"Graft"—Seeking Contracts in Los Angeles—In Charge of Street Work—Crooked Business.

Winston Churchill’s Coniston and Mr. Crewe’s Career explain the methods of bosses and railway presidents, and their conflicts or combinations for the robbing of the public in America. For the railways it may perhaps be said that they have to protect themselves against the “Bosses,” and for the “Bosses” that they are what the people make them: at any rate, I need not discuss the forms of that business immorality against which Mr. Roosevelt has struggled. But I will try to give some idea of the rottenness of the contracting business and the city officials, and truly it was awful. But what can be expected when contractors make their men scoundrels in order to hold their jobs, and teach them to rob the public, and then are horrified when they are robbed or cheated by their own men! Then the men, many of whom have no idea of honour, are all the time trying to hurt one another in order to show up well with the company; of this I shall say more later on. Those who are inclined to seek fortune in America must reckon with such difficulties.

Los Angeles is a very expensive town to live in, and I soon found that financially I had not made a change for the better. But I was gaining in experience in my business, and being in a city, had a better chance to look for openings than I had when cut off from the world, as I was out at the Uvalde Mines. A good part of my work consisted in going round town keeping track of all building and improvement work going on, and trying to get contracts for paving cellars, driveways, and warehouse floors; in fact, anything I could obtain. For this purpose the company gave me the use of a horse and dog-cart. I would see a fine house going up, try to find the architect, get the specifications, and, if asphalt was mentioned, would put in a bid on the spot. I was given a free hand as to prices, the only condition being that the work should show some profit, and, in case the other companies had put in a bid, I was to cut their bid if I could do it without showing a decided loss. In the case of a very big job, or something that might lead to more work, I referred to Mr. Arthur, who would sometimes take the work even at a loss, to keep the other fellow from getting it. This does not sound like good business, but our company was the largest, and could stand a small loss if Mr. Arthur could keep the other fellow without work, so that his pay-roll should eat him up. We could stand the game longer than they except for politics. Of this and our final downfall I shall write in another chapter.

After I had been some months with the company my salary was raised to $3.50 per day, and I was put in charge of the work on the street, and turned the yard over to a man who came down from a branch in San Francisco. The company employed at this time in Los Angeles, beside the general manager, two superintendents, myself as foreman of the asphalt gang, and a yard foreman to whom I had given over charge of that job. Some weeks after the change this man Bister asked me to come up to his room as he wanted to see me about something important. One night I did go, and he informed me that he had heard that the company was going to cut operating expenses, and some of us would be let out as soon as the present rush of work was over. One of the superintendents, Mr. Weber, was drinking, he said, and he proposed that I should join himself and the other superintendent, Cressfield, to get Weber discharged; in return for which Cressfield would guarantee our jobs to Bister and me. I never found out if he had any authority from Cressfield to make me such a proposition, but in order to clinch me, he said that Weber had been speaking rather disparagingly about my work. I laughed at him and told him that I wanted no hand in the fight as I was not interested enough, and that when the company wanted my job back they could have it. Finally, however, they dragged me into the fight against my will, but on the opposite side to that he wanted me to join.

Weber and Cressfield were each in charge of a contract, and my gang did the asphalt work for both of them, so that I worked part of the week for one and part of the week for the other. Cressfield asked me to put his brother on as a skilled tamperman at $2.25 per day, but after he had worked a few days I found that he was not skilled, and the other men would have kicked if I had paid him as a skilled tamperman. I told Cressfield that I could not keep him on as tamperman, but would keep him as a labourer, if he wished, at $1.75. Cressfield did not seem much put out, but told me I was too particular. He took his brother on his concrete gang, where, of course, he had nothing to do with me, though I had made an enemy of him, a fact I was made to feel in a hundred different ways. Weber, on the other hand, tried to help me in as many ways, even when I refused to join him in some of the schemes he was working. Mr. Arthur seemed to be the only man who really was absolutely square, and his principles were such as do not help a man in contracting business in the States.

Some time before I came to the company the foreman of one of the street railway companies in the city had come to Mr. Arthur with a proposition to turn over to him the contract for all the company’s business for a term of two years if Arthur would give him $2000 as a bonus. Arthur replied that he had already put up a bid lower than any other company, and if he could not get the work by a fair bid he did not want it at all; and, furthermore, that he (Arthur) would report the conversation to the owners of the railway line. He did so, but the owners would not listen to him; they said that it was impossible: the man had been in their employ for a number of years, and they trusted him completely. Later on this man was found out and discharged, but through political pull he got the position of chief inspector of the Public Works Department. This occurred shortly after I went on to the street business. The first intimation I got was when we had a new inspector sent out to stay with my gang, and this man from the very first day proceeded to condemn our material, our work, me, and my men; we could do nothing right. I had a great friend in the Public Works Department, a member of my Order, and to him I went at once to see what it all meant. He told me, “You had better get out from under, as the word is out to kill Arthur (in a business sense), and we can only hit him through you fellows. There is nothing personal to you in this, but move while you can.” I could not of course repeat this to Arthur, but I went and told him that the inspector was most unreasonable, and asked him what I should do about it. He told me not to give way to the inspector, and that he would back me in anything reasonable.

I went back to the street and told the inspector that he must not interfere with my men any more, but, if he had complaints to make, to make them to me. He got impudent, and I requested him to take off his spectacles (in California and some other states it is a most serious offence to strike a man with glasses on his nose); he dashed off to a telephone and sent for the street superintendent; I went to another telephone and sent for Arthur. When they both arrived on the scene the inspector stated that I had threatened to assault him for doing his duty. I told the street superintendent that the man was interfering with my men, contrary to rules, and had been abusive to me. The upshot of it was that the superintendent told me that if I could not get along with the man from his office he would “Call me off public work” (the law gives this power to the street superintendent, and any man called off can work on no further public work in that city). During all this Arthur sat in his buggy and never said a word. After it was over I went across to him and offered my resignation, but he asked me to stay on till the job in hand was through.