Harry Chandler

Harry Chandler from cover

Harry Chandler (May 17, 1864 - Sept. 23, 1944), Los Angeles newspaper publisher, civic leader, and real estate developer, was born in Landaff, N. H., the eldest of four children (three boys and one girl) of Moses Knight Chandler, a farmer, and Emma Jane (Little) Chandler. He was a descendant of William Chandler, who emigrated from England and settled in Roxbury, Mass., about 1637. After attending the district school in Lisbon, N. H., Harry Chandler went to Hanover, N. H., in the fall of 1882 planning to enter Dartmouth College, but a severe lung illness (reportedly contracted by diving on a dare into an ice-covered starch vat) kept him from matriculating, and his family sent him to Southern California to recover. Living in a tent in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles, he broke horses and harvested fruit for farmers in return for a share of their crops, which he then sold to threshing crews on the vast Van Nuys ranch. After accumulating several thousand dollars in this manner, he returned home in 1884 to resume his education, but the immediate recurrence of his illness again drove him to California.

In 1885, now twenty-one years old, Chandler began his newspaper career as a clerk in the circulation department of the Los Angeles Times, owned by Gen. Harrison Gray Otis [q.v.]. On Feb. 6, 1888, he married Magdalena Schlador; they had two daughters, Franceska and Alice May. Chandler soon purchased several newspaper routes and began handling his own delivery and collections (newspapers at that time being commonly distributed by independent contractors); he also began buying stock in the Times. Chandler's wife died in 1892, and two years later, on June 5, 1894, he married Marian Otis, daughter of General Otis. They had six children: Constance, Ruth, Norman, Harrison Gray, Helen, and Philip. Shortly after his second marriage, Chandler was appointed business manager of the Times.

Chandler early became involved in a number of speculative real estate ventures in Southern California and in Mexico. His newspaper provided him with valuable contacts, and around 1899, on the advice of a friend, he and a group of Southern California investors bought up land in the Colorado River desert above and below the Mexican border. In 1902 they formed two corporations, the California-Mexico Land and Cattle Company, which managed their lands in California's Imperial Valley (1,000 acres), and the Colorado River Land Company, a Mexican subsidiary that controlled the group's holdings south of the border. The second company became the more important as, over the next fourteen years, it acquired more than 800,000 acres of land in the Mexicali Valley and the Colorado delta. By 1931 the Colorado River company had spent $12,000,000 in developing the region, most of which was leased to tenant farmers engaged in the raising of cotton; it built canals and ditches, constructed roads and levees, and leveled extensive portions of the land. The company also had interests in other ventures, including banks, a canal company, and a cotton gin. Despite declining cotton prices during the 1930's and the expropriation of much of its land by the Mexican government, the company realized considerable income from its holdings.

Other ventures in which Chandler played a part included the formation of a syndicate in 1912 to buy the 286,000-acre Tejon Ranch in Los Angeles and Kern counties, on which some 20,000 cattle and horses were grazed. He himself purchased a 340,000-acre tract in New Mexico and Colorado which he used for both cattle raising and hunting. But the real estate developments which won Chandler the title of "California's landlord" were those in and around Los Angeles. Many were undertaken in partnership with Moses Hazeltine Sherman, a former schoolteacher and banker in Phoenix, Ariz., who had moved in 1889 to Los Angeles and had become a street-railway developer. In 1903 Chandler helped sell lots in Hollywood along the route of Sherman's rapid transit lines, eventually realizing a 60 percent profit.

A major factor in the expansion of the Los Angeles area was the provision of an adequate water supply. Most observers credit Chandler with being the prime force behind the Times's successful campaign in the early 1900's to bring the water resources of the Owens Valley in the Sierras to Los Angeles. City Superintendent William Mulholland, backed by the city water board, of which Sherman was a member, mounted a campaign which successfully floated two municipal bond issues (1905, 1907) totaling $24,500,000, acquired Owens Valley land over the opposition of many local residents, and constructed an aqueduct which ran 233 miles from the Sierras to the upper end of the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles. The aqueduct was completed in 1913.

