by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This post takes us back some 150 years ago to a Los Angeles in the midst of its first development boom, which began in the late 1860s and continued through the mid 1870s, when the bust came with a Virginia City, Nevada silver mine stock bubble burst, coupled with the “Long Depression,” a worldwide downturn that began in 1873 and continued for several years. One of the casualties of the financial collapse was the Temple and Workman bank, the poor management and precarious economic position of which was not realized until the crash came.
The highlighted object from the Museum’s holdings is the 7 March 1873 edition of the Los Angeles Express, a daily launched two years prior and published by George A. Tiffany and associates. While Angel City papers of the era rarely had news on the front page, which was usually devoted to the advertisements that paid for the cost of publishing, this one has a reprint from the San Francisco Bulletin titled “Enamored of a Celestial” and which represented the virulent anti-Chinese sentiment in California at the time—this was under a year-and-a-half since the horrific Chinese Massacre at Los Angeles in late October 1871.
The account concerned “a young lady of rare beauty and intelligence combined with keen wit and a thorough mastery of the graces and the drawing room and, above all, possessed of fascinating amiability and benevolence” who visited San Francisco from New York City. She was known in her hometown for her work with the poor and in missions and was in the northern California metropolis “during the recent season of Celestial festivities,” meaning the Chinese New Year, when “many Americans availed themselves to visit leading Chinese houses of the city and partake of the hospitalities of the inmates.”
In this case, the unidentified woman was said to be enjoying her sojourn with the Chinese, but,
In the accountant of a large tea store she met, as she thought, her fate, and at once fell in love with him. He is an intelligent Celestial, of a graceful figure and manly bearing, taller than the average of his countrymen, and apparently about twenty-six years of age. His complexion is fresh, clear and nearly white, his cheeks showing just a dash of the ruddy tint of the pippin, and his teeth seem very pearls. She . . . was captivated by the charms of his conversation and especially his analysis of Confucian lore. The young accountant was also smitten by cupid’s dart . . .
This nascent love affair, however, alarmed the woman’s friends. who “endeavored to change her taste,” but, “all remonstrance failed to wean her affection from the Celestial” and “the abnormal affection intensified.” This led to a rupture among the lady and her friends through “a social earthquake in the house where she figured as a guest,” so the only solution was that “her friends were finally compelled to hasten her eastward, to avert an alliance that would have rent the atmosphere of social propriety like a thunderbolt.” Miscegenation laws existed in most states and it wasn’t until the United States Supreme Court decided the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that they were deemed unconstitutional.
The second page, generally devoted to editorials, telegraph reports from elsewhere in the state and nation and some local news, included a report about the increase in the drilling of artesian wells (a new town, Artesia, would soon be established in the area) to tap into abundant underground aquifers. Because of these, the Express observed, “as a natural and beneficent consequence, the area of cultivation is being constantly extended” and it reported that Robert M. Town, living “on the Anaheim road,” roughly where Interstate 5 passes through the Orange County city of Buena Park, found water at 130 feet with his well. Town later was a founder of Pomona where Towne Avenue bears his misspelled name.
The paper continued that the area included other wells and added that “every supply of water this obtained is of great benefit to the county, giving a new impetus to the blessed work of irrigation” for agriculture. While the burgeoning population in the region later in the 19th century and into the 20th necessitated the importation of water through marvels of engineering like the Los Angeles and Colorado River aqueducts, the Express concluded with the prediction that,
The day will come when, by means of the wells thus obtained and the more careful and judicious use of the springs and running streams, every foot of our agricultural land will be brought under regular cultivation.
As for “The Crop Prospect,” it was observed that “the farmers and planting and plowing for corn,” while “the barley planted before the rains is sure to give a good yield.” In fact, it was stated that the plantings of this latter were twice as large as the prior year and William Workman, on his vast portion of Rancho La Puente, had a substantial barley field not far from his homestead.
