The Barbary Coast

The handwriting on the wall for the Barbary Coast, though dim and almost undecipherable for several years, was the decisive defeat of the remnants of Abe Ruef’s Workingmen’s party in the autumn of 1911, when James Rolph, Jr., was elected to the first of his ten terms as Mayor of San Francisco. Rolph’s impressive triumph, which was followed immediately by the election of a Board of Supervisors committed to his policies and leadership, was the first actual repudiation by the voters of the evils which had marked the conduct of municipal affairs during the Ruef-Schmitz régime and, to a lesser extent, throughout the administration of Mayor P. H. McCarthy. But, even more important to the Barbary Coast, the downfall of the Ruef machine presaged the eventual abandonment of the gold-rush tradition which decreed that San Francisco must be a wide-open town. From the fall elections of 1911 until it was abolished half a dozen years later, the Barbary Coast was on the defensive and waged a losing fight for existence; it faced an unfriendly if not actively hostile administration, and also arrayed against it was a rapidly growing sentiment, even among those who professed to take great pride in the city’s reputation for wickedness, that there was no place for mining-camp amusement features in the new and greater San Francisco which had arisen from the devastation wrought by the earthquake and fire of 1906. Business men, especially, were beginning to realize that obtrusive and spectacular vice was more likely to harm than to benefit an American city.

The first intimation that a new order of things impended came late in January 1912, when Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook, who as Chief of Police a few years before had risked his official head by interfering with the schemes of the underworld, publicly complained of conditions in Pacific Street and in other thoroughfares of the Barbary Coast. He intimated that unless the dive-keepers cleaned their own Augean stables, the city authorities would eventually be compelled to undertake the task. A few weeks later, on February 12, 1912, before the Barbary Coast had recovered from the astonishment caused by Commissioner Cook’s attack, the Police Commission announced to the newspapers that the following plans were under consideration for the ultimate cleansing and better regulation of the district:

1. All dance-halls and resorts patronized by women in Montgomery Avenue (now Columbus Avenue) west of Kearny Street, and on both sides of Kearny Street, to be abolished.

2. Barkers in front of the dance-halls in Pacific Street to be done away with and glaring electric signs forbidden.

3. No new saloon licenses to be issued until the number had been reduced to 1,500, which was to be the limit in future. There were more than 2,800 places in San Francisco where liquor was legally sold.

4. Raids to be made against the blind pigs. It was estimated that more than 2,500 were in operation throughout the city.

Not until a year after the announcement of these plans did the Police Commissioners cast another straw into the wind and throw another scare into the ranks of the dive-keepers. Then, in February 1913, they adopted a resolution aimed to discourage slumming, which had grown to such proportions that most of the dance-halls and other resorts depended upon it for a large part of their revenues:

“Resolved, That no female shall be employed to sell or solicit the sale of liquor in any premises where liquor is sold at retail to which female visitors or patrons are allowed admittance.”

If this resolution had been enforced and if the announced plans of the Police Commission had been carried out, the Barbary Coast would have been dealt a blow from which it would never have recovered; ninety per cent of the dance-halls and other resorts would have been compelled to close their doors immediately, and the remainder would have been concentrated in the two blocks of Pacific Street between Kearny and Sansome streets. And most of the glamour of the quarter would have been dissipated, for it was born of the union of bright lights and noise. But while Mayor Rolph’s election had deprived the dive-keepers of much of the political power which for more than sixty years had enabled them to operate their places without regard for public decency and the law, they retained enough influence to combat successfully the anti-slumming resolution and to prevent the transformation of the Commission’s plans into enforceable regulations. Consequently both resolution and plans were, so far as immediate and visible effect were concerned, futile gestures which hampered the Barbary Coast not at all. Nevertheless, they were extremely significant, for the mere fact that such radical measures had even been considered showed that the city government no longer looked upon the district with a paternal and indulgent eye. A further indication of this change of attitude appeared in June 1913, when the Police Commission suspended the license of the Moulin Rouge for three weeks and found the manager guilty of contributing to the delinquency of two young girls whom he had employed to dance and entertain his customers. Hitherto the authorities had, except on rare occasions, ignored the well-known and obvious fact that scores of the girls who worked in the dives of the Barbary Coast were scarcely more than children.

