DMPUCATf 
 
 THTtOMMUNITY PROGRAM 
 oTcREATER LOS ANGELES 
 
 j the Board 6/Super<i: 
 
 SEPTEMBER 19 
 
 'R1NTE, F: CIRC
 
 Utt 
 
 The 
 
 Community Program 
 
 of 
 
 Greater Los Angeles 
 
 By 
 JOHN J. HAMILTON 
 
 Member of the Board of Supervisors of 
 Lai Angeles County
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 John J. Hamilton's active life as editor, publisher, 
 author, publicist and citizen has been excellent prepara- 
 tion for his work as a member of the Los Angeles 
 County board of supervisors and for leadership in 
 the development of Greater Los Angeles. 
 
 That the one man who has most deeply and thor- 
 oughly studied the civic life of this community its 
 city, county and school activities should now make 
 public the plan on which he is working, and the foun- 
 dation principles by which he is guided, is a matter 
 for general congratulation. 
 
 Mr. Hamilton maintains that community plans are 
 evolved out of the local life, not made by politicians. 
 The community program presented by him in this 
 booklet is therefore what he conceives to be the plan 
 that the people of Los Angeles County Greater Los 
 Angeles have themselves originated, under the 
 guidance of popular instincts truer and more reliable 
 than the leadership of any individual or group of 
 individuals. 
 
 Taking as his end and aim the development of Los 
 Angeles County as an industrial center, with gainful 
 employment for every worker and profitable business 
 for every man and woman seeking openings therefor; 
 and coupling with this the actual record of the city 
 and county's strivings for good government, civic bet- 
 terment, good roads, harbor and marine facilities, flood 
 control, conservation of forests, land and water, and 
 educational opportunities, Supervisor Hamilton has 
 reached the conclusion that Greater Los Angeles does 
 not need a new civic program; that it already has a 
 community program which, when worked out, will
 
 make this county the best place in the world to live, 
 work and play. 
 
 That this program will be made good while men 
 and women now in middle life are still living, Mr. 
 Hamilton is assured by the results of his thorough and 
 painstaking investigations. He sets forth his reasons 
 for this belief in the following pages. Like every 
 utterance of this faithful official and good citizen, they 
 are worthy a thoughtful perusal. 
 
 JAMES S. LEONARD.
 
 The COMMUNITY PROGRAM 
 of GREATER LOS ANGELES 
 
 As secretary of the Los Angeles charter revision 
 commission in 1912, as a member of the Pasadena 
 board of education in 1914, and as a member of the 
 Los Angeles County board of supervisors during 1915 
 and 1916, it has been my good fortune to have broader 
 opportunities than most citizens enjoy for looking 
 thoroughly, with official authority, into the three prin- 
 cipal divisions of local public life municipal, school 
 and county government. I have made extended sur- 
 veys of all three. 
 
 These surveys have convinced me that the people 
 of Los Angeles County and its thirty-seven cities and 
 thirty-five unincorporated towns are working out a 
 program that is their own, independently of anybody's 
 leadership; a program clearly defined in most of its 
 features and unmistakably indicated by local history in 
 even the most obscure of its aims and objects. This 
 program is a decalogue of grand civic determinations, 
 all of which I believe will be realized during the lifetime 
 of men and women now in middle age, and is as 
 f ollows : 
 
 The Ten Principal Aims and Objects of the People of 
 Greater Los Angeles The Community Program 
 
 1 . Efficient local government, thoroughly co-ordi- 
 nated, firmly held under public control, based solidly 
 on the merit system, and extended to all properly 
 public activities, insuring a rich and satisfying commu- 
 nity life for all, at a minimum cost. 
 
 2. The best schools in the world, economically and 
 democratically managed.
 
 3. The saloon, brothel and gambling den abolished 
 in all our cities and the county, whether prohibited by 
 the state or not, but preferably with California dry. 
 
 4. The health of the people of the county and all 
 its cities fully safeguarded. 
 
 5. The aged, sick, defective, helpless and unfor- 
 tunate generously cared for through a system of scien- 
 tific charities. 
 
