1890-1900 Kann

Mark E. Kann Middle Class Radicalism in Santa Monica, Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1986. 322 pp., 1899, 1893, 1890s

     ". . .  One can bicycle down to old Main Street and be transported back to the 1890s by its wooded storefronts and stained glass windows, Victorian restorations, period restaurants, and sidewalk vendors . . . The more contemporary consumer can choose between Santa Monica Place, a new indoor center featuring major chain outlets, chic boutiques and galleries, and lots of roofed-in greenery designed by a famous local architect . . .

     "One item regularly produced and consumed in Santa Monica is culture. Simply living in Santa Monica is a form of cultural enrichment. One's neighbors are likely to be interesting if not important people in the world of ideas and the arts. The city houses an incredible concentration of scientists, professors, journalists and writers, architects, designers, doctors, and lawyers as well as producers and directors, actors, dancers, sculptors, painters, and artisans. These "captains of culture" for the Southern California region and beyond form a critical mass of support for public and commercial performances. Many of them contribute time, talents, and money to city cultural affairs, and many patronize the experimental theaters that germinate there. Furthermore, their avocational interests compose the demand that attracts an abundant supply of private schools and lessons that cater to middle class hobbyists.

     "The source for Santa Monica's middle class affluence, consumption, and culture is marketable intellectual skills . . ." pp. 6, 7

     " . . . budget . . .

     “ . . .

        “ [p. 29] This fate was avoided, however, by a new twist in Southern California's railroad wars. In 1890, a powerful syndicate of St. Louis capitalists decided to challenge the Southern Pacific's hegemony by laying its own track to the San Pedro harbor and building its own docking facilities there. The Southern Pacific in essence resurrected Jones's old scheme as a competitive response. Collis Huntington drew up plans to construct a deep harbor off Santa Monica that it could monopolize by virtue of its ownership of Jones's Los Angeles and Independence Railroad. Huntington also began a campaign to discredit as unsafe the harbor facilities in San Pedro where the Southern Pacific had once had uncontested control. Ultimately, Southern California shipping would be shifted to the new harbor, and Santa Monica, once again, was slated as a high growth metropolis. By 1893, the Southern Pacific had completed construction of a new 4,500-foot Long Wharf just north of Santa Monica, bought up land throughout the area, and marshalled enough congressional support (including that of Senator John P. Jones and Senator Cornelius Cole, who also had land investments in Santa Monica) to prevent federal appropriations for a breakwater in San Pedro. Huntington meanwhile courted the support of the Los Angeles business community and other influential politicians to win federal appropriations for building a sheltered deep sea harbor off Santa Monica.

     "Huntington called the new harbor "Port Los Angeles" in the hope that Santa Monica would become the commercial gateway for Los Angeles and all of Southern California. He arranged tours of the Long Wharf for businessmen, buyers, and politicians; he ran excursions for tourists who were also potential investors. Ships once again began to dock at Santa Monica and the city itself went through its second wave of growth. Huntington's scheme might have worked were it not for the fact that the St. Louis capitalists had a major ally in the person of General Harrison Gray Otis, founder of the Los Angeles Times and the key single figure in the making of Southern California. Otis put together a coalition of powerful business interests and politicians (including California U.S. Senator Stephen White) to stop the Southern Pacific by ensuring that federal appropriations went to the San Pedro harbor. Otis's public posture was nicely summarized in this Times editorial of 1892:

     "Is any individual or corporation to have a monopoly on this deep sea harbor when it is constructed? It it is found as a result of investigation that the Southern Pacific has taken in advance a mortgage (death grip) on the forthcoming artificial harbor at Santa Monica, then we say let us not give any assistance to the scheme. On the contrary, let us fight with all the self-respecting manhood we have. Better that the deep sea harbor be defeated altogether than that the government should be encouraged to appropriate $4 million or $5 million for the exclusive benefit of this already overgrown and too dictatorial corporation." (1)

- pp. 29, 30, 31, 32

(1) quoted in
Robert Gottlieb and Irene Wolt Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Angeles Times, Its Publishers and Their Influence on Southern California, Putnams: NY, 1977. p. 59

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017