To William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner goes the distinction of starting the first crusade which really succeeded in making any considerable headway against the political and other intrenchments of the Barbary Coast. On September 12, 1913, only a few weeks before James Rolph, Jr, was elected to his second term as Mayor, the Examiner launched its campaign with the fanfare of furious excitement which has always characterized Hearst’s journalistic wars—a full-page editorial demanded that the district be wiped out, and carefully prepared news stories vividly described the wickedness to be found within its borders. The newspaper’s attack came at the psychological moment toward which San Francisco had been slowly progressing since the Reverend William Taylor had preached against the iniquities of the city from the steps of the old adobe house in Portsmouth Square in the fall of 1849. Many churches, and practically every civic and social welfare organization of importance in San Francisco, immediately endorsed the Examiner’s righteous warfare and offered their services. Within a week, one of the most formidable packs of reformers that ever hunted sin on the Pacific Coast was in full cry at the heels of the Barbary Coast and was, in particular, harrying the dive-keepers. And on September 22, 1913, ten days after the Examiner had loosed its first editorial blast, the Police Commission rang the death-knell of the quarter with this resolution:

“Resolved, That after September 30, 1913, no dancing shall be permitted in any café, restaurant, or saloon where liquor is sold within the district bounded on the north and east by the Bay, on the south by Clay Street, and on the west by Stockton Street.

“Further Resolved, That no women patrons or women employees shall be permitted in any saloon in the said district.

“Further Resolved, That no license shall hereafter be renewed upon Pacific Street between Kearny and Sansome Streets, excepting for a straight saloon.”

The Examiner, which had entered the fight with very exalted ideas as to the future of the Barbary Coast, gave due credit to the Police Commission for promulgating the resolution, which was by far the most drastic measure ever enacted against the district, but declared vigorously that the crusade must not end with the elimination of dancing and the barring of women employees and visitors from the resorts. To make its meaning clearer and indicate the nature of its plans, the newspaper published a large cartoon which showed a dainty feminine figure, labeled “Spirit of Wholesome Fun,” rising happily and proudly into the heavens from a smoking quagmire of corruption labeled “The Barbary Coast.” Editorially the Examiner said in its issue of September 23, 1913: ”If the campaign against the Barbary Coast ends with the destruction of the open market for commercialized vice, the good done will not be permanent. Because the purposes of this campaign are constructive as well as destructive. The purpose is to shut up the market of immoral and vulgar pleasure, and to replace that market with a great market for the sale of wholesome and decent fun.”

The action of the Police Commission aroused nothing less than consternation throughout the Barbary Coast, for not even the traditional stupidity of the habitués and dive-keepers of the district could prevent them from realizing that here at last was an enactment which would be devastating in its effects. Moreover, it was quite obvious that the Commission was prepared to enforce its decrees, and that the resolution was not, like so many measures of similar import in the past, designed merely as a temporary stop to the reformers. The owners of several resorts immediately discharged their dancing girls and female entertainers and turned their properties into straight saloons, while others said gloomily that they would have to go out of business when the new ordinance went into effect. (12a) Forty dance-hall proprietors, however, formed an association and announced that they would obey the orders of the Police Commission to the letter by serving nothing but soft drinks. This plan was strenuously opposed by Frank Scivio, of the Hippodrome, who proposed that each dive be divided into two sections, one to be devoted to dancing and the consumption of non-intoxicating beverages, and the other to the sale of liquor, without dancing, entertaining, or the uplifting cajolery of the ladies. Scivio’s scheme, however, was not only rejected by the Police Commission as impracticable, but an audible snickering arose when it was read to them. Apparently they did not feel that the business men of the Barbary Coast could be relied on to prevent the mingling of the virtuous and sinful sections. The Thalia, then the largest and most popular dance-hall in the district, sought to ward off the inevitable by protestations of purity. On the night of September 30, 1913 this unusual sign appeared over the entrance to the dive:

THIS IS A CLEAN PLACE FOR CLEAN PEOPLE. NO MINORS ALLOWED.

A few days after the new regulations had become effective the police added to the troubles of the Barbary Coast by ordering the elimination of the sidewalk barkers and the glaring electric signs. Thereupon the district became, almost immediately, what it had been before the slumming era—a region of dark and dangerous streets frequented principally by habitués of the quarter, with no visible gayety or excitement to attract sightseers from the upper ranks of society. By the middle of October the Barbary Coast lay, as the San Francisco Bulletin said, “harmless as a serpent bereft of its fangs.” In most of the dance-halls, even in such well-known resorts as the Thalia and the Midway, scarcely a dozen dancing girls or entertainers remained, while the ancient traditions of the Bella Union, the oldest and most famous of all the Barbary Coast dives, were sturdily upheld by an old-time dance-hall woman known as Steam-Schooner Ruby, who was so called because of her extraordinary capacity for steam beer. Within another month the dive-keepers had become so desperate that they resorted to advertising—an aged and decrepit horse plodded painfully through the downtown business section drawing a wagon on which was mounted a four-sided sign, thus inscribed:

BARBARY COAST STILL OPEN OPENED IN ‘49 DANCING AT THE COAST EVERYBODY WELCOME.

