Isaias W. Hellman
A cloud, considerably larger than a man's hand, flecked the skies at the dawn of 1898 and troubled many who had been following the course of events in Cuba. So, too, like the thrill sent through the nation at the firing on Fort Sumter, the startling intelligence of the destruction of the United States battleship Maine electrified and united the people. Along the Coast, intense excitement scarcely permitted Westerners to keep themselves within bounds; and instant was the display of patriotic fervor, Southern Californians willingly shouldering their share of the unavoidable war burdens.
On January 22d, John G. Nichols, several times Mayor of Los Angeles and always a welcome figure on the streets, died here at the age of eighty-five years.
Colonel Harrison Gray Otis, soldier, Union officer, Government official in Alaska and President of the Los Angeles Times publishing company, was appointed by President McKinley, on May 27th, a Brigadier-General of the United States Volunteers, following which he was assigned to a command in the Philippines, where he saw active service until honorably discharged in 1899, after the fall of Malolos, the insurgent capital. During General Otis's absence, his influential son-in-law, the large-hearted, big man of affairs, Harry Chandler, Vice-President of the corporation, was general manager of the Times; while L. E. Mosher was managing editor. In 1897, Harry E. Andrews joined the Times staff, in 1906 becoming managing editor and infusing into the paper much of its characteristic vigor. In 1899, Hugh McDowell, who had entered the employ of the Times four years before, began his long editorship of the Times' magazine, a wide-awake feature which has become more and more popular. During many years, Mrs. Eliza A. Otis, the General's gifted wife, now deceased, also contributed to both the Times and the Mirror. From the beginning, the paper has been Republican and in every respect has consistently maintained its original policies. Especially in the fight for San Pedro harbor, it was an important element and did much to bring the energetic campaign to a successful termination.
Paul De Longpré, the French artist who made his mark, when but eleven years old, in the Salon of 1876, was a distinguished member of a little group of Frenchmen arriving in the late nineties. In 1901, he bought a home at Hollywood and there surrounded himself with three acres of choicest gardens—one of the sights of suburban Los Angeles—which became an inspiration to him in his work as a painter of flowers. De Longpré died in Hollywood, on June 29th, 1911.
On August 23d, my excellent friend, Dr. John Strother Griffin, for nearly fifty years one of the most efficient and honored residents of Los Angeles, died here.
A career such as should inspire American youth is that of Henry T. Gage (long in partnership with the well-known bibliophile, W. I. Foley,) a native of New York who in 1877, at the age of twenty-four, began the practice of law in Los Angeles, to be elected, twenty-one years later, Governor of California. A handsome man, of splendid physique—acquired, perhaps, when he started as a sheep-dealer—he is also genial in temperament, and powerful and persuasive in oratory; qualifications which led to his selection, I dare say, to second the nomination at Chicago, in 1888, of Levi P. Morton for the Vice-Presidency. Ex-Governor Gage's wife was Miss Fannie V., daughter of John Rains and granddaughter of Colonel Isaac Williams.
April 27, 1899 was printed large and red upon the calendar for both Los Angeles and San Pedro, when the engineers, desiring to commence work on the harbor in true spectacular fashion, brought a load of quarried rock from Catalina to dump on the breakwater site. President McKinley sent an electric spark from the White House, intended to throw the first load of ballast splashing into the bay; but the barge only half tilted, interfering with the dramatic effect desired. Nevertheless, the festivities concluded with the usual procession and fireworks.
Movements of great importance making for a municipal water-system occurred in 1899, the thirty years' contract with the assigns of John S. Griffin, P. Beaudry, S. Lazard and others having expired on July 22d, 1898. An arbitration committee, consisting of Charles T. Healey for the Company and James C. Kays—long a citizen of importance and Sheriff from 1887 to 1888—for the City, failed to agree as to the valuation of the Los Angeles City Water Company's plant, whereupon Colonel George H. Mendell was added to the board; and on May 12th, 1899, Kays and Mendell fixed their estimate at $1,183,591, while Healey held out for a larger sum. In August, the citizens, by a vote of seven to one, endorsed the issuing of two million dollars of City bonds, to pay the Water Company and to build additional equipment; and the water-works having been transferred to the municipality, five commissioners were appointed to manage the system.
During August, 1899, the Reverend Dr. Sigmund Hecht of Milwaukee took into his keeping the spiritual welfare of Los Angeles Reformed Jewry; and it is certainly a source of very great satisfaction to me that during his tenure of office his good fellowship has led him, on more than one occasion, to tender the altar of the Jewish temple for Christian worship. Scholarly in pursuits and eloquent of address, Dr. Hecht for sixteen years has well presided over the destinies of his flock, his congregation keeping pace with the growth of the city.
Incursions of other jobbing centers into Los Angeles territory induced our leading manufacturers and wholesalers to combine for offensive as well as defensive purposes; and on October 11th, 1899, in answer to a call, an enthusiastic meeting was held in Room 86, Temple Block, attended by J. Baruch, J. O. Koepfli, J. Saeger, R. L. Craig, L. Kimble, L. C. Scheller, George H. Wigmore, F. W. Braun, C. C. Reynolds, I. A. Lothian, W. S. Hunt, A. H. Busch, M. H. Newmark and others, who elected Baruch, President; Koepfli, First Vice-President; Reynolds, Second Vice-President; Scheller, Treasurer; and Braun, Secretary. A couple of weeks later, A. M. Rawson was named Secretary, Braun having resigned to accept the Third Vice-Presidency; and on November 3d, the Associated Jobbers of Southern California, as the organization was called, was re-christened the Associated Jobbers of Los Angeles. Meanwhile at a quiet luncheon, Koepfli and Newmark had entered into negotiations with Charles D. Willard, with the result that, when Rawson withdrew on February 28th, 1900, Willard assumed the duties of Secretary, holding the office for years, until compelled by sickness, on January 18th, 1911, to relinquish the work. On February 21st, 1900, Baruch having resigned, M. H. Newmark began a service of twelve years as President. The strength of the organization was materially increased when, in March, 1908, F. P. Gregson, well up in the traffic councils of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, assumed the management of the recently-established traffic bureau.
