Cadillac Desert_ The American West and Its Disappearing Water - Marc Reisner [50]
Loewenthal knew that the San Francisco Chronicle was, in a vague way, on to the same story. He also knew the Chronicle was not nearly as methodical in its investigations as his paper, and would probably publish rumors without supporting facts. On August 22, just as Loewenthal supposed, the Chronicle ran a story, unsupported by evidence, to the effect that the Owens Valley aqueduct was somehow linked to a land-development scheme in the San Fernando Valley. Two days later, the Times derisively dismissed the allegations in an editorial which, to Loewenthal’s delight, ran under the heading “Baseless Rumors.” On that same morning, the Examiner’s story went to press.
The San Fernando land syndicate, the Examiner revealed, was composed of some of the most influential and wealthy men in Los Angeles. There was Moses Sherman, a balding school administrator from Arizona who had moved to Los Angeles and become a trolley magnate—one of the most ruthless capitalists in a city that was legendary for same. (By coincidence, Moses Sherman also sat on the board of water commissioners of Los Angeles; the syndicate could not have prayed for a better set of eyes and ears.) Then there was Henry Huntington, Sherman’s implacable rival in the rush to monopolize the region’s transportation system. There was Edward Harriman, the chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad and a rival of both Sherman and Huntington. There was Joseph Sartori of the Security Trust and Savings Bank, and his rival, L. C. Brand of the Title Guarantee and Trust Company. There was Edwin T. Earl, the publisher of the Express; William Kerckhoff, a local power company magnate; and Harry Chandler, Otis’s son-in-law, the tubercular young man with the minister’s face, the gambler’s heart, and the executioner’s soul. But Loewenthal reserved the best for last. The person who had signed the check securing the $50,000 option on the immense San Fernando property was the same person who, that very morning, had dismissed talk of such a nest of land speculators as lies—Brigadier General Harrison Gray Otis.
“This is the prize for which the newspaper persons ... are working and the size of it accounts for their tremendous zeal,” wrote Loewenthal, almost squealing with delight. “The mystery of the enterprise is how it happens that Messrs. Huntington and Harriman, who let no one into their [previous] land purchasing schemes, but who bought up everything for themselves, consented to let the other in.” Loewenthal was, of course, enough of a cynic to know exactly why they had. The participants, taken together, represented the power establishment of southern California with an exquisite sense of proportion. Railroads, banking, newspapers, utilities, land development—it was a monopolists’ version of affirmative action. Besides, William Kerckhoff was a prominent conservationist and friend of Gifford Pinchot, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, whose influence with President Theodore Roosevelt could prove invaluable. Harriman’s railroad owned a hundred miles of right-of-way along the aqueduct path that the city would need permission to cross, and Huntington owned the building that housed the regional headquarters of the Reclamation Service! Including Earl and Otis, the two feuding neighbors and publishers, was the master stroke. Like a couple of convicts bound together by a ball and chain, neither could betray the other without exposing himself.
The Examiner’s expose had Harrison Gray Otis venting steam from both nostrils and ears, but he didn’t dare look the accusations directly in the eye, so in the ensuing weeks he tried to hide behind “Mr. Huntington’s” skirts, as if Huntington had been solely responsible for the syndicate and he—Otis—had been an innocent seduced into joining, as a fresh young wayward girl is seduced into sex. Where Otis couldn’t weasel out, he blazed away. “Had Hearst’s ... yellow atrocity