz had requested goods over cash, Portland merchants were unable, or perhaps unwilling, to meet the huge demand on their own. Only a huge infusion of money could guarantee shipment of supplies.

Local banking giants got the fund underway. First National Bank donated $25,000 and Security Savings and Trust gave $10,000. Every kind of community organization and business followed suit. The City Council pledged $375, an amount equivalent to one month's salary of the members. The Multnomah Typographical Union no. 58 offered to empty its treasury to help its San Francisco counterpart. Archbishop Alexander Christie ordered Roman Catholic parishes to conduct a special collection on Sunday, April 22. The Heilig Theater manager and local musicians staged a benefit performance that yielded $1,000. Henry Weinhard Brewery donated the investment return on $10,000 worth of stock certificates from the Lewis and Clark Exposition.²⁰ Local businesses mixed promotion with disaster aid. The Olds, Wortman & King department store advertised a "monster public relief fund" with 5 percent of all sales over a ten-day period donated to the cause. The proprietor of Erickson's Concert Hall — a popular downtown saloon — provided an entire day's receipts for the effort, and his employees pledged to donate their salaries as well.²¹

In one of his few victories over Portland's commercial elite, Mayor Harry Lane forced local banks to release remaining relief funds to earthquake and fire victims, rather than allow the money to remain in local banks after the disaster.

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The leaders of Portland's Chinese community tried with little success to reach their compatriots in the Bay Area. Chinese people in the Rose City had reason to fear their countrymen would face discrimination by relief services in San Francisco. Anti-Chinese bigotry plagued Portland, but to a lesser degree than in other West Coast cities. Local Chinese merchants and individuals raised funds for San Francisco and organized relief services for Chinese refugees expected to arrive in Portland.²²

These headlines were published on the front page of the April 20, 1906, Morning Oregonian. Portland's newspapers spurred a near frenzy of cash donations, which were used to purchase goods from local merchants for earthquake relief.

Portland newspapers helped fashion a community norm of whole-hearted support for San Francisco relief by printing dozens of earthquake stories every day, accompanied by editorials and banner headlines urging donations to the local campaign. The Oregonian established a separate fund for the relief effort. The Oregon Daily Journal, not to be outdone, announced one as well. Each paper published the names of contributors and the amounts donated, which ranged from twenty-five cents to hundreds of dollars. After California Governor George Pardee requested further assistance, Mayor Lane issued a proclamation to all Portland residents: Any individual or business that had yet to contribute should donate a full day's income.²³ Over the course of the subscription campaign, Portlanders donated more than $260,000 — an amount equal to approximately $5 million today. The Oregonian commented: "Never before have Oregon people been so touched by any great catastrophe."²⁴

On the morning of April 19, Portland women gathered in the downtown offices of the OR&N and established the Women's Relief Committee for the California Sufferers. Two young women had proposed the ad hoc group the day before and met with an enthusiastic response from "leading women of the city." Historian Sandra Haarsager notes that women from Portland's "first families" were seldom members of the local women's and civic clubs, but this short-term relief committee was an exception. Mary Phelps Montgomery was elected president of the group. Her husband was the original co-owner of the Albina townsite and a wealthy businessman. Other organizers who claimed high social positions included Henrietta and Mary Failing, Jeanette Meier, and Fannie Frank. The men's committee financed the operations of the women's group in an arrangement established with local voluntary associations decades before the 1906 disaster.²⁵

The women's committee assumed an enormous undertaking: to equip a medical contingent for departure in twelve hours, collect bedding and clothing for thousands of San Franciscans, and organize services for the ten thousand earthquake refugees expected to arrive in Portland within days.²⁶ Their work, in collaboration with the men's finance operation, became the largest social welfare project undertaken in the Rose City, and it benefited from the experience community organizers had gained during the previous fifty years.

PORTLAND'S FIRST VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS were established during the 1850s, when the mercantile elite founded cultural associations to benefit the city and to burnish their own reputations. Historian Frederic Cople Jaher concludes that the charitable regard for others "generally involved wealth, power, civic pride, noblesse oblige, the need for recognition, and the desire of political-economic elites to strengthen their authority."²⁷ Other prominent leaders of the 1850s worked through churches and fraternal clubs to address social problems, primarily public drunkenness. During the ensuing decades, a network of social welfare programs expanded from these few early associations.

In 1867, the First Unitarian Society helped found the Ladies' Relief Society, "the first organized effort to coordinate numerous city-wide women's charitable causes." The women's group developed a home for orphans and abandoned children and later provided lodging for pregnant women. Their efforts were complemented by other associations that helped the most vulnerable populations. Typically, however, the groups avoided working to change the economic and social realities that created disadvantages for the people they tried to help. The financial backers of the women's enterprises were usually members of the local aristocracy, who had little reason to change the status quo. In the 1870s, for example, wealthy businessmen financed the Unitarians' Christian Union, which managed the church's charitable programs. A separation of duties among men and women also prevailed among social welfare groups. "While the Unitarian husbands raised money," wrote historians E. Kimbark MacColl and Harry H. Stein, "their wives became actively involved in delivering social services."²⁸

Social strife indirectly contributed to the growth of social welfare in Portland. The economic depression of the 1880s left thousands of men unemployed, including Chinese laborers, who many Euro-Americans viewed as unfair competitors in the job market. Pro-union sentiment combined with anti-Chinese racism and erupted into street marches and clashes in city neighborhoods. Eventually, the agitation subsided, but the impact of "social conditions" on the city's well-being and reputation worried Portland's establishment. Civic leaders financed programs to assist the disadvantaged and to prevent more disruption.²⁹

Another factor driving the development of social welfare was the determination of women to conduct civic housekeeping. Historian Annette K. Baxter describes reform-minded women as motivated by "powerful internal drives" that "arose from an emotional need to express one's identity and make a lasting contribution."³⁰ In 1887, the Unitarian Church helped form the Portland Women's Union. The Women's Union is described by historian Gloria E. Myers as an egalitarian group, whose members served as "practical workers" for social aid institutions in the city. The organization's first project was operating a boarding house for single, working women, who paid only what they could afford. The union especially targeted newcomers to the city whose limited incomes might otherwise lead them to lodging in what upper-class women saw as questionable quarters and surroundings.³¹

