California Rich

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  With the Maui real estate went hundreds of acres of sugarcane. Now Claus Spreckels was a plantation owner and the beneficiary of the new American tariff laws. With plantations of his own in the islands and beet-sugar refineries in California, he had the best of both worlds, and as he put it later, “If we lost in one direction, we could make it up somewhere else.” On top of all this, King Kalakua, whose interest in the sugar business was desultory, decided to put Claus Spreckels in charge of Hawaii’s sugar output. When Spreckels returned to the United States he had the Hawaiian cane business in his pocket—an overnight tycoon, “The man,” as the newspaper headlines declared, “who bought the King.” The king was certainly an important acquisition. Between 1876, the year of the treaty, and 1911 (when the huge scale of the Spreckels sugar operations at last came under investigation in Congress) production of Hawaiian cane climbed from 16,000 to 600,000 tons a year. On Maui, hard by such romantically named towns as Wailuku, Ulumaiu, and Kahakuloa, there was soon the town of Spreckelsville. The beet-sugar business was also doing well on the other side of the Pacific, and near Salinas there arose the town of Spreckels, California.

  The only other important crisis in Spreckels’ sugar business occurred in 1890 in what was called the Great Sugar War, when Spreckels and Havemeyer finally locked horns. After months of furious price-cutting on both sides of the United States, Spreckels finally determined to fight Havemeyer on the latter’s home ground. He took himself to Philadelphia, where he proved to be as persuasive with Havemeyer as he had been with the Hawaiian king. Spreckels pointed out that both men were losing money in their price war, and Havemeyer conceded this. Then Spreckels drafted an elaborate plan under which both men would pool their resources and become partners. In effect, each man bought the other out, and then each sold part of his shares back to the other. In the West, Spreckels and Havemeyer leased plants to each other. The Havemeyer plants were closed down, leaving the West Coast to Spreckels. The result of this combine was the largest sugar-producing company in the world. As the newspapers commented at the time, “Sugar Kings Share Their Candy.”

  Claus Spreckels had by now adopted the grandiose style of living that was so popular with wealthy Californians. He built an enormous stone mansion on Van Ness Avenue, and traveled about the country in a series of private railway cars. As they moved about the West, Mr. and Mrs. Spreckels customarily had their private car drawn off on a siding for the night. There, in the dining room of the car, they were served dinner on heavy silver plates by a butler and two footmen in livery. And, as the curtains in the car were never drawn, humbler folk in the little towns through which they passed invariably gathered in little knots along the track to watch the rich people consume their sumptuous repast. However, life was not without its vicissitudes. At the time of the 1906 earthquake and subsequent great fire, the city of San Francisco decided that the only way to contain the blaze was to stop it at Van Ness Avenue. To do this, every building along the street would have to be dynamited, including the Spreckels mansion. There was not time even to remove any of its furnishings. Among the last to evacuate the house was Mrs. Spreckels’ personal maid, Emma Kretschmar, and the Irish scullery maid. As they were leaving, the Irish maid pointed to a porcelain horse on a hallway table and said, “Do you think Mrs. Spreckels would mind if I took that?” “No,” said the righteous Emma. “That would be stealing.” The two women departed empty-handed and moments later the house and its contents were reduced to dust.

  Though no longer locked in combat with Henry Havemeyer, Claus Spreckels now found himself in a series of terrible battles with members of his own family. (A Spreckels family tendency toward intramural bickering would become noticeable in future generations.) By 1890, Claus Spreckels’ four sons—John Diedrich, Adolph, Claus Augustus, and Rudolph—were grown men and were ready to fight for control of the business. The two older boys, John and Adolph, allied themselves with their father against Claus’s two younger sons. At issue was money and power. The senior Spreckels had by now become something of an autocrat and was accustomed not only to getting what he wanted but also to striding roughshod through anything that smacked of interference with his wishes. When the arbitrary rates of the monopolistic Southern Pacific Railroad seemed too high, Spreckels had built a railroad of his own to ship his cane and beets to his refineries—a move that did not endear him to the reigning railroad kings. To combat the established public utility firms of San Francisco, Spreckels organized independent gas, light, and power companies. He built a street railway in the city to compete with the existing line. Meanwhile, in an attempt to outdo their father, his two younger sons financed rival gas and electric companies of their own. Rudolph Spreckels even had the temerity to establish a sugar business in competition with his father’s.