His major crop, however, was wheat, of which there several thousand acres in the broad plain to the north where West Covina and Baldwin Park are located, and the Express added that “more wheat is being sown than ever before.” Rye was mentioned as were “large numbers of fruit trees” being planted, while “the vineyards are all looking well,” this was another important part of the Workman agricultural activity.” Lastly, castor beans were noted as under less acreage than 1872 and the totality of farming was said to result in “a fine crop.”
Another agriculture-related piece concerned a call by the paper “to the desirability of a beet sugar manufactory in this city” adding that “our merchants and capitalists would do well to think upon it.” Moreover, fruit growers just starting out with citrus or whatever they were growing would benefit by raising the plant that produced an alternative to sugar produced from cane and who “are waiting for their orchards to attain a bearing age.”
The Express pointed out that a sugar beet factory at Alvarado, now part of Union City in Alameda County south of Oakland, “has made the town” with there being “a flourishing settlement now where formerly there was but a dull and unknown village.” It concluded that “a factory here . . . would be of immense benefit,” but it would not be until the next major boom, in the last half of the 1880s, that Richard Gird of Chino would establish the region’s first sugar beet factory, with other later opening in such places as Clearwater and Hynes, now Paramount, and Los Alamitos, while the Oxnard brothers, who worked for Gird, later became major producers in their namesake Ventura County city.
The report of the prior evening’s meeting of the Common (City) Council, which included William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead owners William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, among its members, included a determination from a special committee that builder James M. Riley satisfactorily concluded his work on the new high school. A lengthy report was made by the superintendent of streets with respect to surveys for extending and widening thoroughfares, including San Fernando Road north to the city limit and Aliso Street and its crossing of the Los Angeles River.
With the grading and filling completed at the new bridge spanning the river, city-owned carts could be reassigned to work at other locales, including the intersection of Aliso and Alameda, where a culvert was proposed to drain water posing flooding problems for adjoining properties lying lower than those streets. It was also noted that “there are other bad places in the immediate vicinity, which require special attention.”
With respect to the bridge, which was the only covered one built in the region, the council adopted an ordinance “which makes it a misdemeanor to ride or drive . . . at a gait faster than a walk; or to injure or deface the same by posting thereon any bills or notices, or painting thereon.” Those found guilty of violating the ordinance were subject, on first offense, to a fine ranging from $5 to $25 and, subsequently, from $10 to $50, with half paid to any informer. Signs in English and Spanish were to be placed at the ends of the span as notification.
The Plaza, the historic center of pre-American Los Angeles, was previously a largely barren and unattractive space, but the council accepted a proposal from Timothy Sullivan, for $25 monthly, “to lay out walks, plant trees, irrigate, etc.” at what was called the “Public Plaza and City Park.” There was a provision that “his services may be dispensed with at any time if he [should] fail to carry out his part of the contract.” Among those who was involved in contributing to the beautification effort was Councilmember Workman’s brother Elijah, an enthusiastic horticulturist, whose Moreton Bay fig trees are still growing there, save one which fell several years ago.
There was also significant discussion of sewerage from the gas works across Main Street from the Plaza, with Workman and Frank Sabichi suggesting a pipe be laid to the river to divert the sewerage, while Matthew Teed recommended a box sewer in a northerly continuation of Los Angeles Street toward the Plaza and through the Calle de los Negros, which then housed the city’s small Chinatown.
Prudent Beaudry, a major landholder and developer who would soon be mayor, countered that both ideas were too expensive “and could not result in more than lopping off a small branch of the evil, without reaching its root.” He asserted that the gas works was “a great public nuisance and injury” and “is a damage to every one” while “all the leading hotels [the Pico House being directly across the street], and all that portion of the city, are annoyed by the smell and smoke.”
Continuing that visitors marveled that the works was allowed to remain in the city and that they “are driven away by this cause,” Beaudry acknowledged that, while the company could not be forced to move unless it was paid a bonus of some $17,000, even with some improvements it made, “he would favor the removal of the works . . . if an amicable arrangement can be made with the company.”
