[Special Correspondence of the Times.] Hot Struggle at the Beach. Proposed Bonding of Santa Monica Casus Belli. Lie Passed in a Sizzling Mass Meeting. Ocean Park Takes a Hand. Election Today. The Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16, 1904. p. A1
Santa Monica, Aug. 15. To be bonded or not to be bonded. That is the question to be presented to the citizens of Santa Monica tomorrow. And there's a hot time.
Whether it is best to bond the city for $220,000, or allow the southernmost corporate limit to become merged in the growing municipality of Ocean Park.
Today was one of the most strenuous in the short history of Ocean Park and South Santa Monica. Groups of citizens gathered on the street corners and intense knots of sun-baked beach transients discussed the pro and con of the bond situation.
Should the bonds carry it is said Santa Monica will be the most heavily taxed city in the State.
This morning South Santa Monica and Ocean Park are plastered with posters, for and against the bond issue to be presented at tomorrow's special municipal election. One lot of blazing posters announced the purpose of the City Council of Santa Monica to bond the city for $220,000, and closed with the words: "The bond issue means increased taxes."
Pasted above this sign was the unique announcement: "These posters were put up by the enemies of Santa Monica."
Before sunrise the fight was on and only ceased when the tired citizens of the contesting beach towns left the midnight mass meeting to rest up for tomorrow's battle.
A special election will be held tomorrow to decide the question of bonding the city for an additional fire system; for the extension of the outfall sewer; for a new water system, and for improved public parks.
Bitter War In It
On its face the proposition appears simple. Behind the ordinance calling for the bond election in Santa Monica is the history of the most bitter inter municipal war. Ocean Park has grown more rapidly than Santa Monica North. Santa Monica South has kept pace with the thriving beach resort. Result: South Santa Monica wants to be merged into Ocean Park; North Santa Monica says"No," emphatically.
Marine avenue is the legal southern boundary of Santa Monica. The sentimental boundary that citizens of Ocean Park would fix runs down the center of Strand street, twelve blocks north of Marine. This means that Ocean Park claims twelve blocks of South Santa Monica. This part of Santa Monica Ocean Park expects ultimately to acquire, and here is where Ocean Park's deep interest in the bond struggle comes in.
Opposed To Bonding
Dana Burks, "Mayor" of Ocean Park, said this afternoon: "The people of Santa Monica will make a mistake to vote the issue of the bonds. Our town is very young and our people are progressive. We are taking in about $1,000,000 worth of property this year. Our taxes are lighter and our benefits greater than those of our sister town. The fight is in Santa Monica proper, but we will be vitally affected by the result of the election. I firmly believe the people of South Santa Monica will defeat the bond issue. It will be only a question of a short time before we shall absorb South Santa Monica. Ocean Park is growing more rapidly than almost any city in Southern California."
Growing confidential he said, "The trouble with Santa Monica is the eternal graft in her City Council."
A.R. Fraser, of the firm Fraser, Jones, and Gage, of the Ocean Park Improvement Company, said: "I am opposed to the bonding of the city of Santa Monica, and please state that I am opposed to the present City Council, whose hands are continually in her public purse. One of the City Councilmen when asked how he proposed to improve the present water system, said: "I have been approached by a good, reliable party, owning water-bearing lands in close proximity to Santa Monica, offering to sell from one to three hundred inches of water. I will investigate this at the earliest possible moment."
Continued Fraser as he pounded the desk excitedly: "They want us to pay $220,000 for an investigation. We won't do it."
Senator Dorsey Patton of South Dakota, who is a summer resident and property owner in South Santa Monica, said: "There is no possible chance for the two towns to exist together. There is no harmony between the two communities of North and South Santa Monica."
"Graft," Says Robinson
City Trustee A.Ed. Robinson of Ocean Park said: "It's all a case of graft, and I don't care who knows I've said it, and the graft is in the center of Santa Monica's civic organization."
Animated Meeting
Everybody went to the mass-meeting held this evening at the old Holborow Hotel in South Santa Monica. Crowds of men stood for three hours listening to the animated discussion of the bond question. A.R. Fraser of Ocean Park was elected chairman, and H.I. Miller, secretary of the meeting.
The fun commenced at once when Fraser announced he had "come to criticise the action of the Board of Trustees of Santa Monica."
Prolonged cheers greeted this declaration.
Robert F. Jones, president of the Santa Monica Bank, was called on. He said: "Let the Trustees tell us what they want to do with all this money. We don't want to pay $220,000 with our eyes shut. "
The next speaker, H.E. Haniman, of South Santa Monica, said: " Santa Monica is trying to shove us out. We've got no street lights worth mentioning. We are constantly legislated against. Men who will perform such small acts are not capable of handling so much money."
