USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea : with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement, Volume II > Part 2
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On July 7, 1919, Mr. Workman became a member of the City Coun- cil and was chosen president of that body, an office where his long expe- rience in municipal affairs, his tact and ability makes his service one of real distinction.
Mr. Workman is president of the United States "Gesel-Plan" Cor- poration, which was organized September 24, 1919, with a capital stock of $5,000,000. The plan on which this institution is conducted seems destined to have a great growth and popularity in America, since it com- bines the features of the savings bank account with the protection of life insurance. Mr. Workman is a member of the California Club, the Los Angeles Athletic Club, Los Ang les Country Club, Los Angeles City Club and Union League Club of Los Angeles.
EDWARD LAURENCE DOHENY. The last word in superfluity would be to explain who Edward L. Doheny is or "introduce" him to the pres- ent or the next generation. But as a resident of Los Angeles for the past thirty years some of the more important incidents in his dramatic career deserve record in this publication.
He was born in a family of respectable and hard working people in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, August 10, 1856, son of Patrick and Eleanor Elizabeth (Quigley) Dcheny. He grew up in the best kind of a home to develop sound character, one equally removed from extreme poverty and from the luxury of wealth. He has always owed much to the superior intelligence and influence of his good mother. His early years were distinguished chiefly by a keen intelligence that enabled him to graduate from high school at the age of fifteen. Mental arithmetic was his favorite subject. He graduated in 1872 and almost immedi- ately began a life of adventure and strenuous outdoor activity. Some years ago Mr. Doheny confessed that he had lived so many years in the open that he found it difficult to accommodate himself to the con- ventional steam heat and soft beds of modern civilization.
Joining a surveying party under the United States Government he went to Kansas, assisting in surveying government land, the following year was in New Mexico, then returned to Kansas and during the year 1873-75 had an interesting experience among the blanket Indians of what is now Western Oklahoma, assisting in subdividing the Kiowa and Comanche reservations. In 1876 he joined an expedition to the mining district of the Black Hills. The Federal Government dispersed the
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party and drove them out of the then Indian Reservation. Mr. Doheny was also frustrated in his next venture, an attempt to find a fortune in the mining district of the San Juan country in southwestern Colorado. From Silverton, Colorado, he and some associates wandered into the southwest, arriving at Prescott, Arizona, and during the next fourteen years he held his own among the keen and resourceful gold prospectors in Arizona and New Mexico. He discovered and helped develop some of the most promising claims in those two southwestern territories.
Probably the chief characteristic of Mr. Doheny is that found in Kipling's character of "The Pioneer," whose desire and vision are al- ways "over the passes," and once the interest of discovery and newness has worn off the rewards of wealth hold no charm to detain him. Sev- eral times it is said that Mr. Doheny was within reach of considerable wealth when he sold his claims and resumed the more interesting role of prospector.
During the seventies and eighties Mr. Doheny was always in con- tact with the raw and elemental factors of the southwestern country. He fought Indians and he fought wild animals, and accepted daily danger as a commonplace of his work. In one encounter his hand was mangled by a mountain lion. Again as the result of a fall in a mine his legs were broken, and while recuperating he bent the resources of an active mind to the study of law, and was qualified for admission to practice in six months. For a year or so he contented himself with the routine of a practicing attorney. By similar study Mr. Doheny also acquired a knowled?e, surpassing that of many graduates of technical colleges, in the sciences of geology and metallurgy.
Mr. Doheny is widely known among his friends as an exemplar of the simple life. He yielded nothing to his partners in willingness to accept hardship and danger, but was free from practically all the vices associated with westerners, and has never used alcoholic liquor or to- bacco.
One of his prominent associates both in New Mexico and also in his early days in California was C. A. Canfield. They tried to develop a gold mining claim in San Bernardino County, California, but finally abandoned it and not long afterward Mr. Doheny came to Los Angeles.
