The great bay of San Francisco is the largest landlocked harbor in the world. Here the navies of all the nations could ride at anchor side by side in safety. Though 65 miles long and from 4 to 10 miles wide, the bay is completely sheltered from dangerous winds and storms. It is connected with the Pacific Ocean by a strait called the Golden Gate, which is 2-3/4 miles long and over a mile wide.
Such advantages have made San Francisco a great commercial and financial center. Ships from San Francisco carry the products of California westward to all the countries bordering on the Pacific, while others sail to the Atlantic seaports of America and Europe.
The outgoing steamers are loaded with wheat, cotton, canned goods, oil, barley, prunes, flour, dried fruits, leather, machinery, lumber, and iron manufactures. Incoming steamers bring raw silk, coffee, tea, copra, nitrate of soda, tin ingots, sugar, rice, cigars, coal, burlap, vanilla beans, cheese, and manila hemp.
[Illustration: THE SITE OF SAN FRANCISCO]
Already the foreign commerce of San Francisco amounts to more than $150,000,000 annually, and with the increasing trade of Japan and China and the shortened route to the Atlantic through the Panama Canal, the future of its foreign trade cannot be estimated.
In addition to her foreign trade, San Francisco has many growing industries at home. Printing and publishing, slaughtering and meat packing, are among the most important. The canning and preserving of fruits and vegetables is a leading industry of the city. The California Fruit Canners Association employs many thousands of people during the fruit season and is the largest fruit-and-vegetable canning company in the world. It operates thirty branches throughout the state, and its products are sent to all parts of the globe.
Though iron has to be imported,--there being little mined in California,--the city does a thriving iron business. In the early days there was need of mining machinery in the West, and San Francisco at that time began manufacturing it. She also has one of the greatest shipbuilding plants in the United States. The famous battleship _Oregon_, the _Olympic_, the _Wisconsin_, the _Ohio_, and other ships of the United States Navy were built in San Francisco.