Extractions from
JOURNALISM IN CALIFORNIA
by John P. Young
Pacific Coast and Exposition Biographies
CHRONICLE PUBLISHING COMPANY
San Francisco, California, 1915
Thank you to Beth Humphrey for transcribing and submitting this material.
For more than a quarter of a century Joseph
Belleau Coryell has bee a part of the business life of San Francisco and
California. Starting in a small way, he has advanced step by step
until today his interests are among the most important in the State.
And he has acquired them all by keen foresight, close application and the
ability to grasp an opportunity when it appeared to him.
When the late E. H. Harriman, some years ago,
was just beginning to extend his holdings in the West, and needed a representative
of proved ability on this coast, he chose Mr. Coryell as the man for the
place. Subsequently Mr. Coryell did much valuable work for the railroad
magnate. One of the direct results was that he was offered the presidency
of a railroad, but this he declined, preferring to devote himself to his
private projects. He is still interested in Harriman affairs.
A native of San Francisco, Mr. Coryell was
born June 4, 1871. His father was Dr. John R. Coryell, at one time
a widely known physician, and his mother was Zoe Christine (Belleau) Coryell.
Following his education Mr. Coryell, after
casting about for a bit, looking over the field with an eye to the future,
decided that the real estate business offered unusual advantages.
Accordingly he opened a real estate office in San Francisco in 1888.
Real estate has been his forte ever since, although he had branched out
in a number of other directions as an investor.
In the course of his activities Mr. Coryell
began pondering growth of the city and the directions in which it was most
likely to expand. Land that he believed to be well situated he acquired,
and it was not long before his prognostications began coming true.
Today he owns more spur-track property than any other man in San Francisco.
It is largely by reason of his operations
on Islais Creek, however, that Mr. Coryell has become locally famous for
his keep business foresight. “Nerve” is the only word that expresses
the opinion of San Francisco financiers and realty dealers when first they
saw Mr. Coryell begin the acquirement of the blocks of mud flats on the
south side of Islais Creek. No man, they reasoned, could possibly
risk his money on those unsightly swamps unless he were possessed of colossal
nerve.
This Mr. Coryell had, without doubt.
And the very ones who declared at the time that the future was too uncertain
to risk such an investment have long since expressed their complete respect
for the wisdom of the man; for the new San Francisco harbor project on
Islais Creek has become a reality, for which a condemnations have been
carried on under which is known as the India Basin Act by the State of
California.
With his wonderful foresight Mr. Coryell saw,
what everyone else seemed blind to, that nowhere else on the San Francisco
waterfront were there lands a available in the future for manufacturing
purposes. He saw, too, that the terminal building operations of the
three great transcontinental railroads entering California must, of necessity,
group themselves about Islais Creek especially since the franchise for
the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe’s joint line on Kentucky street bound
the two railroads to build a steel drawbridge over the Islais channel on
demand.
He could not overlook this assembling of railroad
terminal facilities in the heart of the only waterfront land left in San
Francisco available for factory purposes; nor that the interests around
Islais Creek, railroad, lumber and the like, already established, were
going to demand the clearing and deepening of that waterway. Here
was in sight a combination of land and water shipping facilities unequaled
anywhere. To a far-seeing man like Mr. Coryell the possibilities were obvious.
He had the nerve to back his judgment and
the initiative to put it into effect. He was alone in both.
He is the only man who has spent his money to improve lands on San Francisco’s
waterfront in anticipation of the coming large influx of manufacturers.
And as a result of this purchases on Islais Creek he is now the largest
individual owner of waterfront property in the city. All the rest
is held either by the State, the city or by private corporations, which
are making use of it.
To men of stanch hearts and unswerving loyalty
and hope – men like Joseph B. Coryell – San Francisco owes her bigger and
better existence as the metropolis of the West.
It is to such men as Hamden H. Noble – men
whose integrity and stamina are combined with a progressivism that keeps
them really ahead of their times – that California owes much of her wonderful
growth and prosperity ass a State. He is one of those who have given
the very best that was in them to California; and the results have b been
far-reaching and permanent.
Posterity will remember Mr. Nobel, if for
nothing else, at least for his pioneer work in the converting of electric
current into heat for the treatment of iron ores in smelting. In
1906 he organized and became president of the Noble Electric Steel Company,
a project characterized by the Journal of Electricity in its column as
“one of the nerviest ever fostered in California.” It opened up a
new era in the marketing of pigiron produced in this country, for until
the new system was introduced the smelting of iron ores in the United States
was considered commercially unprofitable owing to the difficulty in obtaining
suitable coking coal.
In a few words this same trade journal tells
of the struggle to perfect Mr. Noble’s idea, when it says: “The story
of the development of this smelter, the heartbreaking trials, costly delays,
unforeseen misfortunes, repeated failures, always bolstered up and ready
to go at it again by the indomitable courage and unswerving faith of these
men, held together and helped and reassured through the untiring energy
of their leader (Mr. Noble), will add a chapter to the glorious history
of California which, next to the satisfaction of the success that it will
chronicle, will be a fitting tribute to the genius of faith and daring.”
