Rivers in the Desert

by Margaret L Davis

  As Mulholland continued to speak, occasionally veering the conversation to seemingly inconsequential subjects to relieve the emotional pressure, Taylor had no doubt that he was indeed facing the man who possessed all the sustaining qualities needed to complete the momentous undertaking. He knew that to the admiring citizens of Los Angeles, the Chief’s personage bordered upon fable.

  “The aqueduct’s so damn big there’s nothing in the ordinary mind to measure it by, unless you stand it up to old Bill Mulholland,” proclaimed the Times for an admiring audience. Critics who wrote that “to try and tame the desert and attempt to build a concrete-steel river stretching hundreds of miles across the most unforgiving desert in North America was beyond self grandiosement—it was insanity,” were squelched in editorials replying “Well, then, maybe he’s crazy alright, but by God, he’ll get the job done.”

  Studying the worried, tanned face with its field-marshal mustache, Taylor knew that much of Mulholland’s success came not only from his dogged determination, but also from his remarkable ability to solve problems in the field. In his trips up and down the line, Taylor had listened to the many anecdotes of Mulholland’s astounding memory told by admiring men who had witnessed it firsthand. Taylor remembered the articles written by Times reporter Allen Kelly, who covered news of the aqueduct. “I have been struck by the fact that he carries his data in his head rather than in note books. I never saw him make a note or refer to a note, yet at any point in the whole 233 miles he could show just where the line was located and tell the exact elevation as rapidly as a man can tell his own name and age.” A statement by one of his engineers that “the Chief would rather get a shovelful of muck out of a tunnel than analyze all the cost data on the job” was widely repeated along the line.

  Like a good general, he did not supervise, but directed and spent every waking moment he could next to his men, in the field. When faced with a thorny construction problem, he’d squat down and draw the solution in the dirt and move on, leaving others to work out the specifics. The Chief was, by his own account, “a practical man and a man of action who just liked to get things done.” So far he had created a dedicated army of more than 3,500 diverse laborers which would eventually grow to more than 5,000. The army, armed with thirteen mammoth steam shovels, the shovels doing in a single day the work of 150 men, together with two dredges and a giant excavator, was advancing determinedly across 200 miles of desert. At the end of every twenty-four hours, the Chief and his aides without fail chalked up the aqueduct’s progress, no matter how great or small, and set a new goal for the next day’s labor. Remarkably, the excavation was progressing at four steady miles per month.

  However, Taylor also knew of the conflicting perceptions of the Chief by the disgruntled among the ranks, who said that he was a harsh taskmaster, feared and admired alike, riding up and down the line like Genghis Khan on horseback, exhorting and driving his men on unmercifully, demanding that his engineers push the overworked brigades of dusty workers to do even better, and aim for five miles per month.

  A story published in one tabloid underscored to many critics of the aqueduct Mulholland’s obsession with keeping the project on time and on budget: when a tunnel worker, trapped in a cave-in, was kept alive by hard-boiled eggs rolled to him through an open pipe until he was rescued, Mulholland supposedly suggested dryly that the worker be charged board during the full time of his unplanned stay.

  Now, listening to Mulholland quietly voicing his fears and hopes for the trapped men, Taylor found the accusations difficult to believe. For every negative story Taylor had heard, dozens more surfaced, telling of a caring leader who after dinner loved nothing more than to sit and joke with his crew crowded around him, relating ribald tales of his early adventures as a sailor and as a zanjero in early Los Angeles; of a leader who took a keen interest in the young engineers, encouraging them to bring their families to the line to live in the small cottages provided for them in the camps, knowing that a man who had a family to go to at night made a better worker and person. He enjoyed visiting them and immersing himself in the atmosphere of family life, roughhousing with children, assuming the role of godfather by handing out advice ranging from the correct method of changing diapers to the books that should be included in the children’s education, and by constructing tented little red schoolhouses and providing teachers.

  Whether tyrant or benevolent general, Taylor was aware the Chief’s professional reputation was at stake and that upon his shoulders would rest the sole responsibility for the success of the enterprise. Any serious error of judgment would end his career, and the city’s coffers would be emptied. The human challenge combined with the risk of utter failure made Mulholland’s progress from now until the completion of the aqueduct the most important continuous news story in the West, and as such, Mulholland and his men were barraged with a constant trickle of newsmen and photographers covering every inch of the construction.

