by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Most of the entries in the “Read All About It” series of posts featuring historic newspapers from the Museum’s collection are from 1870s issues of Angel City papers, though we’ve occasionally highlighted others from different eras. Here we look at one of a group of numbers of the Los Angeles Herald from 1890, this one from 8 April.
This was at a time when, following the Boom of the Eighties, which largely took place during the administration of Mayor William H. Workman (nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste) in 1887-1888, when the regional economy was still in a downturn, but there is still some interesting content as we peruse its pages.
For example, the Herald expressed its concern that,
Reports are coming in from all quarters that the orange trees being brought in from Florida are introducing new scale pests. This is a very serious matter and one that needs most careful attention. No system of quarantine against these pests can be to stringent. The trouble is that in some instances the bug inspectors are importers of trees. This ought not to be. If a man wants to go into the importing business, he ought to resign from the commission, so that he may be well watched and compelled to rid all the trees he offers for sale of all sorts of insect pests. It is greatly to our disadvantage that we have been compelled to go outside of our own section for trees.
The growing importance of the orange as the staple of greater Los Angele agriculture has been discussed here before and this would only grow as the refrigerated box car for railroad shipping was soon introduced, while promotion of the region’s citrus at the World’s Fair in Chicago three years later was also vital.
The editorial offered the view that there would not be the need to import trees the following year, but, in the meantime, it advocated for the treatment of any that were sold and planted in local orchards to keep the scale from spreading. Moreover, it remarked that it was far easier to destroy the pests in the early stages of infestation, but far more challenging afterwards.
Finally, it was commented that “confidence has been restored” concerning recent efforts to keep the scale at bay following previous infestations as the black, red and white varieties were almost eradicated “and we do not want any others of any color to paralyze our hopes again. The piece concluded,
The future of this section hinges very directly on orange culture, and we are now in the midst of a great development of the industry.
In January 1921, a fire in the basement of the Department of Commerce building in Washington, D.C., destroyed, with only a tiny fraction of the schedules of the 1890 census saved. The Herald, in its coverage of the most recent meeting of the Los Angeles City Council, cited a message from Mayor Henry T. Hazard, who wrote that “there are many inquiries from the census bureau regarding the financial condition and other matters of our city that will be of vital importance to us in the coming census reports.”
The chief executive continued that there were no published reports by municipal officers for four years, making fulfilling the Bureau’s request challenging, so Hazard recommended action be taken because the City Auditor had the blank forms from Washington, but could not act. A token sum of $50, he went on, would serve to provide the data requested and which served the useful future purpose of providing “the facts in regard to the growth and development of the city so essential to us.”
Another matter before the council concerned the challenge with traffic access on Bunker Hill, the steep section west of the main downtown business district that was also considered a barrier for those people increasingly residing to the west in such areas as Crown Hill. A recent post here detailed a late 1920s plan for the complete razing of Bunker Hill, but there were other ideas bandied about in preceding years, including what was referred to as the “First Street Cut,” which we’ll look to make the subject of a future post here.
In April 1890, however, the Board of Public Works sent a report to the Council regarding this important thoroughfare, in which it stated that there were a trio of issues to address. These included “those of the property owners between Broadway and Flower street, some of whom prefer a traffic grade, but nearly all of whom have signed an agreement or petition for a grade of about one in ten feet.” A second was for those along 1st from Flower out to the western city limits, then Hoover Street and some three miles in extent, “who want, and are willing to pay by assessment for a traffic grade of one in twenty-five feet.” Lastly, there were owners who wanted a traffic grade on Pearl (Figueroa) Street, “which would be destroyed by anything else than a traffic grade on First street, because of the fill necessary at the intersection of First and Pearl streets.”
The challenge was especially concerning for the three-mile section along First, considered “so overwhelming that it would seem to preclude any other than traffic grade if any work or change of grade is contemplated west of Flower street.” With those calling for a one foot in ten grade and on 1st from Broadway to Flower advocating “for several years . . . [and have] been industriously at work to get something done,” the board felt that their desires and those along the street out to the city limit could be simultaneously addressed. It remarked,
The board recognizes the fact that a traffic grade is a necessity, and that it is imperatively demanded, through the first hill, by the very large and rapidly-growing district west of it . . . The board is o the opinion that both projects can be proceeded with without interfering with each other.
Another item of interest concerned an interview conducted in San Francisco with Collis P. Huntington of the immensely powerful Southern Pacific Railroad (whose near-total local monopoly locally was upended when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe completed a transcontinental line to the region, ushering in that Boom of the 1880s).
Huntington, who long lived and worked in New York City handling financial transactions and lobbying (including all manner of legal and extralegal maneuverings) traveled to San Francisco amid rumors that one of his Big Four partners (the others were the late Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker), company president Leland Stanford, a former California governor who was one of its United States Senators, was poised to resign.
The executive brushed that aside, telling a reporter that “my visit to California is nothing unusual” as he had “large interests her, and it is only natural that I should come out to the Coast once in a while,” though there was an upcoming Southern Pacific board meeting.” Huntington added, “I know of no reason why Senator Stanford should resign . . . and I do not believe there is any truth whatever in the report.”
