The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 37

A Strange PropKecy About a Small Town That Was Fulfilled By Ira Berthclot Wood If HE day will come when tke city of Los Angeles will SUNDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 3, 1926. 4 City's Magic Growth Will Amaze Bankers -at Convention Here By Ralph B. Hardacre VUe-Pnsldenl, Security Trial tTirf 9 CyT MONG the thousands of bank- if ers who will arrive today 1 fr0m au parts of the United States to attend the fifty-second annual convention of the American Bankers' Association opening tomorrow at Philharmonic Auditorium, there will be many hundreds who were here in 1921 to attend the forty-seventh annual A. B. A.

convention and several score who were here in 1U10 to attend the thirty-sixth yearly conclave of th na-' tion3 bankers. Strange to relate however, those who came in 1910 or even so late as 1921 wift -have but little advantage over those com- ing for the first time, in knowing Los An-J geles. Los Angeles has changed so tre--mendously in the sixteen years since the first conven- tion or, as a a 1 1 of fact, in the five years is i the second con-v i that habit-u a 1 conven stretch from the mountains to the sea," asserted a real estate agent of the female persuasion there were feminine purveyors of land, "already so to the writer some thirty-five years ago. To this radically optimistic prophecy the writer, who, though rather youthful, had given some thought to economic subjects and the causes of community growth, retorted, with something of an air of finality, it must be admitted: "Impossible! Los Angeles will grow, of course, just as other cities have, via its birth rate and from probably something more, than the ordinary accretion from without, but the makings of a real big city are simply not here. The two principal causes conducive to communal growth are found in an extensive tributary area under interisive development, such as Chicago or St.

Louis possesses, or a situation on a commodious harbor, such as New York or San Francisco is blessed with, enabling the levying of a substantial tribute on the world's commerce. "Los Angeles lacks the kind of tributary territory indicated it i3 located in a semiarid region its back country consists largely of barren nfountains and desolate deserts; it has no navigable streams (the writer had lived Father of Waters" and voyaged on the rivers to the north;) and it has no harbor, so can never become an important seaport." To this indictment consigning Los Angeles to perpetual mediocrity, the sanguine real estater promptly countered: "Ordinarily, you would be right. But Los Angeles has an extraordinary attraction outweighing all of the deficiencies enumerated the finest climate in the world. People are coming here just to live sick folks are coming to get well well folks are coming to remain so. I tell you, they are going to roll in just because it is God's country." hijui i i vf -r i 1 pi: 'A tion attend- (ffo 1 1 IA f' 1l it i-vv.

ifl 7J If," i 'tM 1 III III I'i'- 1 it ll a win have to start almost at the nning again in learning the facts about thiS City. SEWCITTHM Those who were here in 1910 but not in 1921 will find Los Angeles almost three and a half times as large in popu-" lation today as when they last visited; This fact will be apparent almost from: the moment they step off the train and have a look at the traffic and the crowds Changes Like Magic A Boom The woman was right; the writer hereof wrong The people did roll in; they are continuing to roll and the end tnereoi no mortal can discern. At the time Los' Angeles was a nlaee nf Uv. 1 SZL, a about lid 1 000 popula tion. It was erienc- a 15 i vis I ing a period 4 As a a Bi SM 1431 6 99 of deflation 3 A in fninnri a a i it W11U, 91 TBHRfl SI 51 JI SIS SS flRf)iiri mum m-m sa ks IA if .1 "5 -X i' ttii if 'IKS.

Ml it ooora a a busted" land tious OLD MISSION. But 'even greater increases have been, registered by other factors of growth than -population. Trained economic observers like bankers know that with a larger pop- ulation come increases in postal assessed valuation, building permits, bank deposits and bank clearings. But even they may be unprepared to learn that Los Angeles postal receipts since 1910 increased 457 per cent, assessed -510 per cent, building permit valuation 606 per cent, bank deposits 777 per cent1 and bank clearings 879 per cent! And what will those who came for the first time in 1921 find upon their return to -v Los Angeles today? They too will be im-! mediately struck by the larger throngs on the sidewalks and the heavier traffic on the for population ha3 doubled in the five years since they were last hem But again, the physical changes, elo- quent as they are, cannot tell the whole i. story of the aladdin-like transformation'." that has come upon Los Angeles in half a decade.

