by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing with our look at the controversy surrounding the short-lived Tarbox brandy distillery, located on the east bank of the Los Angeles River where Mission Road heads northeast from César E. Chávez Avenue, including its seizure by federal revenue agents investigating the apparent manufacturing of the fortified wine at amounts far exceeding that allowed by the establishment’s license, we turn to the 2 March 1875 edition of the Los Angeles Herald, which is in the Museum’s collection.
Part one included detailed coverage from the 27-28 February issues about what the paper called “The Grape Brandy Bonanza” including the fact the buried storage tanks and barrels of the liquor were unearthed and worth tens of thousands of dollars that were intended to escape the notice of the Internal Revenue Service’s local officials. The sheet took a decidedly breezy approach, while acknowledging that the contraband was the result of some lengthy planning and execution.
In the 2 March edition, it continued this tone, calling the premises “The Living Spirit Well of C[hristopher] Columbus, Senior,” as it riffed on a joke that the purported discoverer of the Americas was the one who deposited the brandy on the site. A reporter headed over to the distillery and noted that vehicles were traveling into downtown loaded with what seemed to us (and we claim to be a good judge of the article) the pure juice of the grape, doubly distilled and refined into excellent brandy.” It was added that the barrels used in this transport were brought from San Francisco for the purpose.
As before, the feds were tight-lipped about the proceedings, but the Herald sought to express more humor in writing that the agent in charge, with all of the work going on, including boring into the ground, was so diligent that “we don’t believe he considers this Los Angeles affair a very big bore, even though he is consoled by spirits flowing like water. Assistants were occupied in overseeing the pumping of the brandy from the illicit tanks and in piping the liquor into those barrels—this latter apparently “threatened to squirt some at us if we did not leave.”
Former newspaper publisher John O. Wheeler served as a clerk recording the numbers of gallons of brandy seized and removed by the agents, while it was added that “the jolly laborers, impregnated with the fumes of the brandy, were singing a bacchanalian song, the chorus of which is all we can remember, for the fumes of the brandy effected even us strangely,” this refrain being “FEE, FO, FUM, I SMELL JOLLY GOOD RUM.”
The good humor continued with a remark that “next time we go over there we mean to take a Good Templar,” these being a fraternity of teetotalers, “along for safety, and possibly we can give a clearer and more succinct account.” What was recalled that an elderly woman told the paper “she had four hundred dollars worth of grapes in those pipes [barrels], and wanted three of them for her money,” though she was politely informed by the lead federal agent that “they were Uncle Sam’s,” even if the Herald averred that “he really wanted” to return her portion to her.
The piece went on that there was so much brandy stored underground that “the jolly, hard-fisted crew” told the reporter that “they could not lower the well but little, no matter how fast they pumped,” so it seemed that Columbus’ well was that “our people (for there were crowds of them there who saw the same as we) are beginning to think the Great Grape Brandy Bonanza of semi-tropical California will yet eclipse the Comstock or Panamint bonanzas,” these being prominent mining areas of Nevada and California, respectively.
The joking pressed (!) on with the remark that “we expect to see a joint stock company organized to work this great well . . . and already we hear of parties organizing to prospect our glorious valley for similar wells by artesian boring.” The paper went on that distilleries in the west and midwest “will soon be sacrificed at ruinous prices as,
the can’t complete with living spirit wells, where the pure grape brandy can be sucked in inexhaustable [sic] quantities from the lacteal teats of good old mother earth—given forth as kindly as the milk from mother’s breast is given to her sucking babe (we are not alluding to the babes in the woods now).
This latter expression referred to innocent, naive persons in potentially dangerous situations, while the Herald pondered what “the financier, [Isaias W.] Hellman,” former banking partner of William Workman and F.P.F. Temple and then partner of ex-Governor John G. Downey in the operation of The Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank, “had dreamed of [the distillery] when he backed Tarbox up with the credit of the bank.”
Wrapping up its facetious feature, the paper proclaimed,
Future generations of the city of Angels will build two great monuments; one to C. Columbus for planting the well, the other to [IRS] Supervisor Foulke for discovering the same. We await further developments from this wonderful bonanza with breathless interest, and as an independent detective, all on our own hook, we mean to prosecute our investigations to the end without consulting the mediums [spiritualists].
In the “Local Brevities” column, the Herald reported that “we understand the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ [sic] Bank, of this city is a creditor of Tarbox & Co., to the amount of about $7,000, all of which has gone up in a balloon.” Hellman was known for his conservatism, while a part-owner of the paper was Temple, president of the only other commercial institution in town, the Temple and Workman bank, so it would appear this was more than a sly dig at the former.
