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The Spanish portion of the "Star" was presently segregated from the English and given the name of "El Clamor Publico." In 1851 William H. Rand became a partner in the "Star," and remained with it for several years. He subsequently returned East, became the foreman in the "Chicago Tribune" printing office and, in company with Andrew McNally, founded the famous publishing house that bears their names. Changes too place from time to time in the firm publishing the "Star"; J. S. Waite and William A. Wallace entered and departed, and the paper finally came to be owned by Henry Hamilton, an able and prac- tical newspaper man, who conducted it from 1856 to 1864. He was an ardent sympathizer with the Confederate cause, and refusing to
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The Beginning of Things.
moderate his utterances in spite of frequent warnings from the authorities, he was at last ordered to cease editorial connection with the paper. In 1868 he returned to the work and continued in charge, with one or two inter- missions, until 1873. In that year the "Star" passed into the hands of Major Ben C. Tru- man, who had been secretary to President Johnson, and who is now living in Los An-
geles. Hamilton was a man of scientific tastes and made considerable study of the bot- any of the country. At his solicitation Hugo Reid, who had lived among the Californian Indians, contributed a series of articles to the "Star" on the latter's habits and customs, con- taining information of considerable value. The "Star" continued under Truman's man- agement until 1877, becoming a daily in 1873. It finally came into the hands of the Rev. A. M. Campbell, who was succeeded by the sheriff, and in 1879 the paper passed out of existence.
"El Clamor Publico" ceased publication in 1859. No other Spanish paper was attempted until 1872.
In 1854 the "Southern Californian" ap- peared. Don Andres Pico was one of the owners, and its demise, which took place be- fore it was two years old, is said to have left him $10,000 poorer in money, whatever gain he may have made in other directions. The plant was taken by J. J. Warner to be used in
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publishing the "Southern Vineyard," which began in 1858 and ran two years, merging into the "Los Angeles News." The "News" was changed to a daily in 1867, and continued until 1873, when it gave up the ghost. Of the more modern journals, those that are now on the ground, an account will be given later in this work.
CHAPTER XXVII.
LOS ANGELES AT ITS WORST.
C HE people of Los Angeles seem, from the very beginning, to have adopted the principle that whatever they under- took to do they must do thoroughly. During the Spanish regime their chief purpose was to avoid work; and indolence was practiced until it became almost an art. Prob- ably there was at that time no city within the boundaries of the Union where more work was permanently left undone than at Los Angeles. In the quarter of a century of Mexican rule the pueblo leads as the great rallying point for revolutions. Here again a comparison with other cities of the United States need not be feared. When California was brought under American rule, however, revolutions became dangerous and impracticable. If the city was to continue to be pre-eminent, it must be for some other characteristic than political turbu- lence.
This brings us to the darkest chapter in the history of Los Angeles; for, during the period from 1850 to 1870, it was undoubtedly the toughest town of the entire nation. Dur- ing most of this time it contained a larger per- centage of bad characters than any other city, and for its size had the greatest number of fights, murders, lynchings and robberies. This
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long era of violence and contempt for law had its culmination in 1871, in the brutal slaughter of nineteen Chinamen and the looting of China- town by a mob of 500 men. The number of lynchings during this period (not including the Chinamen) is estimated at thirty-five, which is more than four times the number credited to the famous vigilance committees of San Fran- cisco. In addition to the executions that were done in the name of order, if not of law, there were legal hangings about twice a year. As to the number of killings, it is impossible to make an estimate, as no record was kept. There is no complete file of the earliest volumes of the newspapers, all having been destroyed in a fire in 1880, but such copies as are still in ex- istence contain here and there brief items, two or three lines in length, that show by the very absence of comment what the state of things was. A murder which in these days would be given half a page of newspaper space, with pictures of the victim and all his family, and a lurid diagram of the spot and its surround- ings, was dismissed with a few short sen- tences, accompanied by no comment. The Los Angeles News of March 2, 1866, contains these three items, for example :
"The verdict of the coroner's jury on the body of Seferino Ochoa returned that he came to his death by the discharge of a gun loaded with powder and balls."
