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 III > Part 4
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CHRISTIE BROTHERS. Probably as much credit is due the Christie brothers, Alfred E. and Charles H., for making Los Angeles the greatest center in the world for the production of film plays as to any other two men. With their resources combined and incorporated as the Christie Film Company, not only Los Angeles but the world knows the results of their splendid organization.
Alfred E. Christie was born at London, Ontario, Canada, October 23, 1881, son of George and Mary (Jarvis) Christie. At the age of seventeen having in the meantime lived at home and attended the grammar and high schools of London, he went into the theatrical pro- fession, his first work being in the London Opera House. He was there in various minor capacities and roles from 1903 to 1909. For a time he was among the producing force of the Liebler Company under George C. Tyler and Hugh Ford, and at the close of his stage affiliation was with the May Irwin Company.
He left the legitimate end to take charge of the Nestor Motion Picture Company at Bayonne, New Jersey. That was the first inde- pendent motion picture producing company in the United States. In 1911 Mr. Christie brought three companies out to California, establish- ing them at Hollywood on the present site of the Christie Studio. This was the first studio of its kind in Hollywood, and it was the initiative of Mr. Christie that brought Hollywood its fame as a producing center of the motion picture drama. In 1912 the Nestor Company was ab- sorbed by the Universal Company, Mr. Christie continuing as director and supervisor of comedy productions until 1916.
In that year he and his brother Charles H., formed the Christie Film Company as a partnership, purchasing the original studio site of the Nestor Company. In September, 1917, they incorporated as the Christie Film Company, with Alfred E. as president and Charles H as secretary and treasurer. All the facilities of their great organization and their plant in Hollywood are now devoted solely to the Christie Comedies.
Alfred E. Christie is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club. His brother Charles H. Christie, who was also born in London,
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Ontario, and was a pupil in the grammar and high schools there until 1898, was formerly a railroad man. He was employed in the passenger department of the Grand Trunk, later had charge of that company's advertising for the Ontario Division until 1903. Following that he was a commercial salesman representing an Ontario house, and later had charge of a large department store in Ontario until 1915.
He is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, the Friars Club of New York City, and in October, 1902, at London, Ontario, married Miss Edna Durand, daughter of the late George F. Durand, a prominent Canadian architect. Mrs. Christie died July 16, 1918.
HOWARD FROST. In the clay products industry of Southern Cali- fornia and the West no name has stood for more constructive effort and a larger scope of enterprise than Frost. Howard Frost is now presi- dent of the Los Angeles Pressed Brick Company, a great industry which was founded by his father the late Charles H. Frost, in 1887.
Charles H. Frost, who died October 9, 1916, deserves to rank high among the business builders of Los Angeles. He was born at Ithaca, New York, June 9, 1844, son of George P. and Eliza Little (Benjamin) Frost. His grandfather George P. Frost, was a captain in the Revolu- tionary Army. Charles H. Frost received his early education in Ithaca and Chicago, and finally in a high school at Quincy, Illinois. In 1862. at the age of eighteen he left school and as his father refused to permit him to enlist as a fighting man he took employment in the commissary department as a civilian at Chicago. Two years later he was transferred to the quartermaster's department at Cincinnati and promoted to cashier, where he remained two years more.
His first business was life insurance, connected with the Home Mutual Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati. He became its secre- tary and in 1868 resigned to join the United States Life Insurance Com- pany of New York as manager of the western department. He con- tinued that work until 1877.
Charles H. Frost first entered the pressed brick business in 1877. when he organized a large company with a capital of five hundred thou- sand dollars in Chicago. He was made general manager and was its directing head for ten years. He acquired an independent fortune in the business, and came to California in 1887. Being unwilling to retire he organized in 1887 the Los Angeles Pressed Brick Company, and be- came its president and general manager. The business was capitalized for $500,000 and some of the foremost business inen of Los Angeles were associated with Ar. Frost in the enterprise. The main plant is at Los Angeles and there are other plants at Santa Monica, Point Rich- mond, and the newest and one of the largest at Alberhill, Riverside County, and the output is distributed throughout the coast. Charles H. Frost was a member of the Union League Club of Chicago, of the Building Trades Club of New York and the Jonathan Club of Los An- geles, and was a thirty-second degree Mason. On November 19, 1869, at Davenport, Iowa, he married Helen I. Sherman. They became the parents of two children, Lida E., Mrs. L. J. Huff and Howard.
