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IN MY HUMBLE OPINION Okie White FEATURED COLUMNIST Ray Collins FICTION |
"Lets take a walk," you said, out of the blue. The clock had just rung 10, certainly not too late. And from the muffled sound of the horns in the bay I knew that the fog was heavy and just right for walking through the city we loved so much. "Now why would you want to go walking at this time of night," I teased? Knowing full well what you had in mind; I just wanted you to have to work for it. I may be easy, but I'm not that easy. "Because we had a big dinner and you've done nothing but sit here and read and work on that damn computer." "Oh, I see, this is for my benefit is it?" "Yes. C'mon," you said pulling me out of the chair and close to you so that I could feel the glow you always radiate. I kissed you on the nose and you began to chuckle and laugh in your throaty way. "C'mon honey, the fog is thick and heavy, and we can put on sweaters and raincoats and mufflers and hats, and just go walking in all that beautiful gray stuff. Besides, I'm in the mood for a story and the best way to get one is to get you on your feet and moving; and you can use the exercise." "Well now that you mention exercise," I murmured in your ear as I ran my hand down to your bottom in a circular motion, "I've got an idea that just might burn up a few calories." "I'm sure you do and while I like what you're doing, its not what I had in mind at all. At least not for the moment. We can do that later can't we? I want to stretch my legs and hold your arm and go walking in the fog with you and smell the cool clean air fresh from the ocean and listen to the fog horns and the cable cars and anything you want to talk about. That's what I want to do right now. Then later when we get home, we can have a glass of wine and snuggle and get warm and, who knows what will happen." So, sweatered, raincoated, mufflered, and hatted; we hit
the street with a sense of anticipation and childlike You took my arm and moved close to me as we walked in step to our own rhythm; steady and with a purpose born with practice. You were right about needing the exercise. You were feeding much too well and I was starting to feel a certain snugness in my trousers that I really didn't need. On the other hand, when you serve up a tasty stew brimming with meat and fresh peas and carrots and potatoes and green beans and corn and mushrooms all floating in a heavenly gravy flavored with some of our best Cabernet; well what is a man to do but indulge himself. A simple meal you said, grinning from ear to ear and your blue eyes all sparkling and beautiful. A simple meal indeed. You had been working on it for half a day and then served it up with a simple salad adorned with walnuts and raisins with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing, sourdough French bread, and the rest of the Cabernet. We reached the crest of Nob Hill and began the steep decent along the same Clay St. path that Andrew Hallidie had followed when he built his very first cable car. He showed a dubious public back in 1873, that here was an invention to be reckoned with and one for the city of San Francisco to cherish and be proud of. Oh how they derided him when he came up with the idea, and then praised him, almost in the same breath, when he proved to them that his little invention worked and the hills of San Francisco were tamed. Further along we passed Stockton Street and entered the
world of Chinatown, which, after all these years, still had an
aura of mystery for me. Perhaps it was the smell of Chinese food,
or the aroma of incense, or the sting of burnt gunpowder from
the hundreds firecrackers that were always being set off to dispel
unwanted demons from encroaching upon christenings, deaths, and
health store openings. Whatever it was I always enjoyed the feelings
they all evoked within me. It was like when I was kid all over
again and I would come down here and explore. Oh, I was just thinking of something that happened a long,
long time ago. Something rather amazing really. No, not at all. Im doing a piece on John McLaren, the fellow who built Golden Gate Park almost single-handed. What I was thinking about was something I told you on another foggy night walk. Billy Ralston? you asked quickly. Ive been waiting to hear
that story. Didnt he rob his own bank or something? The story began when the Bank of California was incorporated on June 15, 1864. D. 0. Mills, a cold and calculating man was the president; but the power behind the bank, the vision and the high spirit of adventure, the color and the glamour, and the dynamic force that was to make it one of the greatest banks in the land, was Billy Ralston -- William Chapman Ralston. Mills moved slowly; Ralston moved swiftly. Mills was conservative; Ralston was daring. Mills was president, but Bill Ralston was the friend of every depositor and knew almost all of them by name. Of all the men who loved San Francisco and grew with it, and who swore by the city's future and typified its irresistible glamorous charm, none was more popular than Bill Ralston. The bank was Billy Ralston and he was like a child with a new