Harry Carr Los Angeles City of Dreams (Illustrated by E.H. Suydam), D. Appleton-Century Co.: NY, 1935, 402 pp., 1935, 1898
Chapter XIV What We Reporters
"[p. 170] It was a "homey" little city then; we all knew everybody. We were still naive and perhaps unsophisticated; but Los Angeles in its greater days has never been so charming.
"As nearly as by anything else, this general period was punctuated by the Spanish American War. It began when we were still a little hick town. When it ended, we began to grow into a city-and to become conscious of the fact that the next era of the world's history would be in the Pacific and we would be the front door.
"I was perhaps the only war correspondent in the history of newspaperdom who ever started out for the war trail at fourteen dollars a week. I can remember the days when I plodded around town in burning excitement from the colonel's office to the adjutant's office to find out if orders had come from our militia regiment to avenge the sinking of the battleship Maine . . .
"[p.171] But our Seventh Regiment did not sail. It wa a political [p. 172] war and the Secretary of War-General Alger-gnashed his teeth at the thought of Los Angeles. Congress had reversed his ruling by giving the breakwater to San Pedro instead of Santa Monica-and the Southern Pacific Railroad. So he took out his spleen on the militia from our pueblo . . .