USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Greater Los Angeles & Southern California; portraits & personal memoranda > Part 2
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The bank clearances of Los Angeles exceed those
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of any city west of the Rocky Mountains, San Francisco alone excepted. Half a century ago, Los Angeles county was a ranche-hardly that- a wild of grazing lands, for the assessed value of all the real estate in the then enormous county was but $748,696 in 1852, and the value of improve- ments but $301,947. Today, sixty-one towns and cities dot the area of the smaller county, and the assessor's total valuation of the county, after equalization by the state board, for 1905, was $201,- 509,785.
If one knows just where to look for it, there is in Los Angeles an adobe house, there may be one or two or several others-crumbling landmarks of adobe days and adobe men. They were good houses and good men in their day. They were the best of their time and place. All honor to their memory. It should be kept green by the preserva- tion of at least one adobe house. But the great sky-scrapers of steel and terra cotta and rein- forced concrete easily crush the sun-dried walls which sheltered the simple life. The intellectual poverty of the moneved tenderfoot, who, unable to pronounce "El Camino," insists on changing the name of the street on which he lives to the name of a way-back street on which he used to live in a way-back town, is like unto the class of people who date their letters "Troy" because they can- not spell "Skaneateles." The antiquity of a city 225 years old is not that of Baalbec, but it is suffi- ciently venerable to demand the reverence of these days of gallop and gulp. The destruction of the old names, memorials of the people who laid the foundations for all our present day prosperity and glory, is a profanation, like the erasure of an hon- ored name from a tombstone. There is enough of pathos in the fact that the race which christened the city should have been so utterly dispossessed
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of their inheritance. It adds tragedy to the pathos when we obliterate even the names of their fathers. Despite the movement to make spelling easy for lazy illiterates, let California's native and adopted sons alike continue to "spell hickory with a j," and grant the transplanted tenderfoot dispensa- tion to "pronounce her as she is spelled, until he learns to say her as she is spoke."
Now, all this marvel of development was not wrought by climate alone. This required men. And the men of California, like its fruits and flow- ers, are largely adopted children. There is only one generation to the manner born. The speech of the Californian betrayeth him not, for every dia- lect of civilization is here. A little pure Spanish and much patois of Mexican-Indian-Spanish whis- per into the Babel of today the echoes of a roman- tic yesterday. Aspirations and exaspirations from the tight little island have a right to be called na- tive Californian so long as we sing the charms of the English rose, of which we have adopted every- thing save the English perfume. The "sunny land of France" speaks the language of the boule- vards in her own Los Angeles colony and journal. The Basque shepherd cares for his snowy fleeces on the sheep ranges. The New England twang blends with the soft Southern accent, and a broad touch of Pennsylvania Dutch establishes the Dunk- ard's right to the privilege of the native born. The right amalgam is stronger than the virgin metal, and every state in the Union has poured its right and due proportion into the blend that we call Cali- fornia. Russia sent her children here-or rather they came without being sent-runaway children, very much against the paternal will, and they brought the strength and hope and liberty-loving spirit that the mother country now so sorely needs, and which the kinder step-mother so gladly ac-
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cepts as her own. Not only the orient but the oc- cident-the nations who dwell where the East and West join-China and Japan, are among us if not of us. Travelers tell us of the vivid panorama of varied humanity that streams past "Shep- hard's" in Cairo. You will touch elbows with a greater variety of men in the streets of Los Ange- les. Only, the picturesqueness is lacking. The people have become amalgamated. They dress like Christians. At least, they dress like the rest of us.
The immigrants who have made modern Los An- geles were so unlike the ordinary conception of im- migrants that a new name had to be applied to them, and they are called "tourists." Not theirs the toilsome journey across the continent or around the storm-washed Horn. Not for them the daily trek and the nightly camp in the midst of alarms and cactus, Indians, grizzlies, and rattlers; not theirs the weary pilgrimage through the alkali lakes and the desert dust, with the complaining wheels shrieking their anguish to the sun-burned and wind-dried axle; the dying cattle and the long and repeated hours and days of despair and fear. About 8,000 came to Los Angeles in that manner in the decade of 1850 and '60. The rest of them waited for the completion of the transcontinental railways and came with no one to molest them save the train-robber and no one to make them afraid but the porter. In the ten years following the breaking out of the Civil war 4,000 came. Be- tween 1870 and 1880, 10,000 home-seekers came by the easy way of the rail. The ten years follow- ing saw 70,000 added to the city's population, and the same number in the next decade.
