USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > A history of California and an extended history of Los Angeles and environs : also containing biographies of well-known citizens of the past and present, Volume I > Part 32
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"spuds" in the counties contiguous to San Francisco, the agriculturists paying as high as fifteen cents per pound for seed. The yield was enormous and the market was soon overstocked. The growers who could not dispose of their potatoes stacked them up in huge piles in the fields; and there they rotted, filling the country around with their effluvia. The next year uo- body planted potatoes, and prices went up to the figures of '49 and the spring of '50.
The size to which vegetables grew astonished the amateur agriculturists. Beets, when allowed to grow to maturity, resembled the trunks of trees; onions looked like squash, while a patch of pumpkins resembled a tented field; and corn grew so tall that the stalks had to be felled to get at the ears. Onions were a favorite vege- table in the mining camps on account of their anti-scorbutic properties as a preventive of scurvy. The honest miner was not fastidious about the aroma. They were a profitable crop, too. One ranchero in the Napa valley was re- ported to have cleared $8,000 off two acres of onions.
With the decline of gold mining, wheat be- came the staple product of central California. The nearness to shipping ports and the large yields made wheat growing very profitable. In the years immediately following the Civil war the price ranged high and a fortune was some- times made from the products of a single field. It may be necessary to explain that the field might contain anywhere from five hundred to a thousand acres. The grain area was largely extended by the discovery that land in the upper mesas, which had been regarded as only fit for pasture land, was good for cereals. The land in the southern part of the state, which was held in large grants, continued to be de- voted to cattle raising for at least two decades after the American conquest. After the dis- covery of gold, cattle raising became immensely profitable. Under the Mexican régime a steer was worth what his hide and tallow would bring or about $2 or $3. The rush of immigration in 1849 sent the price of cattle up until a fat bul- lock sold for from $30 to $35. The profit to a ranchero who had a thousand or more marketa- ble cattle was a fortune. A good, well-stocked
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cattle ranch was more valuable than a gold mine.
The enormous profits in cattle raising dazed the Californians. Had they been thrifty and economical, they might have grown rich. But the sudden influx of wealth engendered extrava- gant habits and when the price of cattle fell, as it did in a few years, the spendthrift customs were continued. When the cattle market was dull it was easy to raise money by mortgaging the ranch. With interest at the rate of 5 per cent per month, compounded monthly, it did not take long for land and cattle both to change hands. It is related of the former owner of the Santa Gertrudes rancho that he borrowed $500 from a money lender, at 5 per cent a month, to beat a poker game, but did not suc- ceed. Then he borrowed more money to pay the interest on the first and kept on doing so until interest and principal amounted to $100,- 000; then the mortgage was foreclosed and property to-day worth $1,000,000 was lost for a paltry $500 staked on a poker game.
Gold mining continued to be the prevailing industry of northern California. The gold pro- duction reached its acme in 1853, when the total yield was $65,000,000. From that time there was a gradual decline in production and in the number of men employed. Many had given up the hopes of striking it rich and quit the business for something more certain and less illusive. The production of gold in 1852 was $60,000,000, yet the average yield to each man of the one hundred thousand engaged in it was only about $600, or a little over $2 per day to the man, scarcely living wages as prices were then. It has been claimed that the cost of producing the gold, counting all expenditures, was three times the value of that produced. Even if it did, the development of the country and impulse given to trade throughout the world would more than counterbalance the loss.
At the time of the discovery of gold nearly all of the fruit raised in California was produced at Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. In Spanish and Mexican days, Los Angeles had been the prin- cipal wine-producing district of California. Al- though wine, as well as other spirituous liquors, were in demand, the vineyardists found it more
profitable to ship their grapes to San Francisco than to manufacture them into wine. Grapes retailed in the city of San Francisco at from twelve and one-half to twenty-five cents a pound. The vineyards were as profitable as the cattle ranches. The mission Indians did the labor in the vineyards and were paid in aguar- diente on Saturday night. By Sunday morning they were all drunk; then they were gathered up and put into a corral. On Monday morning they were sold to pay the cost of their dissipa- tion. It did not take many years to kill off the Indians. The city has grown over the former sites of the vineyards.