On April 10th, 1908, after many years of hardship, financial trouble and disappointment, during which the Executive Committee and Secretary Willard had frequent conferences with J. C. Stubbs and William Sproule (then Stubbs's assistant) of the Southern Pacific, and W. A. Bissell, of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad, it became evident that more equitable rates for shippers into the San Joaquín Valley and elsewhere could not peaceably be obtained. A promised readjustment, lowering Los Angeles rates about twenty per cent., had been published; but at the request of the San Francisco merchants, the new tariff-sheet was repudiated by the transportation companies. A rehearing was also denied by them. The Associated Jobbers then carried the case before the newly-created Railroad Commission and obtained concessions amounting to fifty per cent. of the original demands. Guided by their astute Traffic Manager, F. P. Gregson, the jobbers, not satisfied with the first settlement, in 1910 renewed their activity before the Commission; and on the 15th of the following February, still further reductions were announced. The last rates authorized in 1912 are still in effect.
In 1899, James M. Guinn, after some years of miscellaneous work in the field of local annals, issued his History of Los Angeles County, following the same in 1907 with a History of California and the Southern Coast Counties. As I write, he has in preparation a still more compendious work to be entitled, Los Angeles and Environs.
At half-past four o'clock on the morning of December 25th, a slight shock of earthquake was felt in Los Angeles; but it was not until some hours later that the telegraph reported the much greater damage wrought at San Jacinto, Riverside County. There, walls fell in heaps; and a peculiar freak was the complete revolution of a chimney without the disturbance of a single brick! Six squaws, by the falling of their adobes at the Reservation some miles away, were instantly killed. When day dawned and the badly-frightened people began to inspect the neighborhood, they found great mountain-crevices, into some of which even large trees had fallen.
Toward the end of the nineties, Henry E. Huntington sold much or all of his large holdings in the San Francisco railways and began both to buy up Los Angeles railway stocks and to give his personal attention to the city's traffic-problems. At the same time, he bent his energies to the crowning work of his life—the development of the various interurban electric systems focusing in Los Angeles. In 1902, the road to Long Beach was completed; and in the following year electric cars began to run to Monrovia and Whittier. In 1903, the seven-story Huntington or Pacific Electric Building at the corner of Main and Sixth streets was finished. The effect of these extensive improvements on local commerce and on the value of real estate (as well as their influence on the growth of population through the coming of tourists seeking the conveniences and pleasures of social life) cannot, perhaps, be fully estimated—a fact which the people of this city should always remember with gratitude.
During the winter of 1899-1900, business cares so weighed upon me that I decided temporarily to cast off all worry and indulge myself with another visit to the Old World. This decision was reached rather suddenly and, as my friends insist, in a perfectly characteristic manner: one morning I hastened to the steamship office and bought the necessary tickets; and then I went home leisurely and suggested to my wife that she prepare for a trip to Europe!
About the first of January, therefore, we left Los Angeles, reached Naples on February 1st and traveled for nine months through Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. I returned to my birthplace, Loebau, which in my youth had appeared of such importance; but although somewhat larger than it used to be, it now nevertheless seemed small and insignificant.
While making this tour of Europe, I revisited Sweden and renewed my acquaintance with the families that had been so kind to me as a boy. Time had lamentably thinned the ranks of the older generation, but many of the younger, especially those of my own age, were still there. Those only who have had a similar experience will appreciate my pleasure in once again greeting these steadfast friends. I also reviewed numerous scenes formerly so familiar. It is impossible to describe my emotions on thus again seeing this beautiful country, or to convey to the reader the depth of my respect and affection for her intelligent, thrifty and whole-souled people, especially when I remembered their liberal encouragement of my father about forty years before.
Thanks to the indefatigable labors of Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes of Los Angeles, the beautiful ceremony of strewing flowers upon the restless ocean waters in honor of the naval dead was first observed at Santa Monica on Memorial Day in 1900, and bids fair to become an appropriate national custom.
Señora António F. Coronel entrusted to the Chamber of Commerce, on June 6th, the invaluable historical souvenirs known as the Coronel Collection; and now[43] for years these exhibits, housed in the Chamber of Commerce Building, have been one of the sights of the city, a pleasure and a stimulation alike to tourist and resident.
A good anecdote as to the transfer of this collection is related on the authority of Miss Anna B. Picher, President of the Boundary League and the lady who made the first move to secure the interesting League mementos now preserved and displayed at the County Museum. When the matter of making the Coronel heirlooms more accessible to the public was brought to Señora Coronel's attention, she not only showed a lively interest, but at once agreed to make the donation. She imposed, however, the condition that Miss Picher should bring to her M. J. Newmark and John F. Francis, then directors, in whose integrity and acumen she had great confidence. This was done; and these gentlemen having pledged their personal attention and sponsorship, the Señora committed the historic objects to the Chamber of Commerce for the benefit, forever, of all the people.
The Los Angeles Herald, on July 7th, passed into the hands of a group of stockholders especially interested in petroleum, Wallace R. Hardison being President and General Manager, and R. H. Hay Chapman, Managing Editor. At the same time the newspaper's policy became Republican.
The Harvard School was opened, on September 25th by Grenville C. Emery and was the first notable military academy for youth in Los Angeles. After many terms of successful work under Congregational auspices, the School has passed to the control of the Rt. Reverend J. H. Johnson, as trustee for the Episcopal Church, which has acquired other valuable school properties in the Southland; Professor Emery remitting fifty thousand dollars of the purchase price in consideration of a promise to perpetuate his name.