A few years ago he told the story of the first drilled well in the Los Angeles oil field. He and his fellow prospector in 1892 had ob- served certain signs which convinced them of the presence of oil sand within the city limits of Los Angeles. They possessed limited capital and practically no experience in oil well operations. Buying a small lot at the corner of West State and Cotton streets, instead of a well they began sinking a shaft in November, 1892. They had laboriously excavated to a depth of about fifty feet when they struck a small pocket of oil and gas, and were nearly asphyxiated before they could reach the surface. They continued the slow progress, but eventually took into con- sideration the danger they ran and also cast about to find better machin- ery and eventually the well was sunk to a depth of six hundred feet and yielded forty-five barrels a day. That was the pioneer operation in the Los Angeles oil field, and the success of Doheny attracted thousands to the district. Even after becoming an oil producer Mr. Doheny's career was not without vicissitudes. In 1896 at the age of forty he was still a poor man. Then followed the development of the Fullerton oil district of California, and later his operations in the Bakersfield district, and since then for twenty years there has been no more impos-
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ing figure in all the history of petroleum than Edward L. Doheny. In this later and familiar period of his life's activities, he has been dominated by the same ambition for achievement as in earlier years. From Cali- fornia he turned his attention to Mexico and with his associates bought several hundred thousands of acres of land in the vicinity of Tampico near the Gulf coast and in 1900 organized the Mexican Petroleum Com- pany, which sunk the w. Ils and started the development that have made the Mexican petroleum field probably the greatest in the world.
Mr. Doheny is president of the Mexican Petroleum Company, Lim- ited, and also president of the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, owning the extensive pipe lines and a large fleet of tank steamers through which during the World war a large part of the fuel oil used by the British and allied navies was supplied. Mr. Doheny is also president of the Huasteca Petroleum Company and the Petroleum Transport Company. In July, 1917, he became a member of the first committee on oil of the Council of National Defense.
Mr. Doheny is a member of the California and Jonathan Clubs of Los Angeles, the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, and the Union League Club of Chicago. His home is at 8 Chester Place in Los Angeles. Mr. Doh. ny confesses that the greatest find in his entire life was his wife, Carrie Estelle Betzold, of Marshalltown, Iowa. They have a son, E. L. Doheny, Jr.
EDWARD L. DOHENY JR., prominent in Los Angeles' business and social circles, is the able lieutenant of his father, Edward L. Doheny Sr., one of the most prominent petroleum producers in America. The career of his father, who has been active in the oil districts of the Pacific Coast for nearly a quarter of a century, is sketched on other pages.
The son was born at Los Angeles November 6, 1893. Frail health interfered with his early education and training. He attended Norwood Street Grammar School until 1907, then entered St. Vincent's College, where he spent one year, and graduated from high school in 1911. For three successive years he attended university, but on account of ill health his total period of work aggregated only eight months. Subsequently he completed his education with the A. B. degree at the University of Southern California in June, 1916.
From early boyhood he was brought in contact with the oil industry under his father, and after leaving university he spent a month at Tam- pico, Mexico, in the district where his father has been one of the most prominent oil operators. He also attended a military training camp at Monterey, California, and after returning to Los Angeles worked in his father's office until November, 1916. At that date he enrolled as an apprentice seaman in the Naval Militia, and in January, 1917, was com- missioned a lieutenant on the cruiser "Huntington." He served for three months and was then transferred to Washington in the office of the judge advocate general in charge of all summary court-martial. Mr. Doheny, in September, 1918, was given orders by Rear Admiral Philip A. Andrews to report to Cardiff, Wales. The night before he was to sail he fell a victim to the influenza, and soon afterward was sent back home to Los Angeles on a two months' sick leave. Upon recovery he was stationed for duty at the submarine base at San Pedro, in Los An- geles Harbor, and January 24, 1918, was given orders for inactive duty.
Since resuming civil life Mr. Doheny has found his time and energies fully taken up with his many executive duties in connection with oil and other business corporations.
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He is a director and treasurer of the following corporations: The Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company, The Mexican Petro- leum Company (Ltd.), Mexican Petroleum Corporation of Louisiana, Mexican Petroleum Corporation, Huasteca Petroleum Company.