In fact, it is generally thought that Huntington came west to engineer the removal of Stanford, who was elected senator in 1885 while his erstwhile partner preferred another candidate, though the latter was also spending increasingly more time readying for the opening of a university named for his teenage son, who died in Italy of typhoid fever, this, of course, being Leland Stanford Junior University.
Why this has resonance for us in greater Los Angeles is that, in 1892, Huntington summoned his nephew, Henry, from the Midwest where he was involved in work for a subsidiary of the Southern Pacific. While Henry was in San Francisco serving as his uncle’s assistant and then vice-president, with much of his efforts concerning street railways, he also bought the Los Angeles Railway, believing in the future of the Angel City and environs. After Collis died in 1900, however, Henry, assuming he’d step into his uncle’s shoes, was instead pushed out, though allowed to take the Los Angeles car line with him. Coming south as the 20th century dawned, Henry quickly made his near-omnipotent mark on regional transportation and real estate, while establishing a garden, library and art gallery at his San Marino estate that left a lasting legacy.
Aside from the City Council report, there was another for the Board of Education, including the note that two contractors requested more time to complete a pair of new school buildings, while a communication was received “calling attention to the fact that only ten men were employed at present on the new high school building” and that, at that rate, work would not be finished during the current year. Los Angeles High School, which opened in 1873 on Fort Moore Hill, just north of Bunker, was moved nearby not quite 15 years later to make room for the County Courthouse. The new building was finished in 1891, with the older structure used for lower grades.
Superintendent William M. Freisner submitted a report, dated the 4th, that informed the board that total enrollment in the city’s school was not far shy of 7,000 pupils, of which there were only 17 more boys than girls—today, there are nearly 400,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a drop of more than 15% in recent years, and it is about 52% male.
There was something of a dust-up among board members, as Michael Whaling, an attorney and resident of some two decades, complained “that he had not always been treated with the respect that was due to him” while he asked to be permitted to submit a resolution “and that proper attention be given to what he had to say.” This failing, he continued, “the sooner he severed his connection with the board the better [as] he would be able do this constituents justice.”
Board Chair Abram E. Pomeroy, who we’ve noted on this blog as a co-founder of the town of Puente (as well as the central California coastal community of Pismo Beach), “assured him that he had always been treated with the same respect as any other member.” Apparently assuaged, at least to an extent, Whaling then recited a long resolution “recommending a schedule of teachers’ salaries at a reduction of 10 per cent, and calling for the abolishment of several of the present arrangements in the department, thereby saving the city about $20,000 per year, and argued at considerable length in its favor.” Whaling’s concern was almost certainly tied to the difficult financial circumstances of that period.
In a summary of the business conducted by the state supreme, county superior and the federal courts, there was a case in the latter in which Newhall (today’s Santa Clarita) resident Avery Clinton was subjected to a hearing after he was charged with sending obscene letters through the mail to his employer’s daughter, Charlotte Sheills of Saticoy, a farm town near Ventura. Confessing that the missives were from him, the report observed,
[Clinton] made the statement that he was not in his right mind when he wrote the letter, that he was suffering from extreme vexation, disappointment and distraction . . . The inference seemed to be that he was in love with the girl and had been refused.
It was later revealed that the contents of the correspondence accused the 16-year-old Charlotte of immoral conduct with other man and threatened to contact a Ventura paper “unless she accorded to him a like privilege.” At the end of May, Clinton pled guilty and was handed a three-year sentence, with hard labor, at San Quentin State Prison.
On a motion of another attorney, San Diego lawyer Olin Wellborn, a Georgia native and Confederate veteran of the Civil War who long practiced in Dallas, Texas, while also serving three terms in Congress before coming west, was admitted to practice before the federal courts. In 1895, Wellborn was appointed to a federal judgeship and served for just shy of two decades before retiring.
In a column of brief personal notices, artist J. Bond Francisco, returned from Europe and in New York City was to spend some time in his native Cincinnati, Ohio “and then hasten on to Los Angeles.” The piece added,
Mr. Francisco has been in the Old World for several years, perfecting himself in music and painting. He left here an accomplished artist in both arts, and returns no doubt with added knowledge, skill and proficiency in both. He will meet a hearty welcome here from a very wide circle of friends and acquaintances.
Francisco settled in the Angel City during the 1880s boom and taught music, while he began exhibiting paintings not long after his return from overseas. In 1897, he was co-founder of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra and was its first concertmaster, while he was was a major figure in the arts until his death in 1931.
As per usual, advertisements, which provide most of the revenue to keep these papers published, are often fascinating to see, including ones for like “Faber’s Golden Female Pills;” W.L. Douglas’ $3 shoes for men; the promotion of the San Gabriel Valley town of Ramona, now in part of southwest Alhambra; the Raymond Hotel in South Pasadena; Coulter’s dry goods store; Jerry Illich’s well-known downtown Los Angeles restaurant; and a spate of medical quacks including “Dr. Steinhart’s Essence of Life,” “Dr. Gibbon’s Dispensary,” Dr. Stoner’s “Big G” for gonorrhea, and others claiming to make weak men strong during this era of the promotion of “vigorous manhood.”
We’ll be sure to devote more future posts in the “Read All About It” series on this group of Herald issues from 1890, so keep an eye out for those.