A tunnel was put through Bunker Hill—by the way, one of the highest of downtown elevations—from Hill Street to Hope on Third, in 1901, bringing the western hill district into closer touch with the business center of the town and greatly enhancing the value of neighboring property. The delay in cutting through First and Second streets, which would afford so much relief to the municipality, is a reproach against the good sense of the City.
The Los Angeles Express, which enjoys the honor of being the oldest daily newspaper still published in Los Angeles, and which, for fifteen years, has been so well managed by H. W. Brundige, was sold in January to Edwin T. Earl, who moved the plant to a building erected for it on Fifth Street between Broadway and Hill. Earl came to Los Angeles in 1885, having previously for years packed and shipped fruit on a large scale. In 1890, as a result of the obstacles handicapping the sending of fresh fruit to the East, Earl invented a new refrigerator car with ventilating devices; and unable to get the railroads to take over its construction, he organized a company for the building of the conveyors. On selling out to the Armours, Earl made large investments in Los Angeles real estate. A few years ago, the Express was moved to Hill Street near Seventh. Possibly owing to the renewed interest in local historical study, the Express, in 1905, commenced the republication of news items of "Twenty-five Years Ago To-day"—a feature of peculiar pleasure to the pioneer.
William F. Grosser, who died on April 15th, was long active in Los Angeles Turnverein circles, having popularized science before institutions and lecture-courses existed here for that purpose. A native of Potsdam, Prussia, Grosser came to Southern California via Panamá, and on settling in Los Angeles, laid out the Grosser Tract. Having been an advanced student of astronomical science and microscopy, and possessing a good-sized portable telescope, he was soon in demand by societies and schools, for which he lectured without financial remuneration. One of Grosser's sisters, Mrs. A. Jelinek—whose husband, a Boston cabinet-maker, had an interesting part in the carving of the chair made from "the spreading chestnut tree" and presented to the poet Longfellow by the school children of Cambridge—has been for years an honored resident of Ocean Park, where she was one of the early investors. A granddaughter is Fräulein Elsa Grosser, the violinist.
On April 24th, Samuel Calvert Foy died, aged seventy-one, survived by his wife and six children.
A little town in Ventura County, bearing the name of the famous student and author, recalls the death near here in July of Charles Nordhoff, whose pioneer book, California: For Health, Pleasure and Residence, published in the early seventies, did more, I dare say, than any similar work to spread the fame of the Southland throughout the East.
Charles Brode, who died in August, first saw Los Angeles in 1868, when he came here to nurse Edward J., my wife's brother, in his last illness. He then opened a grocery store at South Spring Street near Second, and was active in Turnverein and Odd Fellow circles. The mention of Brode recalls the name of one who has attained distinction here: even as a messenger boy at the California Club in the eighties, Oscar Lawler gave promise of an important future. He had come from Iowa as a child, and his personality, ability and ambition soon brought him prominently before the Bar and the people. He served as United States Attorney for this district from 1906 until 1909, when he became Assistant to the Attorney-General of the United States. He is high in Masonic circles, being Past Grand Master of the Masonic Grand Lodge of California. In 1901, he married Miss Hilda, daughter of Charles Brode.
Catalina Island, in the summer of 1902, established wireless connection with the mainland, at White's Point; and on August 2d, the first messages were exchanged. On March 25th of the following year began the publication of the Catalina newspaper known as the Wireless.
After graduating from the University of California in 1902, my son Marco attended for a while the University of Berlin; after which he returned to Los Angeles and entered the house of M. A. Newmark & Company.
The women of California, in the late eighties, wishing to pay Mrs. John C. Frémont an appropriate tribute, presented her with a residence at the northwest corner of Hoover and Twenty-eighth streets, Los Angeles where, on December 27th, 1902, at the age of seventy-eight years, she died. Mrs. Frémont was a woman of charming personality and decidedly intellectual gifts; and in addition to having written several meritorious works, she was engaged, at the time of her death, on her autobiography. Her ashes were sent East to the banks of the Hudson, to be interred beside those of her distinguished husband; but her daughter, Miss Elizabeth Benton Frémont, has continued to reside here in the family homestead.
On the site of one of my early homes, the corner-stone of the new Chamber of Commerce was laid on March 28th with impressive Masonic ceremonies. The principal address was made by Jonathan S. Slauson. Ferdinand K. Rule was then President of the Chamber; and the Building Committee consisted of M. J. Newmark, Chairman; A. B. Cass, Homer Laughlin, F. K. Rule, H. S. McKee and James A. Foshay—the latter for sixteen years, beginning with the middle nineties, having demonstrated his efficiency as Superintendent of City Schools.
Early in 1903, G. A. Dobinson, a Shakespearian student and teacher of elocution, induced me to build a hall on Hope Street near Eleventh, connected with a small theater; and there, in the spring of 1904, he opened the well-known Dobinson School, which he conducted until 1906. Then the Gamut Club, an organization of 1904—whose first President was Professor Adolph Willhartitz,[44] the artistic German pianist—moved in.
The pioneer experiments with the navel orange have already been referred to; a late episode associates the luscious fruit with a President of the United States. On May 6th, amid great festivity participated in by all Riverside, Theodore Roosevelt replanted, in front of Frank Miller's Mission Inn, one of the original, historic trees.
William K. Cowan came to Los Angeles as a jeweler in 1887, later embarked in the bicycle trade and was one of the first men in Los Angeles to sell automobiles, at length building in 1903 at 830 South Broadway the first large garage here.
Some months later, if I recollect aright, witnessed the advent on our streets of a number of horseless carriages, and I was seized with a desire to possess not one, but two. My acquisitions were both electric, and soon I was extending, right and left, invitations to my friends to ride with me. On the first of these excursions, however, one of the machines balked and the second also broke down; and to make a long story short, no mechanic in town being sufficiently expert to straighten out the difficulty, I soon disposed of them in disgust for about seven hundred dollars.