Like elsewhere in the country in the mid-nineteenth century, women's clubs in Portland emphasized personal growth and improvement through literary study. By the 1890s, however, many of the women in these clubs felt confident and empowered to apply their new skills in the public realm of political reform and social welfare.³² The Portland Woman's Club, founded in 1895, became a strong influence in the city's public affairs. Among the club's 116 members were "physicians, teachers, homekeepers and homemakers, artists, business women, women of society, stenographers, college graduates and self-educated women." These "thoughtful, earnest women of the community" advocated an array of municipal reforms and public improvements, including child labor laws, improved jail conditions for female prisoners, and education loans for poor girls.³³ The efforts of these various clubs and associations reflect the numerous ways that Portlanders, especially women, undertook social reforms and civic improvement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.³⁴ Their experiences, and the cooperative relationships they formed, equipped them to mount a massive humanitarian response to the San Francisco disaster.

ON THE DAY FOLLOWING the San Francisco earthquake, the first concern of the Women's Relief Committee was to rush medical care to the Bay Area. The women quickly secured free use of the rails, a twenty-ton baggage car from OR&N, and a passenger car from the Pullman Company. Both cars would be attached to the regular southbound train departing that evening. The women gathered ten tons of medical supplies from local drug houses, including boxes of cotton and gauze, splints, hot water bottles, disinfectants, ether, chloroform, and surgical supplies. Relatively few medications were available in 1906, but the committee obtained ample amounts of strychnine, morphine, opium, and digitalis.³⁵

To recruit doctors and nurses for the relief train, the committee turned to Dr. Kenneth Alexander J. Mackenzie, the physician who had led a contingent to Heppner after the 1903 flood disaster. He was a prominent, forty-seven-year-old surgeon and a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Oregon Medical Department (UOMD).³⁶ Mackenzie spent the morning of April 19 seeking volunteer doctors at Good Samaritan and St. Vincent's hospitals, and volunteers from the nurses' training school at St. Vincent's. The relief mission entailed significant sacrifices: an absence from Portland for two to three weeks, no compensation expected, and lodging on the crowded passenger car or in the midst of earthquake ruins. The volunteers also anticipated contagious disease and, possibly, civil strife. Still, Mackenzie secured forty-two doctors and nurses and turned others away. Most of the volunteers were in their twenties and unmarried. Several were recent graduates of the medical school; others were faculty at the institution. One of the doctors was Ralph Matson, age twenty-six, the state bacteriologist for the Oregon Board of Health. His experience with typhoid outbreaks and sanitation control was especially well-suited for the task in San Francisco.³⁷

Marie Equi was the only female doctor on the mission. At age thirty-four, she was older than most of the volunteers, though she had received her medical degree from UOMD only three years earlier. Her working-class background and limited high school education made her an unlikely prospect for medical school at the turn of the century. She had studied for entry exams on her own and begun coursework first in San Francisco and then in Portland. After graduation and an internship in Pendleton, she established her practice in Portland.³⁸ Mackenzie had been one of Equi's professors at the medical school — where she had argued with the male students and faculty — and he was likely familiar with her sometimes confrontational manner. He may have sought a woman to supervise the Portland nurses or, once Equi volunteered, may have decided that working with the nurses was the most suitable role for her.

On the evening of April 19, the doctors and nurses gathered at Union Depot, pinned red crosses to their sleeves, and posed for a photograph. Then they boarded the Pullman car obtained by the women's committee and began the trip south. The contingent arrived a day and a half later, on April 21. Only that morning had the firestorms been extinguished in San Francisco. Nearly 30,000 buildings were destroyed, and 490 full city blocks lay in ruins.³⁹ U.S. Army officers met the Oregon medics at the train station in Oakland and ferried them across San Francisco Bay to the Presidio of San Francisco, a military base located at the northern tip of the San Francisco peninsula. The U.S. Army General Hospital there was severely damaged but intact enough to house hundreds of patients who had fled the terrors of the city. The military command at the Presidio had already opened its base hospital to civilians, established refugee camps, provided medical care throughout the city, and enforced sanitation controls among the general public.⁴⁰ Through those activities, Presidio officers initiated the first occasion in which the army provided major medical assistance for a calamity in the United States.

Portland nurses and doctors pause for a photograph while preparing to depart Union Depot on the evening of April 19, 1906, and travel to San Francisco to assist earthquake sufferers. Marie Equi stands next to a seated woman on the far right of the photograph.

Originally published in the Oregonian, April 20, 1906

If the Oregon doctors had hopes for heroic service treating earthquake victims, they were dashed by the need for basic disease prevention. A dozen of them undertook sanitation work in two refugee camps, digging trenches and setting up latrines. Lt. Col. George H. Torney detailed Mackenzie to establish a contagious disease hospital at Harbor View, a former bayfront resort. There, Mackenzie converted one hundred small bathhouses into wards for children sick with diphtheria, chickenpox, scarlet fever, and mumps. He partitioned what had been the dancing pavilion into six wards for patients with measles. And, with bacteriologist Ralph Matson, Mackenzie prepared a tent hospital for the expected onslaught of typhoid cases.⁴¹

But Mackenzie found no epidemic during his service in San Francisco. One week after his arrival, the temporary hospital treated 60 patients with contagious diseases — not an insignificant number but nothing close to the thousands anticipated. Yet the totals climbed after Mackenzie's departure. During the two months following the earthquake, the army listed 95 typhoid cases with 17 deaths, and 123 smallpox diagnoses with 11 deaths. By midsummer 1907, typhoid cases spiked to 1,279 cases with 228 deaths. Through a public relations campaign after the earthquake, officials tried to downplay the impact of the disaster, including the morbidity and mortality numbers.⁴²