Mr. Noble, the recipient of this unusual mark
of esteem, is a native of Fairfield, Maine. He was born August 16,
1844, the son of James Wellington Noble, farmer and carriage builder, and
Louisa (Knox) Noble. The younger Mr. Noble attended the public schools
of his birthplace until the age of 18 when – on September 9, 1862 – he
was mustered into the United States Army as a private in Company B, 24th
Regiment of Maine Infantry. After serving for 18 months he was honorable
discharged on account of illness, and came to California in October, 1864,
to regain his lost vitality.
Mr. Noble’s first business experience was
as a clerk in the wholesale paper concern of George W. Clark. After
five years he went to White Pine, Nevada, and for two years engaged in
mining and lumbering, after which he returned to San Francisco. Purchasing
a seat on the San Francisco Stock Exchange Mr. Noble operated on the board
for the succeeding quarter of a century, resigning in 1895, after an unusually
fruitful career.
The Cypress Lawn Cemetery Association, of
which he remains vice-president to this day, was organized by Mr. Noble
in 1892. He also formed the Cypress Lawn Improvement Company, of
which he is president. In 1900 he organized the Northern California
Power Company, and later on the Keswick Electric Power Company, consolidated.
He is at present chairman of the board of directors of the corporation,
whose offices are in San Francisco.
The plant of the Noble Electric Steel Company,
that project which has brought forth so much commendation from the business
and mining interests of California, is located on the north back of the
Pitt river in Shasta County, on the Sacramento Valley & Eastern Railway.
Immediately back of the plant is a veritable mountain of magnetite iron
ore having a percentage of seventy in metallic iron. The success
of the electrical furnace is an assured fact.
Mr. Noble is interested in several other commercial
and industrial enterprises in addition to those already touched upon.
Among these is the newly formed West Coast-San Francisco Life Insurance
Company, of which he is a director.
In this day and age we have come to take nearly
everything for granted. A big engineering project makes life easier
for us – we accept it without further ado. Only a few of us go behind
the achievement and consider the ingenuity it typifies, or the man who
made it possible.
One of the first things noticed by a visitor
to San Francisco is the city’s famous ferry terminal. This was built
under the direction of Howard Carlton Holmes, civil and consulting engineer,
who has conceived and put into execution so many projects as to make himself
an exception to the general rule that the men behind achievements of this
sort are little known. Rather, he is recognized up and down
the Pacific Coast as one of the foremost engineers west of the Rocky Mountains.
Since the age of seventeen Mr. Holmes has
been identified with engineering. He was born June 10, 1854, at Nantucket,
Massachusetts, and when five years old came with his parents to San Francisco
as a miner, then as a building contractor.
After receiving his education in the public
schools of this city, the younger Mr. Holmes started out as a surveyor
and became identified with a number of leading engineers. He was
only nineteen years old when he made all the contour surveys necessary
for the development of Lake Chabot, Oakland’s principal source of water
supply. At twenty-one Mr. Holmes passed an examination for appointment
as United States deputy surveyor. Soon afterward he became assistant
engineer of the State Board of Harbor Commissioners, leaving this position
to design and build the Alameda mole and depot for the South Pacific Coast
Railway Company.
It might be well to say at this point that
the millions who visited the Panama-Pacific Exposition gazed upon Mr. Holmes’
work when they viewed the yacht harbor, its passenger and freight slips
and all the other exposition water terminals. As consulting engineer
on docks and wharves for the exposition he designed all these features.
Mr. Holmes directed his attention to street
railway construction when, in 1887-8, he built the Powell Street Railroad,
known as the Ferries and Cliff House Railroad. During the next few
years he built the cable railroads at Portland, that at Spokane and
the Madison Street Railroad at Seattle. Returning to San Francisco
he constructed the Sacramento street branch of the Powell street road,
the lower end of the California Street Cable Railroad and extended the
Union Street Cable Railroad from Fillmore to the Presidio. Later
he secured the contract for the electric street railway at Stockton.
Becoming chief engineer of the Harbor Board in 1892, Mr. Holmes
built the water terminals for all the railroads running into San Francisco
with the exception of the Southern Pacific, and even in the latter’s slips
were installed the freight and passenger hoists invented by him.
One of his innovations was teredo-proof pile for wharves, concrete over
a core of wooden piles. This type of pile has been used a number
of years with great success.
As chief engineer of the San Francisco, Oakland
& San Jose Railroad Company, the Key Route, Mr. Holmes designed and
constructed the terminal mole, which extends 16,000 feet into San Francisco
bay. He also built the Sacramento electric road and the greater
part of the Oakland, Alameda & Piedmont Railroad, now incorporated
with the Oakland Transit Company.