Our immigrants came not to hew down the for- ests or dike out the sea. They came prepared to buy their homes; they came from homes of comfort to make homes still more comfortable. They were
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not flying from persecution or tyranny in the east- ern states; they were not, as a rule, driven here by stress and pinch of poverty. They did not have to come. They wanted to. True, some of them came with a diminished capitalization of health, but even then they came because they wanted to increase their vital holdings. Men came here not to be made by the country, but to help make the city, county and state. The East sent to Califor- nia her best, and California made them better. The work of betterment was mutual. Southern California was moulded by these immigrants of education, thrift, and morality. It was never the California of Bret Harte, of refined stage rob- bers, chaste and sensitive women of the street and camp, and high-minded and honest blacklegs. The newcomers builded churches, public schools, librar- ies, jails and other concomitants of a high and pro- gressive civilization. It was not a drunken, riot- ous California. Prohibition became popular. One of the largest and most beautiful cities in Los An- geles county, the most prosperous outside of the great county capital, was founded as a temper- ance town, and has not had a saloon within its lim- its for the past twenty-five years. There are half a score of prohibition towns now in the county, and the great city of Los Angeles restricting the num- ber of saloons to 200, has fewer of them in pro- portion to its population than any other city of its size in the United States. Not "wide-openness," but temperance, morality and industry, with an unmeasured faith in the country itself, have been the great elements in the prosperity of Los Ange- les county.
Founded as an inland pueblo, the city of Los Angeles now looks out across the Pacific Ocean from its own frontage, and the great railroad cen- ter is a busy seaport. The dream of the consoli-
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dation of Los Angeles city and county, with the bor- ough system of government, took tangible form in the preliminary report of a consolidation commis- sion in 1906, which had for its object the effective control of harbors and the assurance of free wharf- age; co-operation and participation in the benefits of the Owens River water supply; regulation of terminal rates for harbor towns, and economy and increased efficiency of city and county govern- ment. Since that day of visions Mahomet has gone to the mountain; Los Angeles, finding that the Pa- cific Ocean, which was here first, and abode upon its right of priority, would not come across the meadows and up the grades to the city, has gone to the ocean, by the simple process of annexing the intervening territory, which was all too glad to be annexed, and Los Angeles is one of the important seaports of the Pacific coast. 3 And not the least
important.
Then along in the nineteen hundreds the city began to grow by leaps and bounds. It stretched itself like an awaking giant, and added to area and numbers by the wholesale methods of annexa- tion, always with the glad consent of the annexed. It reached down to the sea and made the great harbor at San Pedro the harbor of Los Angeles, by making a part of itself all that portion of the Pacific Ocean and the towns adjacent. The mu- nicipalities of Wilmington and Colegrove became part of the wealth and strength of Los Angeles. The annexation of Colegrove added ten thousand population to the great city. And having reached its three mile limit of jurisdiction in the Pacific Ocean, the city is now looking fondly toward even greater conquests nearer the mountains. And when it reaches from the desert to the sea, it will probably extend north and south.
The "inner harbor" of "Los Angeles" consists
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of nearly three miles of wharfage along the chan- nel opening to Wilmington lagoon, where addi- tional shipping and industrial facilities are to be developed as the increasing commerce demands, many times greater than in use at present. And the "outer harbor" is the great anchorage which the United States government is protecting by an immense breakwater, now far advanced in con- struction. Completed, it will be 9,250 feet in length, and will cost $2,900,000. The protected area will vary in depth from 20 to 48 feet; with a channel from 500 to 900 feet in width, and a turning basin 1,600 feet wide. The Inner Harbor will have a larger area than the great Liverpool docks, which handle an annual tonnage of nearly twenty millions. On July 1, 1909, 2,732,163 tons of stone had been placed in the great breakwater. The weight of each wall stone, on the harbor side, is not less than 6,000 pounds. On the ocean side, the weight of each stone is at least 16,000 pounds. The breakwater stands 14 feet above low water; 20 feet wide at the top; 38 feet wide at the water line. The width of the base, at the 52 feet depth, is nearly 200 feet.
