After the Earth jumped back on its track at 5:13:47 on the morning of Wednesday, April 18th, 1906, the citizens of San Francisco came down on their feet in fighting mood, and the success of that fight has aroused the wonder and admiration of the entire world. Being true sons of their fathers they showed the thoroughbred strain in time of stress and peril just as did those fathers before them. There was no denying the fact that many thought it the end of time, listened for the trumpet of Gabriel to echo through the crash of worlds, and looked toward the heavens to see the angel with the flaming sword, but they stood to meet it like men, backed as they were against the wall. When walls ceased falling and they had rubbed the dust from their eyes, they found that they still lived; it was then that they shut their jaws and began to fight. They have been fighting ever since and will continue to fight until San Francisco shall have been restored even beyond the dreams of those fathers. The first effective work began with Mayor Eugene E. Schmitz and the members of the Police Commission, who had quickly assembled at the Hall of Justice. It was a time when no man could stop to think twice; immediate action must be taken; action that must be absolutely correct on the first thought. The first official action was to send out police to close each and every saloon. Everywhere the streets were filled with the debris of fallen walls and cobwebbed with a tangle of dangling wires, among which half a million of people stood numb and dazed or groped their way blindly, not knowing where to go nor what to do. In a dozen widely scattered localities smoke devils were dancing from roof to roof and people gave way mechanically for the clanging apparatus rushing wildly to the fires. In collapsed buildings there were many dead, but "let the dead care for the dead;" there were those yet living pinned under fallen walls and beams. There were hundreds and hundreds of injured to be succored. There were hundreds of millions of dollars in shattered banks, the savings of the people, to be guarded against the time when some men go mad and seize on the possessions of a neighbor as one crazed brute snaps at another. That was the situation, in brief, that confronted the Mayor, the Police Commission and the six hundred policemen of San Francisco, a handful to cope with disaster by earthquake, fire, and the elements of chaos that a city of half a million breeds. The Mayor and the Police Commission had barely entered into conference when this message came to them from Brigadier General Frederick Funston: "Do you need help?" Did they? "Yes, send all the troops you can," was the reply dispatched with all the haste of a city's need. Then the conference went on. It was brief. The situation demanded the co-operation of the entire city.