The sea coast echo. [volume] (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.) 1892-current, 1905-09-09
INTERESTING LETTER
EROM Los ANGELES.

the country every year, and everybody
gets little of it. They have to be fed
and lodged and taken around, and they
waste certain proportion of their funds
foolishly on trifes, so that the money
they bring in is pretty well distributed,
Not less than 250,0O0 strangers visit Los
Angeles every winter and spend more
or less time here and in the surrounding
towns. One hundred and fifty thousand
come in over the Southern Pacific aud
! 100000 over the Santa Fe, and the Clark
road from Salt Lake Is beginning to
contribute to the number. Thus the
tourist business is the basis of the pros
perity of Los Angeles, and indirectly
the railroads are responsible.
The city began to be something in
1886. The Santa Fe Railroad having
been completed during the previous
year, there was a great desire on the
part of restless people, particularly in
the central states, from Minneapolis to
Galveston, to see the glories they had
read about. The late w. F. White, for
many years general passenger agent Of
the Santa Fe Road, was a genius at ad-
dertising, and he made the scenic won
ders, the fruits and flowers and the eli
mate of southern California known in
every household. The Southern Pacific
reached Ell Paso the next year and gave
Los Angeles direct line from New Or
leans to Galveston, which was also well
advertised. The city had great boom.
Town lots were plotted over an area suf-
fcient for 100000 of people. Almost
every acre of ranch land within radius
of fifty miles was cut up into ''addi-
tions" and put on the market. For
tunes were made by clever spectators,
attracted thousands of others. The
boom broke in 1888. Prices went down
to nothing, and thousands of people
were ruined, but the flow of tourists
kept things going, and hotels, mer-
chants, grocers and market men retained
their prosperity. Town lots that had
sold for thousands of dollars dropped
to hundreds and could not be disposed
of at any price, but this tremendous
falling off was confined to the specula-
tive districts. 1t is significant fact
that property in the business section of
the city has retained it's value and
steadily advanced during the dull peri
DDS. This is largely due to the never
failing flow of tourists.
Then came nursery boom. Every
body raised young orange trees to sell.
There was a great demand for orange
lands. Orchards sprang up where town
orchards had been. In 1900 the popula-
ton of Los Angeles was $4,000 by the
federal census, and it has continued to
grow. Things began to pick up in 1893,
when the panic swept over the country.
Los Angesles endured it very we'll,
there being only a few small failures.
Only one bank went under, and that
was unimportant. For the next four
years business was dull because the tou-
rist trade practically stopped. People
in the East were so poor that they could
not afford to travel for pleasure, and the
population of this part of California
DEVOTED its energies to the cultivation
of oranges. They raised so much fruit
that prices went down. Everybody
shared the depression. Just at that
time, fortunately, in the midst of the
financial depression of 1898, cheap fuel
was discovered in the form of crude
petroleum, which lessened the cost of
industry at least 80 per cent, attracted
consid erabIe manufacturing and pre-
vented the sending out Of money for
fuel, which up to that time had been
imported from Australia, Wales, Brit
ish Columbia and New Mexico.
Confidence was restorrd; manufacture
ing enterprises were stimulated. Be-
fore oil was discovered the country was
purely agricultural; now it has many
small factories that pay big dividends,
] All kinds of things are made here from
clay, brass, iron and wood-builders'
hardware, chandeliers, construction
iron and many novelties in iron, steel,
copper, brass and other metals are
made. Large numbers of patents are
issued to Los Angeles people every year
| for novelties that are manufactured
here. The factories are not large; most
of them employ from three to fifty men.
Fine furniture is speciality, also, and
nearly all tbs shops have artistic wood
carvers from Switzerland and Germany.
Train loads of ready-made houses are
shipped to ranches and mining regions.
| One of the newest enterprises is the
manufacture of splints, artificial limbs
and other surgical appliances from the
wood of the yucca palm, which is very
light and tough and is found in great
quantities in the desert. Several insti-
tutions are making patent pumps and
wind mills for desert irrigation, orna-
mental terra Gotta, cement, asphalt and
all kinds Of articles of clay. a New
York firm has recently established a
| factory for the manufacture of felt from
Arizona and California wool; piano
!, hammers are shipped from here by the
! @zI III A1.~