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Show 529. earthquake of 1906, San Franciscans hoped to "Rise From the Ashes a Greater and More Beautiful City than Ever." Perhaps even Muir was sympathetic to their causes. And when people like University of California President Benjamin Wheeler and Congressman William Kent turned against him over Hetch Hetchy, he must have understood that it was too much to expect them to be any different from what they were at root, men who wanted the country to grow. Muir could not rely on Harriman's help, precisely because any part Harriman might take would only add fuel to the arguments of the San Franciscans that the people who opposed the Hetch Hetchy Dam were the monopolists who wished to control San Francisco's water and power supplies. But Muir's relationship with Harriman had always been ambivalent. He liked the man well enough, but he didn't know whether he liked what Harriman stood for. This must have troubled him. And you can see it in his language. He wished to attribute the Hetch Hetchy scheme to "monopolizing San Francisco Capitalists." And he insisted that These temple destroyers, devotees of ravenging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the mountains, lift them to dams and town skyscrapers. And speaking of the Parks, again in 1909. he was vehement in his condemnation of the Park despoilers, as he saw the proposers of the Hetch Hetchy plan to be. The Parks were being attacked mostly by despoiling gain-seekers, - mischief-makers |
