William L. Kahrl*
The Politics of California Water
Owens Valley and the Los Angeles Aqueduct, 1900-1927
II. The Politics of Exploitation
In the hard-fought mayoralty election that fall, such charges figured prominently as an issue which very nearly swept the Socialist party into office. [14] Once the regular Republican organization had turned back the Socialist challenge, however, William Mulholland called for a thorough investigation of his project, ether by a committee of the city council or by a panel of citizens. The chamber of commerce at first declined to participate, and the council, acting on a recommendation from Mayor Alexander, appointed a five-member investigating committee that included two Socialists, a number deemed proportionate to the number of votes cast for the Socialist candidate in the last election. Almost immediately, the council reconsidered this egalitarian gesture, removed the two Socialists, and attempted to force the resignation of a third, leftward-leaning appointee. The Socialists responded with an initiative ordinance, passed May 29, 1912, which established a new committee funded separately from the council's control. This panel included two Socialists as well as the apostate council appointee, plus two members approved by the council and the chamber of commerce.
By mid-July, the two original council appointees had resigned, declaring that they "could not retain their self-respect and remain of the body." To their minority report, which dealt largely with technical questions concerning the physical construction of the aqueduct, they added the conclusion that "there is not a single thing the matter with that aqueduct except the knockers who are attempting to bring discredit upon a magnificent undertaking and upon men who wrought even better than they know." [15]
The three remaining investigators published their report at the end of August, a voluminous, free-swinging attack upon the aqueduct in every aspect of its conception and construction. The radicals displayed a catholic enthusiasm for charges of every kind, and in their report, relatively trivial complaints—about the quality of food served to the aqueduct construction crews, the consistency of the cement used, and the danger of pollution caused by cows falling into the open canals—jostled for attention with more serious charges involving Mulholland's alleged failure to develop the Los Angeles watershed fully before seeking an alternate water source. Although the report fastened upon the peculiarities of Mulholland's contract with Fred Eaton for the purchase of Long Valley and called for the indictment of both men if Eaton did not return his cattle and deed to the city the remainder of the Long Valley property, the report concluded on the most critical question: "No direct evidence of graft had been developed." [16]
The confusing outcome of the investigation satisfied none of the participants in the controversy. Although no action was taken on the charges contained in the majority report, neither the minority report's conclusions nor the radicals' exoneration of Mulholland and his staff succeeded in silencing the debate over syndicate corruption. Immediately after the release of the majority report in September, a member of Mayor Alexander's special committee on consolidation and the water surplus, S.C. Graham, offered an alternative to the policies advocated by Quinton, Code, and Hamlin. Rather than applying the surplus in a way that would directly benefit syndicate speculation in the San Fernando Valley, Graham proposed that the city simply sell the surplus for the highest rates it could get and turn a profit on the aqueduct as quickly as possible.
The city council approved the Graham Plan two weeks later for submission on the November ballot as a referendum. With the support of Mayor Alexander's Progressives, the issue was approved by the electorate two to one.
In contrast to the Quinton-Code-Hamlin proposal, which would have required recipients of the surplus water to build their own distribution systems, implementation of the Graham Plan depended upon the approval of $8.4 million in municipal bonds to build conduits to the outlying regions that could afford the city's rates. [17] On January 8,1913, the council approved the submission of the bond issues in a special election called for February 25. Mulholland at this point declared his opposition to the Graham Plan and began to campaign publicly against passage of the bonds. This was a bold move for a public employee, because Mulholland was taking a stand against the policies of the Alexander administration and his employers on the Public Service Commission. Graham was himself a member of the commission, and the board had already rejected Mulholland's request that the Quinton-Code-Hamlin proposal be placed on the same ballot with the Graham bonds. By taking a role in the campaign, Mulholland adopted the Quinton-Code-Hamlin policies as his own and thereby opened himself to the charge that he was working to advance the interests of the San Fernando syndicate.