Chandler had extensive interests in the San Fernando Valley. He, Sherman, General Otis, H. J. Whitley, and others had formed a syndicate, the Suburban Homes Company, which purchased the Porter Ranch in 1905 and most of the holdings of the Van Nuys and Lankershim families in 1909 for about $2,500,000. They subdivided the 60,000 acres into residential and industrial property (serviced by the new water supply) which sold for $17,000,000 over a seven-year period. The 22-mile-long paved highway they built--Sherman Way--connecting the development with Los Angeles is said to have inspired the county to vote a bond issue for paved roads, the first issue for that purpose in the United States. Most of the San Fernando Valley was annexed to the city of Los Angeles in 1915.

In 1923, Chandler paid $21,000 to erect the original "HOLLYWOODLAND" sign with letters 50 feet high, each outlined by electric lights. The sign promoted a housing development, one of Chandler's many enterprises. Harry Chandler, facing camera, participates in the 1923 dedication ceremony for the sign. (photo from NPR)

In the mid-1930's Chandler organized a syndicate which purchased the estate of E. J. "Lucky" Baldwin, including portions of the old Ranchos Santa Anita and La Cienega, and subdivided the land into tracts in Arcadia, San Gabriel, and Baldwin Hills. With other holdings near the Santa Anita racetrack (for which he had helped obtain financing), he had become one of Los Angeles County's major landholders.

Meanwhile Chandler had risen rapidly on the Times. He was named assistant manager in 1898, and when General Otis later that year entered military service in the Spanish-American War, Chandler ran the paper. Thereafter he assumed increasing responsibility. He helped determine editorial policy, including the Times's campaign for the construction of a manmade harbor in the San Pedro-Wilmington area of Los Angeles County and the annexing of this area to the city. San Pedro soon became one of the leading ports on the West Coast.

Upon the death of Otis in 1917, Chandler succeeded him as president and publisher of the Los Angeles Times. He expanded the paper, particularly its advertising pages. In 1921, 1922, and 1923 the Times led all other American newspapers in both volume of advertising and amount of classified advertising; as late as 1940 it was still third in total advertising and first in classified. Chandler added a rotogravure section and the Times Sunday Magazine. A farm and garden supplement evolved by 1940 into the more general Home Magazine. The Times was also the first newspaper in the nation to inaugurate a motion picture page. The paper made increasing use of large photographs, and Chandler was one of the founders of Press Wireless. In 1930-31 he served as president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association. In 1936, a year after moving to new headquarters, the Times streamlined its makeup, inaugurating a typography which won the Ayer Cup for excellence. By 1944 the newspaper had a circulation of 320,000 daily and 615,000 Sunday copies.

Perhaps Chandler's most important journalistic achievement was his use of the press to boost the qualities of Southern California. His father-in-law had formed the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in 1888, and Chandler helped plan the first of the promotional "Midwinter" editions of the Times which were sent annually to persons in the central states. Thousands of Midwesterners, wrote one observer, "amid bitter cold and high snowdrifts, eagerly absorbed the contents of these alluring pages and resolved someday to make California their home" (Ford, pp. 35-36). The Times seldom printed anything negative about Los Angeles, but frequently mentioned the rain, hail, tornadoes, dust, and snowstorms of Eastern weather. In 1921, the year Chandler organized the All-Year Club of Southern California to promote summer tourism, the city's Realty Board voted him "Los Angeles' Most Useful Citizen."

Chandler inherited from Otis a strong antipathy for organized labor. During the 1890's and early 1900's the Times engaged in a continual struggle, particularly with the typographers, to prevent the unionization of its plant. Partly as a result, the paper also campaigned for the open shop in all major industries in Southern California. Chandler helped organize the antiunion Merchants and Manufacturers Association, which for thirty years determined the economic and political policies championed by the city's business interests.

Shortly after 1 a.m. on Oct. 1, 1910, the Times building was blown up by a bomb tied to a gas main beneath the floor under Chandler's desk. Although he had already left the building, twenty employees, including his secretary, were killed. Chandler immediately denounced the bombing as the work of unionists, and the case drew national attention. In succeeding months, three union officials, including John J. McNamara, secretary-treasurer of the International Iron Workers, and his brother James, were arrested and charged with the crime. There followed a long series of negotiations in which defense attorney Clarence Darrow [Supp. 2] tried to save the lives of his clients by allowing them to confess and plead guilty. Chandler agreed to the arrangement since he realized the execution of the McNamaras might make them labor martyrs. Although details of the affair remain obscure, it seems clear that the McNamara confession prevented a Socialist from being elected mayor of Los Angeles, damaged the credibility of national union leaders, and helped preserve the open shop in Southern California.

