by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing our look at some of the early history of Harry Chandler, one of the “three brothers” who acquired the nearly 2,550-acre Tres Hermanos Ranch in 1914 and who was then the vice-president and assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Times, headed for about three decades by his father-in-law, Harrison Gray Otis, we forge ahead into the first several years of the 20th century.
Because Chandler’s rise into the upper echelons of the power brokers of the Angel City, this third part will only cover some aspects of his myriad and rapidly evolving enterprises that extended far beyond his work with the Times. As the new century dawned, it was clear that Chandler was to be the successor to Otis, though that did not happen until the latter’s death in 1917.
The Los Angeles Record of 29 June 1901, for example, covered a “smoker” event at Otis’ residence, called “The Bivouac” and located on Wilshire Boulevard across from Westlake (MacArthur) Park. The article noted that Otis apparently had a designs on a federal position, perhaps assistant secretary of war or at the pension office for soldiers and that “he feels confidence in Harry Chandler as a successor.”
As important as his journalistic career, however, was, Chandler’s interests, even more so than those of his father-in-law, were further afield than the Times. We previously noted his joining, in 1898, the newly founded Columbia Oil Company, the head of which was another of the Tres Hermanos Ranch principals, William B. Scott. A couple of weeks before the Otis event at The Bivouac, Chandler was reelected as the firm’s treasurer.
A massive project undertaken shortly afterward was the acquisition of about 1,000 acres at the border with México near Calexico under the auspices of the California-Mexico Land and Cattle Company, incorporated in August 1902, by Chandler and Frank X. Pfaffinger, who was a general manager and treasurer among other roles with the Times over more than a half-century from the late 1880s until his death in 1940.
Below the border, however, was a domain of some 800,000 acres, basically another of the enormous haciendas found throughout México but controlled by Chandler and his associates, and which was run by the Colorado River Land Company, incorporated in México at this time. To develop, over some years, this huge holding considerable capital was expended in diverting water from the great river, with some conflict involving Imperial County projects like George Chaffey’s California Development Company, for the creation of leased cotton farms comprising most of the acreage.
The chief rival of the Times at this period was the Los Angeles Express, which frequently attacked the former for its controlling interest in the Los Angeles Herald (the Express frequently referred to the others as the Times-Herald), as well as the deep ties Otis and Chandler had with business, politics and real estate interests and syndicates involving such powerful figures as Henry E. Huntington.
With these borderland properties, example, the Express of 26 July 1904, addressed the thorny question of water delivery in the region under the heading of “Imperial Valley Hold-Up” as it claimed,
Imperial valley progress and the rights of thousands of bona-fide settlers are menaced, seriously menaced by a corporation known as the Colorado River Land company, which, owning 500,000 acres of horned-toad and snake land on the Mexican side of the border, is seeking to take unjust advantage of the troubles of the California Development Corporation, with the idea of diverting the Colorado waters for its own selfish end.
Basically, asserted the Express, the “Town Bully” or “Times-Herald” tried to leverage its agreement with the CDC allowing water canals through its land by interfering in negotiations between the latter firm and the United States government. Otis, Chandler and Leslie C. Brand, one of their partners in San Fernando Valley land deals, were attacked for this purported posture because it was observed that the canals ran though the Mexican lands owned by the Times owners and their syndicate before the water reached the California side.
Another early 20th century development of project of note came out of a May 1902 acquisition of a property on Broadway near 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles that was slated, some two-and-a-half years later, for a structure that was to include Oliver Morosco’s Majestic Theatre, but that effort fell through and Morosco built his theater a few blocks to the south. As for the site co-owned by Chandler, it found another theatrical enterprise early in 1910 with the Orpheum circuit and this venue opened in July 1911.
There were other, relatively small real estate acquisitions made by Chandler and syndicates of friends and associates, including in 1905 and 1906 in what became Monterey Park, the Naples section of Long Beach, but the biggest local purchases involved many thousands of acres in the San Fernando Valley, with acquisitions of two substantial ranch holdings that were part of a massive Rancho ex-Mission San Fernando.
Working with Huntington, Brand, Edwin T. Earl (owner of a very successful fruit company sold to Chicago’s Armour and Company and then, from 1901, publisher of the Express—strange bedfellows, indeed!), banker John F. Sartori, utilities executive William s. Kerckhoff and the New York City railroad titan, Edward H. Harriman, Otis formed the San Fernando Mission Land Company in December 1904, with Chandler having a subsequent role in the enterprise. This firm purchased some 16,000 acres comprising the ranch of George K. Porter, who was associated with the 1870s purchase of the northern portion of the ex-Mission San Fernando tract.
Facing criticism from media mogul William Randolph Hearst’s Examiner, which was launched in 1903, the Times vigorously denied claims of land grabbing and inside knowledge, as well as financial gains from selling rights-of-way for the enormous water project that came to be known as the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which the Times aggressively championed, and insisted,
Not one of the ten owners of the tract in question had any previous knowledge or intimation of the Owens River water in advance of the acquirement of the options which were secured by the city.
The tract in question was bought more than two years ago and at a time when nobody, unless it was Fred Eaton [the “Father of the Aqueduct” who worked with chief water engineer William Mulholland on the project], had any conception of the Owens River project.
While the Times informed readers that charges of conspiracy were absurd, not to mention “wicked, knowingly false and essentially malicious, ” while also attacking the Examiner and “the ridiculous, the false, the infamous tactics of Hearst’s newspaper,” it was disingenuous of the former to claim that there was no inside information exchanged when, for example, Moses H. Sherman sat on the Board of Water Commissioners as the Aqueduct was being planned and he had close ties with Otis and Chandler.