After Workman replied that Beaudry’s proposition was also too costly, while Sabichi and Teed repeated their suggestions as the best means for dealing with the issue, a good deal more time was taken on the matter with the Council ordering that the Committee on Sewers research the other ideas, while the Gas Committee was tasked with entering into negotiations with the gas company “as to the practicability and cost of removing the works across the river” to what soon became Boyle Heights, developed by Workman and others two years later. The works were, though, moved to Aliso Street east of Alameda.
The third page, devoted principally to local news, included a lengthy description of a masquerade at the Germania (Turn Verein) Hall on Spring Street. Accounted “one of the most successful masquerades that ever occurred on this Coast,” the event featured “a very handsome tableau” with “a graceful but singular picture of all nationalities grotesquely mingled.”
Among these were a Pilgrim, a gorilla (representing Africans?), “two well made-up China-women” and a “Chinese vegetable peddler;” two Indians said to be “heap big chiefs” and “a fine buxom Pocahontas;” Italian peasants; Irish and Scotch persons; Spanish ladies; clowns and harlequins; troubadours and minstrels; and others. The paper then noted that
Particularly noticed, however, were six figures in black dominos, with cowls and cords, and the death’s-heads and ominous letter Ks, representing the Ku-Klux [Klan]. They had all the murdering paraphernalia of the klan on their persons. With true Ku-Klux instinct, their very first move was to make a raid on the County Treasury. But Mr. [Thomas E.] Rowan [the county treasurer, whose successor from 1876-1878 was F.P.F. Temple] was too much for hem, and the funds are still intact.
Why these figures of the KKK were considered acceptable for a social event is beyond our understanding and it may be that the general marginalization of Black Angelenos was such that no one gave the idea a second thought as to the consequences. In fact, the Express averred that “nothing of an offensive, harsh or inopportune nature occurred to ruffle the smoothness or disturb the harmony of the evening,” and it can be assumed that most, if not all, the participants were white.
Following the unmasking, with it being reported that almost no one guessed the identities of their fellow attendees, dancing was indulged in “until the matin bells,” or an early morning call to prayer, summoned the vast assemblage away. The article concluded in a burst of purple prose that “thus another night of surpassing enjoyment was handed over to the memory of the few marrless pleasures that leave unblemished sports on the motley page of our routine pilgrimage.”
Another entertainment mentioned was a grand concert to be held at the Merced Theatre, adjacent to the Pico House and near the gas works and Plaza, for the benefit of Madame Pauline von Gulpen (1835-1908). She was a singer who was first married to a son of John A. Sutter, the Sacramento area rancher whose mill in the Sierra Nevada Mountains was where the Gold Rush started and whose second husband was carriage-maker and pianist Charles (Carl) von Gulpen (his first wife, Mathilde, sang with him in the early Gold Rush years in San Francisco.)
Among the performers were local “talented amateurs” like the long-time teacher and guitarist Miguel S. Arévalo, who settled in Los Angeles two years prior, and Pauline’s son from her first marriage, Alphonse Sutter. With operatic pieces, guitar and piano solos and other works, the paper stated that “there will be a general desire to enjoy the pleasure of the novelty” and “a very artistic performance” was anticipated “for the benefit of a lady who deserves well of the music-loving community.”
A lengthy article also covered an examination held by the justice of the peace at El Monte concerning the homicide by William E. Parker of Waterman Nelson at the Rancho Azusa a week prior. Witnesses testified that the two men had a dispute about lumber the latter sold the former, but with Nelson claiming Parker stole the material by not paying for it. After some strong words, Nelson fetched a shotgun, fired two shots indiscriminately, and approached Parker, who was behind his wagon. When Nelson continued his advance, his adversary stepped out and, with an undefined weapon, fired. The piece concluded that “the Justice believed the act to have been done in self-dense and discharged the defendant from custody.”
This issue of the Express provides an interesting and diverse mix of material pertaining to a Los Angeles that was in transition from a frontier town to a small, but rapidly growing, city. We’ll continue to offer more newspapers from the first half of the 1870s and that first boom in future installments of the “Read All About It” series, so keep an eye out for those.