  As a result of all this, Claus Spreckels attempted to disown his younger sons, and the family squabbling erupted in a series of acrimonious lawsuits—a pattern that would become drearily familiar throughout the histories of so many California fortunes. For a while, however, Rudolph Spreckels prospered from his defection from his father. He made an independent fortune in sugar and from his gas company, and then turned to politics. He became an ardent progressive reformer and advocate of good city government. Still later he invested in a radio manufacturing business, but lost his entire fortune in the crash of 1929. He died virtually penniless in 1958. Claus Augustus, who had sided with his brother Rudolph in most of the family fights, also prospered from sugar. But he had little interest in either business or politics, and eventually he expatriated himself to France.

  In 1905 there had been an attempt at a reconciliation between the battling Spreckelses, but it had been short-lived. In 1908, Claus Spreckels senior died, and immediately John and Adolph contested their father’s will, which, in addition to establishing large bequests for them, had also made provision for their younger brothers. Referring to their brothers as “the enemy,” John and Adolph claimed that their father had been kept “prisoner” in his house for the last years of his life, that their father had been mentally and physically incompetent, and that he had been forced by Rudolph and Claus Augustus to sign over bequests to them. Apparently there was sufficient evidence of enmity between the father and the younger sons to convince the courts, because the will was eventually broken and the bulk of their father’s estate was ordered divided between John and Adolph. It amounted to some forty million dollars.

  Adolph Spreckels took over management of the established family businesses and John D. Spreckels set out to expand them. John Spreckels was a yachtsman, and on his 84-foot schooner, the Lurline, he had “discovered” San Diego when, on a summer cruise in 1887, he had put into the sleepy southern California port for provisions. San Diego at the time might not have seemed to have much to commend it. Throughout much of the year the town was without a water supply, and water was peddled to the populace in cans, like milk. Except for the rich—who could afford private storage cisterns—baths were unheard-of luxuries. But San Diego did possess a deep harbor, which, though smaller, was not unlike San Francisco’s, and San Diego’s white beaches and benign subtropical climate were already attracting winter tourists from the chillier north. When San Diego’s city fathers learned of the wealthy San Franciscan’s presence in their midst, they immediately offered John Spreckels, free of charge, a “wharf franchise” with which to build a then nonexistent wharf to attract then nonexistent shipping.

  This struck Mr. Spreckels as an attractive deal, and the Spreckels Wharf became the first of a number of wharves and coal depots where coal ships could unload their cargoes to fuel San Diego’s growing industries—which included, naturally, more sugar refineries. Spreckels also financed the building of outlying dams and reservoirs to give the city a dependable water supply, and otherwise took on the task of building a modern city from scratch. He bought the city streetcar line, the newspaper—the San Diego Union—built the San Diego ferry, and, to capitalize on the growing tourist business, developed the nearby resort of Co
ronado and built its famous beachside Hotel del Coronado, where, before long, United States Presidents would vacation. For lesser folk Spreckels built Mission Beach, a public amusement park, and for good measure he acquired something called the Savage Tire Company, which manufactured bicycle tires. The age of the automobile, he suspected, was on its way. Because of all his industrial enterprises in San Diego, John D. was given the nickname Smokestack Spreckels. He made sure, however, that San Diego should not lose its tourist appeal because of an overabundance of smokestacks. If San Diego today is considered one of the most beautiful of American cities, it is due to Spreckels’ insistence that the city council include a landscape gardener, who laid out boulevards with parklike malls filled with John Spreckels’ favorite flowers, geraniums.

