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A Sampling of What We Offer in Each Issue of

Western States Jewish History

1. Going a Few Rounds with Abe the Newsboy

2. Emil Harris, the First Police Chief of Los Angeles

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Going a Few Rounds with "Abe the Newsboy,"

Abraham Hollandersky,

1887 - 1966

by Abraham Hoffman

In September 1906 the presidential yacht USS Mayflower arrived in New London, Connecticut, a seaport town whose harbor included U.S. Navy facilities. Aboard the yacht were President Theodore Roosevelt and a number of high-ranking officers and officials, including Secretary of the Navy Charles J. Bonaparte, Admiral Robley "Fighting Bob" Evans, and several Secret Service bodyguards. Edith Roosevelt, the President’s wife, and Cornelius Vanderbilt were also in the party. Roosevelt and Evans had come to New London to review Navy maneuvers. 1

Roosevelt was standing on the starboard side of the yacht’s quarter-deck when a young man carrying a stack of newspapers approached him. The incident that followed has at least three different versions. The first one is told by Abraham Hollandersky, the young newspaper vendor, in his autobiography, The Life Story of Abe the Newsboy. He had been granted permission to come aboard to "sell the President a paper." Roosevelt bought a newspaper and then, noticing that Hollandersky had a cauliflower ear, without warning grabbed the newsboy’s ear and asked, "Where did you get that cauliflower?"

Hollanderskey replied, "I got it this way," ducked under Roosevelt’s guard, "and gave him a little poke in the ribs. It was a pretty good sock at that. It made him grunt and cover up. And that’s when the secret service men rushed me." 2

The second verson is found in The Jewish Boxer’s Hall of Fame, by Ken Blady, and the review of the book, written by Sam Orbaum "Introduced to the old ‘Rough Rider,’ Abe told President Roosevelt of his admiration for the Navy. In his younger days a fair boxer himself, Roosevelt expressed amazement at the pugnaciousness of the 18 year old runt and grabbed him by his mangled ears. Roosevelt allegedly teased him by saying that lots of people believe ‘a Jew won’t fight.’ Enraged, Abe promptly pummeled the president in the ribs." 3

There are several problems with these two versions, especially the second one. Hollandersky leaves out crucial details in his autobiography. Would Hollandersky, a professional boxer, hit the President without a fair warning? Was the "little poke" intended, but resulted in an unintentional "pretty good sock"? We don’t know. The second version has a number of errors. Roosevelt, age 46 in 1906, was hardly an "old Rough Rider," as the Spanish-American War of 1898 was still a recent memory. Hollandersky omits any mention of his being Jewish. The idea that Roosevelt would make such an anti-Semitic remark strains credibility. He was about to nominate Attorney General William H. Moody to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the process shuffling his Cabinet somewhat. Secretary of the Navy Bonaparte would replace Moody as Attorney General, and Victor Metcalf, the secretary of commerce and labor, would be the new secretary of the navy. In his place Roosevelt would appoint Oscar Straus as secretary of commerce and labor, the first Jew ever to hold a Cabinet position. Roosevelt knew Jews could fight; several had served with him in the Rough Riders regiment. And Hollandersky’s poke in the ribs, even if it was "a pretty good sock," isn’t the same as "pummeling."

I would offer a third version in which Roosevelt asked if Hollandersky was a boxer. Hollandersky would have said he was, whereupon Roosevelt would have assumed a boxer’s stance and challenged the newsboy to a little sparring session. Although this is conjectural, it is consistent with Roosevelt’s background as an amateur boxer. The story of Roosevelt’s poor health is well known, as is his adoption of an exercise regimen to build himself up. At Harvard Roosevelt was on the boxing team and acknowledged a fierce pugilist. As a freshman New York state assemblyman, he learned that "Big John" McManus, a Tammany Hall thug, was planning to haze him. Roosevelt took preemptive action by confronting McManus and saying, "By God! McManus, I know you are going to toss me in a blanket. By God! If you try anything like that, I’ll kick you, I’ll bite you, I’ll kick you in the balls. I’ll do anything to you—you’d better leave me alone." McManus backed off. 4

On another occasion, when political rivals hired a bully to beat up Roosevelt, it was Roosevelt who punched the bully senseless. A few years later, Roosevelt clobbered a drunken ruffian in a saloon after the man threatened him with a gun. As governor of New York, Roosevelt hired Mike Donovan, a former lightweight champion, as his sparring partner. Roosevelt requested that Donovan not pull his punches. They exchanged some fierce blows, and Donovan recalled "that the Governor was no ordinary amateur. If I took chances with him, I was endangering my reputation." 5