In 1903, a notable change was made, and one decidedly for the better interests of the public schools, when one hundred citizens, pursuant to a change in the City's charter, selected a non-partizan Board of Education consisting of John D. Bicknell, Joseph Scott, J. M. Guinn, Jonathan S. Slauson, Charles Cassatt Davis, Emmet H. Wilson and W. J. Washburn.
On October 23d the Southwest Society was founded here by Charles F. Lummis with Jonathan S. Slauson as its first President; Charles F. Lummis, Secretary and W. C. Patterson, Treasurer. Associated with these officers were J. O. Koepfli, M. A. Hamburger, General H. G. Otis, Henry W. O'Melveny, Major E. W. Jones, J. A. Foshay, the Right Reverend Thomas J. Conaty, J. D. Bicknell and others. In the beginning, it was a branch of the Archæological Institute of America; but so rapid was the Society's growth that, in three years, it had fifty per cent. more members than belonged to the thirty-year-old parent organization in Boston, with which it remained affiliated until 1913 when it withdrew in order that all its funds might go toward the maintenance of the Southwest Museum, a corporation founded in 1907 as the result of the Southwest Society's labors.
The first plant of the Los Angeles Examiner, a newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst, was installed in 1903 by Dent H. Robert, then and now publisher of the San Francisco Examiner. The paper, illustrated from the start, made its first appearance on December 12th and sprang into immediate favor. R. A. Farrelly was the first managing editor. The office of the paper was on the west side of Broadway near Fifth Street, where it remained for ten years, during which it rendered valuable service to the community, notably in conducting a successful campaign for the sale of seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars' worth of school bonds which had hitherto proven unmarketable. In the meantime, Robert had been succeeded, first by a Mr. Strauss, and then by Henry Lowenthal and William P. Leech, while Farrelly was followed by Foster Coates, Arthur Clark and W. P. Anderson. In 1908, the enterprising Maximilian F. Ihmsen assumed the responsibilities of publisher, and at the same time Frederick W. Eldridge became the efficient managing editor. Under the able direction of these experienced men, this morning daily has attained its highest prosperity, marked by removal in the fall of 1913 to the Examiner Building at Broadway and Eleventh Street.
Abbot Kinney, foreseeing a future for the tide-flats and lagoons south of Ocean Park, in 1904 purchased enough acreage whereon to build the now well-known Venice, which, as its name implies, was to be adorned with canals, bridges and arcades. Through Kinney's remarkable spirit of enterprise, a wonderful transformation was effected in a single year. Such in fact was the optimism of this founder of towns that, in order to amply supply the necessary funds, he closed out important city holdings including the Flat Iron Square, lying between Eighth and Ninth, and Main and Spring streets, the Abbotsford Inn property and the large southeast corner of Spring and Sixth streets, at present occupied by the Grosse Building. Kinney's foresight, courage and persistence have been rewarded, the dreams of his prime becoming the realities of his more advanced age.
The task of building here a King's Highway—El Camino Real—intended to connect all the missions and presidios between San Diego and Sonoma was undertaken in the troublous days of Don Gaspar de Portolá and Father Junípero Serra; but time in a measure obliterated this landmark. Since 1904, however, such kindred spirits as Miss Anna B. Picher—for nearly twenty years a zealous toiler for the preservation of our historic monuments, and whose zeal in behalf of the royal road was paramount—Mr. and Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes, Dr. Milbank Johnson, R. F. Del Valle, Mrs. C. R. Olney of Oakland and Frank Ey, Mayor of Santa Ana, have so caused the work to prosper that at the present time much of the original highway is about to be incorporated with the good State roads of California. The first bell for one of the mission-bell guide posts (designed, by the way, by Mrs. Forbes) was dedicated at the Plaza Church on August 15th, 1906; and since then some four hundred of these indicators have been placed along the Camino Real.
An interesting attempt to transplant a small Eastern town to California was made in 1904 when Alfred Dolge, the founder of Dolgeville, New York (and the author of the elaborate work, Pianos and their Makers, published in 1911 at little Covina), established Dolgeville in Los Angeles County, opening there, with three hundred or more operatives, a felt works for piano fixtures. The experiment had been undertaken because of expected advantages in the supply of wool; but changes in the tariff ruined the industry, and after some years of varying prosperity, Dolgeville was annexed to Alhambra.
A syndicate, styled the Los Angeles Herald Company, whose President was Frank G. Finlayson, in 1904 bought the Herald, at that time under the editorial management of Robert M. Yost.
Future generations will doubtless be as keen to learn something about the preserving of albacore, commonly spoken of as tuna, as I should like to know how and by whom sardines were first successfully put into cans. The father of this industry is Albert P. Halfhill, a Minnesotan drawn here, in 1892, through the opportunities for packing mackerel on this southern coast. In 1894, we find him organizing the California Fish Company, soon to be known as the Southern California Fish Company. In 1904, Halfhill, while experimenting with various western sea-foods, accidentally discovered the extraordinary quality of the albacore, a briny-deep heavyweight so interesting to the angler and so mysterious to the scientist. As a mere bit of gossip, Halfhill's assurance that M. A. Newmark & Company purchased the first canned tuna is entitled to mention.
The Turnverein-Germania took a notable step forward this year by buying a lot, one hundred by three hundred feet, on South Figueroa, between Pico and Fifteenth streets; and on September 3d, 1905, the new club building and gymnasium were formally opened.
William H. Workman in 1904 was elected Treasurer of the City of Los Angeles for the third time, his first term of office having begun in 1901. This compliment was the more emphatic because Workman was a Democrat and received four thousand five hundred votes more than his opponent—and that, too, only a month after Roosevelt had carried Los Angeles by a majority of thirteen thousand.
