by Paul R. Spitzzeri
This latest “Read All About It” post featuring historic greater Los Angeles newspapers looks at the four-page edition of the Los Angeles Express from 29 May 1874, during which time the region was in the most active part of its first boom, small as it was compared to most of the many which followed. From its founding in late March 1871 to almost exactly four years later, it was under the proprietorship of Tiffany and Company, which began as an association of five printers, the brothers George and Jesse Yarnell, Miguel Varela, John W. Paynter and George A. Tiffany.
Soon, the first three left the enterprise and Henry C. Austin joined, but, in October 1872, he departed, leaving Paynter and Tiffany to run the paper until it was sold to a joint stock company headed by James J. Ayers and Joseph D. Lynch. It appears that Paynter (1843-1888), a native of Missouri who arrived in Los Angeles in 1867, handled the printing part of the business, while Tiffany was responsible for the content as editor.
Tiffany (1844-1906) was born in Greenfield, southwest of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his family were among the earliest settlers less than a decade prior to his birth. This included his grandfather, also George Augustus, and his father, George Oliver, both of whom had some fairly prominent roles in the early development of the burg before Germans arrived en masse and made it famous for its brewing industry.
The Tiffanys were farmers in that area until fall 1866 when they migrated to Los Angeles, perhaps for health reasons as the only other child, Cornelia, died a few years after settling in the Angel City. In any case, George O. became a farmer and rancher, but also secured some federal jobs as a receiver of public monies and an inspector of items subject to licensing and taxation.
By 1870, George A. established a job printing office for almost any type of work, such as invoices, receipts, bills, flyers and so on and this naturally led to the establishment of the Express. A rival, the Los Angeles Star (the city’s first newspaper, launched in May 1851 and continuously published except for the period of 1864-1868) of 28 March 1871, briefly recorded that first issue of the afternoon daily, with it stated that “the proprietors see a good opening for such an enterprise, and are determined to occupy the field,” with the Star charitably noting the new sheet was “a very neatly printed and well filled paper” and offering its best wishes for “an abundant harvest.”
The competition became even fiercer when the Los Angeles Herald was launched in October 1873 by a recent transplant from Santa Barbara, Charles A. Storke, who, however, soon went bankrupt, so that paper was acquired by a syndicate, including F.P.F. Temple, that ran it under a joint stock arrangement. In fact, an editorial in this issue of the Express concerned the printing contract for the city, which was a welcome supplement of income along with advertising for newspapers, with the sheet unhappy that the Common (City) Council, having initially given the contract to it, “reconsidered its action and gave it to the Herald.”
Apparently, this was because the latter offered a lower bid, the standard for municipal contracting, but the Express insisted that “our bid was the best for the city” and added that it was “clear and explicit and covered all the City Printing” while its rival “was indefinite and ambiguous” regarding its promised work and was liable to be potentially more costly because of “extra expenditure for printing not clearly specified in the bid.”
Sure enough, the piece continued, the printing of an amended city charter and the Herald “claimed that that was extraordinary work and should be done for a stipulated price outside the contract!” Asserting that such a circumstance could not have happened if the Express was the “official paper,” it continued that “before the year is out we shall find that ‘extras’ will amplify the cost of this branch of the municipal expenditure so as to make the City Printing, at an ostensible compensation of $120 a year, quite a costly item.”
While one wonders if there was a zero missing from that figure, the Express went on to suggest that any number of items could be considered extra to its competitor’s contract, such as the annual publishing of the delinquent tax list, but it concluded its broadside by predicting,
The people who flatter themselves they are getting their municipal printing cheap, will see the trick of the thing, and recognize the fact that they may be egregiously mistaken.
Two days ago, we featured a post on the commemoration of Memorial Day in greater Los Angeles in 1910 and, here, the Express wrote briefly on what was then called Decoration Day. This was because, just after the Civil War, the idea arose to decorate the graves of those soldiers who sacrificed their lives during that conflict.
In 1874, the observance fell on the 30th and was “the day set apart all over the Union for paying a gentle tribute to the memory” of those who died during the war “by decorative their graves with flowers.” Notably, however, the paper commented “we don’t know that there will be any set ceremony at our own cemetery,” this presumably being what was known as the Protestant or City burying ground where the Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts is now.
The Express acknowledged that there may have been no reason to have an official ceremony, but it did comment that
There are graves there, however, that should not be forgotten to-morrow; and it should not be said that in this beautiful vale, Decoration Day would pass without offering some of our choicest flowers upon the little mounds which consecrate and embrace all that remains of men who bravely fought the good fight in behalf of what they considered right.
