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Los Angeles in the sunny seventies. A flower from the golden land, by Ludwig Louis Salvator; translated by Marguerite Eyer Wilbur; introduction by Phil Townsend Hanna MAIN STREET IN LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES IN THE SUNNY SEVENTIES A FLOWER FROM THE GOLDEN LAND BY LUDWIG LOUIS SALVATOR Translated by Marguerite Eyer Wilbur Introduction by Phil Townsend Hanna BRUCE McCALLISTER JAKE ZEITLIN Los Angeles, 1929 Copyright, 1929, by Jake Zeitlin 900 copies of Los Angeles in the Sunny Seventies—A Flower From the Golden Land have been printed for Jake Zeitlin by Bruce McCallister in Los Angeles, the work being finished in September, A.D. 1929. The illustrations are reproduced from the first edition (Prag, 1878). The title page decoration is by Raymond Winters. i Los Angeles in the sunny seventies. A flower from the golden land, by Ludwig Louis Salvator; translated by Marguerite Eyer Wilbur; introduction by Phil Townsend Hanna http://www.loc.gov/resource/calbk.205 THE INTRODUCTION I “EL PUEBLO” came of age between dawn and dusk on the 5th day of September, in the year of our Lord, 1876, and of the Independence of the United States of America, exactly the one-hundredth. At two o'clock in the afternoon, more or less, at a tiny settlement then and since known as Lang's Station, sequestered in the depths of Soledad Cañon, Charles F. Crocker drove the golden spike that completed the Southern Pacific Railroad and gave to Los Angeles its first all-rail contact with the Atlantic Seaboard. The golden spike and the silver hammer with which it was driven were the gift of an enterprising jeweler of El Pueblo, and the event was properly celebrated that evening at a Lucullian banquet at Union Hall. Inspired, no doubt, by a liberal indulgence in Don Mateo Keller's finest vintages, of which there was an ample supply, a local editor delivered himself of the following opinion: “The road will prove the open sesame to a region incalculably “rich in the precious metals; and, through the influence it will ex- “ert in stimulating their production, its completion will be felt in “the commerce of the whole world....We can take a legitimate “pride in our young commonwealth's ability to undertake and “carry to completion a work of such magnitude. We have built it “in less time than was consumed in the construction of the Penn- “sylvania Central by the great State of Pennsylvania, and we have “done it too in a season when all the money markets in the world, “from Vienna to London, were perturbed and in a distrustful “mood.” Extravagant and euphemistic as these assertions may have seemed to the more conservative-minded then, they were actually both veracious and warranted. The completion of the Southern Pacific was the most important event in the growth of Los Angeles ii and “Semi-Tropical California,” as the vicinage was pridefully known, since 1781 when Felipe de Neve had left a heterogeneous company of forty-six Spaniards, negroes, Indians and mestizos, to found a city upon the banks of the Río Porciúncula. Los Angeles in the sunny seventies. A flower from the golden land, by Ludwig Louis Salvator; translated by Marguerite Eyer Wilbur; introduction by Phil Townsend Hanna http://www.loc.gov/resource/calbk.205 Into the oblivion of things past had gone the slothful days of the Spanish occupation and the predatory and equally meretricious era of the gold-rush. The first seventy-five years of California's existence as a civilized province was as beautiful, from the viewpoint of abstract æstheticism, as the golden years of Greece and Rome, but the period similarly, was a decadent one. It was foredoomed to vanish. From practical considerations its people had contributed nothing to the advancement of culture or the economic betterment of the land they had settled upon. The prevailing attitude was one of procrastination. Nature was beneficent and the necessaries of life were abundant and at their very elbows. In possession of such leisure other nations and peoples have developed arts and crafts that have excited the admiration of the world. But not Californians. Deeper and deeper they sank in the vice of their indolence; more and more did they take from their land, and less and less did they put into it. The advent of gold-days merely intensified the tempo of the “taking.” The change was simply one of degree, and the economic aspect became worse. Men gutted the earth of its riches and dissipated their new-found wealth on a thousand inconsequential baubles. Fortunately the mad debauch of a hundred years was in its last convulsion. A transvaluation of values was imminent. II THE “sunny seventies” brought the dawn of a new day for Southern California. Into remote places the word had gone of its undeniable advantages. Miners in their infrequent letters interspersed references to the fruitfulness of the land and the salubrity of the climate among the chronicles of their tribulations