Should the necessity ever be felt, this great sea wall can be extended an additional 20,000 feet, to the easterly edge of Long Beach, thus increasing tenfold the deep water anchorage. At the present time vessels drawing twenty-five feet of water can take on and discharge their cargoes in the inner harbor. And within a very short time, when the entrance to this portion of the harbor is deepened. the slip can be used by ships drawing thirty feet. Plans approved by the war department provide for the improvement of 60,000 feet of water front in the east and west basins of the inner harbor. Ef- forts are being made to compel the restoration to the state of 700 acres of tide lands of the lagoon
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which in time will become the principal part of the inner harbor. The importance of this great free harbor is not alone for the city of Los Ange- less, but for all of Southern California. During the year 1907, 956 steamers, 281 schooners, and 79 other vessels, coming from the mills in California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Japan, discharged at San Pedro harbor cargoes consist- ing of 484,879,000 feet of lumber, 170,284,000 shin- gles, 1,348,000 shakes, 36,006,000 lath, 275,689 rail- road ties, 12,052 piles for wharfs, 18,230 telegraph and telephone poles, 37,854 posts of various kinds, 789 tons of staves and 2,206 tons of shooks. And the receipt of other classes of freight from domes- tic and foreign ships that make San Pedro a port of call is steadily increasing. Vastly increased traffic will follow the opening of the Panama Canal; all Southern California will rejoice in the consequent tides of prosperity, and the generation of public-spirited citizens who have labored for the possession of this great free harbor will be remem- bered with blessings by a grateful posterity.
In proportion to population, more electric cur- rent is consumed in Los Angeles than in any other city in America. The cheapness of electricity makes it popular. Only one great city in the United States enjoys such cheap electric rates as Los Angeles-that is Buffalo, within eighteen miles of the greatest electric power source in the world-Niagara Falls. The rate in both cities is nine cents per kilowatt hour. Three power and light companies in Los Angeles have a total in- vestment of $16,441,092.29. They furnish 60,000 horsepower for railways, manufacturing and ele- vator service. The aggregate output of these com- panies for light and power, in 1908 was 141,877,145 kilowatt hours.
Los Angeles is also one of the greatest-if not
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the greatest-interurban railway center in the United States. The nine cities of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Springfield, Ill., Detroit, Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus, Dayton and Chicago, with an aggregate population of nearly four millions, oper- ate 1,228 trains per day. One electric railway in Los Angeles alone operates 1,800 trains per day. The three interurban companies operate 1,000 miles of track.
The greatest of all Los Angeles' enterprises-a great undertaking among all great enterprises-is the Owens River aqueduct. It never was a "dream." It was born a "plan," in the brain of a clear-headed, practical man. It was never dis- cussed as a possibility, but always as a reasonable and positive undertaking. It was proposed as a necessity for the city and its environs, that the mu- nicipality bring from the High Sierras, 230 miles distant, a flood of clear, sweet snow water-259,- 000,000 gallons daily-to the homes of its citizens. That means a supply of water for domestic pur- poses for a population of 2,000,000 people and the irrigation of about 75,000 acres of land, now un- productive, adjacent to the city, and the develop- ment of 75,000 horsepower of electrical energy. The water will be carried through 230 miles of canals, lined with concrete and covered with concrete slabs, tunnels, steel siphons and tubes and flumes, with a system of impounding, clarifying and regu- lating reservoirs. It was an immense undertaking for a city of 110,000 people. But when the elec- tion was held in 1907 the people showed their qual- ity of municipal faith and patriotism by voting 14 to 1 for the issue of bonds to the amount of $23,- 000,000 for the work. It was looked upon as a mat- ter of course. And this faith was builded largely upon the character of the men who said it could be done. If they would undertake the work, the
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people would gladly furnish the means. Honesty and efficiency conducted the work. The very day laborers were sifted down to the best. Only American labor was employed. The city con- structed one section of the aqueduct at a cost of less than one-half the lowest bid submitted by a contractor. All the work, with the exception of ten miles, is done by the city, under direction of the board of public works and the aqueduct engi- neers. The authority of the city to perform its own work was contested in the courts. The city won out, and then proved how well it could do its own work, how much better the "boss" could work than the "hired man," by constructing one sec- tion of the aqueduct-the Jawbone-at a cost of less than one-half of the lowest bid submitted by a con- tractor. During one month the working force on this section was over 1,200 men. One of the wisest investments of the city was the construction of a cement plant at a cost of $400,000, with a capac- ity of 1,200 barrels of Portland cement per day. Surrounding the plant, the city owns immense sup- plies of limestone and clay, and a narrow-guage railway, seven miles long.