It was also noted that federal offices were to be closed because it was a national holiday, though the postmaster, Henry K.W. Bent, told the paper that, because it was a Saturday, “and large numbers of people come in from the country on that day” to transact business at the post office, which was located in one of F.P.F. Temple’s buildings on Spring Street between Temple and 1st (where City Hall is now) that was part of the Temple Block, a center of the growing commercial district of the city.
As to the holiday and its observance, the Express told its readers,
The custom is a touching one, and every right-thinking man [and woman?] will be glad to know that the beautiful ceremony this year will be confined to no narrow sectionalism, but that the graves of all who fell in the late war, irrespective of the side on which they fought, will received the same tender tributes of respect. This is a noble step for the nation to take. In the grave all the animosities and asperities of the past should be buried; and all those who fought in the gray and the blue, and now peacefully lie side by side, are equally worthy of the garlands of immortelles [everlasting] which should honor the memory of the brave everywhere.
Other editorial content included the growing movement for the “local option,” in which advocates of Temperance (the anti-alcohol forces) looked at having elections in cities and towns to ban the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages rather than seek statewide prohibition. While none of the communities mentioned were in Los Angeles County, there were those efforts in this region, as well.
The Express also took umbrage with the San Francisco Post for using “language of the utmost indecency” in charging that the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce (not the current one, which was formed during the great Boom of the 1880s) was requesting legislation from Congress to protect the local citrus industry, which was expanding dramatically, particularly in what was known as the San Gabriel fruit belt around the mission.
Answering the northern paper that the chamber did not make that request, the Express noted that the the organization “found that speculators were taking advantage of a mistake perhaps purposely made in the engrossment of the Revenue law to enrich themselves at the expense of the orange interest” in California and was only asking for the law to be better defined and that this goal was accomplished. It asked if the Post was supportive of the fraud entailed in the unspecified speculations and suggested that the sheet “has injured its reputation by defending this questionable clerical alteration in the Tariff Act of 1872.”
Another local organization that, like that first chamber of commerce, failed, but was later reconstituted and remains in vigorous operation today is the Los Angeles County Bar Association. A gaggle of lawyers met the night before the issue of the Express and at the call of the paper in an assemblage at the room of the District Court in what Jonathan Temple built, fifteen years prior, as a market house, but which became the courthouse in 1861. This landmark structure was just south of the Temple Block and just a short distance from the aforementioned post office.
The gathering was brought to order by John R. McConnell, a former state attorney general and Angel City barrister who was the Judge Marshal for the confab, with attorney Frank Howard (son of the prominent legal figure Volney Howard) serving as secretary. McConnell, as paraphrased by the paper, told his colleagues that,
Many members of the Los Angeles bar were of the opinion that the interests of the profession would be beneficially subserved by the organization of a Bar Association. It would establish a better esprit de corps in the profession, give it a higher standard, and inculcate a more elevated sense of duty.
Moreover, there was a felt need for a good law library and those present agreed to established a committee to formulate the structure for an association, including the request from the San Francisco Bar Association for its constitution and by-laws. For a report at the next meeting, scheduled for 11 June, the group of five appointed to the committee included McConnell, George H. Smith, Volney Howard, Andrew Glassell and Frederick Stanford.
Just about two weeks prior to the publication of this issue, the notorious bandido Tiburcio Vásquez was captured at a ranch house in what is now West Hollywood after an extensive hunt, coordinated by Sheriff William R. Rowland (whose late father, John, was co-owner of Rancho La Puente with William Workman) through the region. A brief report detailed how the Monterey County Sheriff, who was to receive the prisoner from Rowland, “had made to his order . . . a pair of irons” linking his arms and legs (at the wrists and ankles) and described in detail with the outfit purported to be escape-proof. It was nearly a year later, in March 1875, that Vásquez, whose trial was moved to San José, was convicted and then hung for his role in murders committed in 1873.
A report from the Inyo Independent in that eastern California county, where mining activity was raging, noted that the photographer Alfred S. Addis, who’d resided in Los Angeles for a short period, considered making his home at Independence, the Inyo County seat, but the main point was about his daughter, Yda, whom the Independent called “a poetical writer without peer of her years,” with the report that she was 12 years old. As the Express noted, “the young lady is a few years older—say, five,” and the Addis family remained in Los Angeles for a while with Yda among the first five graduates of the recently opened high school and making her mark with her versification—later, however, her renown was much more mixed.
