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Berkeley residents at the turn of the century had a standard bit of advice for newcomers: “You best hitch a buoy to the back of your wagon,” they joked. “That way, when it sinks into the muddy streets, you’ll know where it is.”  It would be hard to find much to miss about the dirt roads that passed for city streets in Berkeley in 1900. Muddied by rain, open plumbing, and stampeding animals, they are one part of Berkeley’s history gladly left behind. But it’s hard not to feel a sense of wonder, and even sorrow, at what’s been lost: commuting to work by ferry across a Bay where huge pods of whales still frolicked, glancing up at the north Berkeley hills when the only visible sign of civilization was a criss-cross of ruts formed by wagon wheels. Berkeley 1900, by Richard Schwartz, opens a window on the town as it crossed into the 20th century. The changes were dramatic. In 1841, when Domingo Peralta received the land from his father, Luis (who had received it as part of a land grant from Spain), the longhorn cattle grazing on the land far exceeded the population of 12. People began to move west over the next 30 years, but it was the arrival of the transatlantic railroad in 1873 which brought the steady supply of commodities that transformed the rural land grant into a town of 15,000 by 1900. Stories of the transition fill Berkeley 1900, a 312-page compilation of more than 650 articles published in the Berkeley Gazette between 1900 and 1905. The book, self-published and available through local bookstores, also includes numerous photos from historical society archives and newspapers. The stories reflect a Berkeley more reminiscent of the wild West than the Athens of the West. Young hunters blew off various parts of their anatomies, would-be robbers exchanged gunfire with well-armed victims, and the Fourth of July brought a warning to revelers to remember that “each year a longer list of killing, maiming, and burning confronts us.” It was a town where even though more than a few drunken revelers discharged firearms into the starry night, the peace of the countryside prevailed. Men rode goat carts through gently waving fields that have long since been paved. Mustachioed fathers hoisted their young children in front of rustic scenery identified, but almost unrecognizable, as Russell Street or Telegraph Avenue. “I used to think we lived in a time of the fastest change, but I no longer think so,” says Schwartz as he glances out his window at traffic-filled Shattuck Avenue. “The people at the turn of the century lived on one of the cusps of history. They stood on a ridge looking back at the past, seeing agrarianism, farms, and domestic and wild animal life. Looking on the other side of the ridge, they could see the town’s future—with houses taking over for farms, and the coming of industry and technology.”  Berkeley in 1900 did straddle the past and future. Animal carts shared the road with early automobiles, known as “flying wagons.” Open plumbing was a hazard, but many argued against installing a sewer line because they didn’t believe there would ever be enough people in Berkeley to warrant such a system. The Gazette reported an increase in youth “gangs,” but their crimes were usually petty theft or smoking and drinking in the schoolyard. Yesterday’s students had more to fear from a herd of stampeding cattle than from someone bringing a gun to school. “The pupils of Lorin Public School are constantly endangered by the frequent passing of the animals driven down Alcatraz Avenue to the slaughter houses,” reads an August 24, 1905 article. “Yesterday, at noon, a drove of 200 or more cattle were passing along when they became unmanageable and divided into three separate bands, running rampant over the community.” But, of course, some things never change. “Too Many Dogs in Berkeley,” in which Col. George E. Edwards of Cal’s mathematics department castigates Poundmaster Ryan for allowing the town to be overrun by “mangy curs,” could have been written yesterday instead of July 5, 1905. Poundmaster Ryan must have enjoyed the last laugh when he advised the Colonel that two of his dogs were in the pound. (The Colonel forked over the four dollars and took his dogs home.) Bicyclists were fighting for their right to the road as early as August 1905, when the Gazette reported that Mayor Mott had vetoed a bill that would have allowed bicyclists on sidewalks, provided they dismounted when passing pedestrians. “The Mayor’s faith in human nature will not permit him to believe that such a law would be obeyed,” the paper reported. Berkeley in 1900 was light years away from the home of political correctness many consider the town to be today. Imagine the reaction now if Mr. K.P. Ponce announced, as he did on April 9, 1900, that he planned to market the earth from an Indian burial ground on his property as “the finest of fertilizers.” “Within a few months,” the article cheerfully reports, “it is expected that orchardists of this section will be growing produce with the bones of ancient Indians.” The Gazette articles also reveal a racism that is perhaps most horrifying in its nonchalance. The Japanese, or “the little brown men,” as they were called in one article, are described as being ideal for manual labor because they were not smart enough to tackle the more skilled jobs that went to whites. The Chinese, according to an editorial published in the spring of 1900, were “half-civilized.” “A Chinaman would just as soon kill a man as be friendly with him and his religion bears him out in this. The Chinaman should be kept under strict and rigid laws and not allowed the freedom he at present enjoys.” Gypsies, Italians (“dark-skinned foreigners”), Greeks (“objectionable street vendors”), and African-Americans also were abused. Schwartz warns that readers should not be too smug about how much better things are in Berkeley 2000. “I think we are kind of unconscious about what we’ve all accepted as mores,” says Schwartz. “A hundred years from now, people will see things about us that we can’t hope to see because we’re oblivious to them." |
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