by Paul R. Spitzzeri
A couple of prior posts here have highlighted early issues of the Greater Los Angeles Association Weekly Bulletin, with that group formed in spring 1924 to promote a scheme to raise $50 million to finance industrial expansion in the region. The organization adopted the motto of “KEEP THE WHITE SPOT WHITE” in promoting industry and, while it apparently utilized the slogan to promote the bright prospects of the area, some have interpreted this in racial terms, given white dominance of the economic environment.
It is also worth noting that recent post here concerning the development of Greater Goodyear Park in the Florence-Graham neighborhood of South Los Angeles and the substantial growth of industrial development there in concert with residential subdivisions, while another fairly recent post addressed the twin purposes of Montebello Park—both reflecting the Roaring Twenties movement in maximizing momentum in manufacturing.
So, as the Association moved quickly to promote its project, this fourth number of the Weekly Bulletin included mention that its campaign was being “watched in the east,” specifically in the May edition of the Central Manufacturing District Magazine in Chicago, that city being a major industrial power in the country. Noting that “it is now evident . . . that the enthusiasm” of the Association’s organizational meeting of 27 March “was not of the moment, for it has been increasing,” the publication remarked,
There are many evidences that the campaign of the Greater Los Angeles Association to increase manufacturing in Southern California through the industrial financing corporation, which is now in process of organization, is being watched with interest in all parts of the United States. Inquries [sic] come to the association[‘]s headquarters daily from the Atlantic seaboard and from all parts of the Middle West and South, many of these asking for information concerning manufacturing conditions along various lines in Southern California.
The newsletter also cited an article from the Los Angeles Examiner titled “Keep The White Spot White,” which followed the late March confab and remarked that “the general scheme is similar to that instituted by the Greater New York Association several years ago” and which was adopted by Chicago and St. Louis.
The paper commented that “it was pointed out that no longer is Los Angeles a tourist city” and was joining the ranks of manufacturing metropolises as “here in Los Angeles hundreds of concerns have established their plants during the last several years and in each instance they have met with success.” With astronomical population increase came the growth in industry.
There were asserted advantages for the Angel City over eastern locales with respect to inexpensive power and water rates, the climate, raw materials, improvements at the Port of Los Angeles. Notably, nothing was said about labor, including that Los Angeles was largely an “open shop,” or non-union, city. As for the express purpose of the Association, it was observed that,
It is planned to lend financial assistance to present manufacturing interests here in the form of loans so that their work may be extended and also to assist new concerns in the erection of new factories. In making the loans, the [Los Angeles] Chamber of Commerce’s Industrial Department will be consulted. Banks also have announced they will assist in the campaign.
Moreover, the Examiner stated that “citizens of Los Angeles will be urged to invest their money in bonds for the construction of new factories here” and there was to be no untoward whiff of speculation involved because residents “will not be called upon to take a chance with their money.”
The enterprise was to be called the Industrial Underwriting Corporation and was to “subscribe 10 per cent of its capital stock the first year” and that amount each subsequent year “until the entire $50,000,000 has been amassed into a gigantic revolving fund working for the good of Southern California.
Central to the scheme was to involve as many towns in the region outside of the City of the Angeles as possible, while a stated aim was for the Association “to build a foundation which will support a community that has outgrown its production,” as well as to “advertise in a more emphatic way that advantages of Greater Los Angeles,” and to attract the heavy industry the region required for its continued development and expansion.
Merrick was cited as telling the assemblage:
Every business man, every public spirited citizen in Greater Los Angeles, must consider himself a director in the Greater Los Angeles Association if the organization is not to fall short of its mark . . .
The best brains of Southern California will be drafted to perfect the organization of the $50,000,000 investment corporation. The matter already has been presented to financial men, bankers and hardheaded business men—all of whom pronounce it sound.
It matters not whether Alhambra [where Homestead owner Walter P. Temple invested heavily in business buildings during that period], Pasadena, Pomona, or any other city in the Great Southwest gets the industrial concerns so long as they locate in Southern California and contribute to the wealth of those now here and those who are yet to come.