  But by 1900 it was clear that San Diego would never achieve true city status unless a railroad connected it with the rest of the continent. In 1907, Spreckels invited Mr. E. H. Harriman (who by then had acquired the Southern Pacific from the San Francisco foursome) to spend a week at the Spreckels mansion in Coronado and made Harriman a proposal. If Harriman and the Southern Pacific would supply the financing, Spreckels would oversee the construction of a line between San Diego and Yuma, Arizona, the Southern Pacific’s southwesternmost terminus. Harriman agreed, and the building of the San Diego & Arizona Railway began. Then, in 1909, Harriman died, and the Southern Pacific immediately reneged on its commitment to Spreckels and even instituted a lawsuit against him to try to recover the money that he had already spent. It was a dark moment for Spreckels. The most difficult miles of track had still to be laid, across the San Bernardino mountain range. But Spreckels, determined that the city he had begun to think of as his own should have a railroad, decided to continue construction of the line on his own. While fighting his lawsuit (which was eventually thrown out of court) he turned to his brother Adolph in San Francisco for financial support, and work went on. The cost of the line exceeded all estimates. At one point John Spreckels was required to buy two entire mountains in order to assure his right-of-way. With the outbreak of World War I all construction of railroads in the United States was ordered to cease, but John Spreckels had influential friends in Washington. All railroad construction ceased—except for the San Diego & Arizona.

  On November 15, 1919, at the summit of the huge Carriso Gorge, John Spreckels drove his own golden spike into the last tie of the S.D. & A., which meant that the line was finally completed. His aim was better than Leland Stanford’s, and two weeks later, at 4:40 P.M. on December 1, the first train chugged into San Diego. The town went wild. Thousands of people lined the streets to watch the night-long parades and celebrations. At the head of every parade, waving to the cheering citizenry, rode Smokestack Spreckels. The San Diego & Arizona, among other things, opened up what would become one of the richest agricultural regions in the state, the great Imperial Valley.

  It is interesting to note how quickly the second generation of California rich acquired the trappings and veneer of Old Money—the mansions, the yachts, the stables of horses, the valets and footmen and chauffeurs—and how desperately these new-rich Californians tried to emulate the ways and manners of firmly established easterners. As more and more California towns and cities became connected to the East Coast via the railroads, more and more Californians began to think of themselves as the spiritual cousins of well-placed residents of such cities as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. In 1910, for example, John D. Spreckels was able to replace his schooner, the Lurline, with an even more imposing steam yacht, the Venetia, which rivaled anything that had been owned by J. P. Morgan. With an over-all length of 226 feet and a displacement of 1000 tons, the Venetia was powered by an engine capable of developing 1000 horsepower. In it John Spreckels would cruise through the Straits of Magellan around the Horn to the West Indies, as well as through the Panama Canal to New York.* In San Francisco his brother Adolph built for himself the imposing white “Sugar Palace” overlooking the Bay in Pacific Heights, while John Spreckels’ huge house in Coronado was an Italianate villa with rooftop pergolas and gardens, which reminded many people of August Belmont’s earlier villa in Newport. John Spreckels also built an even larger home in San Francisco, at 2080 Pacific Street.

  And yet, for all the Old Money—and Old World—accouterments that the second-generation Californians gathered around them, somehow an unmistakable spirit of the western frontier remained. Behind the elegant façades of these men there lurked a brawling, roughneck, hard-drinking quality that London tailoring barely concealed. John Spreckels was no exception. Tall, handsome, and silver-haired, with a handlebar mustache, he favored high-collared shirts, tweed vests, Norfolk jackets, a gold stickpin, watch chain and fob. But his Man of Distinction appearance did not quite hide the man himself, who could be tough-talking and bawdy and was possessed of a cowhand, not to say barnyard sense of humor. In the early 1900s, John Spreckels was famous throughout southern California as a prankster, practical joker, and wag, and the examples of the Spreckels wit suggest the somewhat primitive state of West Coast humor at the time. For instance, according to his affectionate biographer Austin Adams, Mr. Spreckels derived no end of “innocent amusement out of the facts of nature, from which the prudish and the Puritanical avert their eyes.” Once, Mr. Adams tells us, Mr. Spreckels playfully served a tableful of guests at a dinner party in Coronado a dish containing “pretty little articles … which proved to be … scarcely edible, let alone toothsome.” Just what the little articles were Mr. Adams refrains from mentioning, leading the reader to imagine the worst of what could be derived from the “facts of nature.”

