Book Description

In 1881, Los Angeles was a rough, frontier community more in touch with the past than the future. The city had two dailies, the Herald and the Express, and the founding of the Times drew only modest attention. Then, in 1882, Harrison Gray Otis launched a formal column, LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE. Hundreds of letter writers used the column to call attention to the matters they thought should be the immediate concern of all Angelenos. While historians have recorded the euphoria of skyrocketing real estate prices, mass migration from the east, the Americanization of the city, and the growth of specific industries and institutions, life in Los Angeles can only be fully understood by examining the concerns of its citizens. The topics discussed reveal a Los Angeles that was occupied with concerns that still divide us today: education, crime, unequal justice, immigration, the treatment of minorities, women's rights, health care, transit, water, the river, lack of infrastructure, and government's negative effect on the business climate. Derived from more than 2,000 letters to the editor, LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE is an in-depth anthology supplemented with much historical data about the writers and events that shaped early Los Angeles on the eve of its explosive growth.