 6. Justice placed within the reach of all, without 
 the law's proverbial delays. 
 
 7. The good roads system completed, including 
 mountain and canyon roads, and better local roads 
 everywhere. 
 
 8. Conservation of our harbors, forests, watersheds 
 and ranch lands by an adequate system of flood and 
 fire prevention and control, including reforestation. 
 
 9. Publicly owned and operated transportation 
 facilities both between our cities and local harbors and 
 at sea, through the Panama Canal and to the Orient. 
 
 10. Public ownership and operation of plants for 
 securing cheap water, power, fuel and light for indus- 
 trial and domestic use. 
 
 Why a Look into Both Past and Future is Just Now 
 
 Needful 
 
 After a period of perhaps the most wonderful growth 
 ever experienced by a city, Greater Los Angeles finds 
 itself under troubled but slowly clearing skies. Build- 
 ing operations in this city and county amounted in the 
 two years of 1 9 1 2 and 1 91 3 to $1 00,000,000 and 
 then came two disastrous floods which together de- 
 stroyed probably $15,000,000 worth of land and 
 other property; a frost that was not less disastrous; 
 the collapse of a speculative real estate corporation 
 in which eighteen thousand citizens were stock-
 
 holders and their losses heavier and deadlier than 
 those caused by the frost and the two floods com- 
 bined; the stoppage of the Panama Canal for many 
 months, and a world war which crushed industry and 
 paralyzed finance and commerce everywhere. 
 
 The reaction has been severe. Speculation in real 
 estate seriously called our "principal industry" by 
 a prominent man in a recent address has ceased and 
 refused, under all sorts of stimuli, to come to life. 
 Discouragement and pessimism have in many quarters 
 taken the place of excessive optimism and feverish 
 over-confidence. A bond issue for good roads and 
 several issues for schools and local improvements have 
 been defeated. It is freely predicted that a vitally 
 important bond issue for harbor protection, land and 
 water conservation and flood control will not receive 
 approval at the polls. The remark is often heard 
 that no bond issue of any kind can be carried in the 
 present temper of the people, which means that the 
 people will refuse capital, at low rates of interest, to 
 develop their own resources. Investors in real estate 
 are finding it impossible to dispose of their holdings, 
 and difficult to rent offices, store-rooms, residences 
 and other buildings or to collect rentals from the 
 diminished number of their tenants. There was much 
 unemployment a year ago; there is less but still much 
 this year. Many property holders are borrowing 
 money to pay interest and taxes and keep their busi- 
 ness going. 
 
 And yet the wonder is that the people are in as 
 good spirits as they are. Owners cling to their real 
 estate, refusing to recognize lower levels of values. 
 Building permits in Los Angeles are running over 
 $1,200,000 a month, and in the county (all cities and 
 rural districts included) more than $20,000,000 a 
 year. There is, deep under the surface, an unshak-
 
 able faith in the future of Greater Los Angeles, OT 
 Los Angeles County. 
 
 It is to turn the attention of the thoughtful people 
 of Los Angeles County to the solid ground for this 
 faith and confidence that this booklet is written. I 
 believe that when the men and women of this won- 
 derful metropolitan district take stock of its advan- 
 tages; when they perceive how grandly their com- 
 munity is planning; when they realize how surely this 
 county, its thirty-seven incorporated cities, its thirty- 
 five unincorporated towns and villages, and its un- 
 rivaled rural districts are moving forward toward a 
 condition promising work and wages for every worker 
 and prosperous business for all desiring to engage 
 therein, prosperity sounder than that of 1912 will 
 return, on more than the 1912 scale. 
 
 Our Fundamental Trouble is Lack of Employment 
 
 and Business Openings Outside of Real 
 
 Estate Speculation 
 
 Before entering upon official life in the city and 
 county five years ago, I was called upon, in the inter- 
 est of a large local enterprise, to do some professional 
 work which enabled me to make a study of social 
 and economic conditions in what may properly now 
 be termed Greater Los Angeles. 
 
 Selecting half a dozen typical neighborhoods in 
 Los Angeles, and a score of them in Long Beach, 
 Redondo, Santa Monica, Venice, Hollywood, Glen- 
 dale, Pasadena, Monrovia and Whittier, I visited four 
 hundred homes and questioned men and women to 
 that number in a manner which brought out their 
 views as to opportunities for work and business in 
 Southern California.
 