The first orange trees were planted at the Mission San Gabriel about the year 1815 and a few at Los Angeles about the same time. But little attention was given to the industry by the Californians. The first extensive grove was planted by William Wolfskill in 1840. The im- pression then prevailed that oranges could be grown only on the low lands near the river. The idea of attempting to grow them on the mesa lands was scouted at by the Californians and the Americans. The success that attended the Riverside experiment demonstrated that they could be grown on the mesas, and that the fruit produced was superior to that grown on the river bottoms. This gave such an impetus to the industry in the south that it has distanced all others. The yearly shipment to the eastern markets is twenty thousand car loads. The cit- rus belt is extending every year.
The Californians paid but little attention to the quality of the fruit they raised. The seed fell in the ground and sprouted. If the twig survived and grew to be a tree, they ate the fruit, asking no question whether the quality might be improved. The pears grown at the missions and at some of the ranch houses were hard and tasteless. It was said they never ripened. A small black fig was cultivated in a few places, but the quantity of fruit grown outside of the mission gardens was very small.
The high price of all kinds of fruit in the early '5os induced the importation of apple, peach, pear, plum and prune trees. These thrived and soon supplied the demand. Before the advent of the railroads and the shipment east the quan-
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
tity of deciduous fruit produced had outgrown the demand, and there was no profit in its pro- duction. All this has been changed by eastern shipment.
Sheep were brought to the country with the first missionary expeditions. The Indian in his primitive condition did not use clothing. A coat of mud was his only garment and he was not at all particular about the fit of that. After his conversion the missionaries put clothing on him, or, rather, on part of him. He was given a shirt, which was a shirt of Nessus, being made of the coarse woolen cloth manufactured at the mission. It was irritating to the skin and com- pelled the poor wretches to keep up a continual scratching; at least, that is what Hugo Reid tells us. During the Civil war and for several years after, the sheep industry was very profit- able. The subdivision of the great ranchos and the absorption of the land for grain growing and fruit culture have contracted the sheep ranges until there is but little left for pasture except the foothills that are too rough for cultivation.
Up to 1863 the great Spanish grants that cov- ered the southern part of the state had, with a few exceptions, been held intact and cattle rais- ing had continued to be the principal industry. For several seasons previous to the famine years of 1863 and 1864 there had been heavy rainfalls and consequently feed was abundant. With the price of cattle declining, the rancheros over- stocked their ranges to make up by quantity for decrease in value. When the dry year of 1863 set in, the feed on ranches was soon ex- hausted and the cattle starving. The second famine year following, the cattle industry was virtually wiped out of existence and the cattle- owners ruined. In Santa Barbara, where the cattle barons held almost imperial sway, and, with their army of retainers, controlled the political affairs of the county, of the two hun- dred thousand cattle listed on the assessment roll of 1862, only five thousand were alive when grass grew in 1865. On the Stearns' ranchos in Los Angeles county, one hundred thousand head of cattle and horses perished, and the owner of a quarter million acres and a large amount of city property could not raise money enough to pay his taxes.
Many of the rancheros were in debt when the hard times came, and others mortgaged their land at usurious rates of interest to carry them through the famine years. Their cattle dead, they had no income to meet the interest on the cancerous mortgage that was eating up their patrimony. The result was that they were com- pelled either to sell their land or the mortgage was foreclosed and they lost it. This led to the subdivision of the large grants into small hold- ings, the new proprietors finding that there was more profit in selling them off in small tracts than in large ones. This brought in an intelli- gent and progressive population, and in a few years entirely revolutionized the agricultural conditions of the south. Grain growing and fruit raising became the prevailing industries. The adobe ranch house with its matanzas and its Golgotha of cattle skulls and bones gave place to the tasty farm house with its flower garden, lawn and orange grove.
