Days of Vintage, Years of Vision

By Midge Sherwood

Days of Vintage, Years of Vision is the living, breathing story of one of the most important periods in American history. This three-volume series records the development of the State of California from its admission into the Union in 1850 to the turn of the 20th Century. It is a family narrative that chronicles both the personal and political lives of those who settled the southern section to bring in railroads, build harbors, and establish a world commercial centre that would one day send favorite sons to the White House. The author skillfully presents this family within the context of the times of not only the State, but the country and the world.

The story evolves with the lives of Benjamin D. Wilson and his sons-in-law, George Smith Patton, Sr. father of the famous Generaland James De Barth Shorb, whose San Marino Ranchonce the queen property of Southern Californiais today the site of the Huntington Library, Art Galleries and Botanical Gardens.

Volume I narrates the Los Angeles arrival of Wilson in 1841, a former Indian trader who became the new communitys first elected mayor and was twice-elected State Senator. Quiet, unassuming, committed to honor and duty, Wilson established a harbor, railroad facilities, a university and other advancements to secure his citys place on the world map as a cultural and commercial center. Mt. Wilson was named for him in appreciation and recognition of all that he did for the State.

James De Barth Shorb arrived in San Francisco in 1864 with the first oil excitement and joined Wilson to manage his 14,000-acre San Pasqual ranch that extended from the foothills of Mt. Wilson to what is today the City of Alhambra. He became a member of Wilsons family by marrying his first daughter, Sue. He began a relentless political career, plunging into every major aspect of the States development after the death of Wilson in 1878.

Volume II continues the Shorb narrative in 1879. He could have become Governor of the State, had he only accepted the nomination, but he, himself, admitted that his hands were full. Not only was he the father of nine children, but he was busy with his many business and civic endeavors. He built the largest winery in the world, helped develop water and irrigation projects, and was very influential in the establishment of laws governing such in the agricultural State of California. Shorb also pioneered an interurban railroad, the forerunner of Huntingtons network throughout Southern California.

The Patton family is also introduced in Volume II. They arrived in 1865 as Civil War refugees. George Patton grew up in Los Angeles, became the citys district attorney, and developed a reputation as an explosive, fiery orator, who could hold a political convention of The Democracy spellbound for two hours. He married Wilsons daughter, Ruth, in 1884, and their son, George Smith Patton Jr., born November 11, 1885, was destined to become the famous World War II General.

Volume III continues the narrative of this unusually vigorous and visionary family in 1889. Times were hard in the fin de sicle of the 19th Century, and they faced an awesome political battle to keep Los Angeles Harbor at San Pedro. The opposition? Collis P. Huntington, determined to establish the harbor at Santa Monica.

This battle, recorded in national headlines, would call forth all of Pattons political energy.
However, Volume III begins with more than hard times. While retaining the reverent spirit, the celebration of Thanksgiving Day in 1889 included a remarkable event. Heralded as the great Valley Hunt,a wildcat and fox huntit consisted of a hunting party of nearly 50 prominent members, and featured Shorbs famous hounds, the Australian blues. As a result of this successful activity, December 12, the president of the Valley Hunt Club wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times suggesting:

A tournament

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465325853

Midge Sherwood

Midge Sherwood, author and historian, grew up in Ironton, Ohio and graduated from the Journalism School of the University of Missouri. Inspired by a student interview with Amelia Earhart, she moved to Los Angeles and entered the field of aviation journalism. As the public relations director of Western Air Lines, she was the only woman in the nation to hold such a position. After marriage to the late Jack E. Sherwood, she turned to history and in 1973 enrolled as a research scholar at the Huntington Library. She has received many honors for her books and articles on the American frontier West.

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Contents

Days of Vintage, Years of Vision

Prologue

Acknowledgements

Chapter I

Poised on the Fin de Siécle

Chapter II

The Great Valley Hunt

Chapter III

The Misnomered Gay Nineties

Chapter IV

Thorns in the Rose Garden

Chapter V

Mother Nature Has Her Say

Chapter VI

The World’s Fair Imbroglio

Chapter VII

Bringing Forth Wild and Sour Grapes

Chapter VIII

When is Free spelled T-A-X?

Chapter IX

The Political Waterloo

Chapter X

This Country is Republican Today

Chapter XI

Cultural Winds Blow East

Chapter XII

Black Friday

Chapter XIII

Is America Still American?

Chapter XIV

Politicians’ Hands in People’s Pockets

Chapter XV

From ‘Man’s World’ to God’s World

Chapter XVI

The Income Tax— An Engine of Gigantic Power

Chapter XVII

Now We Have Reached Bottom

Chapter XVIII

War and Peace

Chapter XIX

Man Proposes, God Disposes —and Transposes

Chapter XX

It’s Like Heaven to Me

Footnotes

Dedicated to my husband

Jack E. Sherwood

(1918-1990)

A patriot devoted to his country

and the preservation of its unique history.

