Great quantities of expensive merchandise glutted the market and were sunk in the liquid mud of the streets as fillage for the construction of sidewalks.
But their instructions were considerably exceeded, for the quantity imported in 1678 was 4713 lb, a quantity which seems to have glutted the market for several years.
Rapid settlement, excessive prices, reckless waste of money, and wild commercial ventures that glutted San Francisco with all objects usable and unusable made the following years astounding from an economic point of view; but not less bizarre was the social development, nor less extraordinary the problems of state-building in a society " morally and socially tried as no other American community ever has been tried " (Royce).