On December 16, 1849, Mr. Daniel Knower stayed at the American Hotel, San Francisco (right). He
felt that he had been robbed when he paid fourteen dollars a day for
room and board. But all other costs were in proportion. Money could be
borrowed at fourteen percent per month. The price of lumber ranged
between three and four hundred dollars a thousand feet. Board shacks
in favorable locations rented at prices higher than mansions of stone
and brick in New York or Boston. Fortunes had been built by dizzy
speculation in this lath and paper grandeur; they were to be swept away
by fires which devastated San Francisco through 1850 and 1851.
Sometimes
the mails from the east were held up as much as three months. Then the
crowds would gather in ugly mood outside the San Francisco Post Office (below) and curse Postmaster Moore.