  As the two men moved to camp chairs to sit, shouting was heard at the mouth of the tunnel. The workers and comrades of the trapped men were jumping up and down, shouting. John Gray and the last of his trapped crew emerged, alive and covered in muck.

  Mulholland and Taylor rushed to them; Mulholland greeted his old friend with a slap on the back and embraced him. John O’Shea approached the imposing Mulholland. “It was the last Hail Mary that did it, Chief,” he said, beaming a broad, toothless smile.

  The spirituality of the moment was not lost on Taylor, as he recalled his readings of the prophet Muhammad. When he was asked what was the greatest act of charity a man could do, the son of the desert replied, “To bring water to men.” Mulholland and his men, Taylor knew, were prepared to do so even at the risk of their own lives.

  Gray, unharmed save for minor cuts on his face and hands, refused treatment from Dr. Taylor, and was back on the line the following morning at six o’clock, discussing with Mulholland his strategy for beating W. C. Aston and the south-end crew.

  FEEDING THE ARMY of workers was a challenge that didn’t go unheralded. The Los Angeles Times described the meat service:

  Three times a day the distant clank of the cook’s triangle summoned the men to meals, and crews of tunnel stiffs, muckers, drillers and mechanics would stream happily and hungrily into the mess tents in answer to the call. Smiling eager young kitchen helpers, aspiring to enter the construction trade themselves, white starched aprons rolled around viands their waists, scurried from the kitchen with heavy steel pots of the choicest cut beef and plates of tasty viands

  The fare for these hearty deserving souls was indeed fit for a King of the Realm. To start off their work day, they are greeted with breakfasts of steaming oatmeal mush, stewed fruits, thick sirloin steaks, scrambled eggs and bacon, fried potatoes, milk toast, hot biscuits, hot cakes, and coffee. After their taxing but rewarding day of labor, offered up for the choosing are rib sticking dinners of cream tomato soup, fricasseed veal, roast beef, baked beans, celery in cream, mashed potatoes, German salad, corn fritters, meat pie, cold ham, cold roast beef, combination salad, fried potatoes, spaghetti, stewed prunes, pudding, apricot pie, cake, coffee and tea. Freshly starched blue linen table cloths and napkins complete the picture.

  Eating at a ravenous pace, shouting good-naturedly, playfully swiping food off each other’s plates, mischievously rapping one another on the head with soup spoons and ladles, letting off the pressure of the day, the happy din [of] their hearty comradery threatened to raise the tented roof of the eating hall. Full and contented, ready for a night of healthful slumber in their comfortable living quarters, the men left after a steward at the door marked their evening meal ticket.

  In the engineer’s mess hall section, where liquor was allowed, the evening meal was usually followed with a gentlemanly round of “rotgut-in-a-jug whiskey,” chased with beer or soda. Here the evening typically ended with a visit to the camp’s drafting room where the maps and blueprints were housed and discussions never wandered far from exciting talk of the
enterprise that had brought them all to the desert—Bill Mulholland’s “Big Ditch.”

  At first, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, the quality of food at the aqueduct camps was unquestionably superb, and food contractor Joe “D. J.” Desmond knocked himself out putting his best foot forward. Besides the sumptuous meals, newspapermen and dignitaries found the dining halls to be clean and the kitchens free of pests.

  Within weeks of obtaining his contract in 1908 with the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, which he won due to his skilled relief efforts in feeding thousands after the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, Desmond had established thirty-one cooking camps along the aqueduct line, charging each worker twenty-five cents a meal. He built three slaughterhouses with which to supply the kitchens, and set up canteens at each camp to sell tobacco, clothing, and other items.

  Enthusiastic and conscientious, Desmond raced from camp to camp, overseeing his extensive enterprise in his chauffeur-driven limousine; but desert heat and lack of refrigeration made the food increasingly bad in proportion to the distance from Los Angeles, and the thirty-three-year-old youngest son of the founder of the Desmond clothing store chain had trouble living up to the standards of his exalted service.