and their triumphs; iii returning traders dilated upon its fine valleys and its timber-clad mountains. The unorganized and unconscious rhapsodies became a veritable pæan of praise, piquing the curiosity and arousing the cupidity of thousands of ambitious men and women, dissatisfied with their lot elsewhere. And so they were coming to Southern California, a slow and resolute current of them. The Senator, the Orizaba, and the Ancon were discharging a constant human cargo at Wilmington and Santa Los Angeles in the sunny seventies. A flower from the golden land, by Ludwig Louis Salvator; translated by Marguerite Eyer Wilbur; introduction by Phil Townsend Hanna http://www.loc.gov/resource/calbk.205 Monica. And they were coming, too, by stage, and by stage-and-rail where such transport was the best available. The Middle West and the Mississippi Valley were contributing their quotas; the late Southern Confederation now convalescing from the scars of war bid reluctant farewell to its favorite sons and daughters who sought a new dispensation in a new milieu; New England, sterile from a century and a half of heavy bearing, was prominently represented; even the Old World had heard the siren lure, and the sturdy Norse, the thrifty Teuton, and the irrepressible Gaul could be distinguished among the multitude that trod Los Angeles streets. The trickling stream became a tide of sizeable proportions when the Southern Pacific was completed and the hitherto occult call had become articulate through the broadcasting of organized information about the resources and possibilities in this newest of lands. The settlers of the “sunny seventies” had no illusions. Elsewhere they had learned the first principles of social economics, though I hardly think they knew them by that name. They knew, for instance, that land must be cultivated; that there must be a “giving” as well as a “taking,” a sowing as well as a reaping. They were acquainted with toil and respected it. The Los Angeles Express, on July 8, 1876, remarked: “What Los Angeles wants is the right kind of population and “plenty of it. With that we shall soon build up one of the most iv “attractive and wealthiest counties in the country and march out on “a splendid era of prosperity....Southern California now presents “the most inviting point for settlement in the Union.” It was true. Los Angeles did need “the right kind” of settlers, and it was getting them. There was a new spirit in the air. Industry had displaced indolence; enterprise and thrift had been substituted for eternal diversion and profligacy. The Spanish-Californians gazed upon the scene with a contempt for those who would so far demean themselves as to work, but the transformation was progressing and no human hand could stop it. Great ranchos began to slip from the grasp of the original grantees, who no longer were competent to cope with the changing environment. Fruits and cereals were bountifully produced on lands that Los Angeles in the sunny seventies. A flower from the golden land, by Ludwig Louis Salvator; translated by Marguerite Eyer Wilbur; introduction by Phil Townsend Hanna http://www.loc.gov/resource/calbk.205 hitherto had known nought but thundering herds, wantonly slaughtered by the thousands for their hides and tallow. And, strange to relate, for the first time in the annals of California, land began to have a value. The values were ridiculous, of course, judged from the standards of the present, but that it had a worth was a portentous sign—a sign that it had inherent potentialities and merited conservation and nurture. And there was abroad a feeling, not yet fully sublimated into a public consciousness despite the perfervid editorial utterances of seven Los Angeles newspapers, that Southern California had a Destiny! Despite the communal industry, there existed no slavery to the land, or to business. Work, it was recognized, was a necessity, but diversion was likewise. It was this temperateness, this realization that work and play, drink and food, rest and reflection, all have their related places in the cosmic scheme of things, that made the “sunny seventies” the most glorious decade in all Los Angeles' history. There was liberty and tolerance without restrictive prohibitions, freedom of action and thought between the broad pillars of public decency and community welfare. The Round House was as popular of a Sunday as the churches and none came under the v censuring finger of public scorn because he frequented this popular retreat where “are to be seen elegantly portrayed the primeval family, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel; also the old serpent and the golden apples, all according to the record.” Nor was one ostracized if, basket-lunch on arm, he hied himself to the station of the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad to embark upon one of the company's two daily trains for Santa Monica, there to disport himself.

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