The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1907-07-25
PEN PICTURES CT CALIFORNIA.
Percy proctor presents several for
readers of The Republican.


cause in the high freight rates on every
thing. Southern Pacific Railroad, the
Hartman line, controls transportation
absolutely and relentlessly, the rates to
and from Los Angeles were much high
er and until the city acquired strip OF
land twenty-five miles to the Pacific
Ocean and annexed the fort of San
Pedro, thus becoming a sea-fort city
and securing the same freight rates as
prevail in San Francisco and other
coast cities where there is water COM
petition, Another cause is the rapid
growth of Los Angeles at the time
when labor was scarce and cost of build
ing material was high. Many people
are forced to live in rooms and get their
meals when and where they can at
restaurants and boarding houses of
scarcity of houses and help. A third
cause is the fact that Los Angeles is a
tourist-city, the headquarters for peo-
pie who come from the East in early
winter, travel though Southern Cali
fornia, and return in the spring. 1t is
customary to charge these people two
and three prices for every thing. and
these inflated prices do not come down
much the other six months of the year.
Wages are high and people willing to
work can earn nearly double what they
do east of the Mississippi river, but
the increased cost of every thing leaves
them little or any better off. Profession
al men, lawyers, doctors, ministers,
architects, and civil engineers, earn no
more in Los Angeles than in cities of
equal size in the East, but artisans,
mechanics, clerks, stenographers, cooks
maids trolley car men, teamsters and
others who work more or less with their
hands, ere III demand. Laborers are
usually MeXicans, negroes or japanese
coolies. These last are unlike the small
neat and polite brown men one meets
with in the East, but are heavy,
ignorant and repulsive looking. 1t is the
presence of these in the same classes
with little white boys and girls in public
schools to which Pacific Coast people
object
Although there Is more work than
there are workers in Los Angeles. yet
there are more loafers and idlers on the
streets than one sees in an eastern city,
except possibly in the South where the
negro population is large, they either
are unable to find the job that exactly
suits them or are indisposed to work at
any kind. At present the demand for
bricklayers, carpenters and others en-
gagged in the building trades is less than
for several years, the high cost of build
ing material and the demand for men in
San Francisco since the fire and earth
quake year ago last spring, put stop
20 much new construction in Los
Angeles. Now the people of San Fran
cisco have spent all the money they got
from insurance companies, and building
there IS on a limited scale, throwing
many men out employment, the work
men there got big wages while the
money lasted; bricklayers a $3.50 an
hour, for example but the goose that
laid the golden egg has been killed and
eaten; most San Francisco merchants
laid in stocks of cheap goods after the
fire, thinking that the people would
have little money to spend, but some
store keepers were caught with con-
signments of expensive silks and satins
the big wages earned by mechanics
enabled their women folks to indulge in
luxury of apparel unknown to them be-
fore, and the supply of the costly dress
materials was sold at top prices. Some
body has the money now but not the
men who made it.
The climate of Los Angeles is better
from November to May than is the
climate of any eastern city. 1t rains a
great deal in fact, all of the rain of the
year falls in these six months, but it
never SHOWS nor freezes. One can work
every day in the year, as far as wealth
er is concerned. 1t is very hot and
dusty the other six months, both in
creasing each month until September
and October become almost unbearable
to people not used to sun every day and
no rain to cool the ar and lay the dust.
AS well as the writer can see, Los An
geles offers no advantages, other than
climate to those unable to bear cold
weather, over Eastern cities to men
and women who work for living, with
brains or hands or both together. 1t is
busy, bustling, growing place which
may in time become a pleasant city to
live in and do business, but now it re-
sembles Chicago in its dirt, disorder and
disregard for human life.
Riverside, about fifty miles northeast
of Los Angeles, is the county seat of
Riverside county, which is as large as
the State of Massachusetts, and is the
orange growing industry of Southern
California, the lower third of the whole
state. Less than generation ago the
country around Riverside was desert