In a previous chapter, I have described the vender of tamales and ice-cream, so familiar through his peculiar voice as well as his characteristic costume. About 1905, another celebrity plying a trade in the same line, and known as Francisco, appeared here and daily made his rounds through the more fashionable Westlake district. He had a tenor voice of rare quality and power, and used it, while exquisitely rendering choice arias, to advertise his wares. Such was his merit that lovers of music, as soon as his presence was known, paused to listen; with the natural result that business with Francisco was never dull. Whenever a grand opera company came to town, the Italian was there, in a front seat of the gallery; and so great was his enthusiastic interest in the performance of those whose voices were often inferior to his own, that he could be seen, with gaze fixed on the proscenium, passionately beating time as if to direct the orchestra. Seven or eight years ago, the long-favorite Francisco was foully murdered, and under strange circumstances; leading many to believe that, having perhaps degraded himself from his former estate and fleeing, an alien, to an unknown land, he had fallen at last the victim of a vendetta.
In 1905, I took part in a movement, headed by Joseph Mesmer, to raise by subscription the funds necessary to buy the old Downey Block—fronting on Temple and North Main streets, and extending through to New High—for the purpose of presenting it to the National Government for a Federal Building site. Unusual success attended our efforts, and the transfer to Uncle Sam was duly made. In the meantime, an appropriation of eight hundred thousand dollars had been secured for the building, and it was with no little surprise and disappointment when the bids for construction were opened, in May, 1906, that the lowest was found to be nearly a million dollars. This delayed matters until the following fall. In October, the site at the corner of Main and Winston streets was sold for three hundred and fourteen thousand dollars; and the deficiency having thus been supplied, it was not long before the new building was in course of construction.
Desiring to celebrate the fifty years which had elapsed since, perched upon an ox-cart, he rode into Los Angeles for the first time, William H. Workman on January 21st gave a banquet to five hundred pioneers in Turnverein Hall, the menu being peculiarly mejicano. The reminiscences, speeches and quips were of the friendliest and best; and the whole affair was one that recalled to both host and guests the dolce far niente days of dear old Los Angeles.
On February 21st, the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad was completed—the fourth transcontinental line, with its connections, to enter Los Angeles.
In the spring, A. C. and A. M. Parson bought a tract of land on Alamitos Bay and there, at the mouth of the San Gabriel River, founded Naples, with features somewhat similar to those at Venice; but unlike the latter town, the new Naples has never developed into a crowded resort.
Arriving in California in 1869, at the age of seven, Frank Putnam Flint, a native of Massachusetts concerning whom much of importance might be related, was elected in 1905 United States Senator from California. His brother, Motley H. Flint, high in Masonic circles, has also enjoyed an important career, having long been associated with many local public movements.
An optimist of optimists, still young though having passed more than one milestone on the road to success, Willis H. Booth came to Los Angeles a mere lad and is a product of the Los Angeles High School and the State University. Before, while and since filling the office of President of the Chamber of Commerce, Booth has been identified with nearly everything worth while here and gives promise of an important and interesting future. He is now one of the Vice-Presidents of the Security Trust and Savings Bank.
In August, Juan B. Bandini, second son of the famous Don Juan, died at Santa Monica. Two of Bandini's daughters were noted Los Angeles belles—Arcadia, who became the wife of John T. Gaffey, of San Pedro; and Dolores, who married into the well-known literary family, the Wards, of London.
Strenuous efforts were made in 1905 to house the Historical Society of Southern California, which, incorporated on February 12th, 1891, boasts of being the oldest organization of its kind on the Coast and the only one doing State work; and the Legislature appropriated one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for a building. Governor Pardee, however, vetoed the bill—an act which later contributed to the endowment, by the State, of the comely County Museum in which the Historical Society now has its home.
In the spring of 1905, the then eight-year-old town of Redondo, with her large hotel and busy wharf, and famed for her fields of carnations, became the scene of one of those infrequent, but typically American, real estate frenzies which come suddenly, last a few days and as suddenly depart. This particular attack, not to say epidemic, was brought on by one or two newspaper headlines announcing to the breakfasting reader that Henry E. Huntington had decided to spend millions of dollars in making immense railroad and other improvements in the seaside town, and that this would at once raise Redondo from the humble status of a village to almost metropolitan dignity. In about as little time as is required to relate it, the astonished beach-dwellers found themselves overwhelmed by a surging mass of humanity struggling for the privilege of buying lots. The real estate offices were soon surrounded by hundreds of people, fighting, pushing and shoving, all possessed of but the one idea—to buy.
And they bought. They bought corners and they bought in the middle of the blocks; they bought heaps of sand and holes in the ground; they bought in one breath and sold in the next; they bought blindly and sold blindly. Redondo had become a huge, unregulated stock exchange, lots instead of stocks for five days becoming the will-o'-the-wisps of the fated bidders, until the boom collapsed leaving hundreds with lots they had never seen and which, for the time being, they could not sell at any price.
Huntington did not spend his millions—at least then and there. Redondo did not suddenly become a big center. Yet, in passing through the experience of many a town, Redondo has gradually grown in population and importance, even developing something of a suburb—Clifton-by-the-Sea. Such was the famous boom of 1905; and such will probably be the story of similar California booms to come.
On January 1st, 1906, after more than half a century of commercial activity—with some things well done, and some poorly enough—during which it has never been my ambition to better myself at the expense of others, I retired from business to enjoy the moderate but sufficient affluence which years of varying fortune had bestowed upon me.
Rather early in the morning of April 18th, news was received here of the awful calamity that had befallen San Francisco; and with lightning rapidity the report spread throughout the city. Newspaper and telegraph offices were besieged for particulars as to the earthquake, which, strange to say, while it also affected even San Diego, was scarcely felt here; and within a couple of hours, more than a thousand telegrams were filed at one office alone, although not a single message was despatched. Thousands of agitated tourists and even residents hastened to the railroad stations, fearing further seismic disturbance and danger, and bent on leaving the Coast; and soon the stations and trains were so congested that little or nothing could be done with the panic-stricken crowds. Meanwhile, more and more details of the widespread disaster poured in; and Los Angeles began to comprehend how paralyzing to her sister cities must have been the wreck and ruin following, first, the shaking of the earth, and then the much more serious fires and explosions. Soon, too, refugees from the North commenced flocking into our city; and these thousands, none with complete and few with decent attire, each pleading pathetically for assistance, told the sad tale much more frankly than could the noisy newsboy, with his flaring headlines and shrill, intermittent Extra!
