TWO MEN BLOCK PLAN TO RUN NEW MONTGOMERY STREET TO THE BAY; ONE
ASKS COIN, OTHER PREFERS FIGHT.
_Promoters Appeal to Legislature and Do Not Neglect Precaution of
First “Seeing” Vote Brokers._
When Ralston and I opened New Montgomery street we never doubted
that its manifest importance would compel an immediate and voluntary
extension to the natural terminus of the waterfront and prove the
logical outlet for congested trade. That this would have been the case
had the majority of property owners been able to follow our example,
I have no reasonable doubt. But just as in the case of “Montgomery
Street Straight,” special interests and selfish considerations stood in
the way. Less than half a dozen property owners, to their irreparable
disadvantage, blocked “Montgomery Straight”--a project that would have
changed the whole course of the city’s progress and development. Just
two property owners prevented the immediate extension of New Montgomery
street to the bay, and again the failure was the city’s heavy loss.
These two men were Milton S. Latham and John Parrott. Latham owned a
stately home and large grounds on Folsom street, directly in the line
of the new thoroughfare. It was a matter of no small personal pride,
and doubtless he was attached to the locality. He asked such a fabulous
price for the right-of-way, which of course would have destroyed the
home value of the property, that even Ralston and myself, who were
accustomed to brush any minor obstacles out of our way without counting
costs, stood aghast.
John Parrott, on the other hand, wouldn’t trade at all. His business
hours were then strictly limited from 9 to half-past 10, and every time
we managed to secure an interview, all the satisfaction we could get
out of him was a promise to fight us every inch of the way.
Outside of these two, we had a clear field. We secured contracts on a
great number of properties along the line of the proposed thoroughfare.
All the large owners concerned favored it with enthusiasm. Still we
were absolutely blocked.
Under these conditions, nothing remained but an appeal to the
Legislature to appoint a commission, empowered to open New Montgomery
street for its full length and assess benefits and damages as provided
by the general laws then in force.
And while about it, we did not stop there. We worked out a grand,
comprehensive scheme of improvement, embracing the immense territory to
the south.
Two years before, a bill had been lobbied through the Legislature
providing for what became famous later on as the “Second Street Cut.”
It was a rascally project, a sordid bit of real estate roguery, carried
through without a moment’s thought of other people’s rights. But it
was an accomplished feat, and one of the results was to ruin the
finest haunt of good breeding San Francisco ever had. Families were
scattering from Rincon Hill to various sections of the city. The old
high-priced residence property was going for a song. As the “Hill” had
ceased to be either beautiful or useful, Ralston and I calmly proposed
to cut it down.
We planned to have the city buy the property, which could be purchased
for $5,000,000 according to arrangement with the owners, and grade
it to the Market-street level. Many million cubic yards of excavated
material were used to fill in a 150-acre tract of tide land, offered
to the city by the State at a nominal price, lying between the Pacific
Mail docks and Islais Creek; also to reclaim China Basin, at least
in part. The cost of grading and reclamation work was estimated at
$7,000,000; in fact, contractors were willing to undertake it at that
price. In other words, the city was asked to issue its bonds for
$12,000,000 and receive in payment over 200 blocks of choice property,
to say nothing of great advantage to the appearance of the town and the
facilities for doing business.
Two separate bills were introduced in the Legislature. One provided
for the opening of New Montgomery street to the bay, and created a
commission to carry out its purpose as above defined. This would
probably have slipped through without any serious opposition; but
coupled with it, in a way, was the great constructive bill for
acquiring Rincon Hill, for filling the tideland acreage and China
Basin and running all the streets from First to Third, including an
extension of Sansome street, on a nearly level grade, southward to the
waterfront. For the extension of Sansome street Michael Reese, Lloyd
Tevis and myself had bought a solid block from Market to Folsom street.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR
Taken during his active career in San Francisco]
I was very much a novice in politics, but Mr. Ralston insisted that
I should have full charge of the program and take up my residence
in Sacramento pending the session of the Legislature. So among
other things I gathered quite an exact idea of how wires used to be
manipulated underground.
In the first place, the necessity of a Legislature was not apparent
at that time. What had been an able and independent body in the early
history of California had degenerated to a mere recording machine
for a couple of vote brokers, “Nap” Broughton and “Zeke” Wilson by
name. “Nap,” brief for Napoleon, was a happy, enthusiastic chap,
always slapping someone on the back with a heartiness not always quite
sincere; a good fellow in his way, and a most abandoned corrupter of
men, a spendthrift disciple of nearly every sin, with an ever-watchful
eye on the money of others, yet himself the veriest sucker that ever
lived.
