1890-1900 Carr 1935

Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1935, 1890s

Chapter XV Underneath the Surface

     "[p. 184] . . .

      "Before the days of automobiles, we had bicycle races. On [p. 185] July Fourth every year there was a road race on high, old fashioned wheels from Santa Monica to Los Angeles; one of the champions was Tracy Hall, now a well-known banker. Regular bicycles of the present type brought in track racing. At first they were called "safety" bicycles and were considered to be somewhat sissified-for girls and such. I think that they started the Modern Youth movement in the pueblo-shameless flappers wearing bloomers that showed the leg mighty near to the knee. They made such a scandal that few girls had the courage to go on wearing them.

     " . . .

Chapter XVIII The East A-Calling

     "[p. 223] After the Sante Fe railroad built into Los Angeles, the pobladores discovered that we had a sea at our doors and that it would float boats-a stunning surprise to the Iowans [p. 224] who thought it was to take baths in. They began rounding in our Congress to appropriate money to build a breakwater and dredge out the mud flats.

     "Huntington answered this demand with an ogre roar. It was lése majeste. He had whipped the pobladores to their knees before. Once they kept Crocker of the Southern Pacific waiting in the lobby of the council chamber while they debated the Southern Pacific's Demand to turn over all the municipal bonds by which the San Pedro to Los Angeles railroad had been built. "I'll make the grass grow in the streets of your town," yelled Crocker; and the frightened little pueblo handed over its railroad.

     "This time, Huntington's growls blanched no faces. Instead old General Otis, with his then little paper the Times, opened up a broadside that turned the old tycoon's face purple with rage . . . And in the Senate a brilliant young California-born senator, Stephen M. White, whose statue now stands in bronze in front of the court-house, lashed the great corporation boss with devastating fury.

     "Collis P. Huntington knew he had, for the first time in his life, a fight on his hands. He wanted the breakwater built at Santa Monica for the very obvious reason that the Southern Pacific had a monopoly there. So confident was he that he could whip Congress into line that he went ahead and built a wharf nearly a mile and a half long going out from the narrow point of land where the road turns into the Malibu. For years it stood there empty and forlorn, growing gray and salt-crusted in the surf spray, a playground for children-a convenient fishing place for the Sunday excursionists. Finally, in the winter storms, its worm-eaten piles broke and drifted ashore to make sputtering green- and orange-colored fire logs for the movie colony at Malibu. Nothing burns like driftwood and broken ambitions.

     "[p. 225] It was a furious struggle that lasted for years. Army engineers surveyed both places and recommended San Pedro. Their reports were pigeonholed by the Secretary of War-General Alger-with what motive no one has ever discovered. Powerful forces in the Senate rose to block Stephen M. White; but he was a gallant fighter.

     "Desperately, as he felt the battle going against him, Collis P. Huntington offered to build a breakwater at Santa Monica and give it to the government.

     "Congressman Henry A. Cooper of Wisconsin said in the House of Representatives at that time:

     ""No question ever presented to me since I have been a member of this house has struck me with as much astonishment as this. I have never known anything like so determined a fight to thwart the will of the people to prevent the carrying out of just laws in the interests of a private corporation. And now these people who have been defeated year in and year out in thier efforts to establish a harbor at Santa Monica come in and say: "We will build a harbor and give it to the United States if you will put it where the engineers of the United States army think it ought not to go.""

     "[In 1896, Congress finally voted an appropriation . . . for San Pedro; but still nothing happened. General Alger, the Secretary of War, managed to block the work until 1899 when President McKinley pressed a button in the White House to dump the first car-load of rock . . . The electrical connection failed to work . . ."

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017