Equi and the Portland nurses began their duties at the Presidio general hospital. The three-hundred-bed facility had been built in 1898 to treat wounded and ill soldiers from the Spanish American War. It had since received special cases from across the country. When Equi arrived, U.S. Army Hospital Corps medical officers and U.S. Army Nurse Corps nurses were treating injured civilians and patients who had been shuttled from three hospitals destroyed during the calamity. Equi was in charge of obstetrics on the "Oregon ward," and one event there received special attention back home. On April 27, a fire broke out in the nearby laundry room. Equi raced to the ward, eased each mother and infant into an invalid's chair, and wheeled them to safety.⁴³

Three volunteers on the mission were surgeons from the Oregon National Guard (ONG). They converted a technical school into a fully operational facility that was soon tagged "the Oregon Hospital." Assisted later by a regiment of the ONG Hospital Corps, the physicians treated nearly one thousand patients among the camp refugees.⁴⁴ The Oregon doctors and nurses were assigned critical positions in the primary medical centers in the city but were not the first medics to arrive in San Francisco. A larger contingent from Los Angeles — financed by newspaper titan and New York gubernatorial candidate William Randolph Hearst — had arrived a day earlier. Doctors from Chicago, nurses from Seattle, Army military medics, and Red Cross volunteers from across the country followed.⁴⁵

PORTLANDERS PLEDGED TO DONATE a steady stream of provisions and send them by rail to San Francisco. The women's committee made more than one thousand house calls seeking donations, and city residents cleared their closets of extra clothing, bedding, and linens. The men's and women's work remained largely separate; the men purchased and shipped food and equipment, while the women collected and packed an enormous amount of dry goods.⁴⁶ That delineation of duties by gender was the norm for local social welfare groups of the time.

The women's committee transformed the drill room of the massive, turreted Armory in Northwest Portland into a supply station with an enormous degree of activity. Every day, one to two hundred women gathered to sort, mend, and pack the steady stream of donations. Each box was packed with similar garments, labeled accordingly with an invoice inside, sealed, and stamped before transfer to the railway station. During two weeks of morning-to-night work, the women packed and shipped more than 250 boxes of donated goods — enough clothing for an estimated 1,200 homeless people.⁴⁷

Three days after the earthquake, more than 1,500 refugees arrived in Portland on the first trains from San Francisco. They had crammed aboard ferries to Oakland and then pushed onto passenger cars with free transport provided by Southern Pacific Railroad. A few California cities had turned away San Franciscans, fearing that a criminal or immoral element might be among those fleeing the city, but the Rose City did not refuse entry to any of the refugees.⁴⁸ The women's committee established a relief station at Union Depot to meet and assess the needs of arrivals. Volunteers offered immediate assistance to those with critical needs. Others waited in line before receiving a barrage of aid: meal tickets, bath passes, toiletries, and transportation as well as guidance for obtaining medical treatment, short-term lodging, childcare, and clothing. Refugees in transit to points north or east received food and passes for berths on the train. A few African Americans and Chinese reached the Rose City as well. None of the Chinese applied to the women's committee for relief; they were offered help separately by the local Chinese community.⁴⁹ Volunteers at the Union Depot relief station registered more than 4,300 total arrivals from the refugee trains. Some of the newcomers were wealthy San Franciscans who fled their damaged homes and filled Portland's better hotels, but most were dependent on whatever humanitarian aid was provided.⁵⁰

Of all the relief operations in Portland, the interception of newcomers at the rail station was the most familiar to social welfare groups. Most believed young women and men who were new to the city faced particular peril from unscrupulous individuals and immoral attractions. To counter the threat, organizations had developed outreach programs and established safe lodging. The Portland chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) hired a Traveler's Aid matron in 1896 to meet "unprotected girls" at Union Depot and steer them to appropriate housing and employment. By 1901, the Portland YWCA and YMCA provided vocational training to "men and women adrift" in the city and attempted to steer them to what the organizations saw as safe, wholesome pursuits. In 1905, a coalition of civic, religious, and women's groups united to protect young women entering the city for temporary employment or entertainment during the world's fair. The new group, the Portland Traveler's Aid, recruited Lola Greene Baldwin (who later became Portland's first policewoman) to direct the operation. During the course of six months, Baldwin's association served more than 1,600 women and girls.⁵¹

The People's Institute — Portland's first settlement house, which also provided free medial care to earthquake refugees — developed this model dispensary in 1907. The Institute evolved into today's outpatient clinic at Oregon Health and Science University.

Courtesy OHSU Historical Collections & Archives

The People's Institute was Portland's first settlement house, and it became an essential service center for earthquake refugees. The First Presbyterian Church had established the institute in 1904 to assist women and children living primarily in Portland's North End district, where conditions were poor. The pre-eminent Ladd family donated property at Fourth and Burnside streets, and wealthy patrons financed a new two-story structure for the church's social services. The "Men's Resort" operated from the first floor and provided lodging, baths, and meals. On the upper level, women and children found similar services as well as kindergarten care, classes for boys and girls, a free employment bureau, and instruction in the domestic sciences.⁵² During the earthquake relief period, both floors of the People's Institute were dedicated to women and children. Volunteers recalled that many of the women arrived in "such a shattered, nervous condition that they could not sleep."⁵³ Most of the mothers, however, found respite once their children were fed, washed, and dressed in clean clothes. Doctors and nurses provided medical care, and volunteers found temporary lodging for the refugees, often in private homes. Day after day, the relief workers repeated the rounds of assistance with new arrivals. After two weeks, the People's Institute had served more than 550 adults and children from the Bay Area.⁵⁴ Men and boys who arrived at Union Depot were dispatched to the YMCA for baths, shaves, and clothing. They rested there and then received free meals at nearby restaurants. Local boarding house operators offered rent-free shelter until the new arrivals could provide for themselves. The earthquake survivors were more destitute than the boys and men the YMCA usually served but, having it's own building, the local association was well-equipped to provide immediate services.⁵⁵ Within days, Portland organizers had relief operations underway at multiple locations in both cities.