 I found in the residence districts of all these places, 
 as I have since found in many others, a remarkable 
 wealth of human resources and everywhere heart- 
 breaking lack of opportunities for employing the 
 people's ^ talents and energies and outside of real 
 estate investing their money. 
 
 On the porches of modest bungalows and alike on 
 the broad verandahs of stately palaces, the social 
 surveyor finds here everywhere, in retirement, the 
 successful merchants, manufacturers, railway men, 
 professional men and farmers of every part of the 
 country. Get them to talking and you presently learn 
 that these modest citizens have been governors, sena- 
 tors, judges, members of their respective state legis- 
 latures, college professors, authors, publishers, physi- 
 cians, railway managers, merchants, manufacturers, 
 owners of steamship lines, artists, men of science, 
 social leaders attracted hither by California's sun- 
 shine, flowers, fruits, vegetables and outdoor life, or 
 lured to this climate by the promise of restoration of 
 health. 
 
 But everywhere, in the homes of rich and poor 
 alike, is the pathetic cry for work for something use- 
 ful and profitable to do. 
 
 Half of the people of Los Angeles County do not 
 have to work for a livelihood. Hundreds of thou- 
 sands of them have incomes amounting to a compe- 
 tency. Every great industry in the United States 
 every profitable mine, railroad, bank and factory, 
 every flourishing agricultural section is earning 
 money to be spent in Southern California. But these 
 successful people, retired from active business in the 
 east and middle west, are not happy if their sons and 
 daughters are loafers, joy-riders and parasites on the 
 community. They are as anxious to find work as the 
 poorest. Opening a real estate office, with desk, chairs,
 
 a telephone and a stenographer, does not satisfy the 
 craving of a normal American for something to do. 
 
 The children of these well-to-do people, as they 
 come of age, are in the labor market, competing with 
 the sons and daughters of the poor for jobs that 
 will not go round. 
 
 Eighteen months' service on the board of super- 
 visors has deepened the conviction I reached five years 
 ago that the fundamental need of Greater Los 
 Angeles is employment for workers and legitimate 
 industrial and commercial openings outside of real 
 estate for men and women of means. Dealing as a 
 supervisor with the problem of unemployment and as 
 a member of the board of equalization with the dis- 
 tressed taxpayer, I am ready to declare that nothing 
 short of the complete and early development of the 
 material, intellectual and moral resources of Los 
 Angeles County, in accordance with the program the 
 people have themselves initiated and carried far to- 
 ward completion, will set us right. 
 
 This County the Framework of One of the World's 
 Great Cities or Metropolitan Districts 
 
 In the first address I ever made before the Los 
 Angeles City Club it was at the Westminster Hotel, 
 in 1911 I maintained that the county was the true 
 unit of local development here; that the good roads 
 system was the future street plan of a great city, and 
 that the interurban lines were to mature into its rapid 
 transit or street car system. I still believe this. 
 
 Los Angeles County is really a city, a metropolitan 
 district like that of Boston or Greater New York, only 
 as yet more loosely built and knit together. The 
 county charter adopted in 1912 is really a city charter 
 of the modern commission type. It is susceptible
 
 of being easily modified, without charter amendment, 
 into the approved manager type. Making the auditor 
 controller and county manager is clearly within the 
 scope of the supervisors' powers. It is my ambition 
 to have a part, along with my colleagues of the 
 board, in realizing the immense possibilities of the 
 charter in this direction. 
 
 I want to see the board of supervisors meeting every 
 other day say on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fri- 
 days as a legislative body for this great metropolitan 
 district, rapidly disposing of three calendars a week 
 instead of one, its orders and notifications going into 
 effect without delay or red tape. 
 
 On two of the other days perhaps Thursday and 
 Saturday I hope to see the supervisors sitting as an 
 administrative body, as the executive committee of 
 this great two billion dollar corporation; receiving, 
 verifying and checking over the reports of the auditor 
 and controller, visiting the county institutions, con- 
 ferring with the many heads of departments regard- 
 ing their plans of work, their efforts to improve 
 service, to develop team work inside of their depart- 
 ments and in cooperating with other departments, 
 encouraging and rewarding suggestions of economies 
 that will reduce taxation. 
 
