by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Bascom A. Stephens traveled through California and Arizona for nearly two decades at the end of the 19th century working as a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, journalist, and filibusterer, espousing his various causes (temperance, skewering the powerful, antagonizing his media rivals, bringing “enlightened” government by white persons to Baja California) with passion and a peculiar predilection for courting controversy.
He continued to do this as the 19th century crept to a close, operating a newspaper in San Diego called the Progress (the same name of the Pomona sheet he’d run a decade prior.) In August 1897, he ran afoul of L.L. Boone, called the “erstwhile editor” of the Pacific Wave by the Los Angeles Times, for which Stephens worked in at least two prior stints, pointing out that Boone was an attorney for a water delivery company that fought a water bond campaign in the city.
While it was certainly possible to express differences in a calm and reasonable manner, the world of journalism was highly competitive and often not particularly remunerative, so, especially in the age of so-called “yellow journalism,” it was often standard practice to attack a rival with “gloves off.” Stephens certainly did so, when he offered the critique that the flume company which Boone represented “sells dirty water and doesn’t pay its taxes” and then piled on with comments like “the crude way he has gone about” offering his views in the paper “betrays his ignorance of the first principles of journalism” while also mocking his origins from Pike County, Missouri, with the term “Pikes” being a common pejorative of the period.
Likely because of that particular personal attack, in which Stephens added that “Northern California,” where he was raised, “has been overrun with Pikers for the last fifty years,” since the Gold Rush and called them “a very undesirable class of immigrants,” Boone surprised Stephens on the street and “chocked [sic] him until his was blue in the face.” Two years later, in June 1899 ,after a typical short tenure with the Vidette, another San Diego paper, Stephens was attacked by its publisher, F.M. Gregg, who got a typical $3 fine for battery.
In summer 1901, Stephens told the Los Angeles Times that “three years ago I was editor of a daily newspaper in San Diego city, drawing my breath oftener than I drew my salary,” and, telling himself “this is wrong; something must be done,” (this sounds like something of a midlife crisis—Stephens was then 44 years old) he migrated back to Los Angeles. He added, “when I landed at the depot about October 1, 1899, I did not have a nickel to pay my street-car fare uptown.” He then found a job as a printer and, over three months, earned enough money to pay his costs and send something to his family—part one of this post included press reports that he abandoned his wife and children to take up with a married spiritualist when he went on his filibustering expedition in Baja California.
Though he only had a dollar to his name, as the last year of the century dawned, he obtained a press pass to go see the Kern River oil fields near Bakersfield, one of the key areas of the California petroleum boom underway, but as he headed to the train station, a friend slipped him a five-dollar bill. From there, he related,
With that $6 I lived like a prince among the oil kings of Bakersfield, and came home in two weeks with a deed to 160 acres of the best land in the Kern River oil district. I sold the deed to an oil company, helped organize another oil company, sold my interest in that and opened my present offices, in which I have been since April 7, 1900.
The Los Angeles Express of 19 March 1900 reported on the incorporation of the Juanita Oil Company with Stephens and four others issuing capital stock of $10,000 and $500 subscribed. Five days later, the Los Angeles Record did the same, but added some notable commentary on the state of the burgeoning industry. It observed that the large quantities of oil, which meant that “California in a few years will supersede Pennsylvania” as the nation’s leader in production, “will doubtless induce many . . . large manufacturing firms to establish plants in Los Angeles and vicinity.”
The 21 April edition of the paper included the first located ad that showed Juanita moved to a new model of stock issuing with a half-million shares issued at just a penny (the term “penny stock” generally now involved companies that issue stock at under a dollar per share) with a minimum of 100 shares sold by blocks. Stating that it “is the settled policy of the company to put the net profits of its producing wells into dividends upon the subscribed capital stock,” which was typical, it added that future issues would be for higher amounts, an encouragement for investors to get in “on the ground floor.”
It was added, however, that “the stock is guaranteed to be non-assessable by reason of a by-law which forbids the incurring of any indebtedness or the creation of any liability unless the money in payment for the same is first in the treasury.” The Times of 4 May briefly reported that “the Juanita Oil Company, which acquired more or less [a] reputation by selling its stock at 1 cent a share, expects to begin work soon” near McKittrick, while adding that leases were held at Summerland and Point Loma, near San Diego.”