A FEW DAYS AFTER THE ARRIVAL of the Oregon medics, the structure of relief operations in San Francisco began to change. On April 23, Dr. Edward T. Devine of the American Red Cross arrived in the city with President Theodore Roosevelt's mandate to take charge of relief operations. Local leaders resented Roosevelt's intervention and especially his authorization of the Red Cross to control millions of relief dollars, but Devine was a highly-regarded social worker and a diplomatic, pragmatic administrator. He agreed to share coordination of relief activities with the U.S. Army, and he yielded control of funds to the local relief committee.⁵⁶

San Francisco doctors faced staggering problems. Hundreds had lost their offices as well as their client base. Wealthier patients had abandoned the city while the working class and poor received free medical care at Army camps and hospitals.⁵⁷ Desperate to resume their practices, many local physicians lashed out at the Oregon medics. On May 3, a San Francisco physician disrupted an emergency meeting of five hundred local doctors with a demand that the Oregon corps — along with all other physicians from outside San Francisco — leave the city. He charged that they had arrived uninvited and unwanted and that they deprived local practitioners of their livelihoods.⁵⁸ Mackenzie immediately took offense. He was especially galled because, two days after his arrival, he had alerted the American Medical Association to the dire plight of San Francisco physicians and had urged other states to receive doctors who might emigrate.⁵⁹ Although the San Francisco doctors eventually tabled the motion, the charge held some truth. The Oregon doctors had not been invited and, while they were still en route from Portland, Governor Pardee of California had requested that no more physicians or nurses be sent.

Earthquake survivors sought refuge at this nearby U.S. Army base, the Presidio of San Francisco. At tent camps there and in city parks, a dozen Oregon doctors performed the grunt work of public health — digging ditches and setting up latrines to prevent the spread of disease.

Courtesy Gleason Library Special Collection, University of San Francisco

Two days later, with a federal strategy in place and local physicians and nurses eager to work, the Oregon medics ended their mission. Praise was lavished on the Oregon team. Pardee thanked the people of Oregon for doing so much "at a time when we were practically helpless." Mayor Schmitz, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner echoed the sentiment. The U.S. Army singled out the Portland nurses for praise and presented Equi with a commendation for her services.⁶⁰ Portland's other relief operations in San Francisco concluded as well, including the hospital tent from which five thousand meals were served daily. The Oregonian and the Oregon Daily Journal had established information and referral bureaus to facilitate contact among displaced people and their loved ones in Oregon. During the first days of May, the Portland Relief Committee transferred all its activities to San Francisco authorities. The Oregon physicians and nurses departed Oakland for Portland sixteen days after the "doctor train" had begun its expedition.⁶¹

Upon his return to Portland, Mackenzie reported to the Relief Committee that the medical team had provided exemplary service. He also expressed a decided preference for military control in times of crisis. Mackenzie believed San Francisco would have fared much better with less "waste and wanton looting" if the city had been under "a dictatorship in the hands of a firm, wise, determined leader — for an indefinite period." On matters of public health and sanitation, Mackenzie stated that San Franciscans had only begun to deal with the challenges, and it was too early to know what lessons might be learned from their experience.⁶²

Relief activities in Portland also tapered to a conclusion. No additional supplies were needed in San Francisco and fewer refugees arrived at the rail station. Local events pulled public attention from the disaster.⁶³ An outcome of the primary election had flip-flopped for several days with one candidate alternately conceding and declaring victory. The contenders complained the voters were difficult to engage, and the Oregon Daily Journal noted a light voter turnout "due to the California calamity."⁶⁴ Suffragists found the public ignored their appeals for campaign dollars and instead donated to the relief funds. The suffrage measure went to Oregon voters on June 6, and by then the momentum of the campaign had been disrupted. After suffrage lost by more than ten thousand votes, a few advocates blamed the distraction of the earthquake for the defeat.⁶⁵ Portland's commercial activity spiked from late April 1906 through the following few months. Tom Richardson, manager of the Commercial Club, expected a short-term increase in trade for the Rose City prior to San Francisco's rebound, and his predictions proved accurate.⁶⁶ Three weeks after the disaster, earthquake reports no longer dominated the front pages of Portland newspapers.

The collaboration between Mayor Lane and the Portland Relief Committee prevailed for several weeks, but it was not to last. After disbursing approximately $200,000, the committee continued to bank $50,000 long after relief operations ceased. Members explained the funds were reserved for future needs of the refugees in town. Lane countered that the money should be released immediately for relief in San Francisco.⁶⁷ Portlanders accused the committee of choosing to increase profits for local merchants through purchases rather than sending the money to San Franciscans. One letter writer demanded immediate use of the funds, since that was "what we gave it for, not to be kept hoarded in banks for the benefit of first families."⁶⁸ The conflict continued for several weeks. To strengthen his position, Lane obtained a request from San Francisco officials to finance winter shelters for the destitute. The committee refused to budge. When Lane threatened to convene a public meeting of all the donors for a vote on how to proceed, the businessmen relented. They transferred $40,000 to San Francisco and kept the balance for local relief.⁶⁹

PORTLAND'S VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS and social welfare groups expanded their efforts considerably during the earthquake relief period, and the experience enhanced their operations. In 1907, the Portland YMCA and YWCA launched a joint fundraising campaign to finance new facilities, which they had planned the previous year. The demands of relief work in 1906 apparently did not sidetrack the effort, and the two facilities were completed in 1909. If anything, the refugee aid emphasized the importance of expanded YMCA and YWCA services and facilities. Protective outreach continued for both associations, but the norms of the past were more often contested. The long-standing characterization of single, working women as vulnerable and in need of direction did not hold with the growing number of women in the workplace, but directors at the Portland YWCA during the early 1900s resisted efforts by clients and staff to move beyond benevolence to more practical programs for working women.⁷⁰

Another of the primary providers of earthquake aid struggled with the financial impact of relief fundraising. Lola Baldwin encountered difficulty trying to keep Traveler's Aid solvent when expected donations to her agency were instead sent to the relief fund. Nevertheless, her organization provided services to 2,555 women and children who had fled San Francisco.⁷¹

Several Portland doctors who did not join the relief mission to San Francisco provided free medical care to refugees at the People's Institute. Their work set the foundation for a more progressive approach to medical care, which linked improved health to employees being fit for work. Initially rebuffed by the city and county for urging free care for the disadvantaged, the Institute developed a model operation, the Free Dispensary, which later enlisted the support of UOMD. Two of Portland's prominent women physicians worked at the dispensary, as did Mackenzie and, later, Matson.⁷²

The Portland Women's Union experienced a "comfortable condition" with its finances a year after the relief work, but its primary endeavor — the boarding house for working women — was woefully unable to meet the demand for housing. The members continued to work for improved social conditions, including support for women's protective services and a state detention home for delinquent girls. The Portland Woman's Club helped raise funds for educational loans for disadvantaged girls, urged free textbooks in Oregon schools, and continued to push for moral reforms in the city.⁷³

The Portland Women's Union residence for young working women, located at NW Fifteenth and Flanders, was founded in 1887. The Union, which espoused "benevolence not charity," determined boarders' rent by their incomes.