Probably in no other city of its population in America do so many people own their homes as in Southern California. And in no land is there displayed a greater desire for home adornment. The bungalow has become a feature of city and country residence architecture. It has followed the old mission style, which, in this land of Span- ish traditions, must always be popular. Less stately and dignified, the bungalow preserves, with the mission home, the spirit of the out-of-doors which belongs to this land. It is capable of an almost endless variety of architectural treatment. Its beauty, lightness, artistic airiness of construc- tion, combined with durability, its easy adapta-
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tion to the personal taste and whim of the owner and builder-in short, its charming individuality -endears it to the home builder, and bids fair to make of Southern California the typical bunga- low-land of the world. It is equally appropriate and graceful in the city, the villa and on the ranche and the mountain slope. In the city of Los Angeles alone, in 1908, homes to the value of $6,- 000,000 were erected. One can build a home for $300. Beyond that, the limit is his purse. One can buy a lot with his money. He can't get a thou- sand-dollar lot for three hundred dollars. Not in California. But he can get an excellent three hun- dred dollar lot for that amount. And he may live in the city, or he may live ten or twelve miles out, and be just about as near to his business in town, on the line of an electric railway that has never been snow-bound since frost was invented. And if the newcomer cannot afford marble, or concrete, or brick or lumber for a home, very well-he can live out of doors. He can do that part of the time, in the severe eastern climates. You may live out of doors in Southern California all the year round, if you so desire. And hundreds of people, in good health, with never a touch of any kind of sickness, and of ample means, who live in costly homes, build the out-of-door sleeping room, because they pre- fer to sleep out of doors. The "sleeping porch" is rarely forgotten in the plans of the modern Cali- fornia house. Tent houses, consisting of a good floor, a good roof, frames for doors and windows, and canvas sides-and sometimes the canvas roof as well-cost from $25 "up" to $200 or $300, ac- cording to the means and taste of the owner. Can- vas partitions give the dweller the requisite num- ber of rooms. Sometimes you will see little colo- nies of these tent houses. One by one they dis-
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appear. A handsome and durable bungalow or more conventional residence stands in its place. The tent house has been moved "back." And in many instances some member of the family still resides therein, from preference. The tent house is a rent saver. It goes on the $100 or $500 lot with the first payment, and some of the happiest hours of the home life are lived in its canvas walls. And all around it the roses and lilies, carnations and violets, geraniums and lantanas glorify the little home with the same wealth of color and fra- grance that they yield to the lawns and gardens of the millionaire. A twelve hundred dollar bung- alow, covered to the window casings and chimney tops with roses and bougainvillea, may be con- structed of marble, for aught the eye can declare.
Los Angeles county is officially declared to be the richest county in the west, including Cook county, Illinois, which contains the city of Chi- cago. The assessed value of Los Angeles county, which, according to the State Board of Equaliza- tion, is fifty per cent of the actual value of the property within the county, is $585,401,164. In the city of Los Angeles there are 1,500 manufac- tories, employing over 12,000 men, with an an- nual output of more than $50,000,000. Among other uses to which the rich county puts its great wealth is the construction of good roads. A few years ago the people voted bonds to the amount of $3,500,000 for the construction of a system of solid, smooth macadamized roads, radiating from Los Angeles city throughout the county, and the practical work on these highways has already be- gun, in 1909. A few years more will see the com- pletion of splendid boulevards from the Sierras to the Pacific. The production of petroleum in eight California counties in 1908 was 48,306,910
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barrels-a value of $26,566,181. This places Cali- fornia at the head of the oil-producing states.