“Zeke” Wilson, on the other hand, was a gray, desiccated, sinister, old
spider, who seldom smiled, and when he did everyone in his presence
felt depressed. He was the “thinking member” of the duumvirate, and
while “Nap” Broughton made nearly all the noise “Zeke” Wilson laid the
plans.
The Senate used to be respectable in appearance, an able body and
reasonably clean. The one that I was concerned with contained such men
as Hager and Saunders of San Francisco, George C. Perkins of Butte, who
made then his first appearance in politics; Rumaldo Pacheco, afterward
Governor; Pendergast of Napa, Lewis of Tehama, and several others whose
names are fairly connected with the history of the State.
The Assembly, on the other hand, was a conglomeration of miscellaneous
riff-raff, gathered together God knows how, inexperienced, ignorant,
venal and scandalously cheap. Of course there were some honorable
exceptions. I am only speaking of the general rule. It was in the
Assembly, not the Senate, that the “business” of the session was done.
That is, if Messrs. Broughton and Wilson wanted to kill a measure, they
never worried what the Senate did, but let the obnoxious bill come
before the “popular-priced” Assembly, where its shrift was short.
No one in his senses ever came to Sacramento with a bill involving
a considerable question of finance without establishing friendly
relations with Messrs. Broughton and Wilson at the start. Treaties
of alliance were negotiated through Napoleon Broughton. At our first
interview $35,000 passed hands. “Nap” merely said in a casual way
that I was a gentleman and I accepted the compliment for what it was
worth. What became of that money I have no means of knowing, and never
inquired. That would have been the height of bad manners. But he
never asked me for any more, and everything I wanted slid through the
Assembly on greased ways.
We were among the first who made a consistent effort to impress the
merits of our measures on law-makers by systematic good-fellowship. I
practically chartered a well known restaurant, threw it open to my
friends, and the bills were over $400 a day, so generously did they
respond to my invitation. Down in San Francisco, Ralston was on the
lookout for statesmen, and none of them struck the town without good
cause to remember the experience pleasantly.
In a way, it was a striking session--a sort of breaking of new ground.
The railroad appeared for the first time as a seeker for favors. It
had two leading bills, each providing for a subsidy for railroads
southward, one through the San Joaquin Valley and one along the coast
line. Neither terminated anywhere in particular; the former somewhere
in Kern county, the latter in San Luis Obispo county, near the border
line of Santa Barbara. The measures simply authorized the electors
of the counties concerned to vote for a subsidy payable to the first
railroad that came along. The combined subsidies provided for amounted
to only $3,000,000, but they were regarded as the opening wedges for
more. Of course everyone knew what that first railroad would be.
Strangely enough, in the newspaper and legislative discussions, no
one seemed to think that Los Angeles cut any figure as a terminal or
feeder. The cry was for a railroad south to the Colorado river. For
that the people were willing to pay any kind of subsidy, but not a
cent for a couple of local concerns. A bitter newspaper war followed,
and charges of corruption were freely made. But the bills passed both
houses by large majorities, and were only halted in their triumphant
progress by the veto of Governor Haight. Even then, it was a close
call. The Assembly enthusiastically passed one of them over his veto,
and in the Senate the same action failed by only two votes.
There were so many bills of a shady, not to say rotten, nature
introduced during the session that almost all measures were looked
on as “jobs.” Our two bills--“Montgomery South” and the effacement
of Rincon Hill--took their places with the rest. They were harshly
criticized by most of the San Francisco papers as crafty schemes, the
true inwardness of which would develop later on. They were likened
to the “Second Street Cut” outrage, and a lot of ill-advised public
opinion was worked up against both. Nevertheless, they passed the
Legislature. How one of them became a law is an interesting story, told
in many official records of the State.
The bill for the extension of New Montgomery street had gone to
Governor Haight. It leaked out from the executive chambers that a veto
message was being prepared. The Governor had ten days in which to veto
the bill, otherwise it became a law by default. It was on the afternoon
of the last day, shortly after the Senate had re-assembled, when one
of my attorneys, Creed Haymond, said in a musing way, “If the Senate
could only be induced to adjourn we would not have to worry about a
veto message. Then it could not be delivered to anyone, and by twelve
o’clock to-night would become a law.” That set me thinking in a moment.
“Is that correct?” I asked. Haymond replied that he was certain,
although he was not sure that the point had ever been tested by the
courts.