But this pathetic appeal failed to bring back the vanished crowds or to revive the ancient glories of the district, for not even the most naïve slummer could thrill to the spectacle of the denizens of the underworld gloomily and distastefully imbibing soda pop. By occasionally presenting obscene entertainments, by selling bootleg liquor whenever the opportunity occurred, and by closing and reopening with such rapidity that even the police could scarcely keep account of their changes in management and ownership, a few of the larger dance-halls managed to survive for several years; but they never regained their lost privileges and powers, and gave the authorities comparatively little trouble. The Grand Jury of San Francisco County, indeed, after an exhaustive survey of the resorts in April 1915, insulted the memory of the quarter by describing them as law-abiding and harmless to morals. The backbone of the Barbary Coast had been broken by the Examiner’s crusade and the action of the Police Commission in the autumn of 1913. In the language of the prize-ring, the Coast was punch-drunk; it could do nothing but wait hopelessly for the knock-out blow.

The final attack upon the Barbary Coast, directed principally against the traffic which had always been the life-blood of the district, was begun in the late winter of 1914, when the California Legislature enacted the Red-light Abatement Act, which empowered the San Francisco authorities to proceed in the civil courts against the owners of any property which was used for the purposes of prostitution. The law became effective on December 18, 1914, and three days later the police raided a building at Grant Avenue and Bartlett Alley, which they alleged was occupied by Chinese harlots, while the District Attorney began a test case against the owner of the property, a Chinaman named Woo Sam. Supported by a hastily formed organization called the Property Owners’ Protective Association, which had raised a fund of $37,500 by assessing each madame in the red-light district three hundred dollars and each prostitute five dollars, Woo Sam applied to the United States District Court for an injunction restraining the police from interfering with his tenants. In refusing to grant the writ the District Court held that while the city’s procedure under the Red-light Abatement Act was limited to civil actions against property-owners, the police possessed the power under existing state and municipal statutes to make raids and arrest inmates of brothels. The test suit brought by the District Attorney had been appealed to the California Supreme Court, but not until early in 1917 did that tribunal hand down an opinion. It then decided unanimously that the Abatement Act was constitutional, and so put into the hands of San Francisco’s reform element their first really effective weapon against open prostitution. Under its provisions property-owners could be held liable if their premises were used for prostitution or for other immoral purposes. And a great many of the buildings used by harlots were owned by very prominent citizens.

Meanwhile there had come to San Francisco, by way of Iowa and Los Angeles, a young Methodist clergyman, the Rev. Paul Smith, who combined an extraordinarily developed sense of the dramatic with a passion for reform. He became pastor of the Central Methodist Church and later president of the Federation of Churches, and after that an automobile salesman, but he made his mark in San Francisco as the instrument chosen by Providence to deliver the coup de grâce not only to the Barbary Coast, but to the Uptown Tenderloin as well. The Reverend Mr. Smith had no sooner assumed the duties of his pastorate than he launched into a crusade against vice in all of its innumerable forms and manifestations; whenever sin appeared, he deluged it with a flood of denunciation and expository facts. He began his campaign by giving to the newspapers copies of a letter to the president of the Police Commission, in which he declared that twenty-five thousand persons made a livelihood from vice in San Francisco, that brothels were in operation throughout the Barbary Coast and within a stone’s throw of his church at O’Farrell and Leavenworth streets, and that streetwalkers made overtures to men on the very steps of the edifice. “Young men have told me,” he wrote, "that they have been approached by women while on their way to church from the Y.M.C.A. Others have been approached almost before they left the doorsteps of the church after Sunday evening services.” Reporters assigned by the Examiner to inquire into these charges were told by friendly streetwalkers that what the minister had said about them was quite true. They were, indeed, rather grateful to the Reverend Mr. Smith for coming to San Francisco; he preached such racy sermons that the vicinity of his church after services was one of the best places in the city in which to ply their trade.