Resigning in 1901 from his position with the
Harbor Board, Mr. Holmes became chief engineer for the San Francisco Dry
Dock Company. He built Hunter’s Point Dry Dock No.2, at that time,
the largest graving dock on the Pacific Coast. Later he prepared
plans for dry dock No. 3 at Hunter’s Point, one of the world’s biggest
and one that will care for the greatest ocean liners and battle-ships.
Today, in the East as well as the West,
Mr. Holmes is considered an authority in his line. In 1904 he was
commissioned by the Boston Harbor and Land Board to report on the respective
merits of graving and floating docks. He also planned the Canadian
Government’s dry dock at Victoria. He ha a goodly private practice,
besides being consulting engineer for the Western Pacific Railway Company
for docks and wharves.
Mr. Holmes is a member to the American Society
of Civil Engineers and of various other prominent professional, fraternal
and social organizations.
“A man cannot hope to obtain lasting results
without concentration. If he is to be a lawyer, a good one, he must
apply himself to law an its ramifications constantly, ever studying to
advance. The same is true of every profession in which knowledge
counts – and this means all of them”
Such is the philosophy of John W. Preston,
United States Attorney for the Northern District of California. BY
constant application he won the goal and made a name for himself; by the
same means he became United States District Attorney.
Born at Woodbury, Cannon County, Tennessee,
May 14, 1877, Mr. Preston is the son of Hugh Lawson Preston, president
of the First National Bank of Woodbury, former State Senator and holder
of other public offices for the past forty years. Mr. Preston was
educated at a country school, then at Woodbury Academy, and in 1894 and
all of 1895 he taught school in De Kalb County, Tennessee, earning enough
to attend Bethany College at Bethany, West Virginia, for a year.
Meanwhile, as a youth, Mr. Preston had been
delving into law. So closely did he apply himself that he was enabled,
from 1894 on, to practice without a license in the justice courts.
So hard did he labor over borrowed law books that he contracted fever.
He was admitted to the bar in Tennessee April 3, 1897, and after practicing
alone for eight months formed a partnership with Major James A. Jones,
a celebrated lawyer.
In 1899 Mr. Preston came to California to
try a will case in Mendocino County, won it, and pending its appeal returned
home and established a branch law office at Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
In 1901 he back to California and compromised the case. He was married
at Nashville January 8, 1902, to Sarah Rucker, by whom he has since become
the father of two children. The honeymoon trip brought the young
attorney to Ukiah again, this time for good, and he remained there until
his appointment as United State was Attorney January 3, 1914, for a tem
of four years.
The work of Mr. Preston in the federal office
has been unique. The European war brought about a situation, which
made him prominent as a preserver of United States neutrality. He
set precedents, as legal adviser to the Collector of the Port, in the case
of three steamships suspected of being about to carry supplies to belligerent
warships in the Pacific Ocean. Taking the initiative, against the
advice of other federal officials, Mr. Preston held that the delivery of
contraband, even at sea, was against international law and virtually made
this port a base of supplies for the warring nations. He started prosecutions
and was sustained by Washington; and inquiries before, the local Federal
Grand Jury, were followed by similar ones instituted by the United States
Attorney of New York.
Mr. Preston’s legal career at Ukiah, before
he became the Government’s attorney, was fruitful. Always independent
in politics, he secured the district attorneyship through no “pull” of
any kind; in fact he met strong opposition. But it was shown by sworn
affidavits from disinterested court officials that he had tried more than
900 cases in court in California with less than 50 verdicts against him
– and by this record of legal successes alone he won the appointment.
Mr. Preston organized and for ten years was
president of the Ukiah Guarantee Abstract and Title Company, and is a member
of the law firm of Preston & Preston with his brother, Hugh L. Preston,
Jr., as partner. He is one of the organizers and directors of the
Fort Bragg Commercial Bank at Fort Bragg and of the Willits Commercial
Bank at Willits, and is president of the Preston Loan and Investment Company
of Ukiah, a private concern handling his realty and financial holdings
and those of his brother, Hugh.
Although he has always maintained his right
to vote as he please, and not as someone else pleases, and has thus upheld
his political independence, Mr. Preston is an active worker for the Democratic
cause. He was chairman of the Democratic County Central Committee
and a member of the State Committee in Tennessee, and for several years
was chairman of the Mendocino County Committee. He was elected to
the State Legislature in 1908 from the Sixth district and was renominated
in 1910, but declined to run.
The general impression seems to be that a career
in the United States Army unfits one, at least temporarily, for any profession
other than the military. But George Elder Price is a striking example
of what an Army training really will accomplish, providing a man take advantage
of it. When Mr. Price emerged from sixteen years in the Army he already
had gained admittance to the bar in Kentucky and almost at once started
practicing law in San Francisco after being admitted in California.
Mr. Price is of that sturdy type that makes
up the real American citizenship. He was born December 17, 1877,
in Davis County, Kentucky, on the arm of his father, George Elder Price.
