San Mateo County: The Brooklyn of San Francisco

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote “people take pride in being in a big town. The once satisfied Brooklynite or Staten Islander likes to hail from New York.”

The initiative was the brainchild of an organization called “The Greater San Francisco Association,” which the Oakland Tribune claimed was established in 1907 for the purpose of inducing all Bay Area cities to join in a scheme “to secure a water supply for San Francisco from Hetch Hetchy and impose a share of the burden on the territory annexed.”

Oakland interests led the fight against the initiative — and with good reason. In his 1959 book, “The San Francisco Bay Area: Metropolis in Perspective,” University of California professor Mel Scott wrote that Oakland had shown fantastic growth during the period leading up to the movement to make San Francisco the Manhattan of the West. The “whole world” anxiously anticipated the 1910 census to see if area cities had recovered from the 1906 earthquake and fire. San Francisco had 400,000 people before the disaster and by 1910 increased to 416,000. Oakland, however, went from 66,000 in 1900 to 150,000 10 years later. Meantime, a “trickle of population moved into underdeveloped areas of the Peninsula.”

Oakland showed “phenomenal gains” in manufacturing from 1904 to 1909, another UC professor, Lawrence Kinnard reported in his 1966 “A History of the Greater San Francisco Bay Region.” The city had 150 factories and, in addition, nearby Berkeley and Alameda had 130. The 1910 census showed a 150 percent jump in Oakland industries, many of them canneries. Oakland had many allies in its fight against the initiative. They included the Pasadena Star which opined that Oakland should not let itself be dragged “into the mire of San Francisco politics.”

The ballot measure didn’t actually refer to San Francisco by name. Proposition 6 allowed for consolidation of “contiguous territory of two or more cities containing a population of at least 350,000.” The pro-con arguments in the voter guide, however, made it clear that San Francisco wanted to merge with other counties the way the cat merged with the canary. The argument against the measure contended that San Francisco would dominate politics “as completely and effectively as Tammany Hall in New York.” The main argument for the measure was that no area would be absorbed without its approval.

Why only the “trickle” of growth on the Peninsula that was commented on by Scott? It was true that the increase was small in whole numbers when compared to population increases in other Bay Area counties. However, percentage wise it was significant. In 1900, San Mateo County had 12,000 people, according to that year’s census. In 1910, the figure was 26,000.

Officials had expected even more people to move to San Mateo County. The big problem, according to Scott, was the cost of public transportation. He said while a San Francisco-Peninsula commute cost 13 cents by train the Alameda County-San Francisco commute cost just a nickel on a ferry boat. And, for goodness sake, why would San Mateo County want to become part of San Francisco again? Yes, again. San Mateo County was created in 1856 so in 1912 many still remembered when the Peninsula was part of San Francisco.

The “Manhattan” forces didn’t give up. Attempts at consolidation failed in 1917, 1923 and 1928.

The Rear View Mirror by history columnist Jim Clifford appears in the Daily Journal every other Monday. Objects in The Mirror are closer than they appear.