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Book Review
| The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself. By Philip L. Fradkin. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. xvii + 418 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $27.50.)
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"What lessons are to be learned for the benefit of the future if nearly everything which has happened is to be misrepresented" (p. vii)? This compelling question, posed by a survivor of the disaster of 1906, is among the epigraphs at the beginning of Philip L. Fradkin's interpretive survey. For residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, it may be a question of life and death, for the region has a better than 60 percent chance of being hit by another major quake in the next quarter century. The question also reminds historians of their sacred trust, and raises the bar especially for those who endeavor to chronicle catastrophes both natural and otherwise. |
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Fradkin is determined to set the record straight, dispelling cherished urban legends and offering sweeping reassessments. His principal theme is stated early on: "San Franciscans, not the inanimate forces of nature, were primarily responsible for the extensive chaos, damage, injuries, and deaths in the great earthquake and firestorms of 1906" (p. xi). To support his thesis, he cites dismissive attitudes toward lessons that should have been learned from earlier earthquakes and fires. He shows that the chosen method of controlling the conflagration—using black-powder dynamite to clear fire breaks—often had the opposite effect. The exaggerated fear of looting led to the "one of the principal tragedies of the disaster," a shoot-to-kill order that resulted in as many as 75 fatalities (p. 67). |
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The author is especially effective in exploding the myth of a brotherhood of suffering. Rather than leveling social distinctions, the disaster exacerbated economic and racial disparities. As in flood-ravaged New Orleans in 2005, the poorer districts of the city suffered far more damage and loss of life than prosperous neighborhoods. The shoot-to-kill order was carried out most aggressively against the poor and ethnic minorities. Likewise, relief efforts were "marked by great disparity of aid given to the middle class and the poor" (p. 212). |
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Fradkin's major reassessment focuses on the political realignment that followed the disaster. Here he is less successful. He offers a generally unflattering portrait of former mayor James D. Phelan, the take-charge hero of earlier narratives, and of the Progressive reformers who supported the post-earthquake graft prosecutions. By contrast, convicted grafter Abraham Ruef of the Union Labor Party (ULP) is portrayed sympathetically as a victim of anti-Semitism, "the ultimate scapegoat for the city's collective ills" (p. 305). |
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Fradkin interprets the prosecutions as the means by which political power "shifted from a labor-oriented movement to a wealthy elite" (p. 6). Yet Ruef and the ULP were the very vehicles that long had been employed by the city's wealthiest corporate interests to win favorable public policies. Furthermore, as Fradkin acknowledges, the graft prosecutions included indictments of several of the elite's most prominent leaders. |
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| James J. Rawls
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| Diablo Valley College |
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ISSN 1939-8603
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