Speakers included former Chamber president and manufacturer Sylvester L. Weaver; the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Paul Shoup; developer and transportation figure Moses H. Sherman; and newspaper publishers George G. Young (Examiner) and Harry Chandler (Los Angeles Times), among others.
A much smaller local paper, the Torrance Herald was cited for its editorial, “An Excellent Investment in Future Prosperity,” as it asserted that “since the California desert was made to bloom, no more important movement has been launched in the Southland than that which is now making new industries its aim.” Success was certain, it was added, because of the motto and “the method by which that object may be realized,” while the plan was declared to be feasible.
Notably, the paper remarked that, once viable firms indicated their willingness to move to the region, the names were to be sent to all chambers of commerce and “it will then become a free-for-all between communities desiring new industries located in their midst.” This, in turn, meant that the Association and the Industrial Underwriting Corporation “will be devoted to the interests of the entire Southland, and not confined to the selfish aims of any particular locality.” It was added that “it behooves every citizen of the Southland to study the aims . . . carefully and to lend them his support.”
The Herald offered a little history lesson in asserting that “California received its first great [financial] impetus in the roaring days of ’49” and the Gold Rush, followed by livestock raising and agriculture. As the 19th century proceeded, the incomparable climate of the Golden State was core to mass migrations and the Los Angeles region became known for its film industry (an early star here being Josephine Workman, granddaughter of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste).
The piece continued that, with the Port of Los Angeles and transcontinental rail lines, “the time has come for Southern California to broaden out the scope of its industrial life.” Moreover, it remarked that the region “has grown just about as long as it can grow on the tourist, climate, subdivision, and the building industries,” but:
California has advanced just about as far as she can on the pleasant but unstable foundation of climate. The most solid foundation which man can place under any community or district is the great American dinner pail.
Hot air and shouting for industries will never bring factories to the Southland. But a sensible financing plan, such as that of the Industrial Finance Corporation, will do it and do it to the full extent of California’s ability to make industries profitable . . .
Woolen and cotton mills, furniture factories, canning factories, mineral products mills, shoe factories, can find sound economic reasons for locating in Southern California.
It is no idle dream to picture the day when the ports of our west will be the busiest in the whole wide world.
That is why we should be intensely interested in the Greater Los Angeles movement and the organization of the Industrial Finance Corporation.
That is why we should invest in future prosperity.
Under the heading of “Organization Work Goes Forward,” the Bulletin commented that “in all section of the Greater Los Angeles area the work of organizing for membership drives . . . is proceeding with gratifying speed” while support from almost all locales contacted was “whole-hearted.”
Twenty-nine towns and cities were listed among these, including Alhambra with a membership committee of a dozen ready to institute a drive; Anaheim holding a dinner the following evening to organize; Burbank having a general committee and ten subcommittees as it pursued its work; Glendale holding regular meetings with its committee of 20; Huntington Park recruiting 60 members on its first day of effort; Norwalk getting prepared with its 10-member committee to launch its recruitment; San Fernando also netting 60 memberships after several days of effort; and Watts getting 25 members on its first day of a drive, thanks to work from its 15-member committee.
There were also 18 district committees representing Alhambra, Anaheim, Bell, Burbank, Claremont, Fullerton, Glendale, Glendora, Hollywood, Huntington Beach, Huntington Park, Norwalk, Pasadena, Redondo Beach, Santa Monica, Torrance-Lomita, Watts, and Whittier. As for the officers and directors of the Association, in addition to Merrick and treasurer William D. Longyear of Security Trust and Savings Bank and a former president of the state banking association, there were 29 vice-presidents and 57 directors.