Howard Frost was born in Chicago, August 28, 1883, and was a small child when brought to Los Angeles. He entered the public schools ' in 1889 and at the age of thirteen attended the Gunnery School for Boys at Washington, Connecticut, for four years, the Belmont School for Boys at Belmont, California, a year and a half, spent one year in Occi- dental College in Los Angeles, and completed his education with another year at the University of Southern California.
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After leaving school Mr. Frost entered the Los Angeles Pressed Brick Company and started in at the factory for the purpose of acquir- ing a thorough practical knowledge of every phase of the business. His first duties were that of shipping clerk and timekeeper, and he worked in all the various departments from the factory to the general offices. He was general manager of the Richmond plant during the first year of its operation in 1907. Later he was elected vice-president and in 1913 became president of this prominent corporation. He is also a director of the Business Men's Co-operative Association, is a member of Sunset Lodge No. 352, A. F. & A. M., Jonathan Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club and is a Presbyterian and a republican. On August 31, 1904, he married Alice Mae Bond. They have one son, John Laurence, born in 1912.
TIMOTHY MAHONEY. While in his early forties as to age, Mr. Mahoney is in point of experience and service one of the oldest elec- trical and mining engineers on the coast. He has been identified with a great and varied volume of constructive and industrial enterprise and in recent years has become a prominent operator in copper mine develop- ment. He is president of the Amalgamated Copper Mine Company of Arizona.
Mr. Mahoney, whose business headquarters are in Los Angeles, was born in Ventura county, California, August 26, 1877, a son of John J. and Arcadia (Camarillo) Mahoney. Until he was nine years of age he attended public school in Ventura county. His parents then removed to Los Angeles, where he was a pupil in the old Spring Street grammar school and later in St. Vincent's College while Father Meyer was its president.
Mr. Mahoney when fourteen years of age went to San Francisco and studied electrical and mechanical engineering and mathematics under a private tutor named Leon C. Saarox. His preceptor was distinguished for having installed the first electric lights in San Francisco. Not long afterward Mr. Mahoney engaged with the Union Iron Works as a marine engineer and was with that corporation until 1901. He then took up electrical engineering for himself, practicing in San Francisco until 1908, at which date he returned to Los Angeles. Since then his pro- fessional work has been industrial engineering, the erection of cement plants, opening of quarries, and general mining engineering. Mr. Maho- ney has sixteen United States patents on railway equipment, dental devices and hot air devices. He organized the Amalgamated Copper Mines Company in 1916. . He is president and director of the company, which has a capital stock of ten million dollars and owns three properties, one being the Copper Hill in Arizona and the other two the Bonanza and the Bullion in California. Engineers and geologists who have investi- gated and examined these properties pronounce them as among the most promising copper properties in the Southwest. The Copper Hill and Bonanza are already being operated and during 1919 a reduction plant with capacity of five hundred tons a day was constructed.
Mr. Mahoney is unmarried. He is a republican in politics and a Catholic.
GEORGE HAROLD POWELL. By way of introduction it is sufficient to say of Mr. Powell that he is general manager of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, probably the supreme example of co-operative mar- keting in the world. The position of general manager for a corporation
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that markets the fruit of ten thousand five hundred orange and lemon growers representing over 72 per cent. of the citrus industry of Cali- fornia, demands both technical and executive abilities of the highest order.