Days%20of%20Vintage%201.tif

  

Days%20of%20Vintage%202.tifDays%20of%20Vintage%203.tif

A Colonel in the Civil War and a General in the Spanish American War, Harrison Gray Otis (1837-1917) was well known as an inflexible original Republican. In 1881, with his wife, Eliza, he founded a Los Angeles daily newspaper known today as the Los Angeles Times.

Days%20of%20Vintage%204.tif

(Courtesy of the Patton Family)

Three generations of George Smith Patton’s are shown in this photo. At far right is George Smith Patton, Sr., father of General George Smith Patton, Jr., shown at the left. The youngster in the center is the General’s son, George Smith Patton, III, who also grew up to be a General in the Viet Nam War and is now deceased. A fourth George Smith Patton, son of the Viet Nam General, is today a Massachusetts farmer.

Days%20of%20Vintage%205.tif

(Courtesy of the Huntington Library)

Georgie, 18, as he was known to his family, attended Virginia Military Institute in 1903 and was admitted to West Point in 1904. He was graduated in 1910 and assigned as a Lieutenant with the 15th U.S. Cavalry at Ft. Sheridan. He married Beatrice Ayers, March 26, 1910, at a military wedding in Boston, the bride’s hometown.

Days%20of%20Vintage%206.tif

Georgie Patton, a West Point student, is standing with his Aunt Nannie (Anne) Wilson on his left, and at his right hand his mother, Ruth Wilson Patton. Center is Henry Edwards Huntington, George Smith Patton, Sr., and the gentleman at the extreme right is thought to be Hancock Banning.

Days%20of%20Vintage%207.tif

(Courtesy of the Huntington Library)

The San Marino Ranch home of James De Barth Shorb is shown here as it stood in the last half of the 19th Century. Seated on the porch are Shorb and his wife, Maria de Jesus (Sue), daughter of Benjamin D. Wilson. They had eleven (11) children, nine of whom lived, and several are in the picture but unidentified. The Shorb mansion was torn down in 1910 to make way for the new home of Henry E. Huntington, who bought the ranch in 1903. The ranch, which gave the city its name, is today the site of the Huntington Library, Art Galleries and Botanical Gardens.

Days%20of%20Vintage%208.tif

Left to right, James De Barth Shorb, III, and his cousin, Shorb Steel, stand in front of the mantel that once graced their Grandfather Shorb’s home on the San Marino Ranch. This mantel, bearing the crest of the Republic of San Marino, is preserved in the Huntington Library where this photo was taken in 1994. Both men are now deceased.

Days of Vintage, Years of Vision

Prologue

Days of Vintage, Years of Vision is the living, breathing story of one of the most important periods in American history. In narrating the life and times of the pioneers, Benjamin D. Wilson and his sons-in-law, James De Barth Shorb and George Smith Patton, Sr., the three-volume series records the development of the State of California from its admission into the Union in 1850 to the turn of the 20th century.

Because these visionary men were so active with other prominent leaders in every phase of the State’s major development, the series is also a political history.

Volume I narrates the Los Angeles arrival of Wilson in 1841, a former Indian trader who became the new community’s first mayor and twice a State Senator. Quiet, unassuming, committed to honor and duty, Wilson established a harbor, railroad facilities, a university and other advancements to secure his city’s place on the world map as a cultural and commercial center. Mt. Wilson is named for him in honor of his many contributions to the State.

Shorb arrived in San Francisco in 1864 to join the excitement of a Black Gold rush and remained to become a member of Wilson’s family by marrying his first daughter, Sue. He began a relentless political career, plunging into every major aspect of the State’s development after the death of Wilson in 1878.

Volume II continues the Shorb narrative in 1879. He could have become Governor of the State, had he only accepted the nomination, but he, himself, admitted that his hands were full. Not only was he the father of nine children (two were deceased), but he established the San Marino Ranch, hailed as the Queen Property of Southern California, and in 1883 built the largest winery in the world, the site of which in the west end of Alhambra is marked with a bronze plaque. Shorb, more than any other, popularized California wines on the world market.

He also influenced the establishment of water and irrigation laws for the agricultural State of California, and his expertise extended into Arizona.

Volume II introduces the Patton family which arrived in 1865 as war refugees. George Patton grew up in Los Angeles, became the city’s district attorney, and developed a reputation as an explosive, fiery orator, who could hold a political convention of The Democracy spellbound for two hours. He married Wilson’s daughter, Ruth, in 1884, and their son, George Smith Patton Jr., born November 11, 1885, was destined to become the famous World War II General.