A little over a week ago, the firm advertised the caution that “excitements are always injurious” and quoted “one of the world’s great teachers” that “under all circumstan[c]es keep an even mind.” Notably, this was from Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910), a professed clairvoyant known as the “Poughkeepsie Seer” for his trance teachings in that New York town and who is generally credited with being a founder of the modern spiritualist movement, though the ad did not mention Davis by name. The ad continued,
Some people are losing their heads in the present oil excitement. Every boom is bound to burst. One of these days the oil industry will settle down to be a legitimate business.
It was repeated that “stock [is] non-assessable” and that Juanita was working “oil bearing land at McKittrick, and proven oil land at Summerland.” Lastly, it was stated that the company “will begin work within ten days after closing out [the] first block of stock.” An ad at the end of month notified potential investors that “blue has the most rapid vibrations of the three primary colors” and so they were warned “get a rapid gait on yourself” and buy Juanita stock.
In a mid-June ad, the company asserted that, once its block of cheap stocks were sold, nothing would thereafter be available at less than a dollar a share and that this was expected to be the case by Thanksgiving, “so if you want to eat turkey, be sure to buy Juanita stock.” It then launched into a series of platitudes, such as that the firm’s directors “are prominent business men whose reputations for truth, honesty and integrity are unimpeached and unimpeachable” and that “founded in wisdom, integrity, experience and justice, she cannot fail.”
Three days later, Juanita offered a limerick: “Here in Los Angeles, if you’d be IT / Two things observe with care / Buy a big block / Of Juanita stock / And dine on Belgian hare.” By this time, moreover, two-cent stock was being offered on an inverted scale of doubling prices and halving shares. In other words, the initial half-million shares at a penny were to be followed by five blocks with prices going from two to 32 cents and share amounts dropping to as low as 15,625. To entice more investors, it was noted that the firm had four properties, one in South Los Angeles, and a 13-lot lease in Summerland.
The following day, 21 June, Stephens sent the Times a lengthy letter addressing comments made by the paper about Juanita’s stock scheme, including its observation that the firm “carefully refrains from informing the public that there are 10,000,000 shares in the company” and following this with “such methods of these are reprehensible and are not indulged in by straight companies.” Stephens insisted that “on all our letter-heads and in every circular which has been issued” the facts of the company’s stock issuance was “made plain and patent.”
The paper rejoined that whatever “graphic and picturesque” were the company’s published statements, they were “all in futuro” as to possible benefit to shareholders and it called the issuance based on a “preposterously large capitalization.” Moreover, it pointed out the Juanita could not claim it “owns any oil property of known productive value” or that any work was actually underway. Amid all of the claims of likely success, the Times noted that Juanita informed potential investors that “somewhere down deep in the bowels of the earth there is a deposit of this asphaltine [sic] petroleum.” It was also inconsistent in its statements about what land it owned or what was leased and utilizing the term “wildcat” for drilling in geologically unproved areas, it concluded,
this wildcat proposition of Mr. Stephens’s does not strike The Times as a strictly sound thing, and it therefore feels it was warranted in making the criticism to which the Juanita Oil Company’s president and general manager objects . . . Let the investing public investigate the enterprise, weight the proposition, and judge for itself. The Times entertains no doubt of the outcome:
“There is a wildcat in the pathless woods,
There is a bullfrog on the lonely shore.”
That couplet was an adaptation of Lord Byron’s 1812 romantic poem, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.” For the next nine months, there was almost no mention of Juanita’s activity in the papers and a reorganization was clearly in the works based on the unworkable nature of the firm’s initial plan. At the end of March 1901, the Times reported on a new incorporation of the firm, though still with the capitalization at “the modest sum of $10,000,000.”
An ad in the Record on the 23rd included the text of a telegram to Stephens from Summerland, a coastal oil town several miles east of Santa Barbara. Supervisor George Thompson informed Stephens that drilling on the first well was down 120 feet, with the expectation of hitting “liquid asphalt” at any time, while the rig for a second well was being built, as was an employees’ bunk house, and casing for the third well was underway.
A week later, an ad appeared in the Record of 30 March, where it was reported that the company’s first well in the McKittrick region west of Bakersfield was in the early stages of drilling and in which Stephens’ knack for snappy dialogue, honed through some two decades of journalism (tough to make it pay as it was). It was added, somewhat strangely, “Mr. Drill is the only oil expert, and what is more, he has the trait of character which illuminated the Father of his count[r]y, in that it never tells a lie.”