 On the sixth day of the week I would have the 
 supervisors out among their constituents, feeling the 
 pulse of the people and studying their needs and wishes 
 on the ground. These trips could be made singly or 
 as a body, according to the needs of administration. 
 
 I would have a scientific budget, not hurriedly 
 thrown together in midsummer, but in process of 
 preparation throughout the year. When roughly com- 
 pleted it would be printed and widely circulated for 
 citizen criticism and suggestions of both cuts and 
 additions. 
 
 I would have the supervisors as a representative 
 
 10
 
 body, both legislative and administrative, serving as 
 a bond of union among all the cities and school 
 districts of Greater Los Angeles, cooperating with 
 each in making economical purchases and introducing 
 the best methods of accounting, preparing reports and 
 administering their affairs. 
 
 I would have the supervisors and the city councils 
 and school boards working, together with the women's 
 clubs, parent-teachers' associations, improvement as- 
 sociations, chambers of commerce and other civic 
 organizations, to carry out the essential proposals in the 
 community program; the people in their civic centers 
 and at the polls all the while adding to, subtracting 
 from or modifying that program, and looking many 
 years into the future to plan ahead their activities. 
 
 Consolidation Under the County Charter vs. County 
 Dismemberment 
 
 We already have, in the county charter, the basis 
 for genuine city and county consolidation, without 
 dismembering Greater Los Angeles into three ex- 
 pensively managed counties and thereby tripling the 
 administrative burdens of courts, charities and high- 
 ways. 
 
 There is need for clear thinking on this subject of 
 city and county consolidation. It is fallacious to argue 
 that by consolidating neighboring territory and set- 
 ting up a combined city and county government after 
 the San Francisco pattern, driving great tributary sec- 
 tions into outside county organizations, Los Angeles 
 can reduce her tax burdens or restore the prosperity 
 her people so earnestly desire. The city is spending 
 95 cents on the $100 for its schools, $1.45 on the 
 $100 for municipal purposes and 52 cents on the 
 
 11
 
 $ 1 00 for county purposes, the last named including 
 courts, charities, roads and many other functions. 
 County consolidation would not reduce the 95 cents 
 for schools or the $1.45 for city purposes. The only 
 question would be whether the combined govern- 
 ment could carry on the superior courts, the county 
 hospital, the county farm, the outdoor relief, the local 
 portion of the support of state institutions and the 
 score of other county functions for less than 52 cents 
 on the $ 1 00. Efficiency will reduce all three city, 
 county and school expenses and duplications in the 
 offices of assessor, tax collector, justices of the peace, 
 sheriff, chief of police, constabulary, etc., must be 
 eliminated, but city and county consolidation on a 
 basis of setting up three counties instead of one would 
 increase, not diminish, taxation. 
 
 Los Angeles is as vitally related to the other cities 
 and towns of the county as if they were within its 
 own corporate limits. They are its suburbs. Its 
 citizens have property in all of them. Many of their 
 citizens own Los Angeles property. Many more sleep 
 in outside towns and work in Los Angeles. To take 
 a concrete example of their mutual relations, the busi- 
 ness done in Long Beach, the development of Long 
 Beach Harbor, and the success of Long Beach fac- 
 tories are as beneficial to Los Angeles as if they were 
 situated and paid taxes in Los Angeles. The sole 
 difference is that the taxes they pay are expended for 
 their benefit through the Long Beach City Hall instead 
 of the Los Angeles City Hall. There is no payment 
 of tribute either way. 
 
 Los Angeles now proposes to retail its electric cur- 
 rent to other municipalities. It could just as well 
 afford to sell them Owens river water at a price that 
 would pay cost of operation and interest and principal 
 of the bonds. It would be no violation of the spirit 
 of the agreement with the federal government. 
 
 12
 
 The essential fact is that all the cities and rural 
 districts of the county, connected as they are by the 
 boulevard and interurban systems, are one community, 
 with identical interests. The chartered county of Los 
 Angeles is the sufficient but necessary bond holding 
 them together. It is the future city, and the various 
 municipalities, handling their local affairs, are the 
 future boroughs of that city. The true line of 
 development is by transferring city functions, one by 
 one, from all the cities to the county, until all duplica- 
 tions are wiped out and city and county consolidation 
 is accomplished on a sound basis. 
 