  In Desmond’s defense, his driver Laurence Knapp years later summed up the problem:

  Joe was a hell of a guy. Maybe the meals didn’t suit everybody, but they were always the best he could do. If you ever want to try to feed fresh meat to 5,000 men in the desert, with the temperatures from 100 up and no refrigeration, and men scattered over 200 miles, you just go ahead.

  Meat spoiled, bread became infested, and most of the fare was restricted to simple imperishables. More than once, workers were driven to riot by the rotten grub. Tables were kicked over and food thrown on the floor, mess tents were torn down, and the cooks chased out of camp. And more than once, Desmond was warned by aqueduct officials that the business might be taken from him.

  Compounding his own problem, Joe Desmond, apparently lacking in the basic subtleties of human nature, made the mistake of arriving at the camp kitchen at Sand Canyon in his shiny new black Mitchell limousine, and the men, already at the boiling point over the quality of the “sin-awful grub,” whipped themselves into a frenzy of incrimination. When Dr. Taylor, just a few minutes later, arrived on his evening rounds, a full-scale riot over the food was taking place and the mess hall exploded before his very eyes. The men were busting the place up, throwing plates and bowls through the windows.

  Desmond rolled down the window of the Mitchell and motioned for Taylor, who quickly got out of his Franklin automobile and ran over to Desmond and slid in the backseat of the Mitchell beside him.

  “What the hell do they expect in Los Angeles?” Desmond said angrily. “These men are damn animals. Let ‘em come up here and try and feed ‘em!”

  Taylor looked at the rioters in dismay and at Desmond in disgust. He knew he’d have to remain on the scene to stitch the men up after they had cooled down, but right now it would be foolhardy to try to stop them.

  “You’re pushing your luck,” said Taylor.

  Suddenly Taylor and Desmond heard shouting from behind them. They looked back to see the camp’s shift boss, Big George Watson, accompanied by a group of men, running past them towards the mess hall, yelling at the rioters to stop. Inside the mess hall, Big George grabbed a metal-frame camp chair in each beefy hand and ordered the rioters to stop their “fussin’ or else!” A six-foot-three, 240-pound tunneler, “hard as nails,” Big George swung one of the chairs and knocked two men who advanced toward him to the ground, and then swung the other chair and knocked down two more.

  “C’mon you sons o’ bitches. I’ll take care of you all,” he growled.

  In a panic the men jammed the doorway to get out of the mess hall as fast as they could.

  Again Taylor looked at Desmond in disgust. In his mind’s eye, Taylor was already counting the lacerations and broken bones he’d have to treat.

  A few of the rioters rushed to the Mitchell and started pelting it with food, shouting obscenities.

  Desmond ordered his driver to take off, and the limousine sped away. One mile from camp Desmond ordered his driver to stop. Desmond leaned back into the seat, exhausted, and Taylor started castigating Desmond about the food. For the past six months, the food had created an avalanche of protest up and down the line. In front of one camp eating house, a sign read DON’T MAKE FUN OF THE BUTTER—YOU’LL BE OLD AND SMELLY YOURSELF SOME DAY.

  Desmond’s ambitious efforts in the desert were in part an attempt to prove to his successful family that he too could turn a profit. But the inexperienced scion had failed to account for inflation in his contract, and by January 1910, Desmond’s operation was in the red thousands of dollars. He then successfully renegotiated his contract to raise the price of meals to thirty cents.

  Again turning a handsome profit, Desmond had purchased the expensive Mitchell, a “practically perfect automobile.” The big, powerful Mitchell could drive from Los Angeles to Mojave in two days, but the “perfect” axle broke four times. The big car was an eyesore in the primitive wilderness of the gritty desert, and to a short-staker sore about the grub, the very sight of the Mitchell was worthy of contempt.