Bank deposits during the 1921 national conclave of the bankers stood at half a billion dollars. Now at the 1926..: convention they are well over a billion. Bank clearings in 1921 totaled 000. At the end of 1923 they totaled Assessed valuation in 1921 stood at In 1925 it stood at I $1,684,205,000. Postal receipts jumped from $4,900,000 in 1921 to $3,226,000 in 1923.

Building permit valuations in 1921 totaled $82,761,000. In 1923 they totaled The value of manufac- tured products in Los Angeles and vicin- ity increased from $800,900,000 in 1921 to $1,202,677,000 in 1924. The 1923 fig- ures are not as yet available. The number of manufacturing plants has increased over the same period from 3825 to 5600. Even more striking are the increases shown by the statistics of commerce.

In -1921 Imports through the Port of Los An- geles were valued at $15,600,000, in 1923 at $38,700,000. Export values in 1921 were but slightly more than those of Im- ports, but by 1925 they had mounted to the surprising total of $71,792,000. value of all commerce, import, coastwise and intercoastal through tV port jumped from $188,000,000 in 1921 I speculators and tardy town-lot promoters were holding sacks full with ashes, the ashes of consumed hopes. The green grass was growing all around and over miles of plots and walks laid in "town-sites" intended, according to their more or less veracious sponsors, to be sisters to the Queen City of the South, a kind of "modern improvement" provocative of much aggravation to these who later sought to make the checkerboarded land produce crops of edibles instead of speculations. The citrus production, the economic backbone of Southern- California, was but a fraction of what it is now.

The only oil fields in what is now termed the Los Angeles Basin were those of the Newhall district and Puente Hills, with comparatively insignificant output, the product of the former being of a gravity which rendered its use for fuel impracticable. Gas was made from coal brought via the Pacific route and was retailed to the consumer $3.50 per 1000 cubic feet. Two-thirds cf che inhabitants used kerosene for illumination and mesquit, juniper and eucalyptus wood for fuel in frt k' FORTY YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT striking visualization of what Los Angeles' -owth has been in little more than a generation is afforded by the two photographs reproduced The utter view shows Pershing Sauare as it a beared in 1SS2 fit was formerly called Central Park) looking southeast and showing the intersec A above. tion of Sixth and If ill streets. Below it is the same view taken today showing the immense building development that has taken place in the meantime.

Other comparatve views of the city "then and now" are shown in the next page. Above is Times' Staff Artist Swing's conception of the future Los Angeles, son, Bonebrake, a banker, having disposed of his interest a few years after completion of the building to Mr. Bry-son. ''Nearly, all professional men of standing had their Coulter, and he had the audacity to locate one of the largest establishments of the kind at the southwest corner of Spring and Second streets. South of the.

latter. to $671,400,000 in 1925! Thursday the bankers will be entertained at Hollywood and Friday at Catalina Island. In 1910 there wasn't a sin-, gle studio in Hollywood. Tlw motion-picture capital and the island resort will show the city's guest3 as amazing changes as Los Angeles itself! Saturday comc3 the Washington State-U. S.

C. football game when a chance to see the Coliseum will be pre-' -sented another outstanding institution that was not. existence when the American Bankers' Association last 'stoves or grates, worthwhile coal, brought from British Columbia or Washington, being from $12 to $15 per ton and at times even higher. Of course, there was no outer harbor and the inner harbor at San Pedro was but a slough, the depth of its channel being so little that the coast passengersteamers could not dock, but anchored well off-shore and lightered their passengers and cargoes to the land. Every important dry goods store of the then Los Angeles was between First and Temple streets on the west sld of Spring street, with the exception of that of B.

F. street there were no trading places of consequence, excepting a goodly-sized grocery at Sixth and Spring conducted by a firm which survives as one of the great food purveying corporations in the city. The only worthwhile office building south of First street was the Bryson-Bonebrake Block at Spring and Second streets, where it still stands with two stories added to the original five and bearing the name of Bry- offices north of Second, the old Baker and Temple blocks, the former within a block of the Plaza and the other at the junction of Temple, Spring and Main, housing the leaders of the bar. Excepting on Spring and Main streets between First and Temple, there was little cement eidewalking and street paving in he business part of the city, heavy (Contlnufd on l'ng 6, Columns 4 and 6) met hers in annual convention, i i.