Volume III continues the narrative of this unusually vigorous and visionary family in 1889. Times were hard in the fin de siécle of the 19th Century, and they faced an awesome political battle to keep Los Angeles Harbor at San Pedro. The opposition? Collis P. Huntington, determined to establish the harbor at Santa Monica.

This battle, recorded in national headlines, would call forth all of Patton’s political energy.

However, Volume III begins with more than hard times. While retaining the reverent spirit, the celebration of Thanksgiving Day in 1889 included a remarkable event. Heralded as the great Valley Hunt, it consisted of a hunting party of nearly 50 prominent members, and featured Shorb’s famous hounds, the Australian blues. The San Gabriel Valley Hunt eventually led to an internationally known institution, the Tournament of Roses.

It would also lead to the healing of some severe political wounds.

But—on with the story of hostile legislation that leads to a bitter court trial; enter Henry E. Huntington, who brings it to a fitting climax as Shorb’s Queen property is royally re-styled as an intellectual, artistic, and botanical institution of world renown.

—Midge Sherwood

Publishers note: Days of Vintage, Years of Vision, Vols. I and II, received two awards from the Conference of California Historical Societies in 1987—one for distinguished contributions to California History, and the other for scholarly achievement. It is the only double award ever given by the society.

Acknowledgements

Without the Huntington Library, so generously established as a world research center by Henry E. Huntington in San Marino, California, it would not have been possible to publish Days of Vintage, Years of Vision, a three-volume series of American frontier history. It is this world-famous Library that preserves the family papers of Benjamin D. Wilson, James De Barth Shorb, and George Smith Patton, Sr., father of the famous General.

As noted in the Introduction of Volume I, the impact of these three men upon California is incalculable, for rarely was a decision made in the pioneer development of the City and County of Los Angeles that was not directly or indirectly influenced by one or all of them.

I am most grateful to the Library staff for cooperating fully with my work that began in 1973, and only now is coming to an end in 2006.

My acknowledgements began in Volume I with thanks to Director James Thorpe and they continue with like gratitude to President Steven Koblik and Director David Zeidberg.

The Reader’s Services Department has been most helpful, and among the staff I would like to thank Romaine Ahlstrom, Jill Cogen, Christopher Adde, and Susan Krasnoo, always ready with solutions to any research problems. In other departments, Mary Robertson, Bill Frank, Sue Hodson and Dan Lewis have cheerfully assisted my work, as have Barbara Quinn, Tom Canterbury, Mona and Randy Shulman. And, when it came to supplying photographs, I could always rely upon Jennifer Watts, John Sullivan and Manuel Flores.

Many others I have listed in previous volumes, but suffice it to say that the Huntington Library staff is without peer and, as the old saying goes, the Library, itself, is one for the history books.

Fellow researchers and authors are also helpful and among those I must acknowledge the encouragement of Paul Zall, John Robinson, and Gloria Lothrop, as well as Fred Egloff and Don Reeves of Westerners International.

Once again, I acknowledge the wonderful cooperation of Joanne Holbrook Patton, Benjamin Wilson Patton, and the late Ruth Patton Totten, daughter of the famous World War II General, who were so generous with the Patton family archives. Without them, this series would not have the personal family touch I so desired.

The City Council of San Marino and former City Manager Charles Martin were also helpful with the archives of the City of San Marino, of which Patton, Sr., was the first mayor in 1913.

When a project such as Days of Vintage, Years of Vision extends over such a long period of years, there is a danger of omitting someone or several, but surely I cannot omit members of my own family, who have not only endured my daily routine, but who have always supported my work.

Maggie Simms, my daughter, has served as editor of this volume, penciling every word and line that did not live up to expectations, and Tom Simms has been equally helpful in the financial department.

My daughter, Melanie, a private school teacher, has also cooperated with suggestions for improvement.

Lastly, I want to thank Joe Palmieri, of the Huntington Library staff, who painstakingly prepared the manuscript of Volume III for the publisher.

With an open-end prayer of thanksgiving, I acknowledge all who helped with this historical series of the American frontier West.

—Midge Sherwood

September 15, 2006

Chapter I

Poised on the Fin de Siécle

Los Angeles represents at present all the characteristics of a metropolitan city. . . . A great commercial center, she is destined to increase in wealth and all that pertains to active business interests. With an unrivalled soil and climate she will continue to attract capital and labor, and they will naturally join hands to develop her resources, build up her industries and attract hither a superior immigration. . . . We are justly proud of our city and of this whole section, and unhesitatingly we ask, where is there a land fuller of promise, of more unbounded possibilities and of large opportunities, or a land that socially, morally, intellectually and spiritually has advanced within the past decade more rapidly than has this desirable section of semi-tropical California.

—Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1889

While the great commercial center of Los Angeles had advanced rapidly toward the end of the 19th Century, there was still much to be done. For one thing, the facilities of Los Angeles Harbor were inadequate. If the city with a population of about 100,000 would maintain its role as the center of Southern California, development of the harbor was absolutely essential.

However, there might be another solution. The Santa Monica Board of Trade took immediate action by subscribing $20,000 to build a new wharf, preparatory to walking away with the San Pedro harbor. After all, was not Santa Monica as a harbor location ideal? The wind was never heavy and the area was well protected.

Members of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce were invited to visit and see for themselves. They did. At the April meeting the chamber reported that, yes, the scheme is feasible. The harbor was well protected by Pt. Dumas on the North, and the harbor bottom was free of rock. A harbor at Santa Monica would shorten the trip from San Francisco to San Pedro by four hours.

Upon the suggestion of General William Vanderveer, 6th District Congressman, the chamber approved an invitation to a U.S. Senatorial Committee to visit Los Angeles for the consideration of a harbor appropriation.

The report was accepted and the plan adopted, with attention calling to the fact that Santa Monica needed $100,000 more for building a 2000-foot wharf. The meeting concluded with the report that Congress had appropriated $350,000 for the improvement of arid lands, and California should have some share.

The U.S. Senatorial Committee arrived May 13. They were met at the train by Stephen White and led at once to a banquet in their honor at the California Club. There followed days of excursions to San Pedro and Santa Monica, where they were met by Senator Robert Jones. Then, as a courtesy to Senator Henry H. Markham, they visited his hometown of Pasadena and the Raymond Hotel, where they were given a grand view of the orange groves and vineyards of San Gabriel Valley.

While all the senators were in agreement that, yes, Los Angeles must have a harbor, Senator George Hoar, Massachusetts, warned Los Angelenos that Oakland would probably get the first whack at appropriations. He further cautioned, You can’t get it all at once. That they knew. ¹

Meanwhile, where were the early advocates of the San Pedro harbor? Senator Benjamin D. Wilson, the first mayor of Los Angeles, who had secured it as the official port of entry, and Phineas Banning, the Father of Wilmington, were, of course, deceased, along with many others who had ushered Los Angeles through Statehood in 1850.

But where was Collis P. Huntington, whose Southern Pacific railroad needed a harbor as much as Southern California?

The Santa Monica Outlook, April 24, announced that the railroad held a franchise to build a wharf for two years and it expired in May. So be it. Santa Monica would build its own wharf. After all, there were other railroads. Santa Fe President William B. Strong had indicated that the Pacific Coast was his chief goal, and he, himself, planned to spend the last years of his life in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Santa Monica was leaving no stone unturned to have a first class harbor, as Senator Jones pledged $10,000 and Colonel R. S. Baker, $50,000 toward the wharf fund.

If Huntington was moved by Santa Monica’s plans, he gave no visible sign of it. The Times reported that he had his sights set on building a railroad in Africa. With the Belgians contributing to the 850,000£ already subscribed, Huntington planned to lay 262 miles of track that would open the Congo to traffic and thus put a stop to the slave trade.

His motive was sentimental rather than financial, he said. He had fought slavery since his youthful days when he peddled hardware throughout the South.

However, the Times did not write him off locally.

It is believed by railroad men on this coast that Mr. Huntington will create a revolution in Southern California before the end of the present year. ²

Still, yet to be heard from was one of California’s major statesmen: James De Barth Shorb. He had worked with both Wilson, his father-in-law, and Banning in developing Los Angeles Harbor. Surely he would take action.

However, Shorb was ridden with severe problems. The cause of the mysterious vine disease was still just as elusive as it had been since making its stealthy appearance in 1883, and it had reached such alarming proportions that it was a threat to the economy of the entire state. He was working tirelessly with scientists to discover the cause of the disease. ³

His immediate distraction was, as it was with Californians in general, a patriotic observance of Independence Day. He was scheduled as the guest orator of the Pomona celebration, which also marked the unveiling of a statue of the Goddess of Pomona, the gift of Rev. Charles F. Loop. Among the honored guests were General and Mrs. John Charles Fremont.

Deeply moved by the patriotic spirit of the day, Shorb reflected upon a boyhood celebration:

I can remember it well, even the face of possibly America’s ablest man, Daniel Webster, when addressing an audience on this occasion. His face to me was like an illuminated missal, and I can almost recall whole sentences now as they fell from his inspired lips. Under the spell of his unrivalled eloquence, in imagination, I was carried back to the days of Grecian eloquence, and it seemed to me I could hear the rolling voice of Demosthenes . . . and again see the crouching form of Catalina, as he shrivelled under the fiery arraignment of Cicero in the Roman Senate.