OHS neg., CN 015788

The period of earthquake relief for Portland was relatively brief — three to four weeks for the most intensive activity. The volunteers who worked among the earthquake survivors and those who treated refugees glimpsed the human impact of the disaster, but they had little exposure to the staggering hardships that San Franciscans endured for many more months. For the leaders who guided Portland's response to the San Francisco calamity, the experience appears to have melded into the continuum of their lives. None are known to have encountered a turning point as a result. Several of the volunteer doctors shaped Portland's public health and social welfare institutions during the decades that followed. Matson became one of the nation's outstanding tuberculosis specialists. Bilderbach became head of the UOMD pediatrics department and was instrumental in the founding of Doernbecker Children's Hospital in Portland. McCusker became the administrator of the People's Institute and later served as Portland's health officer. Dammasch is best known as the state legislator who obtained approval for the mental hospital named for him.⁷⁴ Mackenzie retained his UOMD professorship until his death and also served as Chief of Surgery at St. Vincent's Hospital. In 1912, he became the second dean of UOMD and leveraged his long association with OR&N to obtain a donation of prime hilltop property for a new medical school, today's Oregon Health and Science University.⁷⁵

Portland newspapers showered attention on Marie Equi's work in San Francisco. The Portland Evening Telegram referred to her as "one of the hitherto unsung heroines of the San Francisco disaster." The Oregon Daily Journal wrote that Equi was "one of the most conspicuous examples of self-sacrifice in desire to aid the suffering," a doctor who left a "lucrative practice" to work in the midst of "all kinds of danger."⁷⁶ Portland's dailies had stationed reporters in the Bay Area to obtain human-interest stories as well as first-hand news accounts, and Equi's relatively uncommon status as a woman physician, her supervisory position at the hospital, and her outgoing personality all made her a good subject for reporters. Coverage of Equi also reflects an apparent surprise at a woman's courage and willingness to face danger. The irony of the accolades for Equi from newspapers, politicians, and even the U.S. Army is the turnabout in establishment regard for her several years later. Equi was intensely committed to workers' rights — especially after she joined an eastside cannery strike in 1913 — and she progressed to more radical causes.⁷⁷ She chose to live somewhat openly in a lesbian relationship and, in 1916, challenged the military and the federal government, opposing U.S. entry into World War I.⁷⁸ In the decades after the earthquake, newspapers frequently failed to link the "unsung heroine" of 1906 to the combative physician jailed for a public disturbance.

Portland's response can be partly assessed by the tallies of refugee services, the tons of supplies collected and shipped, and the monetary contributions. Comprehensive reports of the relief committees' efforts were either not created or not retained — or they have yet to be discovered. Existing accounts suggest that local agencies were not overwhelmed by relief demands or unable to serve the survivors who traveled to Portland. Relief activities benefited from the public's shared desire to rescue the afflicted, the community norm to provide aid, and the general lack of tactical or political disagreement over the immediate response. Negative assessments of the Rose City's relief efforts have not surfaced and the degree to which contemporary reports accentuated the positive aspects of Portland's response to the 1906 disaster is difficult to determine. Portlanders, as if by a communal reflex, rushed to organize relief for the earthquake sufferers without questioning their responsibility to do so. The Rose City's substantial monetary assistance to San Francisco reflected the financial capability of its citizens as well as their generosity. But Portland's ability to mount an array of medical and social services for earthquake relief also resulted from decades of civic organizing, especially the work of associations led by women.

The experience with earthquake relief did not directly lead to a call for more government-sponsored social services. Mayor Lane and Governor Chamberlain facilitated the disbursement of relief and conducted official negotiations with their counterparts in San Francisco and California. But the Portland effort primarily resulted from private organizations and individual volunteers. At the conclusion of the relief period, Portlanders did not accuse the government of a too-limited response nor did they complain of unreasonable burdens placed on private citizens. Not until women's associations and social welfare groups exercised more influence in public affairs did they effectively press the city and state government to assume greater responsibility for complex and pervasive social problems.

The response to the San Francisco earthquake was, however, an exercise in community organizing on an unprecedented scale, and the efforts of social welfare groups were widely praised. Daily newspaper coverage of relief activities provided the most positive and sustained public exposure the groups had ever received. The public relations value of effective disaster relief was significant for the organizations, which proceeded to launch capital building campaigns (the YWCA and YMCA), expand services (the People's Institute and the Traveler's Aid), and push for more extensive civic housekeeping (the Women's Union and Women's Club). These organizations continued to evolve beyond their initial emphasis on charity and benevolence to more systematic and comprehensive assistance, often in collaboration with state and national federations.

The demands of disaster relief, as experienced in 1906, tested the capabilities of social welfare in Portland. With decades of community work guiding their efforts, women's associations met the challenges in stride. They coordinated and implemented a sophisticated network of social services for thousands of earthquake sufferers. Their contribution in a time of acute and massive need helped establish a significant moment in Portland history, and their legacy rests with the ongoing shaping of social welfare organizations, medical centers, and public policy today.

Notes

The author wishes to acknowledge the support of historians Sandy Polishuk, Janice Dilg, Kimberly Jensen, and Tom Cook; the members of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest; and Sara Piasecki and Karen Peterson of the OHSU History of Medicine Library. Thanks also for helpful suggestions by the anonymous readers and especially by Dale Danley.

^1. Morning Oregonian, April 19, 1906, 12; Oregonian, April 18, 1906.

