Through the Viewfinder: A “Mash Cache” Bootlegging Operation in Los Angeles, 3 December 1926

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

The temperance movement that swept through the United States during much of the 19th and first couple of decades of the 20th centuries included state-by-state bans on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages before the passage of the 19th Amendment, which led to the enactment, through the Volstead Act passed by Congress, of Prohibition, the so-called “great experiment.”

In what was ultimately a fruitless [!] and failed effort, the federal government created a substantial bureaucracy to attempt to enforce the law, including a cadre of federal agents, investigators and marshals who worked throughout our vast nation to try and stem the flow if imported and domestically manufactured alcoholic beverages, including beer, liquor and wine (there were some allowance for small amounts made at home, as well as for commercial manufacturing of sacramental wine, cooking sherry and others).

In greater Los Angeles, as well as other coastal areas, a focus was on attempts to land illegal hooch at many points along the shoreline of the Pacific, as well as to deal with large rural inland areas (we know, for example, that the Temple family procured illegal beverages for us at their somewhat remote Homestead, while neighboring areas included areas of production) and distribution to and from wide-open spaces surrounding our region. There were also, however, those illicit manufacturing sites in urban locales, including in downtown Los Angeles, as the highlighted artifact from the Museum’s collection shows.

It is a press photo, taken on 3 December 1926, of a portion of the apparatus set up in a downtown Los Angeles building for manufacturing liquor and it represented one of the largest such operations not just in the Angel City but in the country at the time before federal agents raided the facility the prior day. Although it was miles away, though linked by the infamous “shoestring” addition because of the growing Port of Los Angeles, the San Pedro News-Pilot of the 2nd ran a large headline of “RAID HUGE LOS ANGELES DISTILLERY” and the account reported,

One of the biggest hauls made by the Federal prohibition agents in the country since the passing of the eighteenth amendment resulted from a raid on a warehouse near the Santa Fe [railroad] station here at noon today.

Two of the largest stills ever discovered in operation were put out of commission . . . Five men were arrested on the scene.

The Los Angeles Record of the same day tallied “one million gallons of mash, 80,000 gallons of alcohol in five-gallon tins, five hundred barrels of various kinds of syrups” and “nine colossal vats of mash on two floors” of the four-story building on the east side of Vignes Street (named for a family of prominently early vintners whose very name means “vines”) roughly halfway between 1st and 2nd streets and which was recently used as a bakery. The paper added that, with the raid and arrests, “a mortal blow has been struck at Southern California’s chief source of illicit alcohol.”

In addition to the information noted above, the Pomona Progress, also of the 2nd, added that “the raid was conduced by federal sleuths operating under [the] supervision of Col. Robt. E. Frith, prohibition administrator for Southern California, who has resigned, effective Jan. 1.” Frith, a retired Army officer, oversaw the 22nd district, comprising this region and Arizona, during the years 1925 and 1926—notably, an assistant, Lt. Col. Donald M. McRae, was later sent to prison for conspiracy in stealing 800 cases of liquor from a federal warehouse in December 1925.

In its coverage of that day, the Los Angeles Express informed readers that,

A still three stories in height, with a boiler beneath capable of running an office building steam plant, was in full operation. Elevators, huge suction pumps and 8000-gallon vats were all connected by giant pipes, with intricate and expensive gauges and automatic clocks for regulating steam pressure attached.

On the ground floor was the immense boiler heated by gas thrown under pressure. The second floor contained the base of the still, with a dozen faucets set from the floor for filling five-gallon cans.

On the next floor were eight storage tanks for mash. Each contained 8000 gallons of mash ready for pumping to the mammoth still. Chutes, worked by electric motors, were connected to the mixing machine and allowed sugar and malt to flow to the huge bin with automatic shutoffs, which could be set for stipulated amounts.

While it offered the same information, gathered from the United Press service, the Monrovia News took the cake for snazziest headline when it noted “One Million Gallon Mash Cache Found,” while it also employed some of its alliteration allowance by referring to “Frith’s forces” and their raid on the criminal enterprise.

On the 3rd, the Los Angeles Times provided its readers with remarkable information concerning the report that “police officers and United States deputy marshals armed with shotguns last night stood guard over the” building where the distillery, said by the feds to be the second largest facility seized in the country, second only to one in Chicago in 1924, was raided. It added that the law enforcement presence was because of “the receipt of a report that “hig[h]er-ups” were contemplating a hijacking expedition to recover the asserted contraband.”

Moreover, the paper continued, “records were seized . . . [including] a list of 1000 names, believed to be those of Southern California bootleggers obtaining their liquor from the plant.” Also fascinating was the statement that

Evidence leading to the raid was obtained, it was said, by a dry [federal] agent who nightly for two weeks sat in front of the building with his wife, engaged in “petting” parties to divert suspicion.