  Desmond’s renewed financial stability, however, did not solve his problems. Without refrigeration, Desmond had to create makeshift techniques for cooling. He would slaughter beef in Mojave and then transport it after dark to the camps by automobile. It would take two full days to reach the most distant camps up the line, and by then of course, the meat was almost always spoiled. Without ice, meat and vegetables spoiled quickly. Weevils were found in the bread, worms in the sugar, and flies “encrusted in pies.” The men complained about the “embalmed beef” and the “piss bitter coffee.” One disgruntled worker presented to the Los Angeles Herald a photograph of bloated flies infesting an aqueduct livestock feed yard. Unable to resist, the Heraldprinted it in the Sunday edition, initiating unmerciful attacks by the press.

  However, Fortune smiled on Desmond the profiteer. His slaughterhouses did not fall within the jurisdiction of interstate commerce, and so were never inspected by the federal government. The substandard quality of the beef continued, prompting a worker to comment that Desmond’s unrefrigerated meat was “so full of holes from the maggots it looked like a lace curtain.”

  Two enterprising Frenchmen set up an eating house near Cinco that gave some of the men the opportunity to rejuvenate their poor stomachs. It was an instant success and when the men threatened they would buy their grub there, Desmond managed to convince aqueduct officials to issue orders prohibiting the workers from eating outside the camp. One group of workers retained Los Angeles attorney Olney S. Williams to file a lawsuit against the city over the quality of the aqueduct food, which stirred up considerable fuss and much publicity.

  Mulholland steadfastly ignored the complaints about Desmond’s food, believing that the city itself could scarcely do better in feeding thousands of men in the desert heat without ice or refrigeration. “The first three or four years of the work I boarded at the same camps with the men and never asked for a specially prepared meal,” Mulholland informed the city council. “In all cases the average meals were good,” adding that the widespread criticism directed at Desmond was unjust. “Our critics are those who haven’t eaten three meals at the camp.… I never found Mr. Desmond unwilling to improve the mess when I suggested it,” he said.

  In the stormy course of his career, Mulholland was called many things, but never a gourmand. Although he knew the quality of the camp food would never change, he often, in the early years of the construction, complained the loudest about it to placate his men. But when it came to protecting the interests of his aqueduct, he was resolute. After his soul-hardening years as a seaman and working in the field, the food was more than adequate to Mulholland’s taste. As long as he had his well-cooked meat and boiled potatoes, he was satisfied.

  As a result of Mulh
olland’s defense of the food, the situation went from bad to worse, and Desmond found himself the object of continued abuse from the workers, even from his own kitchen help. Cooking over coal ranges with temperatures rising to 120 degrees, flies everywhere, the conditions chipped away at the cooks’ patience, with some walking off the job. Tempers flaring, the kitchen help often drank and fought among themselves; the hapless Dr. Taylor had to stitch them up and send them back to their bunk houses to sleep it off.

  As significant as the food complaints seemed, they triggered a far more serious group of setbacks for the chief engineer. Within two weeks of the Desmond food price hikes, in November 1910, seven hundred men walked off the job at the Elizabeth Tunnel. Ever fearful of losing the edge he had over Aston to reach the center mark, when John Gray learned of the strike he ran to the camp office and rang up Mulholland, who was thirty miles away at the Jawbone division.

  “The goddamn socialists are shutting us down!” he bellowed to Mulholland on the telephone and implored him to do something. Hanging up, Gray ran back to the tunnel and frantically tried to enlist men to break the strike.

  Mulholland arrived at the Elizabeth Tunnel the following day. Much to John Gray’s dismay, Mulholland did not seem worried. Since construction had begun, the unions and now the WFM (Western Federation of Miners) had made frequent attempts to unionize the workers. Although some men had joined the union line, most of them up to now were reluctant to get involved in the labor movement. For the times, they earned top wages, especially those who competed in the bonus system, and according to one observer, the only legitimate complaint remained Desmond’s food.

  But this time when Mulholland drew a hard line and refused to discuss any pay increases to cover meal hikes, demanding that the workers return immediately, the metal workers and steam-shovel operators joined the WFM miners already on the picket line. After his gang of muckers joined the strikers in sympathy, John Gray stood in the tunnel alone, shoveling dirt and cussing. His only consolation was that Aston’s team in the south portal had been shut down as well. Instead of sitting idly by, Gray stayed in the tunnel day after day, picking away at the granite.