His mother, Lydia (Miles) Price, was of the line of the Linthicum family
of Kentucky and Virginia. His Paternal great - great – great – great
– great Grandfather was John Price the Emigrant, who came from Wales in
1620 and settled in the Jamestown Colony. He was one of thee eleven
counselors, with Sir Francis Wyatt, of the provisional government of the
colony under the London Company. His wife was slain in the Jamestown
Massacre of May 1622. One of his descendants was General Sterling
Price of Missouri, great –uncle of the present George E. Price.
During his early years George E. Price attended
the district school near his home. When he was yet a boy his mother
died and from then on he was raised in the family of an uncle, a lawyer
in Kentucky. At the age of fourteen he left school and there after
was with another relative in Illinois.
In 1896, attracted by the Army, he enlisted
and was assigned to the Seventh Cavalry, with which he served in the Spanish-American
and other campaigns. Re-enlisting in 1899, he became a clerk, and
later chief clerk, at the recruiting station at Denver. He attended
night school, was studious and ambitious and in 1901 gained an appointment
as second lieutenant of the Tenth Cavalry. He was made first lieutenant
of the Fourteenth Cavalry in 1909.
Most of Mr. Price’s relatives were lawyers
and he never took his eyes off the ultimate goal, the law. When he
became Second Lieutenant he attended the military university at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, taking the law course there as well as engineering, the languages
and others. Seated in hi tent beneath the trees of Cuba or the Philippines
he studied law, and by diligent application was enabled to qualify, in
1906, for the admittance to the bar in Kentucky.
In 1909 he was assigned to engineering work
in connection with the Hetch Hetchy water project under the Interior Department.
One night his horse fell with him over a forty-foot cliff in the Yosemite
and he suffered a broken leg and other injuries that kept him in the hospital
for eight or nine months. Later rejoining his regiment in the Philippines
he contracted tropical diseases, which brought about his retirement from
the Army of disability in 1912.
Thereupon Mr. Price returned to California
to regain his strength. He was admitted to practice before the Supreme
Court and entered the law office of George D. Shadburne in the Humboldt
Bank building. Later he opened offices for himself in his present
location, the Underwood building.
Mr. Price’s practice has been largely in the
criminal courts. Among his important cases was that of Emil Gunlach,
charged with the murder, on the night of November 4, 1914, of Louis A.
Andrus, proprietor of the Casa Loma Apartments on Fillmore Street.
Gunlach was acquitted. Mr. Price also made a strong effort on behalf
of Verne W. Fowler, convicted of the slaying of Willie Fasset during an
attempted burglary December 18, 1914. Fowler’s case was appealed.
The civil law work of Mr. Price is largely on behalf of the Wholesalers’
Board of Trade.
During his connection with the Military Information
Division at Manila Mr. Price helped advance legislation for the Anti-Espionage
law, prohibiting the talking of photographs within a military reservation.
He also was one of the agitators for the present law making it a crime
for a man to secure free transportation on the representation that he is
about to enlist in the Army or Navy.
Fraternally, Mr. Price belongs to the United
Spanish War Veterans, Modern Woodmen of America, Moose, Red Men, Eagles
and Elks. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of London
and belongs to the National Geographical Society of the United States,
and the Union League and Southern Clubs. He was married in 1903 at
Hudson, N. Y. to Miss Wie D. Townsend. The couple has three children,
Dorothy Townsend, Cordelia Newland and George Sterling Price.
The idea that “Opportunity knows but once at
each man’s door,” and the attendant idea that unless full advantage is
taken of the chance Opportunity will not call again. – this is by no means
of universal application. For if Opportunity fails to seek him out,
the redblooded man will seek out Opportunity. He doesn’t wait for
the knocking on the door.
Lile T. Jacks, San Francisco attorney
at law, didn’t sit around waiting when it came time for him to get out
and hustle for an education and for a career. He hustled. And
this involved, at one period, working in a hotel for his board and, at
another period, digging ditches and keeping pace with men many years his
senior. But he gained his goal.
Mr. Jacks was born March 26, 1877, on
a farm at Meadow Valley near Quincy, Plumas County, California. His
father is Richard Jacks, farmer and miner, and his mother Florence Fremont
(Bell) Jacks. He attended the public schools of the neighborhood,
and after finishing the grammar grades worked for some time as a common
laborer for a mining company. Nest year he entered the Quincy High
School, working in the evenings at the Plumas House, where he boarded.
He was graduated in 1900.
Soon after this Mr. Jacks entered the
mining field by locating what was known as the Smith’s Flat placer claim.
He purchased the necessary equipment, rented water and worked the claim
for three seasons, making enough money to come to San Francisco in January
1901. He took a course in the Gallagher-Marsh Business College, and after
finishing entered the evening law school of the Young Men’s Christian Association,
where he received his A.B. degree. The course covered a period, in
all, of four years. He also took a post-graduate course at St. Ignatius
University.