Mr. Powell was formerly an official of the United States Depart- ment of Agriculture and has long been regarded as an expert particu- larly on the handling, storage and transportation of perishable products. He was born at Ghent, New York, February 8, 1872, a son of George T. and Marcia R. (Chase) Powell. He received the degree, Bachelor of Agriculture, from Cornell University, in 1895, and the degree Master of Agriculture in 1896 from the same institution. His practical experi- ence as a horticulturist covers over twenty years. He was horticul- turist at the Delaware College agricultural experiment station at Newark, New Jersey, from 1896 to 1901, and then for ten years was connected with the Department of Agriculture. From 1901 to 1904 he was assist- ant pomologist, 1904 to 1909 was pomologist in charge of fruit trans- portation and storage investigations, and in 1910 was assistant chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry. In January, 1911, Mr. Powell came to Los Angeles as secretary and manager of the Citrus Protective League of California, and on September 1, 1912, assumed his present duties as general manager of the California Fruit Growers Exchange.
Mr. Powell is a member of numerous horticultural and agricultural societies, including the American Pomological Society, and is a vice president of the American Association of Refrigeration. July 9, 1917, he was placed in charge of the Division of Perishable Foods of the United States Food Administration, and handled that division during the war. At the end of the war he was decorated by the King of Belgium, Chevalier of the Order of the Crown in recognition of services performed in connection with the Commission on Relief for Belgium. He is author of "Co-operation in Agriculture," published in 1913, and of numerous bulletins issued by the United States Department of Agri- culture on fruit growing, cold storage and fruit transportation.
Mr. Powell is a republican, a member of the Unitarian faith, became a member of Cornell Chapter in 1896 of the Sigma Xi, is a Kappa Sigma and a member of the Cosmos Club of Washington and the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
Mr. Powell and family reside at South Pasadena, July 1, 1896, at Buffalo, New York, he married Miss Gertrude E. Clark. They have three sons: H. Clark, born in 1899, is a graduate of the South Pasa- dena High School, and is now a student in the Michigan Agricultural College at Lansing, and while there served as a member of the Student Army Training Corps in 1918. George T., born in 1901, is a graduate of the South Pasadena High School and is now a student at Stanford University. Lawrence Chase, born in 1905, is in the public school.
CALIFORNIA FRUIT GROWERS EXCHANGE. It is no part of this brief article to comment upon the significance of the copious output of news- paper writers, editors, pamphleteers, practical business men and trained cconomists who have discussed the subject of co-operative action as a means of reducing the high cost of living. Newspapers, that a few years ago, before co-operation was understood, were indifferent to any example of co-operation and practice, now devote long columns of their space to the subject, and search eagerly for successful examples from one end of the country to the other.
All this abundant literature on the subject leads at one time or
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another to the greatest example of co-operative marketing in America, the California Fruit Growers Exchange.
The citrus fruit industry of Southern California has been developed commercially since 1873, and up to thirty years ago the industry was still a small one and the methods of distribution and marketing were much the same as those that are still practiced in many parts of the country in other perishable products. As the industry grew larger it was gradually discovered and realized that not only were the commission buyers and middle men taking the cream of the profits, but were also in many cases leaving the producer a reward less than the cost of grow- ing the fruit. It was as a measure of self protection therefore that dur- ing the late eighties and early nineties the growers began to organize small associations. According to an article found in the Year Book of the Department of Agriculture for 1910 Mr. T. H. B. Chamblin, of Riverside, was the pioneer in organizing the citrus fruit growers in Southern California. The Pachappa Fruit Association was the first one formed about 1888. The veteran vice president of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, P. J. Dreher, gives credit for the origin of the present system of marketing citrus fruits by co-operative growers' organizations to the Claremont, California, Fruit Growers Association, which was organized and handled its first crop in the season of 1892-93. During 1893 a plan was outlined which federated a number of the asso- ciations and provided for the preparation of the fruit for market by the local association, for the organization of district exchanges made up of local associations. Out of this federation grew the Southern California Fruit Exchange in 1895 and later in 1905 the California Fruit Growers Exchange, which now handles the great bulk of the citrus fruit crop of Southern California. In 1919 Exchange members forwarded 72 per cent of the state's shipments.
While the membership and strength and efficiency of the organiza- tion have been steadily increasing the following statement taken from the Year Book of the Department of Agriculture in 1910 are essentially descriptive of the Exchange today, with the data changed to fit the present status of the organization.