In September 1909, the Lankershim and Van Nuys ranch, under the ownership of their Los Angeles Farming and Milling Company and comprising the southern portion of the Rancho ex-Mission San Fernando and which they purchased from Don Pío Pico in 1869 as he embarked on the building of his Pico House hotel in downtown Los Angeles, was acquired by the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company. This 48,000-acre holding was acquired for some $2.5 million and the names of those in the syndicate included Edwin J. Marshall and Jared S. Torrance of the Chino Ranch; Sartori; banker Maurice S. Hellman; and banker Stoddard Jess, among others.
In 1910, however, advertisements for the Los Angeles Suburban Homes Company and the selling of lands on the big tract, to include a streetcar line built by Sherman’s Los Angeles Pacific Railroad, which, however, soon was sold to the Pacific Electric, when Harriman’s Southern Pacific Railroad took that line over from Huntington. Also promoted was the modern Sherman Way, which traverses the southern San Fernando Valley from east to west (Chandler Boulevard also runs that direction from Burbank to Sherman Oaks).
What the ads noted was that “purchased about a year ago by a strong syndicate of Los Angeles business men, it is now being developed as a home-creating project” while it was added that “the original purchasers and Board of Control are Gen. H.G. Otis, Harry Chandler, O.F. Brant, M.H. Sherman and H.J. Whitley,” the last of these being the general manager. How one defines a conspiracy relative to the tight connections between the capitalist elite of the Angel City is certainly interesting to ponder.
Chandler had many other business interests during this first part of the 20th century, including the Powell publishing company for law books (1901—this used the Times-Mirror printing machinery and had Otis as a director, as well), Fire Pulp Plaster Company (1902), and the Interurban Water Company (1906). He was also a founder of the Los Angeles Yacht Club (1901-1902), vice-president of the Los Angeles Auto Club (1905), first vice-president of the Motorists’ Protective Association (1909), a founding trustee of a home for boys (1905), and an advisory board member of the Newsboys’ Home, renamed for opera singer Ellen Beach Yaw (whose ranch was in nearby Covina).
Returning to Columbia Oil Producing Company, the firm, of which Chandler was treasurer, merged in September 1903 with the Puente Oil Company, founded more than two decades prior by the third Tres Hermanos owner, former sheriff William R. Rowland. The merger brought together more than 4,000 acres of land on which there were 85 wells generating some 20,000 barrels a month, as well as Puente’s refinery at Chino.
The new enterprise kept the Puente name with Rowland retaining the presidency and Scott serving as vice-president, though it was added that Columbia was to keep its corporate identity and “retain its heavy oil territory, now yielding about 5,000 barrels a month.” In 1908, Columbia moved its corporate office from downtown Los Angeles to the “One Hundred Acres” tract in the Olinda oil field in what, several years later, became the city of Brea.
With respect to the Times, Otis very much remained its titanic and galvanizing force. The paper was the preeminent booster of the Angel City and environs and it was small wonder given the intricate ties that the publisher and his son-in-law had in so many areas of the business world. Virulently anti-union, though there were employees such as press operators and feeders which were part of the typographical union.
As just one example, a strike of these cited workers in late 1903 led Chandler to tell the Express of 8 December,
Our office has withstood twelve such attacks [note that word] during the past thirteen years. In every case the union has failed . . . When leaving, all the men expressed surprise and regret. They did not know why they were ordered out [by the typographical union], which is significant in itself . . . The strike will not trouble us in the least.
On 1 October 1910, radical union figures bombed the Times building in the worst instance of domestic terrorism in Los Angeles history, with 21 persons killed, more than 100 injured and the building destroyed. Despite wide support among union people of their innocence, the brothers John and James McNamara admitted their guilt and the attack further solidified the views of Otis and Chandler, not to mention derailed the likely victory of Socialist Job Harriman in the ensuing mayoral race.
Speaking of local politics, the Express frequently found fault with the tactics of the Times and Otis and Chandler when it came to the latter exerting its considerable influence in mayoral campaigns. Two examples, from 1906 and 1909, found the former bashing its rival and, with the first of these, issuing poems and cartoons lampooning Chandler in particular.
In 1904-1905, Otis and Chandler were charged for contempt of court regarding Times articles accusing the grand jury of overstepping its bounds when it came to how City Treasurer William H. Workman was to deal with receipt of public funds—he was not, however, accused of wrongdoing. The two men were found guilty and fined $500, though the verdict was overturned by the California Supreme Court.
This simple sketch of some of the many and diverse activities, journalistic and business-oriented, of Harry Chandler, covers the first decade of the 20th century. Because he, Scott and Rowland acquired the land that they dubbed Tres Hermanos Ranch in 1914, we’ll return soon with a concluding fourth part to carry us through the year and look, in the future, to examine the last three decades of this remarkable greater Los Angeles figure through his death in 1944.
Keep an eye out for that last part of this post, which we hope to have out in the next few days.
As highlighted in this post, Harry Chandler and his father-in-law, Harrison Gray Otis, skillfully used their powerful media influence and extensive political connections to turn privileged public information into enormous private gains.
Their actions were not particularly surprising but rather exemplified a long-standing model of wealth-building – one that has persisted across time and around the world, practiced by figures ranging from high-ranking government officials and members of Congress to city executives and council members.
This popular model is aptly illustrated by an old Chinese proverb: “Without illicit money, a man cannot grow rich; without extra fodder at night, a horse cannot grow fat.” (人無橫財不富，馬無夜草不肥)