The Californians paid but little attention to improving the breed of their cattle. When the only value in an animal was the hide and tallow, it did not pay to improve the breed. The hide of a long-horned, mouse-colored Spanish steer would sell for as much as that of a high-bred Durham or Holstein, and, besides, the first could exist where the latter would starve to death. After the conquest there was for some time but little improvement. Cattle were brought across the plains, but for the most part these were the mongrel breeds of the western states and were but little improvement on the Spanish stock. It was not until the famine years vir- tually exterminated the Spanish cattle that bet- ter breeds were introduced.
As with cattle, so also it was with horses. Little attention was given to improving the breed. While there were a few fine race horses and saddle horses in the country before its American occupation, the prevailing equine was the mustang. He was a vicious beast, nor was it strange that his temper was bad. He had to endure starvation and abuse that would have killed a more aristocratic animal. He took care of himself, subsisted on what he could pick up and to the best of his ability resented ill treat- ment. Horses during the Mexican régime were
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
used only for riding. Oxen were the draft ani- mals. The mustang had one inherent trait that did not endear him to an American, and that was his propensity to "buck." With his nose between his knees, his back arched and his legs stiffened, by a series of short, quick jumps, he could dismount an inexperienced rider with neatness and dispatch. The Californian took delight in urging the bronco to "buck" so that he (the rider) might exhibit his skillful horse- manship. The mustang had some commenda- ble traits as well. He was sure-footed as a goat and could climb the steep hillsides almost equal to that animal. He had an easy gait under the saddle and could measure off mile after mile without a halt. His power of endurance was wonderful. He could live off the country when apparently there was nothing to subsist on ex- cept the bare ground. He owed mankind a debt of ingratitude which he always stood ready to pay when an opportunity offered. The passing of the mustang began with the advent of the American farmer.
The founding of agricultural colonies began in the '50s. One of the first, if not the first, was the German colony of Anaheim, located thirty miles south of Los Angeles. A company of Germans organized in San Francisco in 1857 for the purpose of buying land for the cultiva- tion of the wine grape and the manufacture of wine. The organization was a stock company. Eleven hundred acres were purchased in a Spanish grant. This was subdivided into twenty and forty acre tracts; an irrigating ditch brought in from the Santa Ana river. A por- tion of each subdivision was planted in vines and these were cultivated by the company until they came into bearing, when the tracts were divided among the stockholders by lot, a cer- tain valuation being fixed on each tract. The man obtaining a choice lot paid into the fund a certain amount and the one receiving an infe- rior tract received a certain amount, so that each received the same value in the distribution. The colony proved quite a success, and for thirty years Anaheim was one of the largest wine- producing districts in the United States. In 1887 a mysterious disease destroyed all the vines and the vineyardists turned their attention
to the cultivation of oranges and English walnuts.
The Riverside colony, then in San Bernardino county, now in Riverside county, was founded in 1870. The projectors of the colony were eastern gentlemen. At the head of the organiza- tion was Judge J. W. North. They purchased four thousand acres of the Roubidoux or Jurupa rancho and fourteen hundred and sixty acres of government land from the California Silk Cen- ter Association. This association had been or- ganized in 1869 for the purpose of founding a colony to cultivate mulberry trees and manu- facture silk. It had met with reverses, first in the death of its president, Louis Prevost, a man skilled in the silk business, next in the revoca- tion by the legislature of the bounty for mul- berry plantations, and lastly in the subsidence of the sericulture craze. To encourage silk cul- ture in California, the legislature, in 1866, passed an act authorizing the payment of a bounty of $250 for every plantation of five thousand mul- berry trees two years old. This greatly stimu- lated the planting of mulberry trees, if it did not greatly increase the production of silk. In 1869 it was estimated that in the central and southern portions of the state there were ten millions of mulberry trees in various stages of growth. Demands for the bounty poured in upon the commissioners in such numbers that the state treasury was threatened with bank- ruptcy. The revocation of the bounty killed the silk worms and the mulberry trees; and those who had been attacked with the sericulture craze quickly recovered. The Silk Center As- sociation, having fallen into hard lines, offered its lands for sale at advantageous terms, and in September, 1870, they were purchased by the Southern California Colony Association. The land was bought at $3.50 per acre. It was mesa or table land that had never been cultivated. It was considered by old-timers indifferent sheep pasture, and Roubidoux, it is said, had it struck from the tax roll because it was not worth tax- ing.
