The lessons of the San Francisco earthquake and fire are constantly before any person interested in the preservation of the records of early business. So many of the actual facts will never be known because of the wholesale destruction of all the books of record of so many of the leading businesses dating back to the earliest days of commercial activity in California. For the business historian the extent of this catastrophe is far greater than the loss of the stories of individual businesses in San Francisco, insomuch as San Francisco was the financial center of not only California but Alaska, Nevada and, to a lesser degree, the Pacific Northwest. In order to tell the complete story of western business, the business historian must improvise and synthesize scattered records to get a connected account.