toy. He loved to work, loved excitement, loved people. The days that saw the opening of the bank were the days when gold and silver flooded out of the Comstock mines in Nevada in inconceivable quantities. In a word, business was good. Soon, a branch bank was opened in Virginia City to handle the flood of gold from the Comstock. The city by the Golden Gate was going through almost the same excitement it had enjoyed fifteen years earlier with the California Gold Rush. But this was not the same San Francisco. In 1849 and 1850 the city was a wild place of rough and tough gold seekers, high boots covered with mud, pistols, dirt, and dripping oil lamps. In 1865 the dirt was gone and in its place were silks and satins, diamonds and champagne, and the oil lamps had been replaced by gaslights. The mining camp had become a cosmopolitan city, the Paris of America, and the low-lifes of the saloons and the dance halls gave way for fashionable society. Mansions were being built and life moved with elegance. Prosperity, and the law, had come to stay in San Francisco! Then things started to go wrong. First the Comstock began to go through bad times, mostly due to the ore beginning to pinch out and too many miners trying to get at what was left. Then the government in Washington issued a large offer of United States Government bonds that paid a handsome interest and hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, was withdrawn from San Francisco banks to be invested in the bonds. The Bank of California, with all the other banks in the city, felt the pressure. Of course, that in itself wasn't very serious. But then nature took a hand in stirring the pot of uncertainty and sometime in the year 1868 San Francisco enjoyed one of its finest earthquakes. Well the folks of San Francisco behaved in typical fashion when the earth trembles and houses fall to the ground. It makes men who love security realize how insecure everything in life really is, especially if the houses were occupied. Depositors withdrew their gold, stuffed it in stockings and boots and leather trunks, and departed for the hills, the plains, or anyplace where the earth stayed put. And the banks suffered. But the optimistic and outgoing Bill Ralston went happily on his prosperous way. He built a mansion down in the Peninsula with all of the grandeur and glitter that was typical of this golden age. Of course, there were whispers of impending trouble. People said the Comstock couldn't last forever; that he was putting his eggs into too many baskets; and that he was inviting trouble supporting Adolph Sutro and the tunnel he was trying to build into the Comstock. They said the troubles would shake the strength of Ralston, Sharon, Flood, O'Brien, and Mackay-all the great names that were taking millions out of the Nevada hills. And Bill Ralston continued on his prosperous way. People might shake their heads and say he was inviting disaster, but everybody liked him, everybody admired him. He was daring and spectacular, and the name they gave him in those days has remained a tradition. They called him the man who built San Francisco. Then things in the banking world began to get worse. The Bank of California had loaned several million dollars to the men undertaking the building of a great railroad connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific, and thoughtful men shook their heads and said the railroad would never be built; it would be impossible to cross the Sierras let along the Rockies. It was an amazing situation. Here the strongbox of the
California gold mines and the new bountiful mines of Nevada was
suffering from a shortage of gold. Oh, of course there were great
stores of gold bullion in the vaults of the bank, but a little
political maneuvering had closed the San Francisco branch of
the United States Mint. No gold coin was being minted. There
was plenty of gold coin in the United States Subtreasury in San
Francisco, but due to stringency across the nation, firm instructions
had been sent from Washington that no coin was to be exchanged
for gold bullion. And gold bullion wasn't legal tender. When
a depositor came to a bank to withdraw his money, it wasn't practical
or possible to honor his demand by handing him a pound or more
of gold bullion. Bill Ralston appealed directly to President
Ulysses S. Grant, and the answer was always "No!" Gold
coin would not be released. Now all that was needed was a whispered rumor that a bank was unable to meet the demands of the depositors, and a run on the bank would result. A run on any one bank could start a run on all banks and the largest and most vulnerable bank in the city was Bill Ralston's Bank of California. Bill Ralston knew that the Bank of California could fall with the avalanche, or it could be the instrument to save the situation and save the city. San Francisco after midnight was then, as it is today, a place of bright lights, of noise and nightlife. But walk down Montgomery or California Streets, down through the canyons of the financial district, and a great and solemn silence pervades everywhere. There is only silence and shadows, after midnight. The district was even more spectral in the 