Separately it was remarked that the IRS supervisor left town for San Francisco and that “the grape brandy bonanza he struck in the Los Angeles distillery pans out so well that it is reported he goes up to the city for the purpose of sending down all the wine pipes he can find and a detachment of coopers to make more.”
The paper was far more serious in its editorial titled “Government,—Revenue—Thieves” and which held that “an oppressive government makes a nation of robbers” while commenting that,
The little brandy mine that was struck a few days ago near this city and which startled the community as though an unparalleled crime had been committed, is not a new thing; it has only revealed a sample of what is going on all over the country. This is the largest transaction that has been revealed to us, but its magnitude does not increase the crime in a moral sense. The man that had his property assessed [by federal revenue agents] for fifty dollars less than its real value and swore to it, is guilty of a higher crime than our unfortunate distillers . . . It is the boast of some respectable citizens of our community that they never pay any taxes. Such men have no right to hold up their hands in holy horror at the discovery of a little brandy, underground . . . The fact is a majority of the whole people are in sympathy with the would-be Government swindlers . . . because a majority of them have been guilty of the same character of crime, only in a less degree . . . [and] they are opposed to a Government that shows such partiality between its subjects . . . [lastly] they are opposed to the Government for making such laws; not to increase the revenue of the Government, but for the sole purpose of feeding an army of officials at the expense of the hard working people, merely to keep them as spies in every community.
Some of this language might sound somewhat familiar, but it also reflects the time-honored tradition of anger at taxation, largely considered unjust in general, but specific to loud imprecations regarding the imposts on locally produced brandy going back at least a decade or so. The editorial went on that, while it was asserted that some $40,000 worth of product was seized from the Tarbox distillery, the paper wondered “how much of this amount reaches the Treasury of the United States and how much of it is absorbed in salaries.”
Not blaming the local IRS officials, the Herald continued that “we charge the Administration directly, with all the corruption and thieving that has been done in the nation by officials from White House down to the Deputy Tax Collector who forges tax receipts by the dozen.” It also thundered that “an oppressive government makes every subject feel that it is his enemy.”
The 11 March edition of the Los Angeles Express recorded that “the Revenue officers completed the work of removing the bonanza brandy from Tarbox’s distillery yesterday” and that 61,700 gallons were seized. Five days later, the Herald copied a report from the San Francisco Call that Tarbox was arrested there and that, in addition to the amount referred to by the Express from the underground vats, some 1,600 gallons in barrels were transported to the northern metropolis using reused federal revenue stamps, while the distillery was said to be valued at somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000. Tarbox posted $10,000 bail subject to appearing before the next federal grand jury and his supervisor, Lucien Curtis, went through the same process.
The Express of 19 March ran an advertisement that Sheriff William R. Rowland, son of the late Rancho la Puente co-owner, John Rowland, was to offer for sale “that certain property . . . known as ‘The Refinery,’ being situated on the lot of E[lijah] Moulton, on the east side of Los Angeles river.” Moulton (1820-1902), a native of Montreal, came to Los Angeles in 1845 with a group of fur trappers, served as a volunteer under John C. Frémont during the American seizure of Mexican California during the Mexican-American War, and married a daughter of William Wolfskill, the prominent vineyardist and orange grower. His adobe house, in which he lived until his death, was at a site now under Interstate 5 a short distance northeast of the distillery and his land is now the Union Pacific/Southern Pacific railyard.
In early May, a notice was filed by United States Attorney Walter Van Dyke, later a Los Angeles attorney and superior court judge who ended his career as an associate justice on the state Supreme Court, seeking a forfeiture of all the real and personal property of the Tarbox distillery. The Herald of 16 June published a rumor that the distillery inventory of brandy was returned to Tarbox, but the following day’s Express printed a telegraphed dispatch from San Francisco that the federal grand jury indicted him and Curtis on multiple charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States through their purported illicit actions with the brandy they processed.
The “wheels of justice” phrase is an ancient one and it certainly applied in this case. The Star of 11 April 1876, this about a half-year after the California economy, following that of the nation, slid into depression, and about three months after the failure of the Temple and Workman bank, reprinted detailed trial accounts from San Francisco. A problem that was revealed in testimony and which could well have been fundamental to the outcome was that the original distillery books were missing, with Tarbox and Curtis stating these were seized by the feds and Wheeler, as clerk, offering a handwritten copy of portions.
One tidbit of note from testimony was that some brandy was seized by revenue agents at the Southern Pacific Railroad station at Spadra (now southwest Pomona), where the line east from Los Angeles then terminated and it appeared the product, marked “E.T.T.” and “L.A.” was to be sent to Anaheim’s Benjamin Dreyfus. He testified that his partner purchased the brandy through Hellman and that Curtis told him “he would stand between me and any trouble.” Charles Kohler, formerly of Los Angeles and a major figure in California winemaking, tried the seized spirits and noted that they required further processing to be marketable.