^2. Oregon Daily Journal, April 18, 1906.

^3. Oregonian, April 19, 1906, 12.

^4. Gladys Hansen and Emmet Condon, Denial of Disaster: The Untold Story and Photographs of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 (San Francisco: Cameron, 1989), 47.

^5. Oregon Daily Journal, April 18, 1906. The April 20, 1906, Oregonian hailed the journalistic feat of the Evening Telegram in earthquake coverage.

^6. "Rank by Population of 100 Largest Urban Places: 1790–1990," U.S. Bureau of Census, 1998. An exact number of fatalities is not known. The San Francisco coroner originally estimated the total of earthquake deaths at 428, but exhaustive research by San Francisco's former archivist, Gladys Hansen, has identified more than 3,400 earthquake and fire fatalities as of January 25, 2005. Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, 153. See also San Francisco Chronicle, January 15, 2005.

^7. In 1905, the U.S. Congress renewed the federal charter for the American Red Cross, making the association responsible for coordination of relief for communities struck by major calamities. The 1906 San Francisco disaster was the first massive relief operation for the reorganized Red Cross. Gaines M. Foster, The Demands of Humanity: Army Medical Disaster Relief (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1983), 53.

^8. Jane Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: MacMillan, 1907), 180–208.

^9. Oregonian, September 13, 1900.

^10. Bob DenOuden, "'Without a Second's Warning': The Heppner Flood of 1903," Oregon Historical Quarterly 105:1 (Spring 2004): 108–19.

^11. Oregon Daily Journal, April 14, 1906. See also Oregonian, April 18, 1906.

^12. Oregonian, April 19, 1906.

^13. Carl Abbott, Portland: Planning, Politics, and Growth in a Twentieth-Century City (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 33–35; Abbott, The Great Extravaganza (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1981), 72. See also E. Kimbark MacColl, The Shaping of a City: Business and Politics in Portland, Oregon 1885–1915 (Portland, Ore.: Georgian Press, 1976), 307–47.

^14. Portland newspapers referred to the medical relief mission as the "doctor train" (Oregonian, April 20, 1906), "hospital relief train," or "relief special" (Portland Evening Telegram, April 20, 1906).

^15. Oregonian, April 19 and 20, 1906.

^16. E. Kimbark MacColl with Harry M. Stein, Merchants, Money and Power: The Portland Establishment 1843–1913 (Portland, Ore.: The Georgian Press, 1988), 381–97. The political struggle continued throughout Lane's two terms as mayor; he lost most of the battles. See also MacColl, Shaping of a City, 307–47.

^17. Robert D. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 29–45.

^18. Oregonian, April 20, 1906. Among the relief committee members were A.L. Mills, banker and member, Board of Trade; William M. Ladd, a member of one of Portland's wealthiest and most influential families; Theodore B. Wilcox, bank and mill director, and member, Manufacturer's Association; Tom Richardson, promoter, Chamber of Commerce, Commercial Club; Julius Meier, Meier & Frank Company; and I.N. Fleischner, a major dry goods manufacturer and dealer. A few reports referred to the "San Francisco" Relief Committee rather than "Portland Relief Committee." See also Fred Leeson, Rose City Justice: A Legal History of Portland, Oregon (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1998), 91–95; and MacColl with Stein, Merchants, 390.

^19. I.N. Fleischner and L.A. Lewis were two members of the Heffner flood relief committee who also served on the Portland Relief Committee. Oregonian, April 19 and 20, 1906. The Heppner committee transferred $15,000 remaining from that relief fund to the San Francisco effort. Oregon Daily Journal, April 20, 1906.

^20. Oregonian, April 19 and 20, 1906. A 25 percent dividend had been declared for Lewis and Clark Exposition certificate holders. Several others contributed their certificates as well.

^21. Oregon Daily Journal, April 19, 1906, and advertisement, April 20, 1906.

^22. Oregon Daily Journal, April 19, 1906. See Marie Rose Wong, Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Portland, Oregon (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), 29–74, 75–148. San Francisco's Chinatown was completely destroyed by the disaster; most Chinese evacuated and took shelter in camps in Oakland across the bay. The San Francisco Real Estate Board proposed to claim the prize property in Chinatown for development and to force the Chinese into a less valuable area. Mayor Eugene Schmitz supported the scheme. National outrage over the suggested land grab sidelined the plan. Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, 111–19; and New York Times, April 25, 1906, 1.

^23. Oregon Daily Journal, April 19, 1906. For Oregonian fund, see Oregonian, April 20, 1906. The Journal of April 20, 1906, reported hundreds of new contributors; individuals gave from $2.50 to $3,000. For Mayor Lane's proclamation, see Oregon Daily Journal, April 20, 1906.

^24. Oregonian, June 29, 1906; Oregonian, April 20, 1906. For other Oregon communities that contributed to the relief, see Oregon Daily Journal, April 19, 1906 (Oregon City), Oregonian, April 20 and 21, 1906 (Ashland, Eugene and The Dalles), and Weekly Oregon Statesman, April 24, 1906 (Salem).

^25. Portland Evening Telegram, April 20, 1906, 17. Lois Steers and Wynn Coman suggested the new relief committee; in the 1910 Federal Census, both are listed as concert managers. Sandra Haarsager, Organized Womanhood: Cultural Politics in the Pacific Northwest, 1840–1920 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 188–89. For these and other members of the Women's Relief Committee, see Oregonian, April 21, 1906.

^26. Oregon Daily Journal, April 26, 1906. The Commercial Club anticipated 10,000 refugees, but the actual number was closer to 4,300.

^27. Frederic C. Jaher, The Urban Establishment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 8. See also MacColl with Stein, Merchants, 106–107.

^28. MacColl with Stein, Merchants, 189, 241.

^29. Ibid. 237–38; See also Wong, Sweet Cakes, 44–60.

^30. Annette K. Baxter, Preface in The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914, by Karen J. Blair (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980), xi–xii.