1860s. It was a graveyard of towering mausoleums, a place of silence where every footstep rang out like the shot of a gun. And on foggy nights the gray shroud placed everyone in a cocoon, hidden from view and prying eyes. The Bank of California, as I have said, was located at California and Sansome Streets. The gaslights were few, the night was dark, the fog was settling in, and the streets were in deep shadow. Slowly, quietly, the doors of the bank opened, and from the shadows emerged three men, coats buttoned to the neck and hats drawn down over their eyes. They walked swiftly and silently up California Street to Montgomery and a half block up Montgomery to a point between Sacramento and California, to the doors of the United States Subtreasury. The men were William Ralston, Maurice Dore, and Asbury Harpending. A dim light was burning inside. But, strange to say, there were no guards in sight, no uniformed men with loaded guns to protect the vast fortune in gold coin buried in the vaults. And, more strange to relate, the great doors were not locked. And standing there was a lone man. Ralston posted Harpending and Dore at the entrance, and then entered the dim, ghostly halls of the Subtreasury. Harpending and Dore stood silently in the gray foggy night. Then the doors swung open again, and Ralston emerged. There was an excited twinkle in his eyes, but his face was without a smile. He spoke crisply and quietly. "Take these to the bank," he said, "The gentleman at the door will give you something to bring back." Over to California Street, down to Battery, the two men hurried, heavy bags on their shoulders. At the door of the Bank of California they were greeted by a fourth man; who is believed to have been the secretary, Stephen Franklin. Without a word he took the bags handed to him, and disappeared into the bank. He checked the contents of the bag, stacks of gold coin of the United States. He tallied them, stacked them away, and then returned to the entrance with a heavy burden. "Take these back to the Subtreasury," he ordered. And for the amount of the gold coins counted he handed Harpending and Dore blocks of gold bullion. That was the first of many, many trips. Throughout that
gray and endless night the men made their journeys to and from
the bank and the Subtreasury. Five tons of gold coins were taken
from the Subtreasury and deposited in the vaults of the bank.
Five tons of gold bullion were taken from the bank and deposited
in the Subtreasury. When the dawn crept up over the Berkeley
hills, the three exhausted men staggered home, their amazing
night's work finished. On the stroke of ten, the doors of the Bank of California opened. The crowd drew back for a moment and then began to surge forward. The pressure became a tidal wave of humanity, pushing, trampling, shoving, and overflowing through the great doors. It was a terrible but silently ominous mob, each man for himself, each determined to get what he could for himself out of the wreckage. Up to the huge mahogany counters the avalanche crashed its way-and then stopped! Eyes popped in amazement, mouths hung open, lips trembled and could speak no words. For there behind the counters stood the gentlemen of the bank, the tellers and the cashiers, smiles of pleasant greeting on their lips. And before them in huge stacks two and three feet high, were a million dollars in gold coins, shining, yellow gold, fresh from the mint. The bank was full of gold, enough gold to take care of every depositor in full and have plenty left over. The Bank of California was solvent. Why, of course, it was solvent. They had always known it was solvent. A cheer broke from the crowd, a cheer that became a roar that was heard through-out the city and echoed three thousand miles away in Wall Street. Mingled with the cheers again and again was heard the name of Billy Ralston. In the doorway of his office, William Chapman Ralston stood and smiled, and nodded to friends, and shook hands with those who forced their way through the cheering crowd determined to shake his mighty hand. The Bank of California was saved, and San Francisco was saved, and that cycle of prosperity that had reached a low ebb started the upward climb again. Oh, there were to be more alarms and new panics were to come. There were to be new lows in the Comstock, new threats of disaster. And during one of them Bill Ralston died. But that is another story. The story of the raid on the United States Subtreasury was ended. The details of how the building was entered were buried when Ralston went to his grave. And the Bank of California went on, growing with the city Ralston loved, to become one of the greatest and strongest banking institutions in the United States. But I still would like to know who that lone man was who
unlocked the doors of the Subtreasury that September night in
1869. © Copyright 1998 by Ron Samuel Ron Samuel, -- actor/writer grew up in San Francisco and If you want to know more about Ron, you can check out his
web site by clicking the icon: If you like the story, send him an e-mail and let him know. He'll even answer you. If you don't, well, keep it to yourself. And remember: that life is serious' |