On 19 April, agent Clarence W. Roach was subscribed for an ad that said that “greater fortunes have been made out of oil than any other product mother earth has given up. Roach added that, comparatively, mining for oil was a much simpler proposition: “a drill is sent down to the oil; a pump is put to work, and that is the end to the expense,” while the money otherwise used in precious metal mining would go to further exploring the ledges and shafts “is used to drill several other wells.” Moreover, it was stated that “dividends from these oil wells have made millionaires out of men who had only a small capital with which to start.”
Roach asserted that Juanita “is not a speculating company” because it “has the finest oil lands in this state” with “one fine [producing?] well” and another under drilling. Adding that “wise ones who get in now will make fortunes,” the agent exhorted readers to “buy Juanita stock at once before it goes up” in price and concluded, “oil made [John D.] Rockefeller millions, why not yours?” Whether Henry C. McNutt, a 45-year old hotel-keeper in Crown Point, New York along the banks of Lake Champlain, expected a massive windfall from his 200 shares on the certificate featured here acquired a few months prior or not is highly unlikely. We also do not know what the price per share was at the start of the new century.
At the end of April, Stephens acquired a controlling interest in the Pioneer Oil Company, becoming its president and general manager for the firm which had a ten-year lease on 16 acres at the southwest corner of Fourth and Rosedale (soon renamed Normandie) streets in today’s Wilshire Center area west of downtown Los Angeles. A well, drilled down nearly 750 feet, was expected to completed in a week, with eleven more to follow, and 10,000 shares of stock issued at a quarter each.
An early May article in the Ventura Free Press related that three wells were to be “put on the pump within a few days” and Stephens said to have “made arrangements by which the company will net one dollar per barrel for its oil.” It was added that those 10,000 shares were put out on offer and half were purportedly sold, so it was deemed that “Pioneer Petroleum is one of the best financial investments in the United States” and that “Mr. Stephens’ reputation for success and integrity guarantees that this stock will ultimately go to par.” Not only this, he “is known to be a man faithful to his word, and can conscientiously recommend this company as one well worthy of investment.”
In its 10 July edition, however, the Times published a lengthy article on Juanita, stating that it “has levied an assessment of one cent a share on its subscribed stock, whereat a portion of the stockholders are raising a howl, because they were assured when they invested in the paper that it was non-assessable.” Stephens, deemed “pretty much the whole thing in the management of its affairs” as well as “an eccentric individual,” told the paper that it was necessary to levy the assessment because activity on the company’s wells ground to halt around the first of June. It was added that, while those original penny shares sold well, this was less the case when the price went up to a quarter each.
Moreover, it was reported that “agents of the company did a lucrative business for a while by buying up the 1-cent shares and selling them at higher prices” though Juanita “profited little from the extensive speculation.” With funds running out, the assessment was levied, otherwise the firm’s leases would have been forfeited. In a recent shareholder newsletter, Stephens acknowledged that the firm had no producing wells on its wildcat lands, but averred that these were “equal to the best oil lands held by any company in California.”
He also admitted that “the revenues of the company from the beginning to the present have been solely from the sales of stock” and, while Juanita shares were advertised to be free from assessment, he fell back on the argument that state law required that all stock be assessable. It was only from his “moment of weakness” that Stephens allowed agents to continue to claim otherwise, but “circumstances alter cases.” He told the paper that, after the assessment call, “the checks and money orders are rolling in” and “all seem to be satisfied” except for the agents who sold stock under the illusion and he expressed confidence that work would soon resume.
Again, the president claimed that the agents told him the stock could only be sold if advertised as not assessable, but he also stated that “anybody ought to know that all stocks” were subject to the levy. Vice-President William M. Richards, however, “did not attempt to conceal his disapproval,” letting the Times know “he had come down here from San Francisco for the express purpose of looking into the affairs of the company, and he was not very well pleased with what he had learned.” He said he’d resigned, offering that “Stephens is it” in terms of active management” and reiterated what was advertised—that the company’s by-laws explicitly stated the non-assessment provision” and concluded “I think the property might be saved by judicious management, which, in my opinion, it has never had.”