The company had the land subdivided and laid off a town which was first named Jurupa, but afterwards the name was changed to River- side. The river, the Santa Ana, did not flow
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past the town, but the colonists hoped to make a goodly portion of its waters do so. The lands were put on sale at reasonable prices, a ditch at a cost of $50,000 was constructed. Experi- ments were made with oranges, raisin grapes and deciduous fruits, but the colony finally set- tled down to orange producing. In 1873 the introduction of the Bahia or navel orange gave an additional impetus to orange growing in the colony, the fruit of that species being greatly superior to any other. This fruit was propa- gated by budding from two trees received from Washington, D. C., by J. A. Tibbetts, of River- side.
The Indiana colony, which later became Pasa- dena, was founded in 1873 by some gentlemen from Indiana. Its purpose was the growing of. citrus fruits and raisin grapes, but it has grown into a city, and the orange groves, once the pride of the colony, have given place to business blocks and stately residences.
During the early '70s a number of agricul- tural colonies were founded in Fresno county. These were all fruit-growing and raisin-pro- ducing enterprises. They proved successful and Fresno has become the largest raisin-pro- ducing district in the state.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE CIVIL WAR-LOYALTY AND DISLOYALTY.
T HE admission of California into the Union as a free state did not, in the opinion of the ultra pro-slavery faction, preclude the possibility of securing a part of its territory for the "peculiar institution" of the south. The question of state division which had come up in the constitutional convention was again agi- tated. The advocates of division hoped to cut off from the southern part, territory enough for a new state. The ostensible purpose of division was kept concealed. The plea of unjust taxa- tion was made prominent. The native Califor- nians who under Mexican rule paid no taxes on their land were given to understand that they were bearing an undue proportion of the cost of government, while the mining counties, pay- ing less tax, had the greater representation. The native Californians were opposed to slavery, an open advocacy of the real purpose would defeat the division scheme.
The leading men in the southern part of the state were from the slave states. If the state were divided, the influence of these men would carry the new state into the Union with a con- stitution authorizing slave-holding and thus the south would gain two senators. The division question came up in some form in nearly every session of the legislature for a decade after Cali- fornia became a state.
In the legislature of 1854-55, Jefferson Hunt, of San Bernardino county, introduced a bill in the assembly to create and establish, "out of the territory embraced within the limits of the state of California, a new state, to be called the state of Columbia." The territory embraced within the counties of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Joaquin, Calaveras, Amador, Tuolumne, Stanislaus, Mariposa, Tulare, Monterey, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego, with the islands on the coast, were to constitute the new state. "The people residing within the above mentioned territory shall be and they are hereby author- ized, so soon as the consent of the congress of the United States shall be obtained thereto, to proceed to organize a state government under such rules as are prescribed by the constitution of the United States." The bill was referred to a select committee of thirteen members repre- senting different sections of the state. This committee reported as a substitute, "An Act to create three states out of the territory of Cali- fornia," and also drafted an address to the peo- ple of California advocating the passage of the act. The eastern boundary line of California was to be moved over the mountains to the one hundred and nineteenth degree of longitude west of Greenwich, which would have taken about
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
half of the present state of Nevada. The north- ern state was to be called Shasta, the central California and the southern Colorado.
The southern boundary of the state of Shasta began at the mouth of Maron's river; thence easterly along the boundary line between Yerba and Butte counties and between Sierra and Plu- mas to the summit of the Sierra Nevadas and thence easterly to the newly established state line.
The northern boundary of the state of Colo- rado began at the mouth of the Pajara river, running up that river to the summit of the Coast Range; thence in a straight line to the mouth of the Merced river, thence up that river to the summits of the Sierra Nevadas and then due east to the newly established state line.
