by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With the Homestead’s collection of historical newspapers, many of them dating to the first half of the 1870s when greater Los Angeles was undergoing its first major period of growth, we have an opportunity to understand a good deal about the region. Sometimes the issues are heavy with news, while on other occasions the editorials might have the more notable content.
The featured newspaper for this post is the 19 April 1874 edition of the Los Angeles Star and it is in the second page editorial section that we find most of the interesting material. Under the heading of “John Barleycorn,” we find editor Benjamin C. Truman writing at length about temperance and the efforts, mainly led by women, to clamp down on the prevalence of alcohol, principally consumed by men, at the time.
Calling himself “the temperate editor” of the publication, Truman noted that he felt that “the woman’s crusade was ill advised and a burlesque on reform,” but that, in so doing, “he has incurred the ill-will of half a dozen reformed drunkards, either through the medium of print or speech.” Asserting that such attacks were unwarranted, he added that he’d hoped “that the laborers in the temperance cause may be successful in diminishing the evils which we are all united in deploring,” even if there were varied views “as to how the proper remedy [is] to be applied.”
Truman commented that “we do not find that remedy in total abstinence or prohibition” because “It is as illogical to hold the sale of stimulating drinks responsible for intemperance as it would be to hold the sale of meat responsible for dyspepsia.” He claimed that it was hardly proof of a problem for consumption of alcohol to take place when “the nations that drink most, the Anglo-Americans, Germans, and Russians, rule the world, intellectually, morally, and physically. It was abuse the required intervention, Truman held, and he continued
Of the woman’s praying crusade it must be remarked that the home is the place where the woman’s best work must be done, and there is the place for social reforms to begin. Let the turbulent mothers whose hands itch to regulate everybody’s business but their own, give their time and attention to the art of supplying the first want of the human stomach—wholesome food; to teaching their daughters—the wives and mothers of the future—how to make good soup, good bread, good coffee. These seem to becoming lost arts with the women of America. How many of these fanatical female temperance brawlers, do you suppose, can send their fathers, husbands, brothers, or sons to their daily toil beaming with the effect of a cup of coffee . . .
Why, after then referring to temperance advocates s those who “unsex themselves” with their vehement protests, Truman professed to be shocked that “we are assailed—we who have never lain in the gutters or been caried [sic] home on a shutter or carried up stairs” after a binge is notable. The publisher noted that a local temperance leader a few days prior “declared that we had feebly attempted to argue intemperance by the Bible,” but corrected his critic by noting that “we had merely alluded pleasantly to the fact that Christ turned water into wine” and that there were several references in the scriptures to drinking. He added that he did not mention Noah or Lot, the first the only human worth saving with the Flood and the latter “an exceptional favorite of the Almighty” and both said to have “drank to excess.”
Truman advised that, because “the craving for liquor comes from the stomach,” the best solution was that “those who are wasting time and money in a vain attempt to close saloons” should focus on promoting “coffee-houses, where there can be obtained for a fair price a good cup of coffee or tea, and a good, plain lunch.” Urban men, he claimed, ate their lunches in a time crunch and this meant that “the temptation to combine drinking with eating is almost irresistible.”
Also interesting is the argument that it was better “to cultivate the taste of wine and beer at home and abroad, and eschew the use of spirit as much as possible” because “vineus and malt liquors are healthy, invigorating and social, more so than tea or coffee.” Truman ended by quoting at great length from the Chicago Tribune in what he felt was one of the “best articles . . . on the subject of the crusade against stimulating drinks.” That piece averred that “the fervor of the intemperate temperance women is abating, dying” with no fewer saloons or drunks that before the movement began.
It continued that “if prayer is a cure for the evils of intemperance, it is certainly as effectual when offered up at home as in a saloon; when performed in a legal manner . . . as in an illegal and fanatical way.” The Tribune acknowledged that “there is a vast deal of drunkenness in the country” and that is was “an evil—a very great evil,” but legislation failed, as had prayer. For the paper, the question was not of banning all alcoholic beverages, but that it had to be recognized that “there may be an abundance of wine in a country and its inhabitants be sober,” with France, Germany, Italy and Spain as cited examples. Also considered important was “pure and wholesome” beverages and the Chicago paper concluded,
Why not legislate the liquor, not the man? There is certainly a very great inconsistency in the law which punishes the sale of unwholesome food and permits that of unwholesome liquors. This is the direction, it seems to us, which enlightened legislation on the matter before us will take in the future. If the demonstrations of the praying women should have called attention to this, they will not be entirely without fruit.
