Oil, Land and Politics
The California Career of Thomas Robert Bard
By W. H. Hutchinson1965, University of Oklahoma Press
Volumes I & II
Volume II - Page 36-37
The Torrey Canyon Oil Company (T. C. O.) was incorporated on May
21, 1889, with a capitalization of $30,000 in three hundred shares,
of which [Thomas R.] Bard held one hundred, and he became its first
and only president, [Wallace L.] Hardison serving as its general
manager. [...]
Harvey Hardison was the "tool pusher" at four dollars a day and
S. C. "Cam" Graham and William "Billy" Loftus
received the same amount as drillers. Graham and Loftus were
veterans of the Pennsylvania fields, recruited for California by
Milton Stewart, and their later direct alliance with Bard became
a most profitable and important one for all three men.
Volume II - Page 91
His [T. R. Bard's] Sisar Oil and Asphalt Company began drilling
again after this trip, and S. C. Graham brought
in the first of five new wells in November at 420 feet for twenty
barrels a day. S. O. & A. had earlier gone on a dividend basis,
reflecting the improved health of the oil industry[...]
Volume II - Page 106
S. C. Graham and William Loftus turned to
Bard with an attractive oil play involving the Petrolia Oil and
Asphalt Company, controlled by James L. Flood, of San Francisco,
which owned substantial undeveloped acreage adjacent to Union's
holdings in the Fullerton area. The result was the Graham-Loftus
Oil Company, composed of the two finders, Bard, D. T. Perkins, and
C. H. McKevett, of Santa Paula, which purchased the property for
ten thousand dollars. In accordance with his code, Bard thereupon
offered his one-fourth interest in it to Union at his exact cost,
but his offer was rejected for reasons not readily apparent. Graham-Loftus
promptly brought in a well that flowed seven hundred barrels a day
of high-gravity crude until the head was pumped off and made a visible
criticism of the judgment that had rejected Bard's offer. Following
Bard's basic policy, Graham-Loftus plowed its earnings into more
acreage in the Fullerton Field, and it proved to be almost as profitable
to Bard as Torrey Canyon.
Wallace Hardison re-entered the scene at this time after two apparently
fruitful gold-seeking years in Peru.
Volume II - Pages 286-287
Even as the Bardians were honing their snickersnees for Pardee's
political hide in 1906, a group of Angeleños that derived from Dr.
J. R. Haynes's successful "Direct Legislation League" had formed
the "Non Partisan Committee of One Hundred" to wrest their city's
government from the unholy alliance existing between Walter Parker's
Southern Pacific machine and the city's demiworld of vice. One of
the key figures in this group was S. C. Graham,
and this personal link was an added reason for Bard's generous response
to the Non Partisan's campaign fund.1 Lee C. Gates, their candidate
for mayor and a man active in Thomas Flint's behalf in 1902, was
defeated, but the Non Partisans elected seventeen of their twenty-two
other candidates for municipal offices. This success made Los Angeles
the reactor chamber that housed the initial generation of statewide
political heat.
At least fifteen men, including Rowell and Dickson and dominated
by newspapermen and lawyers, met at Levy's Cafe in Los Angeles on
May 21, 1907, and elected S. C. Graham chairman
of the gathering. They then proceeded to issue an "emancipation
proclamation" by adopting a "Platform of Principles," of which the
first and foremost plank was to free their party from Southern Pacific
domination. The name of the "Lincoln-Republican Clubs" was adopted
for the organization they hoped would accomplish this great end.
Volume II - Pages 305-306
The League's only legislative triumph came with enactment of an
Anti-Racetrack Gambling Law, designed to sever the threads that
linked the railroad's minions, but never the corporation itself,
with the forces of organized vice for whom bookmaking was a wellspring
of funds. This victory on a moral issue accentuated a local campaign
in Los Angeles where the forces of good government began the nation's
first successful campaign to recall an elected city official in
January, 1909. Their target was Mayor A. C. Harper, the Southern
Pacific's choice in 1906, and their grounds were a too intimate
connection between the members of his administration and the city's
underworld. The Republican faction in this nonpartisan movement
was largely that which had formed the League in that city, and S.
C. Graham served as chairman of the Recall Committee to which
Bard contributed one hundred dollars forthwith. Graham, too, became
chairman of the "Fund for Good Government," evolved by Meyer Lissner
to solve the chronic problem of financing civic reform measures.
[...]
His state's desire for representation in the cabinet of President-elect
Taft brought and eddy from the national scene swirling around Bard's
life. Without his knowledge, J. M. C. Marble, president of Los Angeles'
National Bank of California broached the subject to Mr. Taft on
January 5; 1909.
There is no man you can tender a high position to in the State of
California who will give greater satisfaction to the best elements
in the Republican Party than the Hon. Thomas R. Bard, late Senator
from California... Men who are no doubt friends of yours, who were
Co-Senators with Mr. Bard, can tell you the manner of a man he is.
He does not belong to the Ruef-Southern Pacific graft supporting
crowd, and no one should have an office who is in touch with such
baleful influences...
C. H. Rowell, too, did what he could through Representative J. C.
Needham, who was, as he wrote Bard on January 12, "being consulted
by Taft in regard to his cabinet with more confidence that anyone
else on the Pacific Coast, and he is in a position to do much good."
These friendly labors inspired Bard's letter to Rowell of April
1, and its contents belied its date.
While I value highly your opinion as to my fitness for some place
in the Taft Cabinet...I would not for a moment consider the proposition:
and indeed would not be willing to take any public office whatever.
My friend S. C. Graham, Chairman of the Recall
Committee of Los Angeles, asked me yesterday, in behalf of many
of the men associated with him in politics, to allow them to prepare
the way for my becoming a Candidate for Governor, but I told him
I was altogether disqualified by my physical condition to undertake
such responsibilities, and not to think of me at all in relation
to any office.
Unavailability as cabinet member or candidate did not impair Bard's
usefulness to the reform-minded gentry of Los Angeles. Their social
auxiliary was the City Club, of which J. D. Works was president
and S. C. Graham vice-president, and Bard
was invited to address it on a topic of his choosing to celebrate
the national Day of Independence.
Volume II - Page 262
He [T. R. Bard] was occupied by plans for the Sacramento Valley
Beet Sugar Company, and he gave his personal attention to an oil
play in the Coalinga Field in which he and his associates in the
Graham-Loftus Oil Company had become involved to their ultimate
and very tidy profit.
Notes:
1.Graham has been overlooked in the studies of Los Angeles' civic
reform movement known to this writer. His personal link with Bard
was very strong.