Meanwhile, immediately after taking
up the study of law Mr. Jacks worked for a month as stenographer in a mercantile
firm, holding down this position in the day time and attending school in
the evenings. In 1902 Mr. Jacks was placed in charge of the schools’
supply department under the direction of the Board of Education, a position
he retained until about the time he completed his law course.
In 1906 he became a deputy under County Clerk
Harry I. Mulcrevy. This position he resigned in 1908, took his bar
examinations and was admitted to practice November 18, 1908, before the
District Court of Appeals of California. Since then he has been admitted
by United States District and Circuit Courts. For about a year after
he first was admitted he was a clerk in the law offices of McNair &
Stoker. Then he started practicing independently and has done so
ever since, with the exception of about a year when he maintained his office
in connection with that of Frank S. Britain, now attorney for the Panama-Pacific
Exposition.
Confining himself almost exclusively to the
practice of civil law, Mr. Jacks has specialized in probate matters and
his handle a number of important estates in court. Among these was
the $250,000 estate of Mrs. Ruth Hannah Muzzy, which has been settled and
distributed to the heirs.
Mr. Jacks represented Mrs. Lovell White, chairman
of the Outdoor Art League Club, an auxiliary of the California Women’s
Club, in the fight before the 1914 State Legislature on behalf of the cemetery
condemnation bill. This was a measure to amend the code of civil
procedure relative to eminent domain, so that the City of San Francisco
might take over old cemetery lands and make memorial parks of them.
Mr. Jacks framed the bill, which was the only bill of a similar nature
that was passed by the Senate. The whole bill is to be taken up again
before the next legislature.
In addition to his probate and other work
Mr. Jack is attorney for several corporations and business concerns, the
Home Manufacturing Company; the Imperial Company, manufacturers of waterproofing;
Fish Brothers, real estate dealers, and several others.
Socially, Mr. Jacks is a member of the Native Sons of the Golden
West, the Deutscher Club, Woodmen of the World, and other private clubs.
He was married in San Anselmo, September 21, 1913, to Miss Ethel Kluver,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Kluver of San Francisco, and granddaughter
of the late Henry Dobbel, wealthy California pioneer and member of the
Vigilance Committee of San Francisco’s early days.
When business philosophers have set forth, as the
fruit of long experience, what things are necessary to bring about a man’s
rise in the world, the whole weighty argument may be boiled down and resolved
into three words – ability, effort and perseverance.
Given those attributes, a man may gain all others
with but little extra trouble. But it is essential that he have the
three. The man who will not or cannot assimilate learning, the man
who yawns and watches the office clock, the who flits from one position
to the other in the hope of “landing something good” without working up
to it – such men to failure are foredoomed.
Henry T. Jones is today general superintendent of
the United Railroads of San Francisco because he has, and has had all along,
ability, perseverance and pluck. In order to learn all about the
business he had chosen for a career he began at the very bottom.
He worked, he was dependable, and it was not long until his worth was recognized.
Mr. Jones is a native of Bristol, England. He was born January
22, 1866, the son of Daniel Jones a Colonel in the British Army, and Emma
(Proctor) Jones. He attended Rugby schools and in 1881 entered the
Royal Navy and was assigned to H. M. S. Britannica. Two years later
his father died and he left the navy.
Almost at once Mr. Jones entered the employment
of Sir Clifton Robinson, who at that time was constructing the Higate Hill
cable railroad in London, after having been manager of the Bristol Tramways.
This was the first road of its kind in Europe and was designed after the
cable railroads of San Francisco, which were the first in the world. In
1884 Mr. Jones, in his capacity of conductor, operated the first
car over the Higate Hill line, with the Lord Mayor of London and other
dignitaries as guests..
After a few months as a “platform man” Mr. Jones
was given a clerkship in the company’s offices, remaining in this position
until 1887. Thereafter, for a time, he traveled abroad. Retuning
to London from Mexico, he learned that Sir Clifton Robinson had come to
the United States, to Los Angeles, California, where he was installing
a line for the Los Angeles Cable Railroad. Desiring to stay on with
his first employer, Mr. Jones retuned to America and Sir Clifton made him
assistant superintendent of the road.
In 1890 Mr. Jones did something that few men
do. He went back to get more experience in the actual handling of
streetcars. In need of fresh air, and in the belief that with a firmer
groundwork in the street railway business he would be better enabled to
maintain an executive position when he came to it, he came to San Francisco
and became a conductor on the old Market Street Cable Railway. Since
that time he has remained in San Francisco and has risen steadily through
the ranks to the position he now holds.
Successively he became inspector, car dispatcher
and timetable expert, and in 1902 when the United Railroads was organized
was appointed superintendent of employment. Two years later he was
made division superintendent and this position he held for nine years.
He was appointed acting general superintendent in July 1913, to succeed
the late Elwood Hibbs. Meanwhile, in addition to the regular duties
of this office, he also continued as the company’s timetable expert as
well as chief of the employment bureau. On January 1, 1915, he was
formally made general superintendent.