Roosevelt recalled in his autobiography that as a New York police commissioner he once had to deal with an anti-Semitic preacher from Germany who came to New York City to preach an anti-Jewish crusade. Jewish community leaders asked Roosevelt not to provide police protection, but he had a better idea. He assigned a Jewish sergeant and around forty Jewish policemen to the anti-Semite’s security detail. "It was the most effective possible answer," he recalled. 6

Given Roosevelt’s pugnacity, it is reasonable to assume that he offered a challenge to Hollandersky and that the newsboy did not cold-cock or "pummel" him. The Secret Service men immediately grabbed Hollandersky, but Roosevelt waved them away. The President of the United States and the newsboy then had an amiable conversation and became fast friends. Hollandersky told him that selling newspapers provided the basic income to help out his parents, and his route included visiting U.S. Navy vessels in New London harbor. Roosevelt had an idea. On returning to Washington, D.C, he asked Admiral Evans to create the position of official Newsboy of the Navy for Hollandersky. The lifetime job (which came with no salary) gave Hollandersky "the right and privilege to go anywhere in the world on U.S. Naval vessels and sell papers." 7

For Abraham Hollandersky, newsboy and prizefighter, his encounter with President Theodore Roosevelt was a defining moment that forever changed his life. President Roosevelt in 1906 had no idea how long the lifetime position would be, nor of the use that Hollandersky would make of Roosevelt’s authorization. For the next sixty years, Abe the Newsboy would become a U.S. Navy legend.

Round One: Early Life

Abraham Hollandersky was born on December 3, 1887, in the village of Berznick, in the province of Suvalk, Russia. The Hollandersky family struggled to survive under desperately poor circumstances. Four older siblings, two boys and two girls, died in infancy. Abe’s father, Charles, was a tailor, one of the few trades permitted Jews in tsarist Russia. When in 1893 the district police threatened to imprison non-owners of land, the notice left few options for Jews who were not allowed to own land. Abe’s father had a brother living in New London, Connecticut, and the brother invited Charles to join him there. Abe’s father saved enough money to make the trip, but soon the family received tragic news from America: Abe’s father had gone blind. There was only enough money for Charles’s wife Celia and her two sons, Abe and Sol, to travel as far as Manchester, England. On the way there the money ran out and Sol had to be left with a Jewish agency in Germany. When Abe and his mother arrived in Manchester, he left whatever remained of his childhood and went to work at the only job available, selling newspapers. He was five years old. His mother worked in the Manchester mills. It took about a year to retrieve Sol, cross the ocean to New London, and reunite with Charles. 8

Abe’s public school education lasted exactly one day. He quarreled with another student and caused a disturbance, so the teacher expelled him. At age six he hit the streets, selling newspapers, doing his part to bring in money to support the family. When he was about seven or eight years old a naval officer bought a paper from him, and Abe asked if he was the captain of a ship. Abe recalled, "I was thinking of the captain on the ship that I had come over from England on." The officer looked at the cross-eyed boy—an eye defect resulting from malnutrition in Russia—and took a liking to him. He asked if Abe would like to sell newspapers on the ships in the harbor. He could get five cents each for them. The price of a newspaper in town was a penny, but sailors unable to leave the ship were willing to pay a nickel to get the newspaper, a prime source of information at the time. Four cents a paper offered a significant profit for Abe. The officer (unfortunately unnamed by Hollandersky in his autobiography) told Abe to meet him at the dock at 4 p.m.

When Abe told his fellow newsboys about the opportunity, they didn’t believe him. He reacted to their ridicule by putting down his papers and putting up his fists. The other boy was bigger than Abe, and amid the scratching and slugging, Abe’s shirt was torn. "That shirt cost twenty cents, and I had a blind father. Oi yoi!" he lamented.

The officer came to the rescue, picked up the newspapers, and took Abe to a nearby hotel where he could wash the dirt and blood off. The officer then took him to a waiting launch and, to the amazement of the other newsies, off they went to the warships where sailors were waiting to pay a nickel for a penny paper. 9

Round Two: Day Job—Newsboy, Night Job—Boxer

For the next eight or nine years, until Abe was about seventeen years old, he helped his family by selling newspapers. However, in his spare time he learned scientific boxing at the YMCA, and it seems likely that the sailors who got to know him gave him some boxing tips. At about age seventeen Abe began frequenting the fight clubs in New York City, fighting for medals rather than money. Prize-fighting was intermittently legal in New York State in the early 20th century as laws legalizing it would be repealed. One way to get around the ban was to box in private clubs. It was apparently at this time that Abe earned his cauliflower ears. Abe did not confine his athletic ability to boxing. He also learned how to wrestle—not the fake entertainment of today, but real wrestling—and during his career he had 387 wrestling matches, winning the world’s welterweight wrestling title in 1907. Abe recalled that one match, held at Miner’s Bowery Theatre in New York, lasted five hours and eighteen minutes. His take was seven dollars. 10