 To effect this, however, boss rule, red tape, graft, 
 waste and incompetency must cease at the Hall of 
 Records. Neither city nor county can now be im- 
 plicitly trusted with the vast interests of a consolidated 
 community. It remains for the board of supervisors 
 to demonstrate, by efficient administration, that it is 
 better to hold Los Angeles County America's most 
 productive county together as one splendid com- 
 munity, rather than to dismember it. Certainly if the 
 Antelope, San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys were 
 in other counties and knocking at our doors for 
 admission into Los Angeles County they would be 
 welcomed with open arms. 
 
 Carrying Out the Community Program Will Insure 
 Employment and Business for All 
 
 There is no doubt whatever about the continued 
 growth of Greater Los Angeles in population. If the 
 Los Angeles of the past, with its water largely wasted, 
 with earthen roads enveloping homes, residences and 
 business places in clouds of dust, could attract half a 
 million people, a more populous America will send 
 millions and yet more millions to our present paradise
 
 of good roads, sunshine, verdure, fruits and flowers. 
 The entire Pacific Coast, from San Diego to Alaska, 
 and the vast Rocky Mountain region, not to mention 
 Mexico, will presently teem with millions of people to 
 feed, clothe, educate, house, entertain and supply with 
 all the infinitely varied appliances of civilization. 
 
 If the community which grappled with the titanic 
 enterprise of the Owens river aqueduct, and thereby 
 discovered itself, proceeds to reduce taxation by dis- 
 tributing the aqueduct water on a businesslike basis; 
 to develop and distribute the electrical energy which 
 it owns; to perfect its harbors, and, by truck highways 
 and a publicly owned and operated municipal rail- 
 way, to make those harbors available for all the 
 population centers of the county as they grow together 
 into one great city; if by timely bond issues it boldly 
 accepts the world's offers of abundant capital to com- 
 plete its road system, to protect its mountain forests 
 and watersheds, to conserve and distribute vast stores 
 of mountain water now wasted and worse than wasted, 
 and to control forever the floods which now threaten 
 to destroy our cities, our lands and our whole basis 
 of investment and prosperity, what will follow?^ 
 
 The certain result will be that conditions will be 
 created in the thirty-seven cities, thirty-five towns and 
 villages, and all the rural districts of Los Angeles 
 County that will be more favorable to manufacturing 
 industries and will constitute a combination of more 
 favoring elements than can be found anywhere else 
 on the globe. 
 
 Manufacturers Cannot Stay Away When the Com- 
 munity Program of Greater Los Angeles 
 is Carried Out 
 
 Water transportation alone has made many a city, 
 
 14
 
 like Cleveland for example, a manufacturing center. 
 
 Extensive transportation facilities have turned the 
 scale in favor of many a city, like Indianapolis, in 
 competing for industries. 
 
 Cheap raw materials are everywhere recognized as 
 of tremendous importance in securing the location of 
 manufacturing industries, as at Birmingham, Alabama. 
 
 Cheap water, fuel and power always count in de- 
 termining the location of branch factories, or the 
 removal of main concerns, as in the cities of the 
 Indiana natural gas belt. 
 
 Accessibility to the world's markets is a magnet 
 of prime importance in drawing factories to a city, as 
 in the New England cities. 
 
 Favorable climatic conditions are manifestly an 
 inducement to the manufacturer seeking a location. 
 
 A population of trained intelligence, eager for 
 employment, constitutes an immense manufacturing 
 advantage. 
 
 A low rate of taxation, guaranteed by good local 
 government, cannot fail to appeal to the manufac- 
 turer and investor in industrial stocks. 
 
 Immunity from floods and conditions of settled 
 safety for the investor in lands and manufacturing 
 sites, insuring the well-being of the community and all 
 its workers, will prove very attractive. 
 
 Moral conditions insuring sobriety, thrift, health 
 and a high average of comfort among the people 
 are powerful incentives in determining an industrial 
 location. 
 