Graham, joined by the president of the Public Service Commission, F. G. Henderson, led the fight for the bonds, arguing that implementation of the plan offered the best means of defusing the charges of a syndicate plot behind the aqueduct. Moreover, the Graham plan for turning a quick profit by devoting the surplus to its highest economic use sounded like good business practice, a point which appealed to both Alexander's Progressive supporters and the regular wing of the Republican party. [18]
Mulholland advocated a broader vision for the municipal enterprise he had begun with the construction of the aqueduct and argued that the surplus should go to support the sustained growth and expansion of the city. Annexation, which would require the granting of long-term rights for the use of the municipal water supply, was antithetical to the Graham Plan. Therefore, Mulholland charged, the implementation of the Graham Plan would both destroy the possibility for a consistent policy of municipal growth and work a "base deception" upon the recipients of the surplus. [19]
The genius of the Graham Plan lay in "an automatic process" by which any person who contracted to receive surplus water could be subsequently priced out of the water market "whenever the public service desired to receive the water." By forcing such "voluntary" withdrawals of service, Graham argued that the city could recover its water at any time "without controversy and without the payment of damages for improvements." [20] Mulholland opposed the cruelties involved in such a policy, contending that "water once put on the land should never be removed." [21]
As the campaign became more heated, the city council repeatedly delayed the date of the election. But when the votes were finally counted on April 15, 1913, Mulholland's gamble paid off, and the bonds on which the Graham Plan depended were turned down. In the mayoralty election two months later, the Progressives collapsed in disarray, and the new mayor, Henry Rose, who had argued against Mulholland's annexation proposals during the campaign, switched his position soon after taking office July 1. On August 29, 1913, the Public Service Commission formally adopted the policies of the Quinton-Code-Hamlin Report, thereby opening the way to a decade of massive annexations to the City of Los Angeles.
Throughout this extended struggle over city policy for the disposal of the surplus, Mulholland's negotiations with the Owens Valley ranchers continued. In May, 1913, a tentative agreement was reached which would have allowed the ranchers to draw enough water to continue operation of their existing irrigation systems. [22] But the conditions favoring a peaceful settlement that existed in 1910 had changed drastically by this time. The Graham bonds had been defeated, and the subsequent adoption of the Quinton-Code-Hamlin Report in the months following this tentative agreement meant that the needs of the San Fernando Valley would henceforth take precedence over those of the Owens Valley. Consequently, when one of the Socialist members of the aqueduct investigating committee filed suit to enjoin the city from formalizing its agreement with the ranchers on the grounds that the city would thereby be forfeiting a portion of its rights to the Owens Valley water, Mulholland did not bother to contest it. The agreement collapsed, and farther negotiations were suspended while Mulholland began the lengthy process of obtaining exact measurements of the actual diversions the ranchers would require.
Notes
* Since publication of the first part of this article in the spring issue, Mr. Kahrl has been appointed Director of Research in Governor Brown's Office of Planning and. Research.
[14] For more details on this election, see Part 1 of this article, California Historical Quarterly, 55:17-21.
[16] Report of the Aqueduct Investigation Board to the City Council (Los Angeles, 1912) p. 14. A description of the details of Mulholland's agreement with Eaton appears in Part 1 of this article, California Historical Quarterly, 55: 5.
[17] Under the proposed construction plan approved by the Public Service Commission, one conduit would extend through the Santa Monica Mountains at Franklin Canyon to service the Providencia, Cahuenga, Inglewood, and Glendale areas. A second major conduit would run to Pasadena and east to San Dimas. Three smaller conduits would supply 40,000 acres in the Mission, Fernando, and Chatsworth districts of the San Fernando Valley.
[18] In the public views of successful politicians of the period, industry was seen not as an adversary of government but as its partner or teacher. The principles of one were considered applicable to the other. Meyer Lissner, a prominent Progressive ideologue, for example, promised in 1909 that the incoming Alexander administration would "do public business like great private business is done." Pacific Outlook, 7 (December 11, 1909): 4. Similarly, in 1915, after the regular Republicans had returned to power, charter revisions were drafted on the charge, "Can the city be administered as an efficient business corporation?" Robert M. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis: Los Angeles 1850-1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 221.
[19] Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1913.
[20] Los Angeles Record, September 12, 1912.
[21] J. B. Lippincott, "William Mulholland—Engineer, Pioneer, Raconteur," Civil Engineering (March, 1941): 163.
From: California Historical Quarterly - Summer 1976 pp. 98-120