Read All About in the Los Angeles Weekly Express, 19 December 1872, Part One

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

This latest entry in the “Read All About It” series of posts highlighting historic regional newspapers in the Museum’s holdings looks at the weekly edition of the Los Angeles Express for 19 December 1872, these special issues published each Thursday by the proprietors George A. Tiffany and Company. This one was published at a time when greater Los Angeles was undergoing its first boom, with growth in population, development, agriculture and more.

The first page typically was devoted to state, western American and national news, though there is some local content, including filed deeds, such as the conveyance by Charles E. Beane of one-half his interest in the lot, building and press, type and materiel from the recently shuttered Los Angeles News to former Governor John G. Downey, as guardian to children who apparently had an interest in the property.

Also reported was that the Fort Street [later Broadway] Methodist Episcopal Church’s Ladies Aid Society was to have a three-evening fair and festival from the 19th to the 21st at the German-built and owned Turnverein Hall on Spring Street. A reprinted article from the San Diego World concerned the killing of a bear on the Rancho Santa Margarita y las Flores in that county and bordering Los Angeles (later to become part of Orange) County with the skin to be tanned at Los Angeles before it was to be sent to San Francisco, where the hunter, a judge, resided.

The fourth and last page was dedicated to advertisements and public notices, as well as court notes and most of three columns assigned to the recent Common Council and the transfer of members, as well as the message of Mayor James R. Toberman. An interesting aspect of the seating of the ten new councilmembers was the drawing of lots to see who had short or long terms, in which half served a year and others two.

Among those who drew the longer term was William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and who’d paid his way to Baltimore the prior summer to attend the Democratic National Convention as an alternate delegate (the party’s standard-bearer, newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, lost to incumbent Republican Ulysses S. Grant and Greeley died shortly afterward.) For the ten standing committee assignments by Council President Frank Sabichi (who was nominated by Workman), Workman was chosen for the Finance, Zanjas and Gas committees.

Workman then proposed the abolishment of the Public Works Committee, which was resisted by colleague and future Mayor Prudent Beaudry, and the City Attorney, having determined that the entity could be retired, was requested by Workman to draft an ordinance to that effect. Workman followed by raising concerns about sewage on Wilmington and other city streets.

When a Southern Pacific Railroad official sent a letter regarding concern over the legitimate title to the proposed site for a depot—the company having secured a successful vote from county citizens for a subsidy of some $600,000 and control of the only local line, the Los Angeles and San Pedro, terminating at the rudimentary harbor—Workman was appointed to a committee to meet with the officer on the matter, as well as rights-of-way through the city.

Another notable items before the Council concerned the printing of city ordinances in Spanish by the Los Angeles Star, then the official paper for such purposes, this being done by public bid. Unidentified citizens sent a missive to the board protesting that such publication was “useless and expensive” and requesting that “all matter for the benefit of the Spanish-speaking population should be printed in a paper in their own language.” The Council voted to request a proposal from La Crónica, the sole Spanish-language newspaper and which recently was launched after a dozen years of not having one in town, for said printing.

As for the message of Mayor Toberman, who completed the first of two one-year terms (and later served from 1878 to 1882) in the chief executive positions, he asserted “that the prosperity of a city depends upon the sound and healthy state of its financial affairs is a principle so generally recognized as to need no argument in its support” and so exhorted the Council:

It behooves you, therefore, to so administer the affairs to this city that its financial condition shall be inviting to strangers and encouraging to residents. If obstacles should be met in your efforts to secure this requisite condition they should serve as stimulants to urge you onward in all your endeavors to accomplish a purpose not alone beneficial but one of absolute necessity.

A frugal administration of the city government is not, however, incompatible with liberal, but judicious, expenditures for the improvement of the city and for the general benefit of its inhabitants.

As first impressions tend to produce permanent convictions it is of no small importance to a city that its general appearance should be agreeable and inviting to strangers and visitors.

Not only was it incumbent on the municipality to maintain an attractive appearance, but Toberman continued that, because “the increase of population being an increase of wealth,” whatever it took “to draw immigrants to this city should receive your careful consideration and support.”

Turning to public education, the mayor averred that “training of the youth is one of the most efficient means” for the “growth, prosperity and happiness” of a community, so he called for the board to continue its work with city schools, adding that “a public [high] school building . . . is nearly completed, and will in a short time be ready for occupation.” Built for $25,000 and with a capacity of 500 scholars, the High School’s construction “both in style and manner is alike creditable to the city and the gentlemen who had charge thereof.”

Toberman reminded his hearers that a lack of education was conducive to an increase in crime and “to restrain or control or punish one criminal may entail more cost upon a people than the education of ten children,” a remark that is noteworthy, given that a report at the beginning of this year observed that “locking up a California state prisoner costs nearly twice as much as tuition at the state’s top private universities,” not to mention the amount expended for public school students.

The mayor further observed that scholars in daily attendance “are less exposed to contract vicious habits when roaming about the streets or spending their time in idleness” and that there was already a large number of children “growing up in ignorance and in habits of idleness and constantly exposed to contamination because they were not going to school. He warned, “if this is not corrected it will tell fearfully in the coming generation,” so he asked that efforts be made to attain compulsory attendance within city limits.