Among the social organizations with which he is identified in Los Angeles are the University Club, California Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club and Los Angeles Country Club. Mr. Doheny married Miss Lucy Smith at Los Angeles June 10, 1914. Her grandfather, C. W. Smith, was one of the first vice-presidents of the Santa Fe Railroad Company. Three children have been born to their marriage: Lucy Estelle, born June 21, 1915; Edward Lawrence III, born February 8, 1917, and Wil- liam Henry, born March 12, 1919.
GENERAL PHINEAS BANNING. Wilmington, now Los Angeles Har- bor, as the ocean gateway of greater Los Angeles is popularly considered and frequently spoken of as a part of the great modern era and a dis- tinctive chapter in the recent history of progress. As a matter of fact this development was anticipated nearly fifty years ago by the late Gen- eral Phineas Banning, founder of the town of Wilmington on the shores of San Pedro Bay. It was a long cherished ideal of General Banning to see that harbor linked up with the great commerce centering in Los Angeles, and while the broad realization of his plan was delayed for over thirty years after his death, it is proper to say that no one of the old time generation around Los Angeles contributed more directly to the result than General Banning.
General Banning, who was one of the earliest American pioneers of Southern California, was born in Newcastle County, Delaware, Septem- ber 19, 1831. He was the ninth among eleven children of John A. and Elizabeth (Lowber) Banning, and though his early life was not encom- passed by wealth he inherited the substantial worth of some of the best colonial American stock. He was descended from Phineas Banning who crossed the ocean from England and became one of the early farmers in Kent County, Delaware. For several successive generations members of the family enjoyed considerable prestige in public affairs both in their locality and state. John, a son of the pioneer Phineas, was a mer- chant at Dover and served as a member of the Council of Safety during the Revolutionary War. He was also one of the three electoral delegates from Delaware to choose the first president of the United States, and cast his vote for General Washington. His son, John A. Banning. father of General Banning, was one of the early graduates of Princeton College, a man of ripe scholarship, and a life-long resident of Delaware.
An independent spirit as well as his presence in a large household with limited means sent Phineas Banning out to seek his own fortune at the age of twelve years. He walked to Philadelphia, where he joined an older brother, William, who had recently begun the practice of law. He worked in his brother's law office for his board, and afterward was employed in a wholesale establishment.
At the age of nineteen, in 1851, Phineas Banning sailed for the Isthmus of Panama, and came up the Pacific Coast on a vessel that cast anchor in the harbor of San Diego. For more than thirty years he was one of the men of leading enterprise in the Los Angeles district. He engaged in the freighting business between Los Angeles and San Pedro in November, 1852. and this enterprise in transportation brought him
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a vivid realization of the importance of the San Pedro harbor. Close to the wateriront he established a village which in honor of the chief city of his native state he named Wilmington. For a number of years he was manager of the Los Angeles and Wilmington Railroad which had been constructed by him. He twice appeared before congressional com- mittees at Washington to secure necessary appropriation for development of the San Pedro harbor and never lost an opportunity at the command of his resources to control and direct the shipping business that would link San Pedro with the larger city of Los Angeles. General Banning bought and improved six hundred acres near Wilmington and with the aid of a steam pump large reservoirs and the largest wells in the county furnished an abundance of water for Wilmington and San Pedro and for the vessels that anchored in the harbor. Other undertakings of direct public benefit were credited to his great energy and judgment. General Banning was a very generous man, and his generosity stood as a bar to the accumulation of individual fortune, though the property he left has become the basis of a fortune since his death.
He served as brigadier-general of the First Brigade, California State Militia, and was a republican though never active in politics. General Banning died at San Francisco March 8, 1885. His first wife was Rebecca Stanford, by whom he was the father of eight children, three of whom are still living. On February 14, 1870, he married Mary E. Hollister, daughter of a California pioneer. Mrs. Banning passed away on South Commonwealth Avenue, in Los Angeles. She was the mother of three daughters.
HANCOCK BANNING. A son of one of the Southern California's most conspicuous pioneer characters, the late General Phineas Banning, Han- cock Banning has to his credit more than thirty-seven years of business activity in and around Los Angeles. A practical business man and large property owner, his influence has been a helpful factor in a number of modern developments in the life and progress of the greater city.