The Independent also commented on the Cerro Gordo Water and Mining Company, which “after all their trouble and expensive accidents, have got their works in good working order and for near two weeks past have furnished the [silver boom] town a bountiful supply of excellent water and at very reasonable prices.” It was continued that the firm spent an estimated $120,000 on the project and the paper noted,
It is a matter for general rejoicing that this plucky company have finally succeeded in their undertaking, which promises to be of invaluable benefit in giving Cerro Gordo in due time a status as a mining camp scarcely second to any other on the coast.
What wasn’t mentioned was that the company was founded by F.P.F. Temple and others and included his Temple and Workman bank partner and father-in-law William Workman as a major investor. While the delivery of water from Miller Springs, some eleven miles northeast of the boomtown, was hailed as vital to Cerro Gordo‘s development, the springs unexpectedly dried up after not quite a year and the failure of the enterprise was a major one for Temple, Workman and their bank, which then collapsed in the subsequent financial crash later in 1875 and led to their near complete economic devastation.
The “Local Items” column noted new construction and repairs to existing structures, such as the foundation for the Perry & Riley Block, the Kimball residential hotel, the near completion of the buildings of Felix Signoret and improvements to the Lanfranco Building, where Elijah and William H. Workman long conducted their saddlery and harness business. The grading of Temple Street into the hills west of the growing downtown “has so far progressed that teams are able to pass from Fort Street [renamed Broadway in 1890] to Bunker Hill Avenue,” this latter the site of new residential tract development by Prudent Beaudry (who, being president of the company that published the Herald, soon defeated Tiffany’s father, in the mayoral election in the fall.)
The Southern Pacific’s eastern extension of its line coming from the north through Los Angeles, as mandated by Congress when it issued its 1871 charter to the powerful railroad company as it built to Arizona, and having just passed the prior month through the Rancho La Puente, was at its next junction and the Express noted,
Everybody seems to be bent on going to Spadra [now southwest Pomona] next Sunday on the railroad excursion. Uncle Billy [William W. Rubottom, whose hotel was on what is now Pomona Boulevard] will have to stir himself to provide for the immense crowd that will besiege his liberal board on that occasion.
The Bath Street public school was to have a benefit in two weeks and one of the pupils was to recite “an original Spanish poem, written expressly for the occasion and dedicated to the city of Los Angeles.” The thoroughfare is now in the pathway of Main Street as it extends north past the Plaza and the school, the second built in the city (the first was at Spring and 2nd streets) is now the site of the Italian-American Museum of Los Angeles.
Another educational benefit was being held at the Turn Verein Hall, built by the city’s German community on Spring Street, for an “English-German school,” the following evening. With choral music from the Los Angeles Quartette Club, the evening was expected to be “one well worthy of the object of the benefit and the superior resources of those who are getting it up.”
With Decoration Day soon to come and go, the Express inquired about the fact that “the Fourth will be on us in a few weeks, and there is no time to lose if we would take the necessary pains to make our celebration of the anniversary [the 98th] worthy of our flourishing city.” It then asked, because of the “timely and pertinent” aspect of things: “ought not somebody to make a move looking to the proper celebration?”
Additionally, the paper offered that “there will be no excuse for our next Fourth of July procession being without a military escort” because, it observed, “the enrolled members of the military company,” recently formed by Louis J. Sacriste (1843-1904), a native of Wilmington, Delaware (birthplace of “the Port Admiral” of our Wilmington, Phineas Banning) Union Army officer in a Pennsylvania infantry regiment during the Civil War and a Medal of Honor recipient, met at Stearns’ Hall, where U.S. 101 runs near Los Angeles and Arcadia streets, to organize.
The report of the prior day’s Common Council meeting included a call by the zanjero, or superintendent of the city’s open water ditches, for maps of the archaic system “to facilitate distribution.” Former Governor John G. Downey and others also were awarded a franchise for a streetcar system (the first in the city, the Spring and 6th Street Railway, opened that year with Temple as treasurer) “down Washington street to Figueroa and Agricultural [now Exposition] Park,” where, elsewhere, it was noted that heavy winds affected that day’s horse races.
The Council, however, denied a petition by H.H. Spencer to “beautify the Plaza,” though there were soon improvements, including walks, fencing and plantings, some of the latter provided by Elijah H. Workman, including Moreton Bay fig trees still growing there today. The overseer of the chain gang, which utilized city prisoners for such labor as street grading, clearing and other work, resigned, so police officer Francis Carpenter was appointed to the position.
As is usually the case, these early Los Angeles newspapers, even if only four pages, often have some notable, interesting and instructive material on the Angel City, especially these from the early to mid 1870s as the town was in its first sustained and significant period of growth. Check back for more “Read All About It” posts featuring these valuable sources for that era and others in the Museum’s interpretive period ending at 1930.