In the following four decades, in fact, the temperance movement achieved its goal of legislating state and national prohibition by going after the man and not the beverage, though Prohibition turned to be a failed social experiment and the 18th Amendment remains the only one to have been repealed, when this was done in late 1933, fourteen years after adoption.
Another interesting piece on the editorial page was the sixth part of an article on “The Colorado Desert” by “J.J.W.,” this being Juan José (Jonathan Trumbull) Warner, who came to Los Angeles in the late 1820s and was a frequent contributor to Angel City newspapers on regional history and other topics. Here, Warner claimed that the “northeasterly current of air” in southern California was the northern portion of the trade winds and that this was “the slower movement of the air than that of the periphery of the earth in its revolution upon its axis.”
It was added that the equator of the planet had a velocity of 1,000 miles per hour and he ventured the thought that “if there were no inequalities of the elevation of the land portion of the earth’s surface” or if these were all east to west,” there would be a “lagging of the atmosphere behind the movement of the solid earth” which would create “an easterly wind of such violence” that there’d be no plant and animal growth on the planet.
What struck Warner, however, was that air flows in the Colorado Desert were such that they could not be explained by “any meteorological law,” so he posited that there were “veins of wind” from a “great body of upper air” that was “lagging behind the movement of the solid earth” so that easterly winds of much strength were joined by heated air and causing slivers to be spread throughout the region and “bent down towards the earth” and “driven through it with all the force of the great body of the easterly flow.” Hitting mountains at the western edge, these winds, he hypothesized, split again, with some winds following the face of these ranges and along valley surfaces, while others move over or through the mountains towards the ocean.
Warner then offered another theory of an “electrical force developed by heat in or over the trough” where the winds were situated, but such a possibility was considered outside “our (or at least my own) limited knowledge” and, therefore, “one difficult to sustain.” In advance of a final, seventh part of his essay, the writer concluded that “these desiccating winds which are apparently a great curse to California” merged with the heated valley air were to be considered “safe-guards to the fertility of at least the southern part of California.” Warner, however, felt that understanding the reasons why the climate changed in Arizona could help know “what might result in this part of California, could a change . . . be made in the climate of the Colorado valley.”
There are also a pair of page-two poems, one by Cecil Clifford “for the Star” and which is titled “Unrest.” Here are some samples of the versifying:
Queen Autumn reigned that day o’er all the earth,
Painting the woods with gold and ruby red;
And scattered at our feet upon the hearth
Fair trophies, dying—dead . . .
Far to the sunny southeast; where no night,
No winter of the year can every come;
But where Queen Summer reigns forever bright,
In her perpetual home . . .
Mine [phantom] rolls on the tumultuous sea of life,
And oft the angry waves sweep o’er the deck,
Taking all peace and quiet in this strife
And leaving but a wreck.
The shadows of the past still hover round,
Passed by the grim demon of despair.
Dear friend, where shall sweet perfect peace be found?
Alas! Alas! not here.
A contribution in the Wilmington Journal from 11 April, when a visitor arrived at the port there was a song “Dedicated to Miss Emelina Mellus of Wilmington.” The composer was Stephen Charnock Massett (1819-1898,) a fascinating character who had a national reputation as an entertainer in song, humor, and theatrical presentation. Born in London, Massett migrated to America at age 18 and settled in Buffalo, ostensibly to take up legal studies, but he quickly became known for his acting, including in Shakespeare’s “Richard III.”
In 1841, after a brief period in New York City, Massett relocated to Charleston, South Carolina, and became known for his songs and stage work, though he traveled to far-flung parts of the globe, including Turkey, which he visited in 1843 and of which he wrote an essay that had wide circulation a decade later. When news of the California Gold Rush reached him, Massett took a ship for El Dorado and arrived in San Francisco in mid-June 1849 after nearly 100 days of travel. On the 22nd, he gave a concert that was adjudged the first of its kind in American-era California and he briefly served as editor of the Marysville Herald.
