Los Angeles herald., 1906-05-22
SAN FRANcISCO'S VAST ARMY OF OPIUM
What Fire Destroyed China
Their Source Of Supply
From the Nev Yor9E Evenine eleerapf

It was tough luck for the hop nend
IN san Francisco just after the big
trembler" that shook things up there
a couple Of weeks ago.
In the worry and furry over the de-
struction Of one of the leading towns
of the United States such trivial at
fair as the troubles OF an opium smoker
or morphine eater might appear as not
worth while, but to a man who sat i'm
a Broadway cafe yesterday and told
of the horrors of the few days follow
ing the earthquake, the woes of the
hop fiend were such as to have called
for a Dante to interpret properly.
Frisco was the hop hend's hell for
few days, all right" said the man
from the west. Just why this was so
might not occur to you at first, but
consider:
There are more opium smokers in
San Francisco than i'm any four cities
In this country at the most conserva-
tive estimate. These folks were all
absolutely cut off from their dope, and
they made as much trouble for the
authorities for a time as the food
hunters.
IT'S a wonder to me that with all
these benefits being given here and in
hundreds of other cities, that some
bunch of hop fends don't get together
and give theatrical performance for
the purpose of rushing through a con-
signment of the brown stuff to their
suffering fellows in San Francisco. 1t
would be a thoughtful and a merciful
thing to do.
when left San Francisco hop was
selling for e10 sbe11 aud hard n
at that Seattle and Spokane and
few other nearby cities were rushing
the stuff i'm by the hogshead, but 1t
wasn't coming in quantities to afford
relief.
UNLESS you know San Francisco
you can't realize just what happened
when the earthquake and fire COM
bined to put the town out of business.
Nearly all the opium smoking of
the city was done in Chinatown There
we're hop joints outside Chinatown, of
course, but they were of the swell sort.
Every house in the Chink quarter had
population of smokers connected
with it, and of course nearly all the
opium in San Francisco was ware
housed by the Chinese.
THE fire swept Chinatown out of
existence. 1t ate up the flimsy wooden
structures in one gulp and passed on,
filling up the tunnels, subways, dug
outs and hundreds of underground pas
sages in Chinatown. The opium was
kept in these caves and holes in the
ground, and while there is probably
whole lot Of it yet, it hadn't been
dug up when left.
by the afternoon of the first day
of the earthquake you could spot the
hop fiends all over San Francisco The
few drug stores remaining had sold out
in a short time, and there were at least
100000 whites and yellows hunting hop.
"They didn't care for food and GO
ing without water didn't bother them
at all, but the nerve-racking expert
ences of the earthquake combined with
the horror produced by the aspect of
the burning city drove hundreds of
these pipe-hitters crazy for the time.
by the next morning the 10000 cases
of yen-yen developed had turned San
Francisco into a city of horrors, beside
which the mere destruction of the town
was a trif1e. OF course, thousands got
away to Oakland, but this didn't help
matters much. Opium was as hard to
get in Oakland as in San Francisco at
this time, and there was no relief from
that quarter
by the morning of the second day
after the trembler the hop fiends were
rioting around the different relief head
quarters and besieging the drug stores.
Frequently these opium victims would
be shanghaied by the troops and be
forced to work in the streets, but many
of them went temporarily insane and
were turned loose. Nearly all these
stories that came east of people going
crazy from excitement and horror were
based upon these cases of hop fiends
going bughouse
"By the third day thousands of the
Chinese had disappeared. No one knows
what became of them; they simply
dropped out of sight. 1t is probable
they got away to Los Angeles Seattle
and other big cities along the coast.
Many of them in all Likelihood went
away to take commercial advantage of