In order to earn money to help his family, Abe was willing to wrestle or box not only humans, but also animals. While in New York he saw a sign outside Huber’s Museum on 14th Street, offering a dollar a minute to anyone that would wrestle the "Wrestling Bear." To Abe, "a dollar a minute looked like fast money to me, as I had to sell papers all day to make a dollar or less. I went in and arranged with the management to wrestle the beast at the afternoon performance." Huber’s Museum was a dime museum featuring a variety of programs, from vaudeville to exotic oddities. It operated from 1888 to 1910, so Abe’s bear bout probably occurred around 1905 (Abe didn’t give a date in his autobiography).

Abe went to Tom Sharkey’s saloon and asked the former heavyweight boxer to referee the bout. Tom tried to discourage him but finally agreed to do so. When Abe arrived at the theater, the manager dressed him in a heavy canvas coat as protection against the bear’s claws. The bear wore a muzzle, but the way its long, flat pink tongue licked around the muzzle made Abe "feel creepy."

Rather incredibly, before the match began the stage manager recited a poem by Rudyard Kipling, "The Beast that Walks Like a Man," in which a hunter meets an unfortunate fate when confronted by a bear. "I didn’t know they opened a bear fight with poetry," he recalled. "And I’ve never had any use for poetry since." No doubt Abe didn’t appreciate the line, "From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!" 11

The bear’s name was Custer, but Abe feared it might well be his own last stand. Man and bear sparred a bit, then Abe dived for the bear’s legs to trip up the animal. The bear put a paw on Abe’s head and pushed down, hard. Abe wriggled free, and as Custer tried to shove Abe’s head down again, Abe gave up on wrestling and landed a solid punch on the bear’s face. The bear rolled off the stage onto a $150 bass viol before kicking holes in a grand piano. Amid the pandemonium Sharkey tried to get Abe to leave, but Abe refused until he was paid. The bout had lasted only a minute, and Abe wanted his dollar. The manager refused to pay him, claiming that Abe (not the bear) had destroyed $200 worth of property. Abe insisted on getting the dollar, and got it before he left the theater. 12

Hollandersky also fought a boxing kangaroo. This event occurred in Australia. He was offered $100 for every round in which the kangaroo didn’t knock him down. Abe figured the kangaroo’s arms were quite short so it would be easy going. "But the kangaroo was smart," recalled Abe. "He hit me a kidney punch with his tail and knocked me clear out of the ring. They had to help me get up. Oh, boy!" Another non-boxing opportunity came when Abe was in Santiago, Chile. A troupe of Japanese Jiu Jitsu champions put out an offer of $500 to anyone who could last five rounds. Technically, Abe could lose his amateur standing if he was paid for a fight, but these were challenges, and he rationalized that accepting a challenge wasn’t the same as the money earned in a prize fight. Abe worked out an agreement with the manager of the troupe in which one round would be American style, a second Japanese style, and a third chosen by the quickest winner of the first two rounds. Instead of the $500 prize, Abe and the Japanese would have a $200 side bet.

Abe won the coin toss and chose the Japanese Jiu Jitsu style. He knew something about the sport, having had some instruction when in New York. The match would take place on a bare wooden floor, and Abe had to dress in a felt coat and trousers, plus a felt belt. When the first round began Abe and the Japanese spent some considerable time running around the makeshift arena. Abe knew the Japanese outmatched him, and that once they grappled, he could lose the round. So they bumped against each other, banging into the scenery on the stage, even bashing into the front row. The Japanese finally caught Abe and put a choke hold on him, and he had to admit defeat for the first round, which had gone sixteen minutes. Abe succeeded in the second-round, catch-as-catch can, winning in fourteen minutes. This meant that Abe could choose the style for the final round, and he chose American style. Abe defeated the Japanese in six minutes, an upset victory that awarded him the $200 side bet and the house winner’s percentage of sixty percent. Abe sent some of the money to his parents to help with the payments on a house they had bought. 13

These exotic contests made for colorful anecdotes, and Hollandersky enjoyed relating them in his autobiography. But by 1912 his boxing exhibitions had educated him to the point where he could compete as a prizefighter. By day he sold papers; but at night he fought for prize money. A century after Abe entered the fight game, the idea of Jewish boxers seems odd to the image of an American Jewish middle-class population heavily represented in such professions as law, education, medicine, and the arts.