Among prominent vice-presidents were John H. Blair, co-owner and developer with Charles F. DeWitt of Greater Goodyear Park; Weaver; Orange County Supervisor and oil partner of Temple, Thomas B. Talbert; and Sidney H. Woodruff, the developer of the newly launched residential tract of Hollywoodland. Directors included such prominent figures as auto dealer Earle C. Anthony; Chandler; Sherman’s partner Eli P. Clark; commercial realtor William H. Daum; film director Cecil B. DeMille; former United States Senator Frank P. Flint; Ambassador Hotel official Abraham Frank, Bank of America founder Amadeo P. Giannini; banker Irving H. Hellman; developer Harold Janss; department store owner David May; attorney Henry O’Melveny; banker John F. Sartori; Sherman; Shoup; oil man Mericos H. Whittier; and Boyle Workman, great-nephew of the Homestead’s founders and a long-time member and president of the Los Angeles City Council during this period.
With such an impressive roster of business and political luminaries in Los Angeles, the confidence expressed in this issue and the other two the Museum has in its collection of the Bulletin seemed well-placed enough. Five days after its publication, the 17 May edition of the Los Angeles Express published a contribution by Merrick under the heading of “LOCAL PLANTS TO HAVE AID IN EXPANSION” with a subheading of “Big and Little Look Alike in Financing Plans.” The Association head began by asserting,
Increased manufacturing for Southern California is the objective of the Greater Los Angeles association. We are working to make possible a stabilized prosperity where employment will be given to all who are looking for work and to thousands upon thousands who will come to live among us. But our plan of great increase of industries does not mean that financial assistance will be confined to or even directed principally toward new manufacturing concerns or industries of great size.
Merrick went on to remark that the inaugural efforts of the Association would be for existing companies “whose record of operation shows that they can expand and enlarge their trade territory,” while it was added that there would be as much “assistance to small operators as to the larger ones.” This was because he and his associates knew it would take a diversity of big and small firms “to create the kind of an industrial district that we expect Greater Los Angeles to be.”
The official continued that the region had a purchasing power that was rapidly expanding and involved 14 western states and that the district would be like those on the eastern seaboard. He remarked that,
Thousands of buyers for commercial houses of all kinds, who have not yet begun to think of Greater Los Angeles as a purchasing point for the stocks of goods they handle or the materials of every character they use in their business, will, as our industries increase, look more and more to this market for purchasing.
Merrick cited a recent resolution of the Purchasing Agents’ Association to ensure that much of a billion dollars in business conducted by that group was directed to local markets and that its president, who worked for the Union Tool Works, was paraphrased as saying that “what this action meant to Los Angeles manufacturers could hardly be realized by the public, [as] it will be so far reaching in its effects.”
The writer remarked that new industrial sections learned from what transpired in the development of older ones, but he observed that “none of the important industrial areas of the United States have had, I feel safe in saying, one-half of the advantages for the manufacturer that Southern California has to offer.” This was because of climate, cheap power, ready supplies of fuel, plenty of raw materials, abundant water, “our magnificent land,” and transport by sea—note again, however, the lack of reference to labor.
It was predicted that,
Greater Los Angeles is in the next five years going to be recognized as the great western market, and we are going to be a great and growing factor in world trade. The establishment of this great industrial center and market in Southern California is going to make it increasingly easier for the small manufacturer, for he will find more channels of trade open to him as the volume of commerce here increases.
The rationale for directing initial efforts of the underwriting firm to established local business was that these, unlike new entities, “sent their roots deeper into the soil. Merrick concluded that, although the Association only existed for just under two months, “already it has rendered a valuable service in starting people here to think industrially—to thinking and talking about manufacturing, and what it will mean to all of use.
The Association head concluded his piece with,
The sooner Los Angeles people get to talking industrial development seriously, the sooner will we have well-stabilized conditions that make for prosperity. The unification of effort of all Southern California along this line is going to make a most remarkable era of industrial development certain, and I am glad to say that all of this district is rapidly becoming unified in its thoughts and efforts.
With this in mind, we’ll return with a second and concluding part looking at the rest of the short, though instructive, life of the Greater Los Angeles Association and its Industrial Underwriting Corporation, so check back in for that.