Mr. Jones personally has employed all the men of
the rank and file that the United Railroads has added to its payroll since
the company’s formation in 1902. He is a born executive and withal
one of the most popular men in the service of the United Railroads.
Today he is the head of actual operation of a road that has 278 miles single
track, electric and cable. Including 1900 platform men, he has under
his direction about 2500 employees of all classes. He has been a long and
faithful service. And the days that he has worked 20 hours out of
the 24, notably following the fire of 1906 and during the subsequent strike,
have borne their fruit.
Mr. Jones is a member of the Transportation Club and the Indoor Yacht
Club. He was married in 1902 in San Francisco to Miss Blanche A.
Le Juene, daughter of A. Le Juene, the noted Belgian sculptor. He
has two sons, George F. Jones, 10 and Burgess William Jones, 6.
In three separate and distinct fields of endeavor
– in the profession of medicine, in the drug business and in public life
– has the name of Dr. Thomas E. Shumate come to be familiar to the people
of San Francisco. For the more than a quarter of a century that has
passed since he first came, as a youth, to the Western metropolis, has
yielded well.
Twenty-seven years ago Dr. Shumate was
a clerk in a San Francisco drug store, attending the College of Pharmacy
at night. Today he is a physician with a large and flourishing practice,
owner of the best retail drug business west of the Rocky Mountains, and
in his second term as member of the Board of Police Commissioners.
Dr. Shumate was born April 1, 1871,
at St. Louis, Missouri. His father was Charles H. Shumate, stock
raiser and dealer, and his mother Cornelia Hicks (McKaney) Shumate.
The youth secured the groundwork of his education in the St. Louis public
schools, and in 1888, immediately following his graduation from the West
Side High School, St. Louis, came west to San Francisco.
Having learned in his high school days
that chemistry was his forte, Dr. Shumate resolved to take up pharmacy
and, perhaps, last on, medicine. He did not come to San Francisco
in a private car; nor did he put up at the best hotel when he got here.
Rather, the first thing he did was to look for a job. He found one, in
a drug store.
From 7 o’clock in the morning until
6 o’clock he waited on the trade and otherwise kept himself busy.
After dinner he took his books and spent the evening at eh College of Pharmacy,
and at night he slept in the store, not only for convenience sake, bur
also that he might be on hand bright and early in the morning to attend
to business. This lasted for two years and in 1890 he was graduated
from the College of Pharmacy, which is an adjunct of the University of
California, with the degree of Ph. G.
Dr. Shumate’s next step was to open
a drug store – a very small drug store, by the way, but much larger now
– at Sutter and Devisadero streets. It remains today No. 1 of his chain
of similar stores. Once his drug business was going to his satisfaction
he enrolled in Cooper Medical College. During the day he attended
at the college, then until 11 o’clock at night he worked in his store.
From the latter hour on until he finally sought his bed, he carried on
his studies.
It was a hard grind, but it brought
its reward, for the drug store made possible his attendance at college,
and his studies by lamp light gained for him graduation, in 1894, with
the degree of M. D.
The same year Dr. Shumate opened offices
and began practicing his latest profession. A few months later there
occurred a vacancy in the position of surgeon to the San Francisco Police
Department, and Dr. Shumate secured the appointment. From 1894 until
1900 he served as the department surgeon. During this period he unconsciously
prepared himself for the office he now holds. He kept his eyes open
to the manner in which the affairs of the department were conducted, and
also came into close touch with whom his is personally. The result
was that when James Woods resigned from the Police Commission in 1912,
and Mayor Rolph was called upon to appoint his successor, he chose Dr.
Shumate for the place. Dr. Shumate, said the mayor, was in sympathy
with the administration and was a man in every way qualified to serve.
After serving out Commissioner Woods’
unexpired term Dr. Shumate was reappointed and is now in his second germ
as a member of the Board. Dr. Shumate has accomplished much good
for the Police Department. He helped bring about recognition of seniority
of service and he has aided in making San Francisco a better place to live,
but without, at the same time, forgetting to be broadminded and tolerant.
Seven high-class drug stores are now
being conducted in Dan Francisco under the name of Shumate’s Pharmacy,
Inc. All are enjoying a high class of trade. In addition to
his other activities Dr. Shumate is, and has been for several years, a
director of St. Francis hospital.
Dr. Shumate was married in 1899 in San
Francisco to Freda Ortmann and is the father of three children: Ortmann,
aged thirteen, Albert, ten, and Virginia, four. He belongs to the
Southern, Olympic and Press clubs of San Francisco and also the Independent
Order Odd Fellows.
Contrary to poplar belief of an attorney at
law cannot be gauged by the number of sensational legal betties in which
he appears. Were this so, some of California’s foremost lawyers would
be accorded far less recognition than they really deserve, for their work,
though extremely important, is not of a nature to bring them much into
the limelight.