^31. Gloria E. Myers, A Municipal Mother: Portland's Lola Greene Baldwin, America's First Policewoman (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1995), 4; Elizabeth S. Hamilton, "The Portland Woman's Union," in The Souvenir of Western Women, ed. Mary O. Douthit (Portland, Ore.: Presses of Anderson and Duniway, 1905), 137, as cited in MacColl with Stein, Merchants, 241. See also Oregonian, May 8, 1907, 14.

San Francisco earthquake damag

OHS neg., 325 G 065

^32. See Blair, Clubwoman, 118; and Philip J. Ethington, The Public City, The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Presses, 2001), 331.

^33. Jane Cunningham Croly, The History of the Woman's Club Movement in America (New York: H.G. Allen, 1898), 1018. See also Haarsager, Organized Womanhood, 187–95; Portland Woman's Club (Or.) Records, 1895, MSS 1084, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland; and Oregonian, December 29, 1906.

^34. By 1890, more than seventy institutions dispensed charity in Portland with an estimated annual expenditure from $75,000 to $120,000. Harvey W. Scott, History of Portland, Oregon (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1924), 371. A few of the additional social welfare groups included the Florence Crittenton Refuge Home, the Albertina Kerr day nursery, a Visiting Nurse Association, the Sisters of Mercy, the Volunteers of America and the Catholic Women's League. Haarsager notes that African American women's clubs (except suffrage organizations, which organized at least as early as 1912) organized later in the city, beginning with the Women's Co-op in 1914. Haarsager, Organized Womanhood, 194–95. See also Gloria E. Myers, Municipal Mother.

^35. Oregonian, April 20, 1906; Portland Evening Telegram, April 20, 1906; Oregon Daily Journal, April 22, 1906.

^36. Oregonian, June 18, 1903. The University of Oregon Medical Department later became the University of Oregon Medical School. See also H.K. Hines, An Illustrated History of the State of Oregon, (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1893), 260; Editorial, Northwest Medicine, 14:4 (April 1920): 104–105; O. Larsell, The Doctor in Oregon: A Medical History (Portland, Ore.: Binfords & Mort publication for the Oregon Historical Society, 1947), 178–81; and Scott, Portland, 615–17.

^37. Oregonian, April 20, 1906; Oregon Daily Journal, April 20, 1906. For Mackenzie and Matson, see also Obituary Index Collection, ACC 2005–017, Box 1, History of Medicine Library, Oregon Health & Science University; and Larsell, Doctor.

^38. See Michael Helquist, "K.A.J. Mackenzie, Marie Equi and the Oregon Doctor Train: Portland's Response to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake," Oregon Health & Science University, History of Medicine Society, www.ohsu.edu/library/hom/lectures.shtml; Nancy Krieger, "Queen of the Bolsheviks, The Hidden History of Dr. Marie Equi," Radical America 17:5 (September–October 1983): 55–73; and Tom Cook, "Radical Politics, Radical Love: The Life of Dr. Marie Equi," Northwest Gay and Lesbian Historian 1:3 (Summer/Fall 1996) and 1:4 (June 1997).

^39. Oregonian, April 20, 1906. In Oregon City, three more doctors joined the relief train. See William E. Carll, "The Oregon National Guard at the San Francisco Earthquake Disaster," Journal of the Association of Military Surgeons, 19 (1906): 460–63; Philip L. Fradkin, The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 187–88; and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, "There Is No Real Help But Self Help," The Pacific Monthly 15:6 (July 1906): 750–52.

^40. See Fradkin, Great Earthquake, 104–107. The Army had previously provided foreign medical assistance. The U.S. Army General Hospital was renamed the Letterman General Hospital in 1911. War Department Order no. 152, November 23, 1911.

^41. Portland Evening Telegram, May 8, 1906, 2; Oregonian, April 29, and May 8, 1906. See Larsell, Doctor, 461.

^42. Oregonian, April 26, 1906. See also Oregon Daily Journal, April 20, 1906; Mary C. Gillett, "The Army Medical Department, 1865–1917," Army Historical Series (Washington, D.C. 1995): 370; George H. Torney, "Report to the Surgeon General, 16 August 1906," file 115045, Record Group 112, National Archives, Washington, D.C. For later studies finding greater incidence of disease and the efforts to underreport serious impacts, see Fradkin, Great Earthquake, 221–24, 188–91; Simon Winchester, A Crack in the Edge of the World (New York: Harper Collins, 2005), 319–24; and Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, 107–11, 152–53.

^43. Portland Evening Telegram, May 9, 1906. See also Journal, April 28, 1906; Fradkin, Great Earthquake, 99–107; and Foster, Demands of Humanity, 62.

^44. Chronicle, May 4, 1906; and Oregon Daily Journal, May 8, 1906. The Oregon National Guard, Hospital Corps, 3^rd Regiment established the "Oregon hospital" in the Potrero district of San Francisco. See Adolphus W. Greely, Earthquake in California, April 18, 1906: Special Report of Maj. Gen. Adolphus W. Greely. U.S.A. Commanding the Pacific Division, on the Relief Operations Conducted by the Military Authorities of the United States at San Francisco and Other Points with Accompanying Documents (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1906), 32, 131–32.

^45. The mission from Los Angeles was referred to as the "Examiner relief corps." San Francisco Examiner, April 20, and 25, 1906; Chronicle, April 25, 1906.

^46. Oregon Daily Journal, May 4, 1906.

^47. Oregon Daily Journal, April 21, and May 3, 1906.

^48. Oregon Daily Journal, April 21, and 24, 1906; Oregonian, April 23, 1906; and Fradkin, Great Earthquake, 179–81.

^49. Oregon Daily Journal, April 21, 23, and 24, 1906. See also Oregonian, April 23, 1906.

^50. Oregon Daily Journal, May 4, 1906, and April 25, 1906.

^51. Haarsager, Organized Womanhood, 79–81; and Myers, Municipal Mother, 8–9.

^52. Valentine Prichard, a public school supervisor and teacher's trainer, spurred the development of the People's Institute with her research into the living conditions of women and children in the North End. People's Institute and Portland Free Dispensary, Minutes of the Board of Directors, Accession No. 2001–002, OHSU Historical Collections and Archives, Portland, Oregon.

^53. Oregonian, April 25, 1906.