One element in Chandler's success in avoiding unionization of the Times was the benevolent employment practices he followed. He paid higher wages than going union rates, seldom discharged loyal employees, and rewarded seniority. The Times was the first newspaper in the country to establish a personnel department and one of the first to adopt a forty-hour work week; and in the early 1920's the paper established a group insurance plan paid for by the company.

Chandler disliked public appearances and speechmaking and many times refused to run for office, but he devoted much of his time to political affairs. For many years he was the acknowledged leader of Southern California's conservative Republicans. Many political candidates were chosen in his office; he was sometimes called the "Governor of Southern California." Chandler's sincere, homespun manner made him few personal enemies, but he did have political opponents. A strong lifelong antipathy existed between Chandler and Hiram Johnson [Supp. 3], leader of the progressive wing of the state's Republican party. Some observers believe that their feud contributed to Charles Evans Hughes's loss of California, and thus of the presidential race, in 1916. Chandler opposed Woodrow Wilson, but supported the League of Nations. Other political foes included Upton Sinclair, who muckraked the Times and was in turn harshly attacked by Chandler when Sinclair ran for governor in 1934; Democratic governor Culbert Olson (1939-43); and Fletcher Bowron, mayor of Los Angeles (1938-53). Chandler was frequently criticized by other city newspapers, particularly the Express, the Daily News, and those owned by William Randolph Hearst. But during the depression he won Hearst's gratitude by assuming the mortgage on his estate at San Simeon.

The 1920's were Chandler's happiest years, for he was an acquaintance of both Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge and a close friend of Herbert Hoover. Chandler promoted good will with Mexico and frequently played host to Mexican government officials; he is credited with persuading Harding to extend diplomatic recognition to the Obregón regime in 1923. The Times opposed the building of Boulder Dam on the Colorado River and consistently fought any measures providing for public ownership of utilities or transportation. Chandler turned down a number of federal appointments but accepted Hoover's nomination in late 1929 to the National Business Survey Conference, a group of twenty business leaders appointed to examine the emergency economic situation caused by the stock market crash. During the 1930's Chandler was a constant critic of the New Deal. In 1936 the Times praised Los Angeles police for turning away unemployed migrants at the California border.

Chandler pioneered in many of his city's commercial and cultural developments. He campaigned vigorously for the establishment of a Union railway station and a historical plaza at Olvera Street, which became civic landmarks. In 1922 he helped organize a $30,000,000 steamship company to purchase the government's Pacific shipping fleet, as well as the Central Investment Corporation which built the prestigious Biltmore Hotel. That year, too, he began the area's first commercial radio station, KHJ, which he sold in 1929 after an open-shop dispute. To prevent San Francisco from becoming the coastal airmail center, he organized Western Air Lines, the nation's oldest carrier, which won its first airmail contract in 1925. He also helped Donald Douglas attract capital to Southern California's fledgling aircraft industry. Chandler was instrumental in obtaining the financial backing to convert Throop College of Technology in Pasadena into the California Institute of Technology, of which he was a trustee from 1919 to 1943. For some years he was also a trustee of Stanford University.

At six feet two, Chandler was a big man, and many stories were told of his prowess in delivering papers, tussling with unionists, or pitching hay on one of his many ranches. A Congregationalist in religion, he abstained from alcohol, lived frugally, and commuted by foot whenever possible. His favorite charity was the Salvation Army. He was an indefatigable worker and forthright in his editorial positions. For his comments on the court decisions in certain labor cases still in process of appeal, he was found guilty in 1938 on two counts of contempt of court. His conviction was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 1941--a landmark decision for freedom of the press. For their role in the decision, Chandler and the Times won their first Pulitzer Prize.

By the early 1940's three of Chandler's children had become active in various departments of the Times. He relinquished his position as president and publisher to his son Norman in 1941, but remained active as chairman of the board of the Times-Mirror Company. Three years later, at the age of eighty, he died of a coronary thrombosis in Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.

text by Judson A. Grenier, "Harry Chandler."Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 3: 1941-1945. American Council of Learned Societies, 1973. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2005. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC

Harry Chandler

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