 Carry out the program on which this com- 
 munity has made a start good government, good 
 schools, good morals, good sanitation, good charitable 
 agencies, practical justice, good roads, conservation 
 of our forests, water and land, adequate flood control, 
 modern harbors with rail and truck facilities to reach 
 
 15
 
 them, a publicly owned merchant marine, cheap raw 
 materials, here or brought here by water, cheap power, 
 cheap fuel, cheap light, and the world market that 
 all these things, with the Panama Canal, certainly 
 mean and machine guns could not keep manufac- 
 turers away. Neither could all the obstructive or 
 competitive forces of the twentieth century prevent 
 the factories already here from expanding in un- 
 bounded prosperity. 
 
 What the Pennsylvania Railroad Would Do if It 
 Owned Los Angeles County 
 
 Not long ago a Los Angeles Sunday newspaper 
 published an article intended to stimulate local pride 
 and ambition, telling what the Germans would do if 
 they owned Los Angeles. 
 
 What the Germans have done at Duesseldorf ; what 
 the people of France have done at Paris, and what the 
 people of Great Britain have done at Manchester in 
 short, what all the efficient modern nations have done 
 in their cities demonstrates clearly enough what they 
 would do if they owned this most favored region on 
 earth. They would borrow capital on bond issues and 
 at once develop all its mineral, land and water re- 
 sources and protect them from destruction by floods. 
 They would reap gains in production by these improve- 
 ments sufficient to pay both interest and principal with- 
 out increased taxation. 
 
 But a more pertinent question for this community 
 is what the Pennsylvania Railroad would do with Los 
 Angeles County if it owned it. 
 
 We hear much about running public business just 
 as a successfully conducted private institution or cor- 
 poration is managed. I believe in doing that with 
 Los Angeles City and County. 
 
 16
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad has had immense oppor- 
 tunities, and has splendidly risen to them all, but it 
 has never had such an opportunity as that which lies 
 open to the people of Greater Los Angeles. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad, not nearly as rich or 
 free from debt as is Los Angeles County, has an 
 authorized capital stock of $600,000,000, of which 
 $499,203,600 is outstanding. Its own funded debt 
 is $234,701,000; that of acquired properties it is 
 responsible for is $56,569,100; guaranteed stock trust 
 certificates amount to $14,121,000; equipment trust 
 obligations to $19,950,224, and real estate mortgages 
 and ground rents to $2,340,816 its total borrowed 
 capital therefore being $327,682,140. Although the 
 Pennsylvania Railroad, with less than one-third the 
 wealth of Los Angeles County $2,000,000,000 is 
 in debt for and paying interest on $327,682,140 (ten 
 times Los Angeles' aqueduct indebtedness), .it never 
 turns down an opportunity to secure capital by bond 
 issues to acquire new properties and develop old ones. 
 
 If the Pennsylvania Railroad owned the Los An- 
 geles Harbor, it would have a line of steamers to the 
 Orient and another via the Panama Canal to New 
 York City within twelve months. Edward H. Harri- 
 rnan, James J. Hill or any of the empire builders 
 of the past would have been quick to grasp such an 
 opportunity. 
 
 The Pennsylvania Railroad, like any other private 
 corporation, would undertake these enterprises for 
 financial gain. The civic corporation would have the 
 further incentive of contributing to social welfare. 
 
 Los Angeles County can secure capital at 4J/2 per 
 cent or less. Its credit is as good as that of the Penn- 
 sylvania Railroad or any corporation in existence. It 
 is today better, relatively to its total wealth, than that 
 of any European nation. 
 
 17
 
 The complete execution of the community pro- 
 gram of Greater Los Angeles is within easy reach of 
 the people. They only need to awake to their com- 
 manding position in the world of capital and to put 
 their city and county machinery on a basis of efficiency 
 and then seize their opportunity. 
 