He was born at Wilmington, Los Angeles County, May 12, 1865. He acquired his early education in public schools and on his father's vessels and has held a master mariner's license from the United States Government since he was twenty-one years of age. After completing a business college course he undertook his first business venture at Pasa- dena, where he established the Pasadena Transfer and Fuel Company, and afterwards moved to Los Angeles, where in 1889 he established a wholesale coal department. The Pasadena branch was sold in 1891, and later his business was operated under the name Banning Company, he being manager of its fuel department. Mr. Banning was an equal stockholder with two brothers in the Banning Company, his brothers being J. B. and William Banning. This corporation owned extensive real estate holdings in Los Angeles and on the Wilmington water front, now part of Los Angeles harbor.
Hancock Banning was for more than twenty-five years vice-president of the Santa Catalina Island Company. His brother, William Banning, organized and was president of this company. Hancock had an equal interest with William and his other brother, J. B. Banning, in the owner- ship of Santa Catalina Island until 1919, when they disposed of their interests in this famous resort to the Chicago capitalist, William Wrigley,
Quevel Jan
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Jr. Prior to that time the Bannings had completed the Hotel St. Cath- erine, which together with the company steamers Cabrillo and Hermosa and other improvements represented an investment by them of over two million dollars.
Mr. Banning now makes his home at the old Banning mansion at Wilmington, where he was born. That home had also sheltered his grandmother, and Mr. Banning's granddaughter has lived there, thus giving it the associations of five generations. Mr. Banning is a member of the Native Sons of the Golden West, the California, Jonathan, Los Angeles Country and Los Angeles Athletic Clubs of Los Angeles and the Bohemian Club of San Francisco. He is a member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and is a Hoover republican in politics.
In November, 1890, at Los Angeles, he married Anne Ophelia Smith, daughter of former Judge George H. Smith of the Appellate Court of California. Since her marriage Mrs. Banning has been very active in many social and patriotic movements. During the war she originated the plan and established what was called the "Red Cross Shop" serving as president of the Los Angeles branch. This shop idea was afterward car- ried out in many cities of the United States, and not only the Red Cross but other charitable institutions have adopted the idea. During the war the Red Cross Shop did a business aggregating millions of dollars, and the plan is still yielding great returns to various charitable organi- zations.
Mr. and Mrs. Banning have a daughter and two sons. The daughter, Eleanor Anne, is a graduate of the Marlboro School for Girls at Los Angeles, attended the Miss Spence School of New York City and the State University of California. She was married to J. C. MacFarland, nephew of Judge MacFarland of the State Supreme Court. Mr. and Mrs. MacFarland have a daughter, Anne Banning.
The older son, Hancock Banning, Jr., born in 1893, is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and Cornell University. At the out- break of the war with Germany he abandoned his work as an apprentice at electrical engineering in the General Electric Company's plant at Schnectady, New York, to enlist in the navy. He was serving on the U. S. Battleship "New York" at the time of the armistice and served until discharged after the signing of the same with the rank of lieutenant of the junior grade. He has since resumed his work with the General Electric Company.
The second son, George Hugh, born in 1896, held rank as a second lieutenant when discharged from the Aviation Corps. He had studied and taught flying at San Antonio, Texas, San Diego and Sacramento. Since the war he has graduated from the University of California. George Hugh possesses distinctive literary gifts. With a fellow student he collaborated a comedy which was selected in competition with other aspiring dramatists of the university, and was successfully produced at Berkeley. He is also a navigator of sailing and steam vessels, having served his time at sea before the mast, and having studied navigation both at college and during his practical apprenticeship at sea. He is at this writing on the "Chronicle" newspaper force.
THE RED CROSS SHOP as a distinctive feature of the auxiliary war work originated in Los Angeles, and the mind and heart from which
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proceeded the great and fertile idea were those of Mrs. Hancock Ban- ning. It is due the shop as an institution, to Mrs. Banning and her associates, to make some particular reference to the institution and its work. The best account is found in an article written in the summer of 1918, when the war was at its height.