^54. Oregon Daily Journal, April 24, 26, and May 3, 1906. Two relays of volunteers met passengers on all the arriving trains from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. See Sidona V. Johnson, "The Relief Work at Portland, Oregon" Pacific Monthly 15:6 (June 1906), 746–48.

^55. Oregon Daily Journal, April 26, 1906; Oregonian, April 20, 1906. See also Paula Lupkin, "Manhood Factories, Architecture, Business and Evolving Urban Role of the YMCA, 1865–1925" in Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City, ed. Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt, (New York: New York University Press, 1997) 40–64; and MacColl with Stein, Merchants, 411–14.

^56. Charles J. O'Connor, et al. San Francisco Relief Survey: The Organization and Methods of Relief Used after the Earthquake and Fire of April 18, 1906 (New York: Survey Associates, 1913), 11–13. See also Fradkin, Great Earthquake, 197–204, 201–202; Foster, Demands of Humanity, 53, 60–66; New York Times, April 25, 1906, 1; Charles Hurd, Compact History of the American Red Cross (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1959), 103–112, 116–18; and Edward T. Devine, The Principle of Relief, (New York: MacMillan, 1904, repub. New York: Arno Press, 1971).

^57. George C. Pardee to (Oregon Governor) George E. Chamberlain, April 19, 1906, George C. Pardee Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, MSS C-b 400; K.A.J. Mackenzie to R.R. Hogue, President, Portland Chamber of Commerce, May 21, 1906, Portland Relief Correspondence, A 2001–069, Stanley Parr Archives and Record Center. See also Foster, Demands of Humanity, 57.

^58. Oregonian, May 7, 1906. Portland Evening Telegram, May 7, 1906. The San Francisco Medical Society's records of proceedings from the early 1900s were lost in a fire years after the 1906 disaster. Personal communication, Edare K. Carroll, San Francisco Medical Society, January 2006.

^59. Journal of the American Medical Association, 46:19 (May 12, 1906): 1446; Portland Evening Telegram, April 25, 1906. See also Telegram, May 7, and 10, 1906; and Oregonian, May 8, 1906, 10.

^60. Oregonian, May 12, 1906; Oregon Daily Journal, May 4, 1906; Chronicle, May 4, 1906; and Examiner, May 4, 1906. Although protocol between mayors and governors required such expressions of appreciation, both Pardee and Schmitz had wired several special requests to the Portland relief committee. The commendation to Equi from the U.S. Army read: "Your manifestation of executive ability has been marked and the conduct and services of the corps of nurse under your charge has been uniformly satisfactory in every degree." Portland Evening Telegram, May 9, 1906.

^61. Oregon Daily Journal, May 2, 5, 1906; Chronicle, May 4, 1906; and Oregonian, May 6, 1906.

^62. Portland Evening Telegram, May 8, 1906. See Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, 119–21.

^63. Relief shipments ended after ten intensive days at the Armory. Oregon Daily Journal, April 28, 1906.

^64. Oregon Daily Journal, April 21, 22, and 25, 1906.

^65. Other observers cited the opposition of liquor interests and dissension among local and national suffrage leaders as primary causes. See G. Thomas Edwards, Sowing Good Seeds: The Northwest Suffrage Campaigns of Susan B. Anthony (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1990), 271–72, 266–99; Anna Howard Shaw, The Story of a Pioneer (New York: Harper Brothers, 1915), 292; and Rebecca J. Mead, How the Vote Was Won, Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 103–106.

^66. Tom Richardson, "The Effect of the California Disaster upon Pacific Coast Cities," Pacific Monthly 15:6 (June 1906): 13–14; Fradkin, The Great Earthquake, 245–47. See also James B. Meikle, "San Francisco and the Cities of Puget Sound," Pacific Monthly 15:6 (June 1906): 15–16.

^67. Oregonian, June 29, 30, and July 1, 4, 1906.

^68. Walter J. Burns to Mayor Harry Lane, June 28, 1906, and Paul Strain to Mayor Harry Lane, June 28, 1906, 02561–01, A 2000–003, B, City's Departments, 1906, Stanley Parr Archives and Record Center, Portland, Oregon. The committee's "reserve fund" strategy mirrored a decision in 1903 to retain $15,000 of donations intended for the survivors of the Heppner flood.

^69. Oregonian, July 4, 1906.

^70. "News clipping from YWCA Board of Directors Minute Books, April 3, 1907, Portland YWCA Archives" at http://womhist.binghamton.edu/portywca/buildings/doc1.htm (accessed July 18, 2007); Oregonian, September 8, 1907. See Haarsager, Organized Womanhood, 229; Janice Dilg, "Uncovering 'the real work' of the Portland YWCA, 1900–1923," Journal of Women's History 15:3 (Autumn 2003): 175–82; Nina Mjagki and Margaret Spratt, eds., Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 7–10; and Thomas Winter, "Contested Spaces: The YMCA and Workingmen on the Railroads, 1877–1917," in Mjagki and Spratt, Men and Women Adrift, 65–85.

^71. Myers, Municipal Mother, 16–17. See also Oregonian, December 20, 1907, 49.

^72. The Institute became the Portland Free Dispensary in 1910. See Guide, People's Institute and Portland Free Dispensary, ACC 2001–002, OHSU Historical Collections and Archives; and Oregonian, January 24, 1913.

^73. Oregonian, May 8, 1907, 14. The waiting list for lodgers was likely more the result of the huge influx of newcomers in Portland rather than that of the San Francisco refugees. See Myers, Municipal Mother, 99, 112. Oregonian, December 29, 1906.

^74. Larsell, Doctor.

^75. Editorial, Northwest Medicine, 14:4 (April 1920): 104–105.

^76. Portland Evening Telegram, May 9, 1906; Oregon Daily Journal, April, 28, 1906. See also Journal, April 26, 28, 30, 1906, and May 4, 6, 8, 9, 1906.

^77. Sandy Polishuk, "The Radicalization of Marie Equi," in "Biography — Equi, Marie," Vertical File, Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Portland.

^78. Krieger, "Queen of the Bolsheviks," 53–73; and Cook, "Radical Politics, Radical Love."

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