It was thought that the structure was not being utilized, but a box car containing sugar was found at its rear and it was theorized that rail shipments were at least partially responsible for the deliver of materials used in the illicit distilling. While federal judge Paul J. McCormick, who was then presiding over the widely known trial against oil tycoon Edward Doheny and others as part of the Teapot Dome scandal), issued an order to a federal marshal to seize the stills and material, a federal attorney requested the IRS commissioner to allow him to take possession of the building and any contents valued up to $150,000 as allowed by law.

Frith was said to have alerted federal officials and Los Angeles Police Department Chief James E. Davis of the purported effort by those responsible for the establishment of the plant to commandeer the materials, while he claimed he would have the ringleaders arrested within two days—this, however, never happened and only the quintet captured during the raid were held accountable. These men, all in their later 30s, were held on bonds of $10,000 and four of them were working with the still while the fifth, not specified, handled the books.

Eleven officials were involved in the raid, including Frith, the assistant enforcement administrator, a field deputy, five agents and three IRS intelligence investigators and the Times provided details as to the operation:

Raiding officers reported they found a 2500-gallon still in operation, the still extending from the first floor to the roof, the gravity process being used. On the second floor were six 10,000-gallon vats and two 5000-gallon vats, all containing mash. On the first floor were three 5000-gallon vats containing alcohol. A three-ton truck, 400 sacks of sugar and 150 fifty-gallon barrels of malt also were found.

A picture section on another page included three images of the raided distillery, with one showing the mash vats and those used for filtering as the alcohol was drawn, while the photo featured here was also included and showed “the top of the giant still . . . extended through the three floors of the building and embodied every modern improvement.

The Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News, which, as its name clearly indicated, was significantly image-based, ran a quartet of photos its edition of the 3rd, including one of the exterior of the reinforced concrete structure, the floor with the mash vats and including the support columns for the edifice, a similar shot of the still though with an agent gazing up to the top and a shot of the five purported (and dour-faced) operators.

The paper’s issue of the 11th informed readers that the suspects were arraigned and the matter bound over to the federal grand jury, which, after reviewing the matter was to meet the following week and issue indictments for them “along with more than 40 others implicated in the liquor combine.” Additionally, it was reported that the quintet, identified as Kenneth L. Black, Samuel E. Bragg, Frank Franklin, Joseph Clark and Lloyd Williams, “are considered leaders in local distilleries.”

Lastly, the account concluded, after stating that a half-dozen other “alleged rum barons” were having their cases reviewed by the grand jury, that “formal reports of all such action taken” were to be made available “when Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, assistant United States attorney, returns to Los Angeles” the following week. A prior post on this blog examined the life and work of Willebrandt, an early woman graduate of the University of Southern California law school and who worked in the county district attorney’s office and private practice, before becoming the highest-ranking woman in the federal government as the head of Prohibition enforcement, known as “The First Lady of the Law” by admirers and the “Prohibition Portia” by detractors.

In its 27 December edition, the Times reported that a federal attorney formally filed for seizure of the still’s materials, declared to be worth some $100,000 in value (a decline of $50,000 from prior estimates), though any effort to do so for the building and land was foregone because of concerns about whether a precedent would be set that could stand legal scrutiny. This also depended on whether it could be proved that the unnamed owner of the edifice knew of the illegal operations in his structure. It was also remarked that the five indicted men were free on bail.

The issue of 6 January 1927 commented that the grand jury indicted nearly 30 persons for a variety of federal crimes, including vehicle theft, drug offenses and “white slavery,” or prostitution. A half-dozen, meaning the five men in the Vignes Street case and one other, were charged with Prohibition violations, while it also “recommended that the national prohibition act be amended to permit deportation of aliens twice convicted of violating the prohibition law.”

From there, nothing was located about the illicit still issue until the Times of 26 October reported,

Six men arrested December 2, 1926, in a raid on what was believed to be the largest [illegal] distilling plant west of the Mississippi River, located in a warehouse at 120 South Vignes street, were found guilty yesterday of violation of the internal revenue law and the Volstead Act by a jury in Federal Judge McCormick’s courtroom.

Sentences were to be handed down the following day, but nothing could be located about the punishment or anything further about the convicted men, while it appears that those who were the “higher-ups” eluded responsibility for their establishment of the substantial illicit enterprise. Prohibition continued for another half-decade, but rising sentiment against it led to the repeal of the amendment in 1933 and Americans were free to openly and legally imbibe again.

As for the structure housing the hooch-generating plant, it is still with us and is known as the “Vignes Art Building,” with resident artists occupying the edifice and it has been surveyed for the Los Angeles Historic Resources Inventory, though not much is stated about it, other than that it is eligible for the federal National Register as part of a register-eligible district, this being the expansive Arts District that has grown by leaps and bounds in this section of downtown in recent decades.

With respect to the photo, it is an excellent illustration of efforts, ultimately unsuccessful, of moral reformers enacting Prohibition to severely limit the production, distribution, sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages and, specifically, work by local and federal law enforcement to shut down illicit distilleries like this particularly sophisticated and substantial enterprise.