It was
all so different fifty or sixty years ago. According to the census
returns the population of San Francisco in 1850 was 34,000. In 1860
there was a gain of 22,802. In 1870 there were in the city 149,473
souls; while in 1880 there was a population of 233,959 including
30,000 Chinese. The census of 1890 gives an increase of 64,038 during
the decade, and the last enumeration shows that there has been a gain
of 44,785 in the ten years. If the towns across the bay and northward,
as well as San Mateo on the south, which are as much a part of San
Francisco as Brooklyn and Staten Island are of New York, there would
be a population of more than 450,000. The growth, as will be seen, is
steady, and San Francisco offers to such as seek a home within her
borders, all the refinements and comforts of life, all that ministers
to the intellect and the spiritual side of our nature as well as our
social tastes and desires.
There can be no greater contrast imaginable than that between the San
Francisco of 1846, when Commodore Montgomery, of the United States
sloop of war _Portsmouth_, raised the American flag over it, and the
noble city of to-day.
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