"The California Fruit Growers Exchange represents about six thousand (10,000 in 1919) growers who have organized themselves into one hundred or more (200 in 1919) local associations. The association usually owns its own packing house, where the fruit of the members is assembled, pooled and prepared for market under brands adopted for the different grades by the association. The association usually picks the fruit of the members.
"The associations in the different regions combine into one or more district exchanges which represent the associations in the business opera- tions common 'to each and which sell the fruit in co-operation with the California Fruit Growers Exchange through the district or local agents of the latter or at auction, receiving the proceeds therefor through the California Fruit Growers Exchange, an incorporated agency formed by a representative of each of the sixteen (20 in 1919) district exchanges. which acts as the selling agent for these district exchanges. The Cali- fornia Fruit Growers Exchange takes' the fruit of the district exchanges after it is packed and with their advice places it in the different markets. sells it through its own exclusive agents to the trade by auction, and collects the proceeds and transmits them to the district exchanges, which in turn pay the growers through the local associations.
"The central exchange, the district exchange, and the association
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all transact the business for the grower at actual cost. The central exchange through its agents is in daily touch with the markets of America, thereby enabling it to distribute its fruit intelligently. The local ex- changes and the associations receive a daily bulletin from the central exchange which outlines the condition of all the markets the preceding day, states the selling price of all exchange cars, and gives the growers such information as will help them to pack and distribute their fruit to the best advantage.
"The limits of this article are too restricted to permit more than a brief outline of the battle that the citrus-fruit growers of California had to wage for fifteen years before the co-operative principle was on a firm foundation. At first, the growers were inexperienced in meet- ing the attacks of those who were opposed to co-operation among the producers. Powerful financial interests of various kinds were arrayed against them and were organized to oppose them. Vicious attacks were made on the integrity of the officers. The results obtained by the asso- ciations were belittled, the growers' association contract was assailed in the courts, and the methods of marketing the fruit were attacked. The most determined efforts were made to show that the grower's organi- zations were illegally formed. Finally the growers combined with the buyers at one time to market the entire crop, but this incongruous com- bination of producers and dealers was dissolved at the end of a year and a half.
"The history of the citrus industry in California is largely a record of the progress in the co-operative handling and distribution of the crop by the producer and of his determination to receive an equitable share of the value of the labor expended in its production. The battle has been won; the co-operative principle is firmly fixed. It is the balance wheel that gives stability to the industry and to the relations that exist between it and the agencies with which it transacts business."
E. AVERY MCCARTHY. In a city of the magnitude of Los Angeles it is a real achievement when an individual name becomes associated with all the significance that surrounds the McCarthy Company. The McCar- thys have been in the real estate business for over thirty years, and as their enterprise attracted attention when Los Angeles was little more than a village, so today the firm and the name have grown in propor- tion to the city itself. It is one of the largest organizations identified with the promotion and sale of subdivisions in and around Los Angeles.
The president and manager of the company at Los Angeles is E. Avery McCarthy. The business was founded, however, by his father James P. McCarthy, who was born in Oswego county, New York, April 7, 1848. He was educated in the public schools. For a time he was a towpath driver along the same canal where James A. Garfield had worked in a similar capacity and thus gained the experience which later made him known as the canal boy president. For a time James McCarthy worked in a store at Troy, New York, and he and his two brothers estab- lished a general stock of merchandise at Syracuse, New York. On selling his interest in this enterprise he returned to Oswego, and opened a general store of his own. He kept the business growing, and de- veloped a number of branch stores throughout the state.
It was after a successful career as a merchant in New York State that James McCarthy sold out and in 1885 came to Los Angeles. The first investment to attract him here was an orange grove. This orange grove extended from Main Street to Grand Avenue, through which
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now runs the thoroughfare known as 24th Street. As a matter of course he became interested in the real estate field, and he is still interested in it. James McCarthy married at Oswego, New York, Myra L. Chesebro. They have three children: E. Avery; Mrs. Arthur W. Forester of Los Angeles ; and John D., secretary of The McCarthy Company and man- ager of the San Francisco office.
