Los Angeles herald., 1905-03-05

The existence of thirty-one trust,
savings and commercial banks in Los
Angeles, many of them with colossal
capitals, deposits and surpluses, indi-
Gates very flourishing condition of
the finances of this extreme southern
corner of the United States.
The truth is that at nearly every
stage of its history there has always
been a suggestion of the dabbling in
large sums of money. in the Angelic
city. Even when the city of the Queen
of the Angels was an old fashioned
Spanish pueblo the rattle of dingbats
could be heard hereabouts in lively
cadences. Long before our city became
great, old John Temple had financed
the government at the City of Mexico
and the father of ex-Sheriff Martin
Aguirre, an elegant Spaniard born in
old Spain, had buttressed the Roman
Catholic church of the Golden state
when Mexico defaulted on the Pious
fund, which Diaz has since made good
to the United States through The
paid over to Archbishop Riordan.
Away back, forty years and more
ago, there were plenty Of rich men in
Los Angees-Eich as riches were then
counted. Some of them are living now,
few are lately dead, and the de-
scendants of others, though to slight
extent, are still with us and still rich.
In a review of some of our early rich
men we must still take note of the
lumber millionaire, j. M. Griffith. AL
though this gentleman has encountered
physical casualties enough to kill half
dozen ordinary men, he is still hale
and hearty. He has some signs of the
vagary which occasionally carries
man near and at rare intervals beyond
the century mark. His last accident,
which might have broken his neck,
which happened up at San Bernardino
some years ago, in stepping from a
railway platform in the dark, seemed
simply to have rallied his vitality, and
he daily appears at the lumber yards
of ]. M. Griffith & CO. as full of busi-
ness as in his green and salad days.
In the old days-away, way back-the
firm of Griffith & Tomlinson counted
for much in the business affairs of San
Pedro and Los Angeles. They were the
great rivals of Gen. Phineas Banning,
who is today represented by the Ban
ming boys, Capt. William, Hancock
and Joe" or the Judge In those
a
stage and transportation line running
from Wilmington to Los Angeles and
even TO Yuma.
Those were homeric times. Gen.
Banning had come on here from Will
mington, Del, whence the genesis of
our town of Wilmington our subsidiary
port of San Pedro, He built himself a
great mansion near his town in
which was the center of more hospi-
tality than has ever been dispensed
in Southern California, unless Dan
Freeman's at the Centinela became the
exception, in later days.
In those good old times hot rivalry
existed between Gen. Banning and
Griffith g. Tomlinson. Beginning with
one steamer a month the ocean traffic
gradually grew to two, three and four
Never was there on the face Of the
globe a livelier competition than existed
between those two transportation COM
panies. The Los Angeles headquarters
of the Griffith & Tomlinson line were
at the Lafayette hotel and those OF
the Banning line at the st. Charles
nearly opposite, on Main street, where
they stand now. Miracles of bronco
speed would be performed on those
trips, and for long distances bronco
apeed is the finest In the world. Ole