On the Sunday following his letter to the head of the Police Commission, the Reverend Mr. Smith delivered a rousing sermon against prostitution, and next day the newspapers began the publication of a series of interviews in which he amplified his accusation that San Francisco was a moral cesspool, divulging information which he had obtained by venturing incognito into brothels, dance-halls, cafés, restaurants, and other resorts. He described a café in Ellis Street which with every private dining-room provided an equally private bedchamber, and told of visiting the Mason Street parlor house operated by Pearl Morton, one of the many aspirants to the title of “Queen of the Underworld.” There a dozen handsome girls were paraded for his inspection, and when he declined to purchase, he was told that any type of woman he desired could be obtained within a few hours. He was also offered a fifteen-year-old girl at slightly higher than the usual rate. On the Barbary Coast, the Reverend Mr. Smith declared, conditions in the cribs, the cow-yards, and the parlor houses were so bad as to defy description. Again the Examiner sent its investigators into the field, and their reports more than verified the Reverend Mr. Smith’s statements, as, of course, everyone who was at all familiar with San Francisco had known they would. The adventures of the investigators included being accosted by streetwalkers and dancing with strange women in cafés; they appeared to have been very much impressed by the fact that most of the café girls were young, and that they all smoked cigarettes and told dirty stories. One of the investigating parties went to a café at Mason and Geary streets and arranged with the manager of the floor show to meet a few girls in one of the curtained booths which lined each side of the room. In a few minutes the manager appeared with six girls who wore short skirts and sleeveless blouses cut very low at the throat.

“Here, boys,” he said, “is a fine flock of chickens.”

No further details of the investigators’ experiences in this resort were given, but it was intimated that the girls displayed an embarrassing willingness to conduct themselves in a very improper manner.

The Reverend Mr. Smith’s disclosures, together with the vivid reports of the newspaper investigators, aroused an even greater sensation than had been created by the Examiner’s campaign against the Barbary Coast in 1913. The Chamber of Commerce officially demanded a thorough clean-up of the city, as did a group of influential citizens headed by Rudolph Spreckels, while clergymen, religious and civic organizations, and all of the newspapers announced that they would support the Reverend Mr. Smith’s crusade. On January 15, 1917 Mayor Rolph said that he would order an inquiry and promised to close every brothel and disreputable resort in San Francisco. Six days later, on Sunday, January 21, thirty-nine clergymen delivered sermons against open prostitution and other forms of vice, and that afternoon committees of citizens assembled in various parts of the city to make arrangements for a mass meeting which had been called for January 25 at Dreamland Rink. On the appointed day seven thousand persons crowded into the Rink, where they listened to speeches and then adopted resolutions demanding that the city government proceed immediately against all places of ill repute.

On the morning of January 25, only a few hours before the great mass meeting was called to order, occurred the most dramatic incident of the entire crusade. More than three hundred prostitutes, dressed in their gayest finery and reeking with the noisome perfume so beloved of the harlot, left their quarters in the cribs, the cow-yards, and the parlor houses and, escorted by two policemen, marched to the Central Methodist Church to call upon the Reverend Mr. Smith. Although most of the women were from the alleys of the Barbary Coast, they were under the command of Mrs. M. R. Gamble, better known as Reggie Gamble, who with Maude Spencer operated a parlor house in Mason Street, in the heart of the Uptown Tenderloin. The prostitutes were admitted to the church by the pastor, who had been notified by newspaper reporters that the women were on their way. A dozen men who followed them inside were ejected by the police escort, but otherwise there was no disorder. The harlots sat quietly in the pews, hitherto occupied only by virtuous worshippers of the Christian God, until the Reverend Mr. Smith stepped into the pulpit and faced them. Then they rose and shouted as one woman:

“What are you going to do with us?”
The clergyman was nonplussed, but only for a moment. He urged them to seek refuge in the church.
“Can we eat that?" asked one woman.
“Will your congregation let us sit among their daughters?“ asked another.
"Come and see,” invited the Reverend Mr. Smith.
“You mean come and be snubbed.”
“I’ve been running a house in San Francisco for eight years,” said Mrs. Gamble, “and I know something about women. And about men, too. How many patrons of your church would accept a woman out of this life into their homes? You would cast these women out of the city. Where to? Where would they drift?“ (12b)
“Can’t they establish homes?” asked the Reverend Mr. Smith. “How many have children?”
By actual count, three-fourths of the harlots raised their hands.
“There isn’t a woman here,” said Mrs. Gamble, “who would be a prostitute if she could make a decent living in any other way. They’ve all tried it, and none could earn more than eight dollars a week. They became prostitutes because they didn’t have enough to live on."