Unlike many cities, Los Angeles still had a significant agricultural economy, especially with the fact that “the cultivation of the soil by means of artificial irrigation is an interest of so great an importance that its needful protection presents many grave questions for your consideration and official action.” He reminded the Council that the state legislature recently “restored the control and management of the water for irrigation to the corporate authorities of the city, from whose hands it had been taken” for private oversight by the Los Angeles Water Company. Toberman continued,

it merits your deepest solicitude, as upon a sufficient supply of water whenever needed and at the lowest possible rates, the abundance of the harvests, the husbandman and the cheapness of the products to the consumer is dependent, as also the financial growth and permanent prosperity of the city itself.

Knowing, he went on, that the Council fully understood its rights to water that was diverted from the Los Angeles River and directed through the zanjas, or open ditches, that carried the precious fluid through town, the chief executive implored its members to be mindful of the stewardship of those rights. His concern was about “any loss of diminution of them through oversight or unguarded action or through the interference of trespassers.”

Related was the need for a “good and efficient sewerage” and the understanding that “the location, physical topography of this city is such as to present universal difficulties” regarding this critical need. It was added that “large sums of money have been appropriated” and costly and bitter legal actions filed, which added to the municipal debt, yet “no means have been attained whereby the sewerage of any part of the city is satisfactorily disposed of.”

With respect to legal matters, Toberman acknowledged “the imperative duty of the chosen guardians of, and those who entrusted with the safe keeping of the interests of of the city, to maintain and defend them by all lawful means,” he also cited the time-honored view that “a bad settlement is often better than a good law suit.” Consequently, he argued, “it should . . . be your constant aim to avoid litigation, when consistent with the interests of honor of our municipality.”

Returning to the river, the mayor advised the Council of “the changing condition of the riverbed within the city limits and the exposure to destruction of a large amount of property liable to be swept away sooner of later by its changing its way.” He added that it was understood that historically “the bed of the river has been repeatedly changed by the floods in winter, and which are liable to come upon us in the future” unless measures were undertaken to prevent “individual suffering together with large loss of property” which was expected in the next flood.

In fact, in 1815, flooding destroyed the pueblo and, a decade later, after the river flowed south of the Mexican-era pueblo and then abruptly turned westward and emptied into the Pacific, another flood created massive swamps to the south and the watercourse followed these to the ocean where the current terminus is today. The “Noah’s Flood” of December 1861 and January 1862 wreaked great havoc and another flood in the winter of 1867-1868 was also severe.

For the most part, Toberman’s warning went unheeded and more drastic damage took place in the deluge of 1883-1884 and other storm years. A turning point was after the destruction wrought by floodwaters in 1914 and the formation the following year of a county flood control district. While some important work was undertaken locally in the next two decades, voters were not willing to approve more bonds for further efforts and, after major floods in the Great Depression years, especially in 1938, the federal government and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took the lead on regional flood control efforts. The river was almost completely channelized with concrete between 1938 and 1960, though recent advocacy has called for a return to its natural state with flood management components included.

The mayor’s message concluded with:

If I am not mistaken, the spirit which actuated the people of this city during the recent canvass and election that resulted in the choice of the present officers, it is one of progress and advancement, and a trust, the people will not be disappointed, nor have cause to grieve over the consequences which shall follow from their selection of the persons into whose hands they have committed the welfare of the corporation.

It will be my endeavor during my term of office to second you in all your efforts to improve, enlarge and promate [promote] the interests of the inhabitants of Los Angeles City.

In the “Legal Intelligence” section, some notable cases were mentioned. Ex-Governor Pío Pico was engaged in long-running litigation with Antonio Cuyas, who was hired to run the hotel in the Pico House, completed two years prior. In the matter before District Court Judge Robert M. Widney, who was appointed after the late 1871 death of predecessor Murray Morrison, it was stated that the “findings of [the] court [were] filed with order for judgment that the defendant recover his costs, and plaintiff recover nothing.”

In another matter, however, Pico prevailed, this relating to the quieting of title to lands on the Rancho Paso de Bartolo, where Don Pío kept his Ranchito residence, with the statement being that for a half-decade prior to the filing of the suit on 28 October 1871, the land “was protected by a substantial enclosure, or were usually cultivated or improved by plaintiff or his tenants, i.e., about 1,800 acres.” Two decades later, though, Pico would lose his Ranchito by fraud over what he understood was a loan but what the defendant, merchant Bernard Cohn, insisted was a deed.

Four days before the Ranchito lawsuit filing, a horrific lynching by a mob of hundreds of Anglos and Latinos of seventeen men and one teenage boy among the Chinese community was committed, with the location of most of the terror committed in a building owned by State Treasurer Antonio F. Coronel, a major Los Angeles figure for decades. The suit of People vs. A.F. Coronel for nuisance concerned an effort to get him (Coronel pled not guilty to keeping and maintaining a nuisance, arguing that his renting of spaces to the Chinese did not constitute such) to make major improvements to the heavily damaged building, which, however, remained standing for more than a decade further until a realignment of Los Angeles Street led to its razing, with compensation for its owner.

A strange case involved an indictment of prominent nursery owner and real estate dealer Ozro W. Childs for perjury involving a land dispute and, while the District Attorney, Cameron Thom, who would later server as mayor, admitted that the County Court did not have jurisdiction over the matter and recommended dismissal, Childs’ attorney insisted on a statement from the judge on the indictment’s structure as well as to remark that “no offence had been committed by the defendant.” Judge Ygnacio Sepúlveda, like Coronel, one of the few Angel City Latinos in a position of power and responsibility, however, declined, stating that he “could do no more than dismiss the case” even as he “appreciated and approved [the lawyer’s] sentiments and motives.”

There is more to cover from this issue of the Weekly Express, so we’ll return in a couple of days, and conclude with a part two then.