One of those attorneys whose practice is largely
quiet, but who nonetheless has an enviable reputation for ability in his
chosen profession, is Edward J. Talbott. He has no practice to speak
of
in the criminals courts, but confines himself to a general civil practice,
largely in probate and corporation matters, which are of more vital interest
to those directly concerned than to the public at large.
Unlike some others, Mr. Talbott did not decide
fully upon the law as a career until he was half way through the university
and until after he had investigated fully the field and his own fitness
for entrance to it. He was born August 9, 1878, at Lompoc, Santa
Barbara County, California, the son of William L. Talbott, a farmer and
stock raiser, and Amelia (Irwin) Talbott. He is of Irish stock, with
several noted jurists among his maternal ancestors.
After traversing the grammar schools at Lompoc
Mr. Talbott entered high school, from which he was graduated in the spring
of 1896. In August of thee same year he matriculated at the University
of California, finishing in May 1900, with the degree of B. S. By
this time he had resolved to become a legal practitioner. Accordingly
he attended Hastings College of the Law for two years and in May 1902,
was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of California.
Mr. Talbott at once began practicing in San
Francisco in association with William J. Herrin. The partnership
continued until Herrin’s death in October, 1913, since which time Mr. Talbott
has practiced alone.
For the past ten years Mr. Talbott has been
one of the attorneys in the litigation over the estate of Thomas Bell,
one of the longest drawn out and hardest fought cases in California’s legal
history. It has been before the probate court for twenty-three years
and it probably will be several years more before the various claims to
the property are adjudicated.
Thomas Bell was at one time the wealthiest
man on the Pacific Coast. His property aggregated some $20,000,000
in value, but he lost it in one way and another, principally by unwise
investments, until at the time of his death in 1892 he was worth only about
$200,000, with outstanding debts totaling twice as much. Following
Bell’s death, however, oil was discovered on his land. BY taking
advantage of this the administrators have built up the estate once more
until today it represents something like $5,000,000.
Mr. Talbott has been interested as an attorney
in several other good-sized estates, which he has settled in one way or
another to the satisfaction of his clients. He also is general counsel
for a number of corporations, among them the San Francisco Sulphur Company,
which does practically all of the importing and exporting of sulphur that
is carried on in San Francisco. In this, as well as in other concerns,
Mr. Talbott is likewise interested in a financial way.
In politics Mr. Talbott is a stanch Republican.
He has neither sought nor held office, but has preferred to do his work
for others or for the party’s general good. He does not find time
to belong to social clubs, although he is a member of the B. P. O. Elks
ass well as of the American Geographical Society.
Mr. Talbott was married in 1906 in San Francisco
to Lillie V. Rose. He is the father of one child, a daughter, now
seven years old.
One who does not believe that “it’s the little
things in life that count,” need only analyze the career of F. W. Woolworth,
of W. J. Rand, Jr., Pacific Coast manager of the F. W. Woolworth Co., to
be convinced that the old saying is eminently true.
It was by looking after the little things
that Mr. Woolworth made of his concern the largest of its kind in the world.
It was by looking after things, tending strictly to business and guarding
his employer’s interests that Mr. Rand advanced himself from a $1.00 a
day job as stock boy to the Pacific Coast managership, with fifty stores
and nine states and something like 1,500 employees under his direction.
Mr. Rand is a native of Brooklyn, New York.
He was born August 2, 1877, the son of W. J. Rand, a musician who has since
retired from active business, and Lillias L. (Warner) Rand. He attended
the public schools of Brooklyn and thereafter spent five years at Trinity
School of New York, finishing at the latter institution when he was about
eighteen years old.
From school Mr. Rand went directly into offices
of a New York advertising concern as office boy. Later he solicited
classified advertisements for the New York Journal, and in 1897, when he
was twenty years old, he began his so fruitful connection with the F. W.
Woolworth stores.
At the outset Mr. Rand was stock boy in the
F. W. Woolworth Five and Ten Cent Store at Yonders, N. Y. The work
was hard, the job was confining and the emolument was $1.00 a day -- $6.00
a week. Mr. Woolworth, however, had the reputation of being willing
to help his employees if they were willing to help themselves. He
still has that reputation, by the way. He has given hundreds
of young men the opportunity to advance themselves in the business world,
and the fruits of this policy have been most gratifying.
With the future, rather than the present,
in mind, Mr. Rand proceeded to stick to business. The eyes of the
store manager were upon him, even though his work kept him in the basement,
and within two months his salary was raised to $10.00 a week and he was
made floorwalker. He continued thus until 1900, when he was transferred
to Norfolk, Virginia, as assistant manager of the stores there. In
1901 he was sent to Hartford, Connecticut, in the same capacity and in
1902 became manager of the stores of Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
About this time he married Miss Clara Wake of Providence, Rhode Island.
From this time on Mr. Rand’s rise was rapid.