Murphy Assails Trustees
E.W. Murphy said he had failed to find any property owners in favor of the bond issue. That all the leading citizens are opposed to the propositions, and that the main reason for this opposition is lack of confidence in the city officials of Santa Monica. "Trustee Vawter has a water works to sell," shouted Murphy, and the speaker's voice was drowned in the applause that followed. "Trustee Steere will also handle some of the money," continued Murphy, "and the Review and Outlook also favor the bonds."
The applause became deafening.
Concluding, Murphy asserted that two Trustees will be much closer to this $220,000 than any of the taxpayers. (Cries of "Vawter!" "Vawter!" "
Let's hear Vawter." greeted the last words of the speaker.)
Twelve big farm hands standing in a row on one of the rear benches rooted lustily for Trustee Vawter and it was impossible to continue until their request had been granted.
Vawter on the Floor
The chairman had promised a sensation during the early course of the meeting. It came when Vawter was granted the floor. The opposing factions yelled themselves hoarse, and only from sheer exhaustion remained quiet while the Councilman spoke. "I came over here to make a speech, and I'm going to talk straight. The people of Ocean Park are fighting me, but I want to tell them that the Vawters gave the name of Ocean Park to their city. There is talk of graft. The Board of Trustees of Santa Monica have not misappropriated a cent of public money."
"How about Second street?" shouted someone in the audience. Vawter did not notice the interruption.
"The E.J. Vawter Water Company, the Artesian Water Company and the Ocean Park Company supply us with water. I have sold my interest in the Vawter Water Company, and have no system to unload on the city, as has been charged."
The speaker was jeered.
Refuses To Answer
The Councilman was asked by the chairman to state what steps had been taken to arrange for an adequate water supply.
Vawter refused point blank to answer the question, and delved into the taxation question, during which discussion he took occasion to grill some of the citizens of Ocean Park.
Then the lie was passed between the veteran Councilman and Jones, and the meeting was almost broken up in the confusion that followed.
Col. Hotchkiss, the next speaker, said: "Los Angeles sold her water bonds in New York for 3 1/2 per cent, but this flimflam proposition gives no statistics, and presents no engineer's report. Gentlemen you will put a lien on every one of your homes if you vote these bonds."
F.H. Taft, City Attorney of Santa Monica, was next called for and made the statement that there is an abundance of water to be had anywhere between Santa Monica and Sawtelle on the east and Playa del Rey on the south. He said Dana Burks had told him that they had sunk a well at Ocean Park Heights and had enough water to irrigate every foot of soil between the heights and the ocean. The chairman said the well there was not nearly so good as that, whereupon Mr. Taft retorted that he never would undertake to explain Dana Burks. Taft said he was not surprised to find the water interests at this meeting opposing the municipal ownership of water. Fraser asked Taft if he knew where the Trustees were going to get water, and Mr. Taft said that the land all about was water-bearing, and that so far as he knew the Trustees were not going to "put the land owners on" before the city was ready to strike.
At this juncture of the proceedings a message having previously been handed to the chairman, Mr. Fraser took the floor and referred this time more vigorously, but still vaguely, to the mystery that had hovered about the meeting from the very beginning. He said emphatically that it was an unsafe proposition to place this sum of money in the hands of the Trustees to be expended. He held in his hand and referred to living evidence that at least one of the Trustees was not to be trusted. He said some member of the board would have to answer before morning in the courts of justice. He said two suits had been instituted today. In one the papers had been served, and in the other he "held in his hand a message from Los Angeles advising him that a warrant was at that moment in the hands of the constable to be served upon one of the Trustees as soon as he could be found."
Resolutions denouncing the proposed bond issue and pledging those in the meeting to work for its defeat at the polls, had been drafted, but were not presented.
Injunction Brought
One of the suits to which the chairman referred is that of a temporary injunction issued by Judge Trask at Los Angeles today on complaint of L.C. Hulburt. The suit is brought against T.H. Dudley, president of the Santa Monica Board of Trustees, together with his associates and the city officials, and enjoins them from passing upon a claim of the Morning Review for printing city advertising in connection with the bond election. It is alleged that the Outlook is the official organ of the city of Santa Monica, by reason of it having put in the lowest bid for the city printing; but on August 1 the Trustees passed an ordinance calling a special bond election, and this ordinance was ordered published the legal time in both the Outlook and the Morning Review.
For ten days it is alleged the ordinance was published in both papers, and at tonight's session of the board the claim of the Morning Review for such publication was to have been passed upon. The plaintiff to the action avers he doesn't know the exact sum to be charged for the illegal publishing of the ordinance, but on knowledge and belief states it is $400.