Shorb also recalled his own grand heritage, the American Republic, with all its unparalled advantages, as well as its gravest responsibilities.

"On us devolves these duties and to the future historians will be given the task to tell in what spirit we conceived them and how faithfully we executed them.

There is something more to life for the national or individual ambition than the acquirement, the possession of imperial power, force, or political greatness . . . something more in life for the individual man than the acquisition or accumulation of great fortunes, in landed estates, or money. . . . much remains for us to do.

Shorb than considered the great burning question of the times—educating the American people to a higher and nobler standard of civilization.

"This must be the super structure, of which we are the architects and builders, and constitutes the debt we owe to the past men of our nation, and the duty we owe to ourselves and future generations . . . .

Material greatness was only the foundation upon which that civilization should be built.

While greatly admiring American enterprise that had conceived great railroad systems, gridironing the continent with its rails; that had spanned the ocean and enriched the globe with its cables and wires to tell us of the Czar’s daily designs on India, or Constantinople, and the changing conditions of the crops over the face of Europe by the early morning’s rain; that had brought the starry heavens and countless planets millions of miles nearer to us by study and comparison, Shorb hoped to be pardoned for asking for still more a systematic course of national education.

 . . . we must seek to implant the proper principles into our system of education, and then see that they are taught in all of our schools, colleges, and universities . . . .

The following day in a letter to his son, James De Barth, Jr., then a mining student at Mojave, Shorb wrote:

Your mother thinks I delivered the best address of my life, but Mrs. Fremont remarked . . . that it was ‘pearls to swine’; although the audience seemed to be enthusiastic . . . and old Mr. Loop was beside himself with delight. ⁴

The Fremonts had obviously not forgotten voter rejection of the Pathfinder in 1856, when as a Presidential candidate, he campaigned to restore the nation’s proper principles.

July 4 was also a respite from harbor and other problems for Los Angelenos, who celebrated with a parade, orations, poems and pageantry that forced the Times to declare: Los Angeles outdoes herself.

The city’s cable cars were gaily decorated, and Wilson’s Peak, named for Senator Wilson, was lighted up by enthusiasts who climbed to the top. As a matter of fact, moonlight parties to the now-famous peak were the latest fad, reaching fever pitch along with whist and bicycling.

Shorb and many Los Angelenos were later distracted from the serious harbor question by the advancement of the Wilson Peak Observatory, where the Harvard lens photographed the Heavens at last.

A toll road to the peak via Eaton Canyon was chartered July 17 with a capital stock of $50,000, and three days later it was announced that Miss C. W. Bruce of New York had given $50,000 to Harvard for its telescope project. According to Professor William H. Pickering, director of the Harvard Observatory, a new lens in the planning stage would have nine times as much capacity. Two thousand photographs, it was reported, would cover the entire Heavens.

As a good omen, a beautiful rainbow arched itself over Mt. Wilson after a rain, and no less encouraging was the birth of the first baby there—a son born to the Peter Steil’s, who maintained a camp and tent-motel at the peak. ⁵

It was reported that several enterprising men were studying the possibilities of building a hotel at the summit. Is it possible, asked the Times? Engineers said it was. The road could be modeled after the Mt. Washington road (in the White Mountains) the masterpiece of Sylvester Marsh, and so safe that after carrying some 137,000 people, not one accident was reported. The Times reminded its readers that the road designer had for many years been known as Crazy Marsh. It had taken from 1865 to 1869 to complete it, but the toll road was a model of ingenuity. ⁶

Although the harbor problem was far from solved, Los Angeles was unusually quiet following July 4, but politics finally reared its ugly head with a reform movement to establish a new Utopia. Adroitly fictionalized in a new novel, Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy, Utopia was little more than a spin-off of German Marxism, but it developed a feverish following.

Bellamy, born the son of a Massachusetts Baptist minister in 1850, had migrated to Germany for his education, and it was there, as well as in other cities of Europe, he said, that he discovered man’s inhumanity to man. Returning to America, he studied law, but turned to journalism, first working on the New York Evening Post, then founding his own small newspaper in 1880. But fiction was irresistible. His novel outlined a plan for national socialism and was prefatorily endorsed by Socialist Heywood Broun, organizer of the American Newspaper Guild. It was so well received that it led to the formation of National Clubs across the country, the first of which in Los Angeles was organized by a group of 30 who met in Turnverein Hall June 23.