The Reverend Mr. Smith said that he would pledge himself to work for the enactment of a minimum-wage law, and that arrangements were already being made to assist the women after the brothels had been closed. A great shout of derisive laughter went up from the harlots when he declared that a woman could remain virtuous on an income of ten dollars a week. Several shouted that the minimum weekly wage should not be less than twenty dollars.

"Statistics show,” said the Reverend Mr. Smith, “that families all over the country receive less.”
“That’s why there’s prostitution,” retorted Mrs. Gamble. “Come on, girls, there’s nothing for us here.”
 As quietly as they had come, the harlots left the church.

The climax of the warfare against the Barbary Coast and the Uptown Tenderloin, which by this time had become city-wide, came during the last week in January 1917, when the Supreme Court made public its decision on the Red-light Abatement Act. On January 30 James F. Brennan, assistant District Attorney, announced that he was preparing to file civil actions under the Act against every brothel in the city, and at the same time the Police Commission issued new regulations for the control of the Uptown Tenderloin and warned the few remaining Barbary Coast dive-keepers that any violation of the law would be severely punished. Dancing was prohibited in all cafés, restaurants, and other resorts in the area bounded by Larkin, O’Farrell, Mason, and Market streets; managers of the places were instructed to bar unescorted women from the premises; all curtains, boxes, and booths were ordered removed from all places wherein liquor was sold, and the license of the Lambs Club, a notorious café in Ellis Street, was revoked. Chief of Police David A. White formed a special squad, consisting of a sergeant and three policemen, to patrol the district and see that the orders were obeyed. These regulations effectually disposed of the Uptown Tenderloin, and within a week practically every resort in the district either had been turned into a straight restaurant or saloon or had closed its doors. Among the famous places which thus passed from the San Francisco scene were the Black Cat, the Panama, the Pup, Stack’s, Maxim’s, the Portola, the Louvre, the Odeon, and the Bucket of Blood.

Early in February 1917 the police raided and closed every brothel in the uptown area, and on February 14 a blockade was instituted against the Barbary Coast. The entire quarter was surrounded by policemen, no man was permitted to enter unless he could prove that he was engaged in legitimate business, and the prostitutes were ordered to vacate the cribs, cow-yards, and parlor houses. They were allowed a few hours in which to pack and remove their belongings, but by midnight the red-light district was deserted; eighty-three brothels had been closed and 1,073 women had been driven from their quarters. A hundred Chinese girls were evicted from the few bagnios which remained in operation on Grant Avenue. Two days later forty Barbary Coast saloons and dives closed their doors through lack of business, and within a week the remainder of the resorts had likewise abandoned the field.

The Barbary Coast was as dead as the proverbial doornail until the summer of 1921, when a resurrection was attempted with the opening of the Thalia, the Neptune Palace, the Elko, and the Olympia. They sold near beer, employed a few dancing girls, and offered bawdy theatrical entertainment, the degree of obscenity depending upon whether or not the audience was composed of tourists. But the serpent of vice had scarcely reared its venomous head when it was scotched by Mrs. W. B. Hamilton, chairman of the Clubwomen’s Vigilance Committee. Having heard rumors that immoral exhibitions were on display at the Barbary Coast, Mrs. Hamilton gathered a group of her friends and visited the district in a sightseeing bus, which they boarded at Market Street. The driver was told that the party was from out of town. When the bus stopped in front of the Neptune Palace, he said: “Now, ladies, if you are squeamish about entering this place, stay outside. But if you are good sports and want to see the sights, go in and keep your mouths shut afterwards.”

Mrs. Hamilton went in, but immediately afterwards she called upon the police and the newspapers. In an interview she said:

“I have visited dancing places in Honolulu, Tahiti and various islands of the South Pacific, but I saw nothing in those places more obscene and morally degrading than I saw at the Neptune Palace.”

The police took immediate action upon Mrs. Hamilton’s complaint. They ordered the owners of sightseeing buses not to send their vehicles into the Barbary Coast and notified the dance-hall proprietors that not even the slightest infraction of the law would be tolerated. Within a week the dives were closed.

And that was the end of the Barbary Coast. Of its ancient glories nothing remains excepting a few battered façades, the tattered remains of signs, and the plaster nymphs and satyrs in the entrance lobby of the old Hippodrome, now befouled by dirt and penciled obscenities.