He had already proved his worth and it remained only for him to acquire
a broader experience. In 1904 he was made manager of the Decanter,
Illinois, store; in 1907 he was given charge of the store at Omaha, Nebraska,
and before the end of the same year was recalled to the Chicago offices
as traveling superintendent. The assistant managership of the Chicago
offices was given him in 1910, and 1912, he was made a director of the
F. W. Woolworth Co. stores west of Denver.
The F. W. Woolworth Co. operates more than
800 stores, among which 47 are in Great Britain and 75 in Canada.
Mr. Woolworth started his first store in Utica, New York; with $300 capital
His 1915 business was expected to reach the startling figure of $70,000,000.
There are probably less than ten concerns in the United States whose volume
of business is annually so great. The growth of the corporation in
the past few years may be realized from the fact that when Mr. Rand started
in as basement stock boy, there were but 47 Woolworth stores in operation.
Mr. Rand, by the way, came near being a California
native son, his parents having moved to this State when he was six months,
but later returned to the east.
Socially, Mr. Rand is a member of the Claremont
Country Club and the Olympic Club. He is director of the Chamber
of Commerce of San Francisco and also belongs to the San Francisco Commercial
Club and the Rotarian Club and the Masonic order.
Few San Franciscans have been so consistently
active in advancing the interests of their city, in advertising it to the
world as a bustling business community and a good place to live, as has
Robert A. Roos. Civic projects fathered or participated in by him
have helped San Francisco to a degree that is beyond measure.
Born June 7, 1883, in San Francisco, Mr. Roos
is the son of Adolph Roos and Ernestine (Mahler) Roos. He was graduated
from the University of California in 1904, after having taken a leading
part in student affairs. He at once entered the San Francisco store
of Roos Brothers, a business established in 1851 at Virginia City by his
father and his uncle, the latter Achille Roos, and removed in 1860 to San
Francisco. The younger Mr. Roos has worked himself up until now he
is a member of the firm, in charge of the merchandise office of the largest
concern of its kind west of Chicago, with three stores – San Francisco,
Oakland, and Berkeley.
Immediately after the San Francisco fire of
1906 Mr. Roos was in charge of one of the relief food stations. Soon
afterward he was one of the founders of the Fillmore Street Improvement
Association, serving as an officer until 1908. He and another member
made possible by their work the illuminated arches on Fillmore Street,
a monument to civic progressivism.
In 1907, during the streetcar and accompanying
strikes, he was a member of the San Francisco Conciliation Committee, which
helped settle the controversies.
In 1908, when Market street once more became
the business artery, Mr. Roos helped form the Downtown Association and
became one of its directories. He also helped form the Civic League
of Improvement Clubs by the amalgamation of about 100 improvement associations;
he was its president in 1912 and 1913, declining a third term. He
was in charge of the League’s nonpartisan campaign, which did away with
political parties in San Francisco’s government system. Again, he
aided in the formation of the League’s inspection bureau, which checked
up the repairing of the city’s streets and the spending of the bond money,
thereby saving a considerable sum. And he cooperated with the City
Attorney and Police Department in framing laws and rules for the police
traffic squad.
Mr. Roos was a member of the committee that
consolidated the old Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Association and
the Merchants’ Association and for a year and he was a director of the
new Commerce Chamber.
What really started the campaign for the Panama-Pacific
Exposition was the first organized New Year’s Eve celebration in San Francisco
in 1908-9, which Mr. Roos helped bring about, and the subsequent 1909 Portola
festival, of whose executive committee he was a member, as well as of the
Portola of 1913. Prior to the fiesta he went to Washington and persuaded
President Taft to flash his famous “Toast to San Francisco” around the
world, besides visiting all the foreign embassies and inviting the nations
to participate officially in the Portola, which many of them died.
In 1910 he was a member of the San Francisco delegation to the national
capital and aided in the campaign that finally gave the exposition to this.
He now is a member of the exposition’s ways and means committee; and was
one of those in charge of the ceremonies on Oct 14, 1911, when former President
William Howard Taft broke ground for the exposition, receiving the executive
at his home.
In dozens of other ways Mr. Roos has displayed
his public zeal. When the fleet of the United States Navy came around
the world to San Francisco in 1908 he helped arrange the entertainment
for the enlisted men. He is one of the founders of the San Francisco
Public Schools’ Athletic League, sanctioned by the Board of Education,
was it’s vice-president and is still one of its directors. He has
done much to bring Chinese merchants of the city into closer touch with
the municipal government. In 1909, as trustee of the San Francisco
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, he was appointed as its
delegate to the International Animal Protection Congress at London.
He was named by President Taft in 1912 a member of the United States Assay
Commission and served one year, and during Taft’s 1912 campaign was secretary
of the California State Republican Committed. In many other public
movements o importance Mr. Roos has proved himself an indefatigable worker.
He belongs to a number of social clubs both in San Francisco and New York
Mr. Roos was married April 26, 1915, in Chicago,
to Miss Louise Swabacker.