Dr. H. H. Peebles, spokesman of the evening, described Bellamy as the Moses of the day, leading masses to an amelioration of their condition, in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Bellamy himself was more humble. He had, he said in interviews, stumbled onto the cornerstone of a new social order and rewritten it as a fairy tale. Fairy tale or not, his enthusiastic following organized into a political group that demanded nationalized railroads as the first step, after which all the rest will follow.

Step by step all must be taken. ⁷

Step by step, Harrison Gray Otis began taking the new social order apart and described Looking Backward as absurd in looking forward, sidewise, and every way but the right way.

The central idea of the author is that the United States should take control of all industry of every kind, and become the paternal guardians of all the people within its boundaries. They are washed, fed, schooled until 21, then go into labor camps, from which they choose a trade . . . working until they are 45, and then playing.

The necessity of education no one will deny, but you may develop intellect until the crack of doom, yet if the heart remains untouched you are working with no reform. ⁸

Beginning with the wrong premise, that money is the root of all evil, when Biblically it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, Bellamy quite naturally came up with the wrong answer. Despite this and innumerable Times’ editorials pointing out both left and right thinking, Angelenos checked out his novel so rapidly that copies could not meet the demand.

S. Byron Welcome irately reported to the Times that it was obvious the Karl Marx school was opposed to competition as well as free speech—the Nationalists refused to let him be heard at their meetings.

But socialism, Independence Day, and the vine disease were briefly swept aside with the harbor question August 14 with the headline: Judge David S. Terry Meets His Avenging Nemesis. He was shot dead by U. S. Marshall David Nagle after striking Justice Field on the side of the face and refusing to desist. Terry, with his wife, Sarah Althea Hill, who had failed to prove herself the wife of William Sharon in a sensational court case, were accused of plotting to kill Justice Field because of his Supreme Court decision against her. In Sarah’s satchel were found a gun and a knife. The Times reported that his death would be approved by all right-thinking men.

If so, none was more right-thinking than Shorb, who at once wrote his friend, Francis G. Newlands, Sharon’s defense lawyer and son-in-law, that both he and Sue were happy it was all over, and he had forwarded Judge Field his congratulations on his escape from the assassin’s hands. ⁹

But Shorb had other reasons to be happy. Mayor Henry Hazard invited him to serve as chairman of the reception for the Arid Lands Committee, which, hopefully, would legitimize irrigation as a law of the Southwest.

Serving with Shorb were A. B. Chapman, Fred and L. B. Eaton, L. J. Rose, Markham, Antonio Coronel, Stephen White, Stoneman, and others of impressive leadership.

It was like old times. Shorb was in his element, once more working on an irrigation project, for the committee planned to collect information on the potential value of irrigated lands.

Things got off to a bad start, however, when the San Francisco press welcomed the committee but neglected to mention that there were also irrigable lands South of the Tejon.

Again the North omits the South, chafed the Times, noting that such offenses were becoming all too regular. How was it possible to overlook the great Mojave Desert of 6,302,000 acres; the Colorado desert, 4,669,000 acres, and Antelope Valley, 2,185,000 acres? Continued Otis:

"No section of the world can be more interested in the reclamation of arid lands by irrigation than California, for though there are Territories east of us which contain a larger area of land which is useless without artificial moisture, yet, even in these cases the increased business property of such Territories would mean increased wealth for our manufacturers, merchants, and population in general.

Sen. [William M.] Stewart’s proposition, properly carried out, means the reclamation of some 50,000,000 to 160,000,000 acres of barren land at a cost perhaps of $50,000,000. Reckoning on only 35,000,000 acres and the value of water at $50 per acre, this would mean the creation of a value of $1,250,000,000. ¹⁰

Sen. Stewart, author of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a specialist in mining law, was the first member of either house to propose federal appropriations for the reclamation of arid lands in the West. In February he had introduced a resolution calling for a seven-member committee, known as the Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid Lands, to investigate and report in December. The resolution was passed within a week and $250,000 appropriated for a geological survey. The work began in August, arousing the admiration of Otis: He lets no grass grow under his feet—a redoubtable comment about one who expected to convert deserts into lawns and gardens.

The Committee arriving in Los Angeles included Stewart himself; Senator John H. Reagan, Texas, formerly of the Confederacy; Major J. W. Powell, chief of the U.S. Geological Survey; Colonel Richard J. Hinton, an engineer and old campaigner with John Brown in Kansas; and Senator J. J. Hemphill, South Carolina.

If Chairman Shorb had been remiss in challenging Santa Monica’s threat to walk away with the San Pedro Harbor, he now made up for it. First on his agenda for the visitors was an excursion to San Pedro. There they were met by Captain William Banning and taken aboard the Falcon for a turn around the bay, as the Senators noted the government work.