"A party of Salt Lake and Montana team- sters had a lively row in the Monte on Mon-
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Los Angeles at its Worst.
day night; several shots were fired, from the effects of which one man died."
"A shooting affray occurred recently be- tween Mr. T. Baldwin and Mr. Adam Linn. Mr. Baldwin was shot through the heart, but unloaded his pistol before he expired, dying without speaking. Mr. Linn was uninjured."
The Southern Californian of March 7, 1855, remarks :
"Last Sunday night was a brisk night for killing. Four men were shot and killed and several wounded in shooting affrays."
This lawlessness had its beginning in the years that California was without a regular government-the interregnum between Mexi- can and American authority. The semi-mili- tary government that prevailed through part of this time served to hold things in check, but it was withdrawn before the new authority was firmly in its seat. The changed order brought inevitable confusion in the effort to accommodate Spanish law to American cus- toms and Spanish customs to American law, and this confusion was suddenly confounded by the arrival of a hundred thousand new- comers in the state-the gold hunters. In such a vast number, coming for such a pur- pose, it was to be expected that representatives of the criminal and desperate classes should be included. When the vigilance committees of San Francisco and the northern mining camps began to drive these bad characters out,
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many of them drifted south to Los Angeles, and the latter city soon took on the character of a frontier town of the toughest type.
The situation was more complicated in Los Angeles than in most other portions of the state, because of the presence in that city of many hundred native Californians of the low- est class. These were idle, shiftless and ad- dicted to drink, but up to the time of the Amer- ican occupation they had not shown contempt for the law, nor were they given to crimes of violence. The change of government seemed to bring a radical change in the character of many of these men. It may have been that they were merely imitative, and that they were undertaking to do as they saw the Amer- ican frontier outlaws doing; or it may have been that having lost their country and-many of them-their vague claims to land, they be- came desperate, and defied all authority; at all events, a large percentage of the killings re- corded for this period, particularly the murders done for money, are to be charged to the na- tive Californians, and many of the fiercest and most reckless highwaymen were of this class.
Another element in the population that rendered the maintaining of order difficult was the Indian. About two thousand natives who had either been brought up at the missions or had sometime been under their influence, so that they were not wholly wild, were living in and around Los Angeles. During the week they worked on the ranches and vineyards and
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Los Angeles at its Worst.
on Saturday, having secured their pay, much of it in brandy, they repaired to the city to in- dulge in a frantic carouse. Their favorite ren- dezvous was a small street between Arcadia and the plaza, where Los Angeles street now is. "Nigger alley"-as it was called-was sur- rounded by low drinking places, and was the home of crime and disorder. The Indians fought incessantly among themselves, and without much interference on the part of the authorities; but they seldom raised their hands against the whites, or if they did they were shot down without mercy. When they were all drunk, which happened usually within twelve hours after their discharge from the ranches, they were gathered into a corral back of the present location of the Downey block. On Monday morning they were sold off, like so many slaves, the employer agreeing to pay the fine in return for the next period of ser- vice. The Indian received only a dollar or two for his week's work, part of that in brandy. This condition of affairs lasted until the In- dians were all dead, and they went out rapidly under such a hideous system.
The city was run on the so-called "wide- open" plan, no attempt being made to control the liquor traffic, and gambling accepted as a matter of course. A law-abiding, God-fearing element existed, and at times exerted itself ag- gressively, but the supply of desperate charac- ters seemed to be inexhaustible ; when one lot was run out of the place, a new detachment ap-
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peared, and permanent reform was deemed hopeless. The police force of the city was in charge of an officer known as the city mar- shal, who had several regular deputies that were entitled to fees, but in times of special difficulty he called on the citizens generally to aid him. When the Star printing establish- ment came into existence, its first job of print- ing was to prepare for the use of the marshal one hundred white ribbon badges, bearing in Spanish and English the legend "City Police : Organized by the Council of Los Angeles, July 12, 1851," which were to be used on a law and order Committee of One Hundred. Two of the marshals of this period were killed in office, and those who ventured to do their duty had plenty of interesting experiences. Companies of armed vigilantes were formed from time to time, generally under the name of "Rangers." The authorities shut their eyes to the lynch- ings, few of which were unjustifiable. On one occasion the mayor, Stephen C. Foster, re- signed to head a lynching party. This was the extreme case of a murderer, whose guilt was without question and who was likely to be freed by a technicality by the supreme court.