"More than a year ago," says Ruth Burke Stephens, "I had the pleasure of learning something of Mrs. Banning's original plans for the Red Cross Shop. Even then the contagion of her idea, illuminated with her own enthusiastic faith in its ultimate success, spread to the little group of friends to whom her plans in detail were confided. With one exception, this original plan has been carefully adhered to, and so complete was the conception in its initial details that but few new ideas have been incorporated.
"The Red Cross Shop in all its many ramifications is nothing short of wonderful, and particularly is this so when one considers that it is essentially a big commercial business, successfully conducted by women who before the war scarcely knew the value of money, and nothing what- ever of business principles. Without the co-operation and the enthusiastic interest of her copatriots, Mrs. Banning's plan could, however, never have developed to the advanced state of realization that it has now reached. It is the very spirit behind the plan, the great integral factors of self-sacrifice and democracy which has carried the idea along like a swiftly propelled boat in the surge of a well directed current.
"When Mrs. Banning first planned the Red Cross Shop I think she herself nearer realized than did any other just how far-reaching would be its scope, for her hope even then was for a nation-wide emulation of the Red Cross Shop. The plan, as it is now in force, was evolved from a before-the-war idea of Mrs. Banning for the establishment of an organization which should carry on 'relief' work in the various centers of the United States, under the name of the 'Grey Sisterhood,' and working in a manner somewhat similar in plan to that of the 'Misera- cordia Society' of Italy. It is significant that while Mrs. Banning's original idea became through her enthusiastic interest a co-operative part of the Red Cross, that the designating costume worn by the women is a soft grey gown with white collars, cuffs and apron.
"Briefly outlined by Mrs Banning at the time she first set forth to Harvey D. Gibson, manager of the American Red Cross, her original Red Cross Shop plan, the dominating idea was to be one of democracy and sacrificial giving- of time, of money and of gifts from which benefit to the Red Cross funds would accrue. With tireless and unstinted energy the women who have become interested in the project have given of their time and strength. There are no salaries paid except to the Japanese boy helpers and the janitor. Through the patriotic gener- osity of Mrs. J. M. Danziger, the beautiful Canfield home at Eighth and Alvarado Streets has been turned over to the cause and the commodious garage converted into headquarters for the shop. Disbursements from the gross receipts are of infinitesimal amount, practically everything being donated, even to the postage stamps and stationery, which are personally given. Bookkeeping, stenography and publicity are given gratis by women whose talents are adaptive to such special lines of work, while the many needs for repair work in the reconstruction of broken furniture, clocks, toys, the mending of clothing, millinery, etc., are met by patriotic volun-
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teers who are happy to give of their time and skill to the worthy cause. It is this democracy of spirit which illuminates the success of the shop. And it is this great conception of sacrifice and giving that has so unified the women of the city in the one splendid purpose. Many of the girls who labor in the downtown stores eight hours in the day, six days a week, have assumed the responsibility of devoting a part of their precious spare time to the Red Cross Shop work. Nimble fingers of many an humble artisan are doing their bit with glad patriotism, and it is by this means that the expenditures of the shop are kept down to the minimum.
"Merchants of the city have been equally as generous in their co- operation, this despite the fact that from a purely business standpoint they might consider the project an infringement upon their own com- mercial enterprises. Not only are the merchants generously responsive to the specific calls made upon them, but they have aided immeasurably by instructing the women workers of the shop in the basic principles of salesmanship, all of which has been of vast benefit.
"While naturally the credit for the Red Cross Shop plan reflects directly back upon Mrs. Hancock Banning, whose brilliant and compre- hensive idea was its origin, yet, with all due modesty, Mrs. Banning attributes the success of the shop to the wonderful spirit of the women who are allied in the great work, not only those who are devoting them- selves to the actual operation of the shop, but to each and every individual who donates something to the cause, whether it be an article of intrinsic or sentimental value, talents and artisanship, or just one's time, which to many men and women involved in the fatiguing struggle for a liveli- hood is a priceless gift. And those who patronize the shop are like- wise 'doing their bit' in contributing to the success of the institution.
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