Long before much information was secured as to just what had happened, public-spirited men and women, some under the banners of regular organizations, some acting independently, moved energetically to afford relief. The newspapers led off with large subscriptions, while the Chamber of Commerce, Board of Trade and the Merchants & Manufacturers' Association swelled the amount. Eventually some two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was raised. At the same time, and within two or three hours after the terrifying news had first been received, the Directors of the Chamber of Commerce met and appointed various committees headed by Francis Quarles Story, a patriotic and indomitable citizen who arrived in 1883; and having the valuable coöperation of Frank Wiggins, who served as Secretary, they went actively to work to render the most practical assistance possible. A Supply Committee, of which M. H. Newmark was chairman, by five o'clock the same afternoon had assembled fourteen carloads of goods, partly donated and partly sold to the Committee at cost, to go by rail, and nine carloads to go from San Pedro by water. This train full of necessaries was the first relief of its kind that reached San Francisco; other shipments of supplies followed daily; and with the first relief train went a corps of surgeons, under the chairmanship of Dr. L. M. Powers, Health Officer, who established a hospital in the Jefferson Square Building, treating two thousand patients in less than three weeks. Among the chairmen of the several committees were: J. O. Koepfli, J. Baruch, R. W. Burnham, Niles Pease, Perry Weidner, John E. Coffin, J. J. Fogarty, W. L. Vail, D. C. McGarvin, W. A. Hammel, F. Edward Gray, Mrs. R. M. Widney and D. J. Desmond; while H. B. Gurley, long identified with Frank Wiggins in Chamber of Commerce work, was Assistant Secretary.
In this way was our sister-city laid low; but only, as it were, for a moment. While the flames were yet consuming the old San Francisco, her children were courageously planning the new; and supported by that well-nigh superhuman spirit which community misfortune never fails to inspire—the spirit that transforms weakness into strength, and transmutes, as by an altruistic alchemy, the base metal of "eachness" into the pure gold of "allness"—this stricken people built and built until, to-day, less than a decade after that memorable night, there stands by the Golden Gate a finer and more beautiful city than the one from which it sprang. And, as if to emphasize to other nations the fulness of San Francisco's accomplishment, her invincible citizens are now organizing and triumphantly carrying out a great world's exposition.
One incident of this period of excitement and strain is perhaps worthy of record as evidence of the good fellowship existing between Los Angeles and the prostrate city. On May 2d the Executive Committee[45] of the Associated Jobbers passed resolutions discouraging any effort to take advantage of San Francisco's plight, and pledging to help restore her splendid commercial prestige; whereupon Samuel T. Clover made this editorial comment in the Los Angeles Evening News:
We commend the reading of these expressions of kindly good will to every pessimist in the country, as an evidence that all commercial honor is not wiped out in this grossly materialistic age. The resolutions, as passed, are an honor to the Jobbers' Association in particular, and a credit to Los Angeles in general. The Evening News desires to felicitate President Newmark and his associates on the lofty attitude they have taken in the exigency. We are proud of them.
Among the many who at this time turned their faces toward Los Angeles is Hector Alliot, the versatile Curator of the Southwest Museum. Born in France and graduating from the University of Lombardy, Dr. Alliot participated in various important explorations, later settling in San Francisco. Losing in the earthquake and fire everything that he possessed, Alliot came south and took up the quill, first with the Examiner and then the Times.[46]
Mr. and Mrs. M. Kremer, on April 9th, celebrated their golden wedding; less than a year later, both were dead. Mrs. Kremer passed away on March 5th, 1907, and her husband followed her two days later—an unusual dispensation.
In July, I was seized with an illness which, without doubt, must have precluded the possibility of writing these memoirs had it not been for the unselfish attendance, amounting to real self-sacrifice, of Lionel J. Adams. From that time until now, in fair weather or foul, in good health or ill, Adams uncomplainingly and, indeed cheerfully, has bestowed upon me the tender care that contributed to the prolongation of my life; and it affords me peculiar pleasure to record, not only the debt of gratitude that I owe him and the sincere friendship so long marking our relations, but also his superior character as a man.
J. M. Griffith, for years a leading transportation agent and lumber merchant, died here on October 16th. Griffith Avenue is named after him. Just two weeks later, William H. Perry passed away—a man of both influence and affluence, but once so poor and tattered that when he arrived, in February, 1854, he was unable to seek work until he had first obtained, on credit, some decent clothes.
Sometime about 1907, Major Ben C. Truman, both a connoisseur of good wines and an epicure, figured in an animated controversy as to the making of mint-julep, the battle waging around the question whether a julep's a julep, or not a julep, with the mint added before or after a certain stage in the concocting!
In an exceedingly informal manner, at the Westlake Avenue residence of my daughter, Mrs. L. Loeb, my wife and I on the 24th of March, 1908 celebrated our golden wedding anniversary, the occasion being the more unusual because both the nuptials and the silver wedding festivity had occurred in Los Angeles.[47] Our pleasure on that occasion was intensified by the presence of friends with whom, during most of our married life, we had maintained unbroken the most amicable relations.