E. Avery McCarthy was born in Oswego, New York, March 21, 1870, and was fifteen years old when his father moved out to Los Angeles. He attended the public schools in the meantime, and remained in New York to complete his education, spending one year in the Pack- ard's Commercial College at New York City and one year in the Cen tenary Institute at Hackettstown, New Jersey. Rejoining his people in Los Angeles he attended the University of Southern California two years. Mr. McCarthy then entered his father's real estate office, and after two years of experience and training took charge of the branch of the business at San Francisco, though at first he was merely a sales- man there. Subsequently he remained as manager at San Francisco for twelve years. On returning to Los Angeles he became president and general manager of The McCarthy Company. This corporate name has been associated with so many allotments and subdivisions in and around Los Angeles it scarcely needs special description. Altogether the company has put on the market twenty-seven subdivisions, largely in the south and south and southwestern sections of Los Angeles along Moneta Avenue, Main Street, San Pedro Street, and Vermont Avenue, and in the Wilshire District. One of the largest single enterprises of The McCarthy Company was the building and the ownership and opera- tion of the Hotel Broadway at. 205 North Broadway, in Los Angeles. This is owned and operated by the McCarthy Company and since it was opened has been one of the popular hotels in the city.
Mr. McCarthy is a member of the Bohemian Club of. San Fran- cisco, the Midwick Country Club of Pasadena, the California Club, Los Angeles Athletic and Los Angeles Country Clubs of Los Angeles, and in politics is a republican. He married in Los Angeles, June 28, 1905, Susan Howard, daughter of A. J. Howard and granddaughter of Judge Volney E. Howard and of Colonel Whiting, two renowned citizens of the West. Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy have two children: E. Avery, Jr., born in 1906, now in the Pasadena Army and Navy Academy, and James Howard, born in 1911. Both sons are students in the Los Angeles grammar schools. Two daughters of Mr. McCarthy by former marriage are Aileen McCarthy, now Mrs. Morgan Adams, of Los Angeles, and Miss Lylian McCarthy, in University of California at Berkeley.
JOHN E. RANSFORD is a former Chicago business man who, with Mrs. Ransford has contributed to Los Angeles what is probably the most talked of and finest apartment building, the Garden Court Apart- ments, at Hollywood. This building, so much admired, and patronized to the limits of its capacity since it was opened, requires no description, since nearly every resident of Los Angeles and visitors to the city are familiar with it as one of the most attractive architectural structures of Hollywood. Mr. Ransford started life as a country boy in Southern Indiana. He was born in Sullivan county, that state, December 30, 1867, son of Ruben and Mary Elizabeth Ransford. His father was an Indiana farmer, also a native of Sullivan county, and of English ancestry. He continued farming there until 1889.
In the meantime John E. Ransford attended the grammar and
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high schools of Sullivan county, graduating at the age of nineteen. On leaving the farm he went to Terre Haute, and became stock clerk with the large store of L. B. Root and Company. He made rapid advance and was eventually employed as assistant buyer of the silk and dress goods department. He remained with that establishment fourteen years. His experience and abilities requiring a larger field, he went to Chicago, and beginning as salesman in the silk and dress goods department of Marshall Field and Company was promoted until he was division super- intendent of that great commercial establishment.
Mr. Ransford resigned from Marshall Field and Company in 1913 and came to Los Angeles, where though nominally retired he has identi- fied himself with many business organizations. Mr. and Mrs. Ransford built the Garden Court Apartments in 1917. He is also a director of the Master Carburetor Company of Los Angeles, a director and vice president of the First National Bank of Hollywood, and a director of the Pine Pool Gasoline Company of Oklahoma. He is a member of the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
At Chicago, in September, 1911, Mr. Ransford married Mrs. A. W. Tobin. Mrs. Tobin associated with her brothers was one of the organ- izers of the Continental Motor Company, one of the largest organizations of its kind in the United States. Mr. and Mrs. Ransford own a beau- tiful residence on Crescent Heights in Hollywood.
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