The county was represented in the work of maintaining order by its sheriff; and three of these officers were killed during this period. The circumstances connected with the slaying of Sheriff Barton show what a deplorable con- dition of affairs existed at the time, although
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Los Angeles at its Worst.
his death led to a temporary improvement. A number of the worst characters in the city had been driven out by a vigilance committee, but they remained in the neighborhood, robbing travelers and committing murder if they met with resistance. In January, 1857, Sheriff Barton gathered a posse of five men, and went to the Sepulveda ranch in search of these ban- dits. The gang proved to be much larger than he had supposed, most of them native Californians, and all well armed and mounted. There was a fight, in which the sheriff and three of the posse were killed, the other two escaping back to the city. This brought mat- ters to a crisis, and the law and order people of Los Angeles rose in a body to make a thor- ough job of clearing the country of the bad element. They began by hunting through the city for all suspicious characters, and about fifty were arrested and thrown into jail. The country was then scoured in search of the gang that had killed Barton; General Andres Pico led the posse. The robbers scattered, and some of them took to the mountains, but they were nearly all captured. Over fifty were lodged in jail, and eleven were hung, some by the committee and others through due process of law. This cleared the atmosphere for a time.
The most terrible page in this dark chap- ter of the city's history is that on which is re- corded the massacre of the Chinamen. The Los Angeles of today is so far removed from
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anything like mob sentiment, its population, 90 per cent of which comes from the older eastern states, is so thoroughly conservative and law-abiding, that it is hard to understand how, only thirty years ago, such a horrible outrage came to be committed in the city. As a mere exhibition of mob rule, however, it was no worse than has been seen since that period in various eastern cities, notably Cin- cinnati, Pittsburg, Kansas City and St. Louis. If the number of lives taken was greater than in any of these latter instances, that may be accounted for by the fact that in those days nearly everyone in Los Angeles was accus- tomed to go armed, and knew how to shoot to kill, and by the further fact that public senti- ment at the time placed a very low estimate on the value of the life of a Chinaman. This is not offered in extenuation of the crime, but merely to help explain something that seems at first sight difficult of comprehension.
The affair took place on the 24th of Octo- ber, 1871, and succeeded the great Chicago fire as a topic of news most under discussion throughout the country. This was for many thousand eastern people their first introduc- tion to Los Angeles, and the incongruity of the name as the location for such an awful deed was frequently commented upon. The riot grew out of a war between rival Chinese societies-or "tongs"-that had been in prog- ress for several days, one faction shooting across "Nigger alley" at the other from time
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Los Angeles at its Worst.
to time. A city policeman attempting to make an arrest met with resistance, and summoned to his aid a well-known citizen, named Robert Thompson. Some Chinamen concealed in a building on the corner of Arcadia street and "Nigger alley" shot through the door and mor- tally wounded Thompson. He was carried to an adjoining drug store, and died within an hour.
The fatal shot had been fired just at dusk. By night time a great crowd of angry men had gathered in the alley and surrounded the build- ing. Several of the Chinamen undertook to es- cape, but were shot down or captured and hung. The mob finally broke open the building, which the Chinamen had barricaded on the inside, and dragged eight Chinamen out into the street, where they were beaten and kicked and pulled about with ropes tied around their necks, and finally taken over to a corral on New High street back of the Downey block and hanged to a high cross-bar above its gate. This was about 9 o'clock in the evening.
