The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 31, 1917, Page 3

In the interest of a square deal for the farmers onpartisan Jeader Official Magazine of the National Nonpartisan League VOL. 4, NO. 22 FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA, THURSDAY, MAY 31, 1917. A magazine that dares ty print the truth Los Angeles’ inner harbor, looking toward the sea. Los Angeles had to carve its harbor out of the ocean as no natural protection existed. The two lines of breake # EN years ago Los Angeles was the third city in size on the Pacific coast, although it was fast overhauling San Fran- cisco and Seattle, its two chief rivals in population. Angeles was located twenty miles from the sea and was not a seaport, like its rivals. Its shipping; which was.negli- gible, was handled through San Pedro, where the terminal facilities were com- pletely monopolized by private inter- ests, and through what was then call- ed "“Port ILos Angeles,” at Santa Monica, where thé Southern Pacific railroad owned all the terminal facili- ties. The city might almost as well have been located a thousand miles from tide water as twenty miles, for all the advantage its-proximity to the ocean gave it. Today Los Angeles is probably the biggest city in population on the Pacific coast of the two Americas. It claims about 700,000 population, against San Francisco’s 500,000. And now it is a seaport, with a fine harbor of its own and terminal faeilities that have cost $10,000,000 and on which $4,500,000 more is to be spent during the next few years. This change from an-inland town, <with avenues of commerce controlled by private interests, to a seaport open on equal terms to all has been possible because of one thing. Los Angeles decided upon public ownership and control of its proposed harbor ten years ago and put all the resources of - its people behind the project. In no other way could the transformation have taken place. In. no other way ‘could the ambition of the city to.rival Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Oakland and San Francisco as a seaport have been realized. : Los Angeles has become a seaport only after a most bitter and spectacu- lar struggle with private interests. The seemingly impossible. has transpired. Picture a city twenty miles inland from a coast that had no natural har- bor. Picture it with meager facilities for shipping, all in the hands of private interests, determined not to let go and to fight every step of the way against the city’'s progress to publicly owned terminals. Then you have an idea of what Los Angeles had to overcome, CITY BUILDS ITS OWN PUBLIC HARBOR In the first place a harbor had liter- ally to be built out of the open sea. The city limits had to be extended for twenty miles to take in a portion of But Los the ocean shore. The grip of the private interests on every foot of the shore had to be broken. Great bond issues had to be passed by vote of the people. The legislature had to frame special laws to permit the gigantic and unprecedented project of the people for publicly owned terminals to be carried out. Imagine the oppor- tunity to fight the project, in each one ° of these steps. Yet each step has been accomplished. ‘What private corporation, no matter how powerful and rich, could have made Los Angeles a seaport, even if it wanted to? Private interests had a hundred years in which to make the city a seaport, and they did not do it. machinery. stacles it had to overcome: interests. terminals. the project. ceive the people. Yet Los Angeles won. Read the story. How Los Angeles Won the Fight The people of the northwestern states have a fight on hand to get public ownership and control of terminal and marketing Does anybody think these things come easily? If so he ought to read this story of the ten-year struggle of Los Angeles to get a publicly owned harbor and publicly owned terminal utilities. Was Los Angeles faint-hearted? Here are a few of the ob- A harbor had to be manufactured out of the open sea, and the city had to fight powerful private interests to get the harbor made where it would best serive the public instead of private The city, twenty miles inland, had to beat down organized opposition and extend its city limits over this twenty miles to take in part of the ocean shore and get sites for publicly owned It had to annex two large coast towns with the consent of those towns, with the private interests attempting by the expendi- ture of vast funds to poison the voters of the coast towns against It had to fight through two sessions of a state legislature controlled by a corrupt political machine to get laws that would permit the annexation of the shore land. ) - It had to fight years of litigation to break the hold of rail- roads and other corporations on the only water front available for the publicly owned projects. It had to carry two big bond issues by a vote of the people, with the opposition spending unlimited money in attempts to de- It had another tv.vo-‘year fight in the courts hefore the bonds could be sold for the publicly owned projects. water shown at the left of the picture were built to protect shipping from the sea. A policy of public ownership has made the city a seaport in a few short years. ‘When I went over Los Angeles har- bor ‘the other day in a port pilot's launch, I was reminded of certain passages in that classic true story of the sea by Richard Henry Dana, “Two Years Before the Mast.” Dana was a sailor on a Pacific coast trading ship in 1835. He tells of visiting this very spot in that year, and of rolling hides down the hillside to be transported by lighters from the shore to the waiting ship at anchor off the coast. He de- scribed the bleak shores, without .natural protection from the sea, as I remember it, as a “desolate looking place.” He had kindlier things to say THREE = about “the little Pueblo of Los Angeles,” a Spanish settlement, which he discovered twenty miles inland. That was eighty-two years ago. Dana tells in his book about revisiting the same shore in 1859, twenty-four years afier his first visit, and he remarks about. the “marvelous development” that had taken place in those years. A wharf had been built, and in calm weather ships could tie to it and take on their cargoes with out lightering them from the shore. AR That second visit of Dana’s was fifty-eight years ago, and it is a fact that until the last few years under public ownership the ‘“marvelous de- velopment” he spoke of was about all the development that had taken place. The “little Pueblo of Los Angeles” had become one of the greatest American cities, even ten years ago, but it did not have a harbor of its own and its shipping and terminal facilities were little better than when Dana described them in 1859. I wonder what Dana would say about the miles of protected water, lined with publicly owned ware- houses,” wharves and other terminal facilities, and served by a publicly owned railroad, that greet the eye of the visitor on this shore today. SOUTHERN PACIFIC POLITICS OPPOSE PUBLIC OWNERSHIP After Los Angeles decided it would become a seaport under a system of public ownership, its first big fight was to have the government breakwater built at San Pedro, instead of at Santa Monica, then called “Port Los Angeles.” The city had ambitions to annex San Pedro and the intervening extent of country and develop its har- bor there, the logical place for it. San Pedro bay is not a protected bay, but hills shelter it on one side and it was known that the breakwater there would make plenty of sheltered harbor. But the Southern Pacific railroad, then at the height of its political power in California, wanted. the breakwater at the so-called “Port Los Angeles,” at Santa Monica, where the railroad had spent a lot of money on terminal facilities and where it absolutely con- trolled all the shore. The railroad feit that there was less chance of Los Angeles annexing Santa Monica than’ San Pedro, and hence less chance of public ownership breaking its control. Also, it had competition from another railroad at San Pedro, while at Santa Monica it had things its own way. All the force of the famous Southern Pacific political machine was used to i 3 gl