But Santa Monica was not to be denied. The party, including Los Angeles officials, community leaders and the press, were next taken to the Hotel Arcadia in Santa Monica, where, Shorb, master of ceremonies during the luncheon program, called on Senator Stewart. The harbor, however, was not on the Senator’s agenda. He stayed with the subject at hand—arid lands—and pointed out that about three-fourths to nine-tenths of all the agriculture in the world has been accomplished by irrigation.

Northern Europe and the United States were the only parts of the cultivated world with sufficient rainfall to grow all kinds of crops. He also noted that Southern California’s experience would be of great value to the country.

The next day Shorb entrained the party to Riverside and San Bernardino, but had the train halt at his newly platted town of Ramona for a tour. They were met by Sue, who in her charming way, invited them to inspect the great establishment and enjoy the refreshments prepared for them at the San Marino. ¹¹

At Riverside the Committee questioned water company officials on their system of irrigation, and were told that land once worth $3 to $5 an acre, was now $300 to $400, and, with orange trees, as high as $750 to $2500 per acre. Irrigated lands produced a gross revenue of $100 per acre, and 25,000 acres had been brought under irrigation. At San Bernardino they learned of the immense Bear Valley dam and irrigation projects.

Then it was off to San Diego. There the good-natured Committee discovered there was no arid throat committee, such as the one headed by Shorb in Los Angeles, and it was sadly missed. Stewart also endeared himself to Shorb by noting that riparian rights, or the right to divert water above all public land sold was non-existent and that the antiquarian researcher which led to such an alleged discovery here by a hunt among the cobwebs of the past to amuse boys with, would soon be forgotten.

"However this may be, one thing is certain: the Southern part of the State, being the first to find out the value of water, has its rights now well protected by lapse of time; whereas the North, which must yet come to it to reach the full measure of its power, will be the only one to suffer from decisions which forget what the law of England would have been had she had a dry season, and which condemn millions of public wealth to run to waste in order that water may stand a few inches higher upon grass roots on bottom land already too wet.

"San Diego will also be little affected for its main dependence will be upon winter storage of an excess rainfall, the right to reservoir which exists even in England.

Major Powell leans toward taking the Colorado River out above Needles. The vast area of rich alluvium and shell-marl, known as the New River country, on the Colorado Desert, he thinks too low and deficient in drainage to carry off the alkali. It matters little when they begin if they will only make a start somewhere. Everything thus done will make it more easy for private enterprise to finish the rest.

Stewart delighted Angelenos by saying that the Committee had been unable to find the busted boom and he pronounced Southern California the liveliest corpse on earth.

Nor was he jesting. For the Times reported the names of newcomers a half column long a few days later, and noted that hardly a day passes now that an excursion does not come with it. The weak-lunged, particularly, were fleeing severe Eastern winters.

Shorb, the Eatons, Antonio Coronel, and other county water experts testified before the Committee during scheduled hearings, and Shorb told them in detail the development of Wilson’s Ditch, the granddaddy of them all, as well as a model for other irrigation systems in the State. Since the Committee’s next stop was Phoenix, Shorb also testified on the progress of Salt River Valley, later to play a more significant role than any of them could have predicted.

By September 5, fast moving Sen. Stewart had gotten his party as far as Yuma, where they were surprised to see ripe dates and limes. It was also, they reported, hotter than Hades.

Although given to grand celebrations on July 4 and Memorial Day, Los Angeles readied for a new one after dispatching the Arid Lands Committee on their way. In the last legislature, California Admission Day was put on the calendar as a legal holiday. While many found September 9 a good chance for a last fling on the beaches, the Native Sons of the Golden West staged a gala at the Turnverein with Steve White, Mayor Hazard, and many others commemorating the day 39 years ago that the star of the Bear Flag State became the 31st on the American flag.

One of the speakers was J. J. Ayers, recognized as a pioneer after having witnessed at least 40 years of the State’s progress. He arrived at the age of 19, he said, when there were no libraries, no schools, no churches, and few women. We were cast into a maelstrom of masculinity . . . in which everyone had to paddle his own canoe and get out of the vortex as best he could. But—How developed it is today—you have everything!

Well, almost. There was still the harbor question.

September 24, Los Angelenos enjoyed another gala, the opening of the twelfth District Agricultural Fair at Hazard’s Pavilion with a reading by the local poet laureate, Kercheval, who noted every product grown in the Southland in his poem of 35, four-line stanzas, concluding that

The chief of our crops is babies

While our ‘climate’ shall endure!

