Third Perch

The great dome which tarnishes above the defunct New York World's offices in Park Row no longer has any significance, and the owls whose illuminated eyes once ogled Herald Square from the old Herald Building only appear now at "alumni" dinners. But across the continent last week the hoary symbol of another great newspaper settled down on its third perch atop a brand new building. For the great bronze eagle of the 54-year-old Los Angeles Times is the mascot of a publishing property still very much alive.

When the Times eagle was cast in 1891, the paper was just ten years old and Los Angeles was a town of 50,395 inhabitants. By all odds the fieriest spirit among them was Harrison Gray ("Old Walrus") Otis, late lieutenant colonel of the Union Army. In his own words, he nourished "a tremendous and abiding faith in the future of Los Angeles"--and its climate. This bewhiskered turkey-cock boomed the town into a city, made money as it grew, built himself a fine home called "The Bivouac" and mounted his bellicose eagle on a building at First and Broadway studded with granite battlements and buttresses.

Only a few years after Colonel Otis acquired the Times his eye had lit on an aggressive, cool-headed circulation hustler named Harry Chandler, a young fellow-Yankee from New Hampshire who had quit Dartmouth to go West for his health. Harry Chandler married the boss's daughter, was soon high in the saddle as the Times's general manager. From this vantage he looked with considerable anxiety on his father-in-law's savage enmity toward union labor.

At 1:07 a. m. on Oct. 1, 1910, following a rash of local strikes and street violence, the Times plant was bombed. Many were injured, 20 killed. "O, you anarchic scum," cried General Otis, "you cowardly murderers, you leeches upon honest labor, you midnight assassins!" Viewing the destruction of the building, in ruins save for a portion of wall where perched the Times eagle, a local poet named Drayton Pitts spontaneously declaimed:

High on the ruins of the battlement

The Eagle stood, unscathed above the wreck

Of dynamite and death. . . .

The A. F. of L., Eugene Debs, the resurgent Socialist Party, many a liberal advanced the belief that General Otis had himself destroyed his plant. The General, who had mounted a small cannon on the hood of his automobile, impatiently waited for Detective William J. Burns to find the bombers. Sleuth Burns found the Brothers John J. and James B. McNamara, Iron Workers Union dynamiters, kidnapped them from Indianapolis and Detroit to Los Angeles. The trial in 1911 caused such serious nationwide friction on the labor-capital front that many a cool head feared a workers' revolution. Then, at the last moment, the Brothers McNamara confessed. Their lawyer, Clarence Darrow, was twice tried, finally acquitted of jury tampering. Los Angeles, saved from a Socialist mayor, became more open-shop than ever and the U. S. labor movement went into decline. "Years of peace are assured," gloated General Otis, "because Liberty and Law will triumph and prevail." The Times eagle got its second perch in a new building on the old site and in 1917 General Otis died.

In the 18 years that he has had sole control of the Times, Harry Chandler has proved himself not only a capable newspaperman manager, but also an inspired capitalist. Back in 1899 he launched a syndicate which bought up 862,000 acres in Lower California. He and his associates built Hollywood, founded a vast agricultural colony at Calexico which produced $18,000,000 worth of cotton in 1919. He owns a 281,000-acre ranch in Los Angeles and Kern Counties stocked with fine cattle, a 340,000-acre hunting preserve in Colorado, an interest in another 500,000-acre sporting preserve in New Mexico, is officer or director in 35 California corporations, including oil, shipping, banking. The whisper, "Chandler's in it," signifies a good thing to most California businessmen.

White-haired and purse-mouthed, Harry Chandler is a teetotaler, eschews all forms of exercise except mowing the lawn a bit. When the first drop of perspiration runs down his nose, he quits. He has eight children, four of whom work for the Times. He is still at 71 a good trader. A rock-ribbed Republican and great personal friend of Herbert Hoover, he made Democratic Los Angeles pay him well for the inconvenience of moving one block up First Street last week into the fine new Times building.

As long ago as 1919 a project was broached which would include the site of the Times plant at First and Broadway in a civic centre. For sentimental reasons, Harry Chandler opposed the plan, had his corner exempted. Ten years later, however, the County bought for a State building the property behind the Times, ordered the Times to move out. In 1930 the Times agreed to do so if paid $1,846,000 for its land, 18-year-old building and machinery. A great political howl rose, followed by condemnation proceedings which awarded Mr. Chandler $1,021,345 for his building and ground, nothing for the presses he wanted to leave behind. Then the State Supreme Court upheld Mr. Chandler in his demand that he be paid for his equipment. Meantime, Mr. Chandler had started his new plant, a six-story miniature skyscraper topped by an Hispanic tile roof, with the printing plant separated from the main structure by a 6-in. crack. Next the City Council stepped in, offered to save a retrial by a new appraisal which set the figure at a high $1,875,000. That was the signal for Mr. Chandler to do the handsome thing: he offered to accept $225,000 less and salvage some of his equipment. Bribery! yelled the Times's enemies. With the structure of its new home completed, the Times was faced with the possibility of another long-drawn condemnation proceeding. Nevertheless, canny Publisher Chandler served notice that he would not move until he knew who was going to pay how much, for what. Suddenly last month the City Council offered $1,193,345. Harry Chandler took it and moved out.

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