  John Spreckels’ friends were jokesters too. Once, for a bit of sport, a friend surreptitiously placed a mongrel puppy on Mr. Spreckels’ doorstep. The puppy was taken in, and Spreckels then tried by a process of elimination to discover which of his friends had played this joke on him. It took him two years—at the end of which time the dog had grown into an enormous canine of no discernible lineage—before he had narrowed down the possible donors of the dog to one man. At this point the dog died. Spreckels had the dog packed in excelsior, crated in a large wooden box, and shipped to his friend’s house. “I’m returning the dog you let me borrow,” Spreckels said. “I always repay my debts.” Everyone roared. The dead-dog story circulated for years. It was considered one of the funniest things that had ever happened in San Diego.

  John Spreckels’ love of practical jokes was so famous that on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, in 1918, it was decided that the ultimate practical joke should be played on him. A gala dinner was announced in honor of San Diego’s preeminent citizen and all the local worthies were invited to attend. Further, it was revealed that Arthur Cahill, a prominent young portraitist of the period, had been commissioned to undertake a life-size portrait of Mr. Spreckels, and the capstone of the evening’s festivities was to be the unveiling of the portrait.

  On the night of the banquet some seven hundred guests filled the ballroom of the Hotel del Coronado. John D. Spreckels was seated at the head of the speakers’ table and on a tall easel just behind him stood the heavily veiled painting. There were many ceremonious toasts and speeches, all attesting to the personal and civic virtues of the city’s great benefactor until, at last, the moment came for the unveiling. Performance of this honor fell to George Brobeck, chairman of the executive committee of the J. D. & A. B. Spreckels Company, who rose and said, “And now, Mr. Spreckels, on behalf of my associates and myself I have the honor and pleasure to present to you, and beg you to accept, this lifelike portrait of him whom we admire and esteem above all other men—yourself.” Mr. Brobeck then drew aside the veil and the hushed room filled with wild applause.

  Then, just as quickly, the applause subsided and a ghastly silence fell as the assembled company began to take in some of the details of the portrait. John D. had been depicted standing in front of a dinner table in white tie and tails. He had been made to appear some forty pounds heavier than he actually was. His black vest
strained at its buttons, and below it a considerable paunch emerged. His famous gold watch fob dangled awkwardly below his waist, and his white tie was askew. On one lapel was pinned an upside-down American flag. The expression on the face was fiercely choleric, the eyes strangely glazed. The right hand—adorned with what appeared to be an enormous diamond ring—clutched a large soiled dinner napkin. The left hand held a large smoking cigar, its long ash threatening to fall into the plate beneath it, which held the carcass of a chicken. Beside the plate were strewn various pieces of silverware and an empty wine glass. Of the shocked faces in the room none was more frightful to behold than that of the honored subject. Mr. Brobeck collapsed in his chair. Then, as a climax, tiny electric lights in the diamond ring and shirt studs began to wink.

  When the hoax had had sufficient time to ripen, accompanied by gasps of nervous laughter, the real Cahill portrait was unveiled. It portrayed Mr. Spreckels properly slim, in his familiar English tweeds and high collar, looking dignified and kindly. The room broke up in thunderous laughter and applause. Even Mr. Spreckels looked, at last, amused.

  It is perhaps significant that the ultimate joke played on John D. Spreckels—and the ultimate tribute to him—should have been an oil painting by a locally acclaimed master. By the second generation, wealthy Californians had become painfully aware that, though they had supplied themselves with mansions, yachts, servants, and English tailors, their lives lacked something that more solidly established easterners appeared to have in plenty. Something was required to smooth out the rough ranch-hand edges and to supply Californians with the true patina of ladies and gentlemen. That necessary something of course was culture.