Los Angeles herald., 1891-07-26
MORTIMER AGAIN.

They are few people who know the
amount of damage an individual known
as G. White Mortimer, her Britannia
Majesty's vice consul at Los Angeles, is
doing to the contemplating British in
vestors in this county, and to this region
at large. If his utterances were confined
to keeping Englishmen out Of Southern
California we should have nothing to
say about this man. But, through
vicious perseverance of years, he has, to
a certain extent, caught the ear of the
British home office, and he doubtless
procures the publication Of certain por-
tions of his stuff in agencies of the
Associated Press in both England and
the United States. Thus, the other
day, We saw telegram published in
the New York World, under the sub
head, "But 1t Has Beautiful Climate
All the Same," in which everybody was
warned to beware of investment in
Southern California. A gentleman in
Chicago, under date OF the 21st inst
and we will confidentially inform our
readers that it is Major Ben
G. Truman, the capable head of
the Southern California exhibit in the
Rialto building in that city, clipped the
following from the Chicago press, under
the head of an Associated Press dis
patch, and sent it to us:
LONDON, July 14.-The report of Mr..
Mortimer, the British vice-consul at Los
Angeles, CAL, just issued, says: "Great
dangers beset the investors in Southern
California from promoters in London
and from the mismanagement of Eng
lish managers who are not familiar with
the country, and from the impositions
of vendors here" Mr.. Mortimer adds
he is reluctantly compelled to advise
English capitalists not to invest in that
part of the country, and quotes San
Francisco newspapers as declaring that
the companies foated in London for the
last five years have been miserable fail
uree, while many of them have been
out and-out swindles.
Major Truman writes: "This man is
"the individual who made the Rose
vineyard sale, and he should be made
''to elaborately explain that he does not
"mean smallinvestors and home-seekers
generally. That Associated Press dis
"patch has gone all over the world.''
Who is this man Mortimer? He is
the British yice-consul at Los Angeles,
and he has law Office here. The HER
AID has correctly designated him as the
stool-pigeon who made possible the pro-
moter's scheme which large number of
the English people were led into the
Rose vineyard project. We have said
that then was the time for him to
have used his position to protect
British investors, but then was the
time when a $4,000 fee kept
his mouth shut. At the same time
when he was standing in with that pc
culiar scheme of robbery he was dis
suading British investors from buying
the cheap lands OF Antelope valley. The
Englishman who would have put his
money into Antelope valley at the time
when Mortimer advised him to have
nothing to do with those cheap lands,
put his money in a promoters project
at disastrous loss, which Mortimer
warned nobody about. The Antelope
valley lands would since have yielded an
increment OF five hundred to a thousand
per cent, while the investors in the
Rose vineyard have reioiced ever since
in what is known in American parlance
as 'Irish dividends"
1t will be happy thing for English in
vestors in Southern California lands
when they can get rid Of the insidious
counsels of this man Mortimer. Just at
the time when the low-priced lands of
Southern California are showing great
elasticity, with marked prospects of
large and immediate profits on invest
ment, this individual again raises his
bazoo, with the undoubted effect, if not
intention, of keeping his countrymen
from the legitimate profits which natur-
ally attend purchases at bedrock
prices on a rising market.
When the market has risen
heavily he will undoubtedly, if con-
tinued in his post, steer his countrymen
into promoters projects like that of the
Rose vineyard, with comfortable
profit to himself and unspeakable loss
to investors.
The question is whether the English
people can stand indefinite repetitions
of the "stool-pigeon" business from this
official representative of their country?
The people of Los Angeles can stand it
very well, in the future as in the past.
In the development Of Southern Cali
fornia it matters little whether English
investors win or lose. To man up a
tree it would look as if it amounted to a
good deal to Englishmen themselves.
1t is clearly their concern, and we thus
present the matter.