In the meantime a gang of thieves and toughs who had joined the mob for purposes of plunder made the most of the confusion to break open several stores belonging to China- men who could not be supposed to have had any part in the murder of Thompson. Some seized the goods and began to carry them off, while others wrecked the buildings and the store fixtures. All Chinamen that came into the
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History of Los Angeles.
hands of the mob were dragged out into "Nig- ger alley" and hung or shot to death. The crowd was beside itself with rage against the race, and spared neither youth nor old age. Two of the victims were very young boys, and one, an old physician, a man of good education, who begged for his life and offered over $2000 in money to those who had captured him. The money was taken, but he was hanged with the rest. The amount of cash taken by the mob was estimated at $40,000.
There were in all nineteen Chinamen put to death, some with great cruelty. The affair lasted only about an hour. News of what was going on had by this time spread over the town, and a party of brave and law-abiding citizens, accompanied by the sheriff, went down into Chinatown and compelled the mob to desist. A few arrests were made, and when the grand jury met, indictments were found against 150 persons for participation in the massacre. Only six of these were convicted in the trial that followed, and they, after a short imprisonment, were given their freedom on a technicality. The jury severely censured the officers of the city and county for neglect- ing their duty. From the evidence taken af- terward it was established that only one of the nineteen Chinamen killed was concerned in the original conflict between the "tongs." The guilty parties had all made their escape be- fore the mob came on the scene.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
BETWEEN OLD AND NEW.
HE story of Los Angeles from 1850 to 1880 is largely one of slow indus- trial development, and a narration of. that order is best handled in epochs. A division into decades may be an ar- bitrary one, but it is convenient and will be employed through the next three chapters of this work.
Many of the principal events of the period from 1850 to 1860 have already been narrated, for the epoch is one of considerable local im- portance in marking the commencement of the new order of things. There were also sundry happenings of minor note, that have to be re- corded as part of the city's history, although their number and variety may make this narra- tive somewhat disjointed in places.
The year 1850 saw the beginning of the Protestant church in Los Angeles. The Rev. J. W. Brier, a Methodist minister, who was passing through the city on his way to the northern part of the state, held the first Prot- estant services that ever took place in Los An- geles, on a Sunday in June, 1850. It was in a private residence located where the Bullard block now stands, and where for many years afterward the county court house stood. In
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1853 the Rev. Adam Bland was sent to Los An- geles by the California conference of the Meth- odist Episcopal church to organize a church. He made use of an adobe building on Main street near the Baker block. There he preached for two years, and his wife taught a girls' school in the same building. Others succeeded him, but in 1858 the field was abandoned for eight years.
The next Protestant sect to come to Los Angeles was that of the Presbyterians. In No- vember, 1854, Rev. James Woods of that faith, held services in a little carpenter shop near the corner of Main street and the plaza. A year later a regular church was organized with Mr. Woods as pastor, and services were held in the first court house, which stood where the People's store now is, on Spring and Franklin -a building that was for many years after 1860 used as the city jail. In 1856 the moral development of Los Angeles was abandoned by the Presbyterians as hopeless, and was not taken up again until 1859, when a movement started to have Protestant services of a general character, there not being enough of any one sect to maintain a church. The Rev. W. E. Boardman acted as pastor. It was decided to erect a church structure, and a lot was secured at the southwest corner of Temple and New High, where the steps now lead up to the court house. A brick building was begun, but before it was finished Mr. Boardman left the city, and the meetings were abandoned. The
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Between Old and New.
building was finally turned over to the Rev. Elias Birdsall, an Episcopal clergyman, who had been officiating for a small body of that faith that met in Odd Fellows hall in the Dow- ney block. Episcopal services were first held in the city in 1857, and a parish was or- ganized in that year, but it continued only a short time.
The Baptist church began in the year 1861, although occasional services were held during the '50s, the first being by a Mr. Freeman in 1853. The first Jewish services were held in 1854. The first congregation was organized by Rabbi A. W. Edelman, whose long term of ser- vice lasted until 1886.
