Bribery and corruption—The Good Government League—Servant problem in
California—The climate and its effect on wages—Off to Guadalajara.
My resignation being refused, I decided to stay and finish up the
streets we were on. Of course after this the inspector had it all his
own way, and he certainly led us a dance. I continued to look out for
other work, and one day the chief sewer inspector told me that he could
give us all the repaving work in connection with the sewers if there was
anything in it for him. I reported this to my superintendent, and was
told to give the inspector ten per cent., and the cashier told me the
same thing. Arthur, I knew, would not have allowed it had he known it,
but I was ordered not to report to him. The barefaced bribery, robbery,
and swindling that went on in Los Angeles, in fact, in any town I knew
anything about in the United States, was really surprising. However, I
understand that so far as California is concerned all this has been
changed since the prosecution and conviction of Reuff and Smidt, Mayor
of San Francisco, and the formation of the Good Government League. A
contractor was at the absolute mercy of the city officials and dared not
say them nay; it was not that he wished to bribe but it was forced upon
him if he hoped to remain in business at all. The same applied to his
superintendents and foremen; if they were not ready to supply cigars and
drinks for the inspectors their work would turn out so unsatisfactory
that they did not hold their jobs long.
Between the city officials and the labour unions the contractor had a
bad time. Los Angeles had not much trouble as far as the labour unions
were concerned, but San Francisco was practically run by the unions
during Mayor Smidt’s time (the man mentioned above), he himself being a
union man. I do not mean to infer that I am against organised labour,
for in many cases that is their sole defence against starvation wages.
But when the unions allow such men as the Macnamara brothers (just
convicted of the _Times_ Building dynamiting) to guide their destinies,
they cannot expect the outsider to sort the sheep from the goats. In
“Frisco” a delegate came every day from the Labour Council to visit your
gangs, and would order you to discharge any man who did not belong to
their Order; if you complied they sent you men in the place of those
discharged, and if you refused they posted you as “unfair,” and you
could not get men. They called off the union bricklayers on a building
once because we were working non-union men laying asphalt in the cellar.
We told them that there was no such thing as an asphalt union in Los
Angeles, so that the men could not belong to it, but this made no
difference to them. So we had to wait till the building was completed,
and then go back and finish the asphalt work. I have heard of some
extraordinary lengths to which they would carry their “unfair list,”
though I will not vouch for the following story, but tell it as it was
told to me: A walking delegate came to notify a doctor that he was on
the “unfair list.” The doctor was surprised, as he had always been most
careful to deal in stores with union clerks, to pay his servants union
wages, &c. The delegate said, “You have been attending Martin Brady who
is ill with pneumonia.” “Yes,” said the doctor, “but I found out first
that he was in good standing with the union.” The delegate replied that
"Brady got his cold through getting wet at a farmer’s pump, and we have
found out that the pump was not union made."
The servant-girl problem is worse in California than in any other place
I have ever been to; they get wages running from $25 to $50 per month,
and in consequence are as independent as can be. My wife got ill, so I
went to one of the employment bureaus to see about a girl, and passed
through the ordeal of my life. One woman I spoke to asked me how many
there were in the family, and what I did for a living, and then, when I
told her the house had only five rooms (as an inducement, I thought),
she turned to me and said, “Five rooms, indeed, and I would like to know
where you could put a girl!” One girl that came said, “I am so glad to
see you have a piano as I do love to play in the evenings.” They tell of
a Swedish girl whose mistress asked her, the first morning after she had
arrived, if the table was laid for breakfast. The girl replied,
"Everytang bane laid but the aigs, and I don’t tank dat bane part of ma
job."
The climate of Los Angeles is much better than that of San Francisco,
but it is not all that it is cracked up to be. The winters are much
damper than in Texas, and though the summers are fine there are very bad
dust storms at times, and it gets very hot indeed. But the residents
resent complaint of their weather, as they think it is the finest on
earth, and you can hardly blame them, for the climate is what brings
most of the money to the town. And certainly it produced some of the
finest and healthiest-looking men and women it has ever been my luck to
see. This question of climate has a curious effect on the labour market.
So many young fellows of large brain but weak bodies have flocked to the
town that an office man cannot approach the wages paid to a labourer or
a mechanic; good office men could be got for from $40 to $50 per month
at the time when labourers could get $1.75 per day, carpenters $3.50 for
eight hours’ work, and masons $6.50 per day. I had a negro raker working
under me who was getting the same salary as myself, and we had a cement
sidewalk finisher who was drawing more pay per week than the
superintendent.
The yard foreman and I soon fell out, for the inspector was condemning
the material he sent up, and, as I could not say anything, it was sent
back to the yard. The yard foreman, to get even, would report more stuff
sent up than I had received, and finally things got to such a pass that
when we got the first of the streets finished I left. The day after I
resigned I was riding up town on my bicycle when I met the manager of
our big rival company. He stopped me and asked if it was true that I had
left the Barber people. When I told him so he asked me if I would work
for him. I refused, saying that I was sick of Los Angeles and the
trouble with the street department, and had the offer of a position in
Boston. He told me that if I worked for them I would have no further
trouble with the street department, and he would give me the same salary
as I had been getting, besides a bonus on any exceptionally good work.
So the next day found me at work for the rival concern, and it was like
coming into a harbour from a storm at sea. This concern had been making
friends with the powers that ruled while Arthur had been making enemies,
and the inspectors helped instead of hindering the work. If any of us
were called away for a time the inspector would take hold of the gang
and look after things till one returned. I was surprised, till I found
out that they were one and all on the company’s pay-roll, besides what
the city paid them for looking after the city’s interests. Thus the
public was robbed; but this form of robbery is so common that the public
seems to expect it, and can hardly realise such a thing as an honest
contractor or honest public officials.
I was getting pretty sick of all this trickery, and was glad, a couple
of months later, to hear of a new company formed in Los Angeles who were
looking for a man to go down to Mexico to take charge of a contract they
had there. I reckoned that conditions would be so different there that
things might be run on the square. I went to the manager and president
of the new company and applied for the position of superintendent. He
took me in his auto and we went over the different jobs I had done, with
which he seemed satisfied. So we signed a contract for six months at
$4.50 per day, which was to be raised at the end of six months if
everything was satisfactory. I then went to see the manager of the
company I was with and told him of the offer. He told me he did not wish
to stand in my way if I wished to go, and that if I did not like Mexico
he would try to place me again if I cared to come back; but that owing
to the keen competition in Los Angeles they could not offer me a higher
salary. So on 4th September 1904 I left Los Angeles for Guadalajara,
Mexico, the second largest city in the republic (population 130,000).
Poor Arthur, they got him a few months after I left the city, as, being
an honourable man, he was unable to make a single contract pay; so the
Barber Company dismissed him to make way for a new man who had no
enemies in the city. Arthur followed in my footsteps, and went to work
for the company which he had been fighting for so many years. A few
months later came the elections, and the street superintendent was
himself turned out of office (if only Arthur could have outlasted him!),
and immediately started a paving company of his own to fight the other
two; and owing to his general crookedness and knowledge of the political
ropes of the town he seems to be making a success of it. The Barber
Company is an immense corporation with hundreds of branches and dozens
of different names to work under, but its most desperate fight has
always been with its own men, who turn and rend it.