If the newcomer has a taste for forestry, and does not know any too much about it, there is temptation of eucalyptus culture awaiting him, with its promise of profits. The area of the euca- lyptus groves of the state were increased over 7,000 acres in the spring of 1909. One company planted 2,250,000 young trees upon its lands, and other concerns had at that time 200,000, 400,000, 500,000 and one million trees in nursery stock, and the demand far exceeds the supply. There are twenty-five eucalyptus companies in the state at this time. The largest single plantation in the spring of 1909 was that of the Santa Fe Railway Company, which had planted between 7,000 and 8,000 acres. An acre of commercial eucalyptus, rightly located and handled, at ten years of age should produce 100,000 feet of lumber, board measure. The stumpage value should be $2,500 per thousand feet, for this age. And the cost to the grower about $2.50 per thousand.
Southern California offers unusual inducement to the small rancher-the "truck farmer." The lure of the hen is as attractive as a gold mine, and results, while never so dazzling in the blue print and prospectus, are more certain. Indeed, the small producers, as a rule, are more prosperous, proportionately, than are the great investors. The poultry ranches range from a "coop" in a back lot of a city home, to the big corral with a thou- sand or thousands of busy hens, announcing their diurnal output after the manner of their kind. The largest pigeon ranche in the world, contain- ing about 100,000 birds, is located in Los Angeles -the ranch covering eight acres of gravelly ground in the bed of the Los Angeles River.
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These are common pigeons. About 300 squabs per day are killed, selling at $2.50 and $3.00 per dozen. All the fancy varieties of pigeons do well in California. Poultry raising in the state is an established business, all the way from the little brown hen to the gigantic ostrich, the hen being a more profitable investment than her gigantic sis- ter-and more easily managed. In 1908, the reve- nue from the poultry yards of the state was $12,- 650,000, results which justify a great deal of cack- ling both from the producers and owners.
And the vineyards call to the immigrant with a very pleasant voice. The man who is rich in children and poor in purse may capitalize the labor of his family in this industry. A fifty-acre vineyard has been known to yield a profit of $3,000 a season. Grapes raised for raisins alone have yielded a return of $60 an acre. There are three classes of grapes grown. The vines for the wine grapes are easiest of culture. No irrigation is demanded, and far less care in picking is required. Muscats are the raisin variety, growing quickly and fruiting abundantly, with certain profits. Ta- ble grapes-Malagas and Tokays-are the most profitable, the returns sometimes running as high as $1,000 per acre. The eastern varieties, Con- cord, Isabella, Delaware and Catawba, are also grown in California. The new vineyard begins bearing in three years. More than $100,000,000 is invested in the wineries of California, about $40,- 000,000 of this being represented in Southern Cali- fornia, which contains about sixty wineries, and produces the bulk of the sweet wines. There is one vineyard at Cucumonga which alone produces 20,000 tons of grapes. Altogether there are 100,- 000,000 vines in the state, three times more than are grown in New York, and nearly ten times more
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than in Ohio. The raisin crop, cured, is over 60,- 000 tons. Of dry wines, the product is about 30,- 000,000 gallons; sweet wines about one-half that amount, and brandy, in some years, about 4,500,- 000 gallons. The prune product of the state is about 100,000 tons. From the entire output of natural resources, California derived a revenue in 1908 of more than $405,000,000. Of this amount $300,000,000 came from the soil. The florists raised $600,000 worth of flowers and the bees ex- tracted $825,000 worth of honey and wax from all the blossoms in the state.
In Southern California about 12,000 orchard- ists are engaged in the cultivation of oranges and lemons, the principal counties being Riverside, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Tulare, Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara. This industry sup- ports about 150,000 persons, including laborers and their families. During the past eleven years the citrus orchards of California have produced 90,089,300 boxes of oranges and 9,780,500 boxes of lemons. The amount received by the citrus growers from the year of the first shipments is over $250,000,000. In 1908 Southern California placed on the market 600,000 gallons of select olives, and more than 200,000 gallons of oil.
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