I submit to you, as Californians, whether this is a record in which we
can take any pride. With the exception of the pitiful attempts of its
loyal friends from time to time to revive the California Historical
Society, absolutely no organization work whatever, except what has
lately been initiated at Berkeley, has been done by any public
institution to promote the publication of California history or the
collection of material therefor. With a history such as ours, with its
halo of romance, with its peculiarity of incident, with its epoch-making
significance, is it not a burning shame that our people have not long
ago, either through private endowment or through public institutions,
taken as much pride in the preservation of our history as its makers did
in the creation of it? Is it not time that civic societies in every
section of this State should combine and work together for the creation
of a public sentiment which will support and uphold any institution that
will strive to perpetuate the record of the history of this great
commonwealth?

Though there has been no sustained or organized effort on the part of
the State, or of any community in the State, to recognize the duty of
collecting and preserving the priceless records of its historical
growth, yet, by the luck that often attends improvidence, we have the
nucleus of a library which goes far toward offsetting our culpable
indifference.

One of the great fires that swept San Francisco in its early stages just
missed the Bancroft Library, then at the corner of Merchant and
Montgomery streets. The later fire that burned the building on Market
Street, near Third, next door to the History Building, again barely
missed the Bancroft Library. And when it was moved to the building