Massett, however, was a peripatetic figure and wandered far, wide and often over much of his life. In 1850, for example, he toured in Australia and Hawaii and returned to the “land down under” seven years later. At the end of the decade, he performed extensively in the South, Midwest and East Coast and returned to San Francisco for a short tour in fall 1859. Returning to New York City, he joined the staff of the Spirit of the Times and did theatrical work, as well, though when he registered for the draft in 1863 during the Civil War, his listed occupation was waiter.
That year, however, saw the publication of his best known work, Drifting About, or What Jeems Pipes of Pipesville Saw and Did. The character of “Jeems Pipes” was a persona for Massett and Pipesville was said to be the Mission District of San Francisco, as the writer used humor and other elements to share stories that resonated with a good number of readers. He returned to California in 1864, 1868 and 1871 to perform for sizable audiences and made his only known visit to Los Angeles as the city was growing sufficiently to attract troupes and individuals like Massett to perform for locals.
Massett’s song includes the lyrics:
I have gazed on the face of the lovely and gay,
And watched the love sparkle from eyes passing bright,
But the brightness that glows in the morn’s early ray,
Is the glance of thine eye—is the life of its light!
When I saw thee, I thought how my heart would be blest
By one word from those lips, than the roses more red;
And the smile that thou gav’st lulled my spirit to rest,
But with it, alas! all my happiness fled!
Though I leave thee, I cannot forget thee; oh, never!
Thine eye is my guide star on life’s stormy wave,
And believe me, my heart will be with thee forever!
And beat for thee only till it rests in the grave!
It should be noted that Emelina had just turned 17 years of age, while the lyricist was soon to turn 55. She was the daughter of the late merchant Francis Mellus and Adelaida Johnson (who was half-American and half-Mexican) while her stepfather was David W. Alexander, a close friend and business associate of several members of the Workman and Temple family. In November 1875, Emma, as she was known commonly, married William S. Lyon and the couple had two children, and she lived in greater Los Angeles until her death in 1941.
Local news was a bit sparse, with the “Local News in Brief” noting that Massett’s “farewell entertainment” at the Merced Theater was to take place on the 21st and readers advised to secure a reserved seat and “see the inimitable ‘Jeems’ and have a good laugh.” The notorious bandido Tiburcio Vásquez was on the run in the region and the paper joked that a rumor he “took away the city time yesterday was a mistake” because ” he wouldn’t have that old clock,” meaning the oft-broken one Jonathan Temple built atop what was then the county courthouse “as a gift.”
Legal items, a warning to “special taxpayers” of a penalty for not paying assessments on time, the return home of La Crónica editor Eulogio de Célis, and a note that railroad shipments for local farms included oranges, lemons, wine and brandy, corn meal and wool were also mentioned. So, too, was the news that the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad, oft-mention in this blog, met at the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank and elected officers, including F.P.F. Temple as president, ex-Governor John G. Downey (of Farmers’ and Merchants’ and a friendly rival of Temple) as treasurer, and Charles E. Beane (former publisher of the defunct Los Angeles News) as secretary.
Among the advertisements was a full column one for the sale of more than a million dollars of jewelry, watches, silverware and other items at the city’s Skating Rink, near the Court House, but with the proviso that all would be sold at just $1 on a “general average plan” by which, due to the national depression that burst forth the prior year, manufacturers sold direct to consumers by bypassing importers, jobbers, and retail and wholesale dealers. The hitch was that a buyer purchased a “strapped box” not knowing what was inside, only that their dollar meant that they “may receive a valuable Gold or Silver Watch, a Diamond set of Jewelry, a Diamond Pin, Ring, or some other valuable article.” The sale was for three days only, through the 21st and open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Also of note was a May Day Ball to be held at Forst’s Hotel in El Monte, with its noted that “the proprietor will make ample preparations to have an enjoyable affair in every respect” with supper promised to be “one of the leading attractions” of the affair.” Also of interest was that the Los Angeles and San Pedro Railroad, built by local capital in 1869 to run from the Angel City to the port at Wilmington and acquired by the Southern Pacific Railroad three years later as a deal was made for that transportation giant to build its main line from the north to Yuma through Los Angeles, completed its Anaheim Branch Line within the last several days and the schedule announced.
We’ll return soon with another “Read All About It” post highlighting a historic newspaper from the Museum’s holdings so keep an eye out for that.