The emergency demanded swift work. To offer a motion to adjourn, just
after settling down to business, would certainly have aroused suspicion
and a general rumpus. Here I worked in a bit of strategy or what might
have more properly been called chicane, which I trust may be pardoned
me in my final account.
Senator John S. Hager was the leader of what might be called the
“reformers” and had quite a following among his fellow members. He was
the unwearied foe of anything like a job. Among other measures, he had
opposed the Montgomery Street Extension bill. But there were several
bills on a special file that afternoon that were his pet abominations
and he justly feared that they might slip through. While in this frame
of mind, a certain gentleman called him aside and advised him that
several members were anxious for an adjournment, that if he would make
the motion it would probably carry and the obnoxious bills would lose
their places on the special file and their chance of final passage.
The Senator swallowed the bait--hook, sinker and all. While he
was lining up the “reformers,” somebody else was attending to the
“performers,” and when the gentleman made his motion to adjourn he must
have been gratified at the unexpected support. It went through _nem
con_, as the lawyers say. The officers of the Senate were hurried out
of the room on one pretext or another and in a few minutes the chamber
was vacant.
Dr. Edward R. Taylor, later Mayor of San Francisco, was the very
efficient private secretary of Governor Haight. I was in an agony
of fear lest he should pop into the Chamber with the fatal message
before the adjournment could be arranged. For this reason, I had
several effective conversationalists stationed between the Governor’s
office and the Senate, to engage the secretary for a few minutes if
he chanced to appear. This they actually did, although Dr. Taylor has
forgotten the incident. What he does remember was that he found much
to his surprise an empty Senate Chamber, and after ruminating over the
situation for a time, carried back the veto message to the Governor’s
office and laid it on his desk.
On the following day the Governor attempted to deliver his message,
but the Senate held he was too late. His Excellency refused to certify
the bill to the Secretary of State as passed and I brought a mandamus
suit to compel him to take that action. The title of the case was
_Harpending_ vs. _Haight_, and attracted a wide attention at the time.
It was carried to the Supreme Court on an agreed statement and decided
within fifteen days in my favor. The decision can be found in Vol. 39,
Cal. Reports, page 189. Other Governors have been cautious not to hold
back their vetoes till the last day. Hager roared like a wounded bull
buffalo when he found out how he had been used, but his lamentation
bore no fruit.
Thus the Montgomery South bill became a law of the State, although the
Governor liked it not. Commissioners were appointed by Judge Lake, a
lot of work was done in surveys, estimates of benefits and damages,
but in the end it came to naught. Two years later, while I was in
Europe, a bill with a misleading title, designed to repeal the act,
was introduced and Ralston, busy with many things, never knew about it
until it had sneaked through both houses and become a law. Because of
this, New Montgomery street still halts at Howard street and bids fair
to camp there forever more.
As to the Rincon Hill measure, that also passed both houses
triumphantly, but was held back through the opposition of Senator
Hager, so that it went to the Executive just one day beyond the period
when a return to the Legislature must be made. It found a peaceful
resting place in the Governor’s capacious pocket.
Thus all our grand schemes for the development of the city southward
fell by the dreary wayside of lost opportunity. I do not pretend for a
moment that Ralston and myself were inspired in our efforts by the pure
spirit of benevolence. We would have made our profit, but a mere trifle
in comparison to the public good. It was the most comprehensive plan
for the city’s improvement ever presented in a concrete form, and the
pity is it was not better understood.
Just take a retrospect. Who is there who would not admit that five fine
level streets from Market, between First and Third, southward to the
bay, would not be a vast improvement and convenience to business, over
the blockade that prevails to-day?
And was such a real estate proposition ever before offered to a people
and turned down? For the sum of $12,000,000 the city would have
acquired full title to approximately two hundred and twenty blocks, the
present value of which would be hard to estimate exactly. But a rough
valuation indicates that the property would be worth enough to pay the
entire city debt, buy the Spring Valley Water Company’s plant, bring in
the Hetch-Hetchy water supply and leave a balance large enough perhaps
to settle all questions with the United Railroads and municipalize the
entire street transportation system, not in the dim future, but now.
Immense revenues would have flowed into the municipal treasury from
these utilities. Taxation would have become a joke. All these things
are among the haggard, melancholy “might have beens.”
There were too many well-intentioned, but bigoted, reformers in the
city then, just as there are now.
And the incident serves to indicate the superiority of hindsight over
foresight, which has been illustrated unhappily and too often in the
history of the State.