The territory not embraced in the states of Colorado and Shasta was to constitute the state of California.
The taxable property of Shasta for the year 1854 was $7,000,000 and the revenue $100,000; that of Colorado $9.764,000 and the revenue $186,000. These amounts the committee consid- ered sufficient to support the state governments. The bill died on the files.
The legislature of 1859 was intensely pro- slavery. The divisionists saw in it an oppor- tunity to carry out their long-deferred scheme. The so-called Pico law, an act granting the consent of the legislature to the formation of a different government for the southern counties of this state, was introduced early in the ses- sion, passed in both houses and approved by the governor April 18, 1859. The boundaries of the proposed state were as follows: "All of that part or portion of the present territory of this state lying all south of a line drawn east- ward from the west boundary of the state along the sixth standard parallel south of the Mount Diablo meridian, east to the summit of the coast range; thence southerly following said summit to the seventh standard parallel; thence due east on said standard, parallel to its inter- section with the northwest boundary of Los Angeles county; thence northeast along said boundary to the eastern boundary of the state, including the counties of San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Bernardino and a part of Buena Vista, shall be
segregated from the remaining portion of the state for the purpose of the formation by con- gress, with the concurrent action of said portion (the consent for the segregation of which is hereby granted), of a territorial or other gov- ernment under the name of the "Territory of Colorado," or such other name as may be deemed meet and proper."
Section second provided for the submitting the question of "For a Territory" or "Against a Territory" to the people of the portion sought to be segregated at the next general election; "and in case two-thirds of the whole number of voters voting thereon shall vote for a change of government, the consent hereby given shall be deemed consummated." In case the vote was favorable the secretary of state was to send a certified copy of the result of the election and a copy of the act annexed to the president of the United States and to the senators and rep- resentatives of California in congress. At the general election in September, 1859, the ques- tion was submitted to a vote of the people of the southern counties, with the following result:
For. Against.
Los Angeles county
1,407
44I
San Bernardino
441
29
San Diego
207
24
San Luis Obispo
IO
283
Santa Barbara
395
5I
Tulare
I7
...
Total
2,477
828
The bill to create the county of Buena Vista from the southern portion of Tulare failed to pass the legislature, hence the name of that county does not appear in the returns. The result of the vote showed that considerably more than two-thirds were in favor of a new state.
The results of this movement for division and the act were sent to the president and to con- gress, but nothing came of it. The pro-slavery faction which with the assistance of its coad- jutors of the north had so long dominated con- gress had lost its power. The southern senators and congressmen were preparing for secession and had weightier matters to think of than the division of the state of California. Of late years, a few feeble attempts have been made to stir up
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HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.
the old question of state division and even to resurrect the old "Pico law."
For more than a decade after its admission into the Union, California was a Democratic state and controlled by the pro-slavery wing of that party. John C. Fremont and William H. Gwin, its first senators, were southern born, Fremont in South Carolina and Gwin in Ten- nessee. Politics had not entered into their election, but the lines were soon drawn. Fre- mont drew the short term and his services in the senate were very brief. He confidently expected a re-election, but in this he was doomed to disappointment. The legislature of 1851, after balloting one hundred and forty-two times, adjourned without electing, leaving Cali- fornia with but one senator in the session of 1850-51. In the legislature of 1852 John B. Willer was elected. He was a northern man with southern principles. His chief opponent for the place was David Colbert Broderick, a man destined to fill an important place in the political history of California. He was an Irish- man by birth, but had come to America in his boyhood. He had learned the stone cutters' trade with his father. His early associations were with the rougher element of New York City. Aspiring to a higher position than that of a stone cutter he entered the political field and soon arose to prominence. At the age of 26 he was nominated for Congress, but was de- feated by a small majority through a split in the party. In 1849 he came to California, where he arrived sick and penniless. With F. D. Kohler, an assayer, he engaged in coining gold. The profit from buying gold dust at $14 an ounce and making it into $5 and $10 pieces put him in affluent circumstances.
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