The following day’s Herald published testimony from Tarbox, who said he processed 10,000 gallons of brandy and 2,000 of “singlings,” the crude from which the final product later came and that, after the first seizure by the feds in November 1874, he distilled another 15,000 gallons. He claimed that “after the seizure, the tax was paid upon a part and the remainder was stored in the warehouse,” apparently with no end to deceive, while another 12,000 gallons was processed at the time of second seizure and this “was sold to the Los Angeles Bank,” meaning, presumably, Hellman’s Farmers’ and Merchants’. At that point, Tarbox stated, “I did not register my still as not being in use up to that time” and he was going to work the singlings,” while “my still lay idle at that time because I had as much brandy on hand as I could dispose of for some months and I had no money for the necessary casks, etc., required,” this an admission of his economic struggles.
Nine days later, however, the Herald editorialized on the defeat of the feds’ case, though another report stated that there was a single count in which Tarbox and Curtis were convicted, but that was to be appealed. In any event, the paper remarked that “the Revenue law supposes a distiller to be a thief and it is the custom of Revenue officers to deal with him on the assumption that the supposition of the law is correct” and it added that “it would be something remarkable if distillers did not play the role the law assigns them in the case.” Still, it concluded,
It is quite probable that the business of the Los Angeles distillery was conducted on the crooked order. But the Government could not prove it and we are inclined to rejoice over the result of the trial.
While Tarbox was apparently released from all criminal liability, he still had to face his financial ones. A meeting of his forty creditors was held on the last day of May at the county courtroom (this in the Market House built by Jonathan Temple seventeen years earlier) and the edition of the Express that day reported that William H. Workman, future mayor and city treasurer of the Angel City, presided.
It was agreed that Tarbox agreed to pay 60 cents on the dollar after a year in return for the release of all claims on the brandy still in the possession of the feds, the latter apparently prepared to allow him to continue distilling the material, hopefully by fall, and then placing it on the market. The paper added separately that the deal was good for grape growers and that Tarbox “notwithstanding what has occurred, is a very capable distiller” and that “no one is calculated better than he to make the enterprise across the river a success and a benefit to our people.”
Yet, the feds were not done litigating, but took more time to decide what to do. In early 1878, it was reported that the contents were to be released to Tarbox’s creditors and that the distillery was in the possession of the Bank of California in San Francisco, with the idea that it would resume operations that fall. This was after a second trial, concluded at the end of January, again was found in the favor of Tarbox and Curtis, but the U.S. Attorney replacing Van Dyke, John M. Coghlan, filed a motion for a third proceeding. The matter went to the federal circuit court and it apparently ended there.
Tarbox, however, declared bankruptcy that July, but the contents of the brandy from more than three years prior were not released to creditors until September and the Herald fulminated against the turtle’s pace of the legal proceedings, while asserting that:
This distillery, while running, was a great boon to our vineyardists, affording them a reliable market for their grapes. Since it has passed into the hands of the United States officers it has been of absolutely no use to our community, and one of our leading interests has been paralyzed . . . Our people have been encouraged several times by the announcement that the Tarbox case had been finally disposed of, but each time the news proved unreliable. What is the difficulty?
The distillery finally passed into the hands of the prominent San Gabriel Valley vintner Leonard J. Rose and his partner Charles Stern, who, in September 1880, were reported to be prepared to distill 100,000 gallons, above double what 40 local establishments worked with the prior year. This, the Express of the 14th remarked, meant that Rose “will be obliged to tax his Sunny Slope distillery,” located in what is now northeast Pasadena, “and the old Tarbox distillery, across the Los Angeles river, to their utmost capacities.”
Speaking of taxed to capacity, the financial burdens on Tarbox were such that, in late July 1881, he tried to kill himself by cutting at arteries in his neck and inner thigh, but his caseknife was particularly dull and, after being cuffed and dragged to a hospital by San Francisco police officers, grimly commented that he’d been a “beautiful failure” and, pending the doctor’s treatment, he “might be damned fool enough to live.” That he did, for more than two decades, working as a clerk and in real estate, while also active in Republican Party politics, until his death in December 1904 at age 67.
The story of the short-lived Tarbox distillery in notable in terms of local winemaking, specifically that of brandy, poor management, likely attempts to circumvent federal revenue laws and officers, and the biting criticism of the Government by the Herald. It was fully admitted that Tarbox and Curtis broke the law, but sympathy was with them by that paper and, presumably, others against the IRS—this, again, a time-honored American tradition.