Many years after spur-track switching charges had been abolished throughout other industrial districts of the United States, the Western railroads continued to assess this charge in Los Angeles, to the extent that, as was estimated, our merchants were paying through this tribute alone an amount not less than $250,000 a year. In August, 1908, however, or shortly after F. P. Gregson became identified with the Associated Jobbers, suit was filed by M. H. Newmark, as President, before the Interstate Commerce Commission; and on May 7th, 1910, a decision was rendered in favor of local shippers. But unfortunately this decision was reversed on July 20th, 1911, by the Commerce Court.[48] Joseph P. Loeb and Edward G. Kuster, young attorneys, handled the case in a manner recognized among men of their profession as being unusually brilliant; while Gregson brought together a mass of valuable facts. This was probably the most notable of all the cases of its kind in the commercial history of Los Angeles. The other directors at the time the suit was brought were: J. O. Koepfli, C. C. Reynolds, F. W. Braun, L. C. Scheller, H. R. Boynton, A. Douglass, D. Wiebers, W. H. Joyce, W. E. Hampton and E. H. Greppin.
Not the least interesting step forward in providing Los Angeles with a harbor was the acquisition of a strip of land known as the Shoe String connecting Los Angeles with San Pedro and Wilmington. This practical idea made possible in 1909 the unhampered consolidation of the three places; and before the beginning of April their various civic bodies had been considering the formation of committees to bring this about. On Saturday, April 3d, the Los Angeles appointees met at the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce for permanent organization. They were William D. Stephens, Mayor of Los Angeles; Stoddard Jess; Homer Hamlin, City Engineer; F. W. Braun; J. A. Anderson, Attorney for the Harbor Commission and ex-member of the Board of Public Works; Leslie R. Hewitt, City Attorney; Frank Simpson; Joseph Scott, President of the Board of Education; M. H. Newmark, President of the Associated Jobbers; J. M. Schneider, President of the Merchants and Manufacturers' Association; A. P. Fleming, Secretary of the Harbor Commission; ex-Mayor M. P. Snyder, H. Jevne, O. E. Farish, President of the Realty Board; and F. J. Hart. Jess was elected President; Fleming, Secretary; and to the admirable manner in which they conducted the campaign, much of the ultimate success of the movement must be attributed. The delegates from San Pedro and Wilmington refused to go on until the Associated Jobbers had pledged themselves to obtain for the harbor districts, after consolidation was effected, the same freight advantages enjoyed by Los Angeles. This promise was given and fulfilled. Various other pledges were outlined in the Committee's report and adopted by the City Council; but many of these assurances have not thus far been carried out by the authorities. Then a vigorous campaign was projected, as a result of which both elections—that of Wilmington and Los Angeles on August 5th, and the other, of San Pedro and Los Angeles, on August 12th—resulted in handsome majorities for consolidation. These substantial victories were fittingly celebrated throughout the consolidated cities; and on February 13th, 1910, the port became officially known as Los Angeles Harbor.
In April, 1906, the one hundred thousand books of the Los Angeles Public Library, then under the administration of Charles F. Lummis, were moved from the City Hall to the Laughlin Building. With the opening of September, 1908, the Library was again moved by the same Librarian, this time to the Hamburger Building.[49]
On the evening of October 11th, 1909, I attended a banquet tendered to President Taft by the City of Los Angeles, at the Shrine Auditorium. Every honor was shown the distinguished guest, and his stay of two or three days was devoted to much sight-seeing, to say nothing of the patriotic efforts of many politicians whose laudable desire was to whisper in the Presidential ear à propos of government employment.
The election of George Alexander as Mayor on November 10th, 1909 was largely responsible for the later success of the Progressive party—with whose Socialistic policies I am not in sympathy. W. C. Mushet, the more acceptable candidate, ran on a ticket endorsed by business-men organized under the chairmanship of M. H. Newmark, while George A. Smith was the Republican candidate. Alexander's campaign was managed by Meyer Lissner, an arrival of 1896 who had a brief experience as a jeweler before he turned his attention to law. He possessed much political sagacity, and was therefore quick to turn the Alexander success to the advantage of Hiram Johnson who was soon elected Governor. George N. Black, who came here a child in 1886, and graduated from the Los Angeles High School, later being President of the California State Realty Confederation and Grand President of the Independent Order B'nai B'rith of this district, directed Smith's campaign.
On January 29th, 1910, the citizens of Los Angeles, under the leadership of Max Meyberg, tendered to D. A. Hamburger (Chairman), Perry W. Weidner, Fred L. Baker, William M. Garland, M. C. Neuner, Dick Ferris and F. J. Zeehandelaar, the committee in charge of the first Aviation Meet here, a banquet at the Alexandria Hotel. The contests had occurred a few days before at Dominguez Field, on a part of the once famous rancho; and to see the aërial antics of the huge man-made birds, as they swiftly ascended and descended, was no less nerve-racking, at least to me, than it was interesting.
Litigation having established a clear title to the property once held by the Sixth District Agricultural Association, and the State, the declared owner, having agreed to lease the ground to the County and the City for fifty years, decisive steps were taken in January, 1910, by the Historical Society of Southern California to provide the Museum building now such a source of civic pride. Other bodies, including the Fine Arts League, the Southern California Academy of Science and a branch of the Cooper Ornithological Society, were invited to coöperate, each being promised a place in the park and museum plans; and by the middle of February, the supervisors had agreed to vote the necessary building funds. On July 11th, 1910, in the presence of a large and representative gathering at Exposition Park, ground was broken for the building, although the corner-stone was not laid until the 10th of December.
In the dark hours of the night of April 25th, 1910, after an illness of four days and almost entirely free from suffering, she who had shared with me the joys and sorrows of over half a century was called to her reward. She passed from this life as she had passed through it—gently and uncomplainingly. I was left in the midst of a gloom that I thought would be forever black; for six out of our eleven children had preceded their mother, whose spirit on that night was reunited with theirs. I was soon to find, however, how true it is that "The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." Common misfortune and common memories made but stronger the tie, always strong, between my children and myself. Time has performed his kindly offices: he has changed the anguish of grief to the solace of recollection; and in assisting me to realize that I was permitted so long and so happy a companionship, he has turned my heart from its first bitterness to lasting gratitude.