 The Fallacious and Insincere Outcry Against Bond 
 Issues is Not in the Interests of the People 
 
 This two billion dollar city and county do not 
 owe, for all their great harbor, aqueduct, municipal 
 and school properties, a tithe of the indebtedness of 
 the Pennsylvania Railroad. The county's indebtedness 
 for its wonderful road system is only $3,300,000. Un- 
 limited capital is available for flood control, conserva- 
 tion and other features of the really modest com- 
 munity program I have outlined; but whenever far- 
 seeing men propose availing themselves of this capital, 
 as the Pennsylvania Railroad would do, there is an 
 outcry of extravagance, excessive bonded indebted- 
 ness and high taxation from men who would pro- 
 nounce such a loan by the Pennsylvania Railroad per- 
 fectly good business. 
 
 This outcry against bond issues is fallacious. It is 
 insincere. It is not in the public interest. Private, 
 selfish interests are back of it. 
 
 A few people do not want the city and county to 
 enter the immensely profitable field of commercial 
 enterprise because they want it all for themselves. 
 
 They prefer their private profit and advantage to 
 the public welfare. 
 
 Unfortunately, the great frost, the two disastrous 
 floods and the collapse of the Los Angeles Invest- 
 ment Company have disheartened many of the people 
 and made them, just now, susceptible to delusive 
 appeals of this character. 
 
 is
 
 Unfortunately, too, in the conduct of that magnifi- 
 cent enterprise, the Los Angeles aqueduct, the public 
 men of the city were too conservative and timid to 
 champion a bond issue large enough to carry forward 
 the aqueduct, its distributing system and the entire 
 power system at the same time. If they had done so 
 (constitutional and charter provisions permitting), the 
 sale of water and power today would be sufficient to 
 carry the bonds, principal and interest. 
 
 The public is justified in demanding that a bond issue 
 be for the benefit of the entire community and not to 
 creat opportunities for a few to profit by; but, if funds 
 are properly administered, the public cannot justify 
 itself in refusing, through fear of incurring indebtedness, 
 to do a thing which ought to be done; for example, to 
 spend $15,000,000 in permanently controlling floods 
 which have in two years destroyed $1 5,000,000 worth 
 of taxable property. 
 
 Big, bold, carefully planned measures, like those 
 of Manchester and Duesseldorf, and like those of 
 the Pennsylvania Railroad, are safer and sounder than 
 timid, halting, half-way measures. 
 
 The Program as Outlined Has Originated With the 
 People and is Entirely Feasible 
 
 It is with the community program outlined in this 
 pamphlet in mind that my course as a member of 
 the board of supervisors is chosen from day to day. 
 
 This program is not of my making. Every one of 
 the ten proposals originated in this great, aspiring 
 community and is cherished deep down in the hearts 
 of the people. 
 
 If there be any exception, it is the suggestion of a 
 publicly owned and operated merchant marine. But 
 
 19
 
 even that project was mooted by the secretary of the 
 Los Angeles Harbor Commission, as long ago as 
 1911, in the form of a proposal for a government 
 line of steamships to the Atlantic seaboard. 
 
 This part of the program may come later than some 
 of the others, but it will surely come sooner or later. 
 It would come tomorrow if the people rose in their 
 might and willed it. 
 
 And what a glory it will be for Greater Los Angeles 
 when her argosies, as proud as those of ancient 
 Venice, plough the seas of both hemispheres, bearing 
 the products of ten thousand factories, employing 
 myriads of busy workmen and creating opportunities 
 for all who desire to lead lives of useful activity. 
 
 For to this wonderful city and county, with their 
 more purely American population than is to be found 
 elsewhere, and with, consequently, their clearer vision 
 of American ideals, their stronger hold on American 
 traditions and their truer devotion to distinctive] 
 American principles, the world must look for the grand- 
 est achievements in city-building and community 
 planning and execution. This people unquestionably 
 the most intelligent must demonstrate themselves to 
 be the most efficient community in the United States. 
 Owing their exceptional culture to the toil and self- 
 sacrifice of unnumbered generations in the past, they 
 are under sternest obligations to transmit their inherit- 
 ance, enriched and ennobled, to generations that are to 
 come. 
 
 The opportunity is ours, but not necessarily all ours. 
 We can call into cooperation with us not only our 
 own thriving cities and towns, but the willing forces 
 of the state and nation. With or without their assist- 
 ance, but better with it, we shall -solve the vast and 
 far-reaching problems confronting us. 
 
 JOHN J. HAMILTON. 
 
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