However, Shorb did not enter into the glorious exhibits, featuring everything from Santa Paula’s 12 varieties of cooking apples to the crystallized fruits of Pomona. He had just joined the new Chamber of Commerce, organized by Publisher Harrison Gray Otis of the Times to supplant his own, for it was more important everyone work together to save the wine industry. He appeared before the group to pursue his battle against the Whiskey Ring which, he had reported to Congressman Vanderveer, was trying to break up the manufacture of sweet wines in this State and especially in . . . this Congressional District by demanding and getting legislation that required the fortification of sweet wines with grain spirits, in one day netting the Chicago ring $700,000 in sales to France, alone, for making their concoctions at Marseilles. However, California sweet wines were of pure spirit, and did not need fortification. We use grape spirit, but the whisky men insist upon our using their grain spirits, said Shorb, and to make matters worse, they have their own men appointed as Internal Revenue agents.

Now, said Shorb, he had come before the Chamber of Commerce to read General Vanderveer’s reply:

"I appreciate all that you say, and will gladly lend what aid I can for the correction of the wrongs of which you complain. The whisky ring seems to have things its own way. I can see no more effectual way of suppressing them but a repeal of the Internal Revenue laws and the suppression of the Internal Revenue bureau.

"The whiskey ring may send their grain-distilled spirits abroad free from the Internal Revenue tax of 90 cents a gallon, to be returned in spurious wine for American consumption in competition with the genuine product of the American-grown grape.

It has agents appointed to protect its monopoly of furnishing free spirit for foreign concoctions while the American products of genuine grape wine is obliged to pay 90 cents per gallon of grape spirit with which he fortifies his product. The iniquities of the Internal Revenue system can only be prevented by extinguishing it entirely.

Properly horrified at this state of affairs, the Chamber at once referred the matter to a committee composed of Shorb, Workman, Ayers, J. B. Lankershim and Chamber President E. W. Jones, himself.

This committee composed 17 whereas’s and received that our representatives in the U. S. Senate and Congress . . . be requested forthwith to demand from the commission of the Internal Revenue and the present administration that the revenue officers of the State be ordered to discontinue forthwith their acts of hostility and repression against the wine interest of California, or to consider their instant removal. It was further resolved that other Chambers and Boards of Trade throughout the State adopt similar resolutions and instruct the publication of same at once.

The Chamber also passed a resolution thanking the banks of Los Angeles for forming a syndicate by which the grape crop of the county is being marked at a fair price, when without their aid the same would, to a large extent, have been wasted, thereby entailing on many a serious loss . . . severely felt by the community at large.

At last the Southland as a whole was coming to the rescue of the depressed and beleaguered wine industry, threatened on all sides by extinction. Shorb had to be relieved. He now had allies of equal energy and determination, including Otis, who at once began exposing the stringency of the internal laws, not to be winked at as some wineries had done. One vineyardist had already been taken into custody. ¹²

Certainly Shorb was grateful to General Vanderveer, whom he wrote later:

It gives me strength and consolation in the fiery ordeal that we are now going through . . . I am pleased to know that among at least a few of our public men there is that bravery left that is not afraid to condemn the bad and give place to what is good in public affairs. ¹³

That Shorb should have had this fiery ordeal at this particular time fell unusually heavy upon him, for the vine disease had so crippled the Southland crops that he cancelled a $25,000 loan annually borrowed for the vintage. He explained to Thomas Brown, cashier of the Bank of California, September 27: We find now that there are so few grapes offered we can handle the cost with our own resources . . .

Then suddenly Shorb was plunged into one of the most tragic events of his life. On the afternoon of October 1 the body of his brother was found in his San Francisco lodgings. Campbell, 53, had died in his sleep. On his bedstand was a two-ounce vial of chloroform, about half full, which he often used to induce sleep. His chloroformed handkerchief, quite dry and tightly clasped in his fingers, partially covered his face. The coroner ruled his death accidental.

Evidently having contemplated the very danger from which he met his death, reported the Times, the doctor at one time devised an apparatus to admit the safe self-administration of chloroform for producing sleep.

[Dr.] Shorb, who was suffering from excessive nervousness owing to his earnest efforts to overcome the opium habit to which he has for some time been addicted, went up to his room at 850 Folsom Street last night and retired. As he had not left the house nor even made a noise in his room up to 2:30 p.m. today—unless it was a cough, which Mrs. Deveny (the housekeeper) thinks she heard in the morning about 7 o’clock—she became alarmed and notified the police. ¹⁴

The police entered the doctor’s room through a window and found him in bed, his long, long night of pain ended at last.

The death of his brother was both a tragedy and a trying financial experience for Shorb, but his woes, like Job’s, only seemed to multiply. He was also battling the Internal Revenue Service both in the press and the Legislature.

Shorb challenged the right of the Department’s Commissioner or his subordinate officers to search without due process of court or regularly issued search warrants.

"I admit his right of free access to