At one o'clock in the morning of October 1st, 1910, occurred the most heinous crime in the history of Los Angeles. This was the dynamiting, by the evil element of union labor, of the building and plant of the Los Angeles Times, resulting in the sudden extinction of no less than twenty human lives and the destruction of the property of the corporation. The tragedy, lamented in obsequies of the most impressive kind ever witnessed in this city, was followed by the construction, on the same site and at the earliest moment, of the present home of the Times. The trial of some of those deemed responsible for this disaster brought to the fore John D. Fredericks, District Attorney[50] in 1900, 1902, 1906 and 1910.
Not the least of the many and far-reaching losses entailed through the ruin of this printery was a History of the Medical Profession of Southern California by Dr. George H. Kress, with an introduction by Dr. Walter Lindley—a work of extended research almost ready for publication. After all such material as could be saved from the ruins had been assembled, an abridged edition of the volume once planned was issued.
In strong contrast to this annihilation of man by his brother, were the peaceful exercises marking the afternoon of the previous Sunday, June 19th, when the Kaspare Cohn Hospital, on Stephenson Avenue, was dedicated; a worthy charity made possible through the munificence, several years before, of the pioneer after whom the hospital is named.
As Superintendent of City Schools here for four years beginning in 1906, C. E. Moore laid the foundation for that national reputation which, in July, 1910, led to his being called as a professor to Yale University.
Jacob A. Riis, the famous Danish-American sociologist, who was so instrumental in cleaning up New York's tenement districts, visited Los Angeles for the fourth time, on March 10th, 1911, lecturing at the Temple Auditorium on "The Battle with the Slum."
The City Council having created a Harbor Board, Mayor George Alexander, in October, 1909, appointed Stoddard Jess, Thomas E. Gibbon and M. H. Newmark as Commissioners. In March, 1911, at a popular election, the Board was made a charter body, and Mayor Alexander reappointed the gentlemen named. Owing, however, to the numerous difficulties thrown in the way of the Commissioners in the accomplishment of their work, M. H. Newmark resigned in December, 1911 and Stoddard Jess in January, 1912; while Thomas E. Gibbon, for many years one of the most formidable advocates of a free harbor, met with such continued obstacles that he was compelled, in the summer of 1912, to withdraw.
Having left Los Angeles, as I have said, in 1879, Myer J. Newmark made San Francisco his home until December, 1894, at which time he returned here and became associated with Kaspare Cohn. In December, 1905, he once more took up his abode in San Francisco where, on May 10th, 1911, he died at the age of seventy-two years.
The first issue of the Los Angeles Tribune, a wide-awake sheet projected by Edwin T. Earl, owner of the Express, appeared on July 4th, flying the banner of the Progressive party, but making its strongest appeal for support as the first one-cent morning newspaper on the Coast, and a readable journal advocating the moral uplift of the community. Like all the other newspapers of this period, the Tribune was illustrated with photo-engravings.
In 1911, William R. Hearst, of national newspaper fame, bought the Los Angeles Daily Herald, making it at the same time an evening newspaper and placing it under the management of Guy B. Barham. The latter had come to Southern California with his father, Richard M. Barham, who located in 1873 at Anaheim, conducting there the old Planters' Hotel. After school was out, Guy did chores. Graduating, he worked for Hippolyte Cahen, the Anaheim merchant; then he kept books for Eugene Meyer & Company, and in time became Deputy Internal Revenue Collector. For some years he has been a Custom House broker, in which activity, in addition to his newspaper work, he is still successfully engaged.
The Federal Telegraph Company, which had established itself in Los Angeles in the fall of 1910, inaugurated in July, 1911 a wireless service with San Francisco and other Coast cities; and just a year later it effected communication with Honolulu, although oddly enough at first, owing to atmospheric conditions, it was necessary to flash all messages across the waste of waters during the night. For some years, the giant steel masts erected by the Company in the southwestern part of the city have puzzled the passer-by.
At half-past three o'clock on November 28th, I turned the first spadeful of earth in the breaking of ground for the Jewish Orphans' Home of Southern California. This privilege was accorded me because, in response to the oft-expressed wish of my wife to assist those dependent children bereft of their natural protectors, I had helped, in a measure, shortly after her demise, to assure the success of the proposed asylum.
Sixteen years after Colonel Griffith J. Griffith agreeably surprised Los Angeles in the presentation of Griffith Park, his munificent bounty again manifested itself in another Christmas donation, that of one hundred thousand dollars for the construction of an observatory on Mount Hollywood, the highest point in Griffith Park. Incidental to the making of this gift, due official recognition of the Colonel's large-heartedness was displayed at a public meeting in the City Hall, in which I had the honor of participating.
M. A. Newmark & Company in February, 1912 removed to their present quarters on Wholesale Street—a building (it may some day be interesting to note) five stories high with a floor space of one hundred and thirty thousand square feet.
In common with the rest of the civilized world, Los Angeles, on April 15th, was electrified with the news of the collision between an iceberg and the great ocean steamer Titanic which so speedily foundered with her 1535 helpless souls. For a day or two, it was hoped that no one with Los Angeles connections would be numbered among the lost; but fate had decreed that my nephew, Edgar J. Meyer, a son of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Meyer, should perish. He was one of those who heroically hastened to the aid of the women and children; nor did he rest until he saw his wife and child placed in one of the lifeboats. They were saved, but he went down, with other gallant men, among whom I may mention Walter M. Clark, son of J. Ross Clark, of this city.
Nor can I refrain, while mentioning this awful catastrophe, from alluding to another example of courage and conjugal devotion[51] than which, perhaps, neither song nor story portrays one more sublime. As the huge liner was sinking into the dark abyss, one frail woman declined to become the beneficiary of that desperate command, "Women and children first!" The wife of Isadore Straus, unafraid though face to face with Death and Eternity, still clung to her loyal husband, refusing, even in that terrible moment, to leave him. She chose rather to die by his side; and as the black sea roared out its chill welcome, it received one who, in the manner of her going, left a precious heritage for all mankind.