The abandonment of this field by the clergymen of the various Protestant sects dur- ing the later '50s, while it may not be entirely creditable to their devotion to the service, gives some indication, nevertheless, of the moral darkness that hung over the city at that time. The Catholic church continued its min- istrations, of course, but few of the Americans attended its services. The "Star" commented upon the departure of the Presbyterian preach- er in these terms: "To preach week after week to empty benches is certainly not en- couraging, but if, in addition to that, a minister has to contend against a torrent of vice and im- morality which obliterates all traces of the Christian Sabbath-to be compelled to endure blasphemous denunciations of his divine Mas- ter, to live where society is disorganized, relig-
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History of Los Angeles.
ion scoffed at, where violence .runs riot, and even life itself is unsafe-such a condition of affairs may suit some men, but it is not calcu- lated for the peaceful labors of one who follows unobtrusively the footsteps of the meek and lowly Savior."
The Masonic order came into existence in Los Angeles in 1854 with Los Angeles Lodge, No. 42. The next year came the Odd Fellows, Los Angeles Lodge, No. 35. The Hebrew Be- nevolent Society was organized in 1854; the French Benevolent Society in 1860. The Teu- tonia Concordia, afterward Turnverein, was started in 1859. In that same year there was a series of lectures given by the Los Angeles Mechanics Institute; the Library Association started a small reading-room at the corner of Court and North Spring street, and an agricul- tural society came into existence. These three organizations perished when the Civil War broke out.
The first hospital for the sick was opened in 1858 in a private house by some Sisters of Charity from Maryland. This was the begin- ning of the "Sisters' Hospital," which now oc- cupies a large building on Bellevue avenue. The Catholic Orphan Asylum was founded in 1856. St. Vincent's college for boys began in 1855. The decade was one of considerable de- velopment in the local Catholic church.
Los Angeles was incorporated as a city in 1851. During this decade the mayors were elected annually, and the list runs as follows :
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Between Old and New.
A. P. Hodges, 1850; B. D. Wilson, 1851 ; J. G. Nichols, 1852; A. F. Coronel, 1853; Stephen C. Foster, 1854; Thos. Foster, 1855; Stephen C. Foster, 1856, four months; J. G. Nichols, 1856-7-8; D. Marchessault, 1859; Henry Mel- lus, 1860.
In 1852 the city began to give away the land in the southwestern section of the city in 35-acre tracts to all who would agree to make improvements. In 1855 the land south of Pico street to the western and southern boundaries of the city was surveyed in 35-acre pieces by Henry Hancock. Two years later A. Walde- mar made a similar survey for the portion north of Pico to the western boundary.
In 1848, of 103 proprietors of farms in the city, only eight were "gringos," i. e., not native Californians. Three years later, of the thirteen principal property owners in the county, six were Americans and they owned 135,000 out of 500,000 acres, and $306,000 out of $500,000 of personal property. In 1858, out of forty-five principal property owners in the county, twenty-five were American and twenty Cali- fornian. The two largest individual taxpayers were Abel Stearns, $186,000, and John Temple, $89,000. During most of the 50's interest was 5 per cent a month, and the Californians were easy borrowers. In 1856 the city's real estate was assessed at $187,582, and the improve- ments at $457,535.
The average annual income to the people of the county from the sale of cattle during this
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period was between $250,000 and $500,000, the latter figure being reached only one year, 1856. Next to cattle raising, the production of grapes was the most lucrative form of industry. In 1849 and 1850 grapes sold for 1212c a pound on the vine, to be shipped to San Francisco, where they retailed at any price. In 1858 there were I010 acres in vines, and a few years later 3000. In 1851 about a thousand gallons of wine were shipped from Los Angeles. Soon after this the northern counties began to grow grapes and make wine, so the shipments to San Francisco diminished ; but in 1855 exportation to the eastern market began. In 1857, 21,000 boxes of grapes, or nearly a million pounds, and 250,000 gallons of wine were shipped out. By 1860 the shipments of wine had increased to 66,000 cases.
In 1856 the yield of oranges was estimated at 400 boxes, or a little more than one carload. Wm. Wolfskill, who had the principal orchard, declared that he had received $100 apiece in- come from several of his trees. By 1860 it was estimated that there were 2500 trees in the state, of which three-fourths were in and around Los Angeles.
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