The situation worsened in a bizarre fashion with the next day’s edition of the Times under the title of “Oil and Spirits Strangely Mixed.” The paper pointed out that Summerland was long a stronghold of spiritualists—in fact, the word meant a paradise-like place after death to adherents who can communicate with spirits residing there—but it went on that “no one suspected that the spooks would become pioneers in the oil industry.” It was added that, “the Juanita Oil Company is one of the corporations which is said to have had spiritual guidance, according to letters alleged to have been written by its president, Bascom A. Stephens, extracts from which have fallen into the hands of some of the stockholders and which seem to have thrown some light on the remarkable manner in which the company has been managed.”
The paper noted that there was an organization called the Sun Angels’ Order of Light, with Stephens said to be a member and referring in letters to his fellow angels how he got into the oil business thanks to spiritual guidance. One missive purportedly included:
The more I went into the Silence, the more I felt the necessity of material wealth to do certain work on the earth plane, and the more I felt I could get it first through oil, and that I should come to Los Angeles, where conditions were more favorable for my plans of development. Accordingly I came here last September [1899]. In the Silence daily I demanded to be led. I need not record the details, but when I stood at the bottom of the cañon on my McKittrick lands on the 30th of last January [1900], I knew that there is one place where I will get a “gusher.”
Stephens went on to describe how, through “the Silence,” he “floated right out of my body” and was carried over the earth to Summerland, where, at the end of a wharf, he could see a gusher at his side. He added “I was so deep in trance, and the scene was so beautiful.” One the “angels” through her psychic powers was taken to a specific location “west of Ortega hill” and Stephens talked of how “Sister Anna,” Mrs. A.M. Daniels, found the spot where wealth was to be found “in the vast and valuable deposit of liquid asphalt.”
Determining that the property contained north of $4 million of oil, Stephens then wrote that “the property of the Juanita company at McKittrick must be worth many times more” and added that “the spirit world reserved it for those who could and will invest it right—to advance the interests of humanity—to use if unselfishly.” It wasn’t just oil that was laid aside for the “Children of Light,” he asserted; “frequently as I sit in the Silence I have a strong drawing come over me toward a gold mine east of Los Angeles, somewhere in the Colorado Desert, which I will have in time, but it takes a mine to work a mine.” Once the oil money rolled in, he could turn to that source of wealth, made known to him by “Sister Anna.”
The self-described “visionary” insisted that “the gushers will surely be struck” if those assessments were properly paid, but the Times recorded that the McKittrick leases were forfeited, even though several acres at Summerland remained and awaited the money to continue drilling. It was in a letter to a prospective Juanita investor in the east that Stephens related how he got to Los Angeles with almost no money and somehow obtained the leases that led to the company’s formation.
As stock sales trickled in and he went without food in his tribulations, the spiritualist capitalist claimed that for three days he intoned “I am the conscious master of my conditions” until “its vibrations” sent someone to his office to buy stock—from that day onward, Stephens wrote, he ate three square meals a day.” He avowed “I am determined to be as rich if not richer than John D. Rockefeller” and added that he’d accumulated $3,000 after expenses, supporting his family and running Juanita, which, he insisted, “now has two wells that will soon be put to the pump.”
The Times, meanwhile, quoted a Nevada banker and stockholder who decried the “big fake” perpetrated by the assessment and lamented that he promoted Juanita to colleagues and friends and was now seen as “a d—d liar” in “a dirty peace of business.” Seventeen Chinese investors in San Francisco lodged protests, while a Los Angeles company director holding 60,000 shares said he could not and would not pay up.
On the 16th, the Times reported on a special meeting of the company about delinquent assessments and the unlikely prospects for the firm recouping those funds. The paper mockingly suggested that, once he came out of “the Silence,” Stephens might “project his astral body into some distant or nearby cañon, and discover a new gusher.” Unsurprisingly, no such spiritualist practice could save Stephens or Juanita from collapsing.
He did continue on as an oil and mining broker and turned to another pet project, the division of California with the establishment of the state of Southern California, as well as his interests in charter reform and good governance through Republican Party Progressivism and the idea of dividing other states in western America to give the region more senators and power in Washington. In 1908, he criticized the arrests of Mexicans in Los Angeles under the assertion that this was done to placate Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who was, however, soon driven from power in the ensuing revolution.
Labeled “a perennial joke” by the Times a few years after the Juanita fiasco, Stephens died of nephritis, or kidney inflammation. He was hardly rare in his loose methods of operation in oil prospecting and may be seen as something of a precursor, though on a far smaller scale, to such future hucksters as C.C. Julian. His spiritualist bent, however, makes for an unusual twist in the “Drilling for Black Gold” series of posts on this blog.