The fact is that the sons of Jewish immigrants were no different than the sons of other immigrant ethnicities; prizefighting offered a way out of the tenements, quick access to money and what it could buy. Novelist Philip Roth captured the essence of Jewish boxing in the early twentieth century in a statement his father made to him at age 86, reflecting on the immigrant neighborhoods. "You know how it was: these kids grew up, they had a tough life, the slums, no money, and they always had an adversary," recalled Herman Roth in 1988. "They fought two battles. They fought because they were fighters, and they fought because they were Jews. They’d put two guys in the ring, an Italian and a Jew, an Irishman and a Jew, and they fought like they meant it; they fought to hurt. There was always a certain amount of hatred in it. Trying to show who was superior."14

Abe came by his nickname because of his daytime job; it was a natural fit. Other Jewish boxers took on appellations that described what they did or what was felt might give an opponent pause. There was Leach Cross (Louis Wallach), the "Fighting Dentist;" Battling Levinsky (Barney Lebrovitz); Jackie Fields (Jacob Finkelstein); Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom; Al "The Bronx Beauty" Singer; Abe the "Little Hebrew" Axtell; Benny Leonard (Benjamin Leiner); Barnet Rosolfsky (Barney Ross); and Al McCoy (Albert Rudolph). Sportswriters generically referred to Jewish boxers as "Disciples of Mendoza," a tribute to Daniel Mendoza, Sephardic Jewish boxing champion in England from 1791 to 1795. Benny Leonard sported a Star of David on his trunks, as did Leach Cross, Battling Levinsky, and some other Jewish boxers. Non-Jewish boxers offered their own personalities—James J. Jeffries, the "Grizzly Bear of the West," Tony the "Punching Postman" Thornton, Jack Dempsey, the "Manassa Mauler", Luis Firpo, the "Wild Bull of the Pampas", Jimmy the "Baby-Faced Assassin" McLarnin, and, most recently, Roberto "Hands of Stone" Duran. 15

Most sources on Jewish boxers overlook Abe Hollandersky, possibly because he won his championship bouts in Panama, not the United States. When he is mentioned, there are errors as to his date of birth and the number of bouts he fought. The web site www.jewsinsports.org scrambles the number from the correct 1,039 to 1,309. Abe himself mistakenly put 1888 for the year he was born, an error that persisted through the editions of his autobiography. The correct birth date, as noted above, was December 3, 1887.16

Abe did not give the exact date in his autobiography when he switched from amateur status to professional boxer. His adventures in Australia, Chile, Panama, and other countries were made possible by his authorization from President Roosevelt to go aboard any U.S. Navy vessel as a passenger, ostensibly to sell newspapers, but utilized by Abe as a way to travel to faraway places. Abe made the most of this permission: his autobiography includes a photograph of his Liberty Card passes. More than 100 passes can be seen in the picture (1949 edition). The 1961 edition contains six pages that offer close-ups of the cards. The forty passes shown in these pages are from the USS Nevada, Pennsylvania, Utah, Nautilus, California, Oklahoma, Quincy, Marblehead, Chicago, Farragut, Dewey, and many more. Unfortunately, the Liberty Cards are not dated. The commander of the USS Dent scribbled on the pass that Abe "sold papers to Dad and I and is always welcome." 17

Despite Abe’s jumbling of childhood memories and trips to Latin American ports as a fighter (pp. 127-129 is a good example), he was definitely going to Panama by 1912 to fight for money. Abe mentions a President "Portos" who helped arrange a private exhibition ten-round fight. Although the list of Panamanian presidents does not include a President Portos, the president of Panama from 1912 to 1916 was Belisario Porras Barahona. Given Hollandersky’s functional illiteracy, he was almost certainly referring to President Porras, and the exhibition fight took place around 1912. At any rate, Abe knocked out his opponent in the fourth round and earned enough money to send $600 to his father in New London as the first payment on a house and lot there. A friend wrote the accompanying letter in which Hollandersky said, "I have got enough challenges from other Latin American countries to pay out. In Russia we were not allowed to own any land because we were Jews. In America I have become a champion and am defending the colors in every country down here, and I want you to own a bit of the soil under whose flag your son Abe is a champion and is knocking them for a goal." 18

It would be redundant to track all the fights in Abe’s career, especially those in Latin America, since his autobiography relates his wins, losses, and other experiences, including some amorous escapades. In his prime at 150 pounds, Abe fought as a welterweight, though on occasion he would take on much heavier opponents. He defeated Jack Ortega for the heavyweight championship of Panama on a foul in the 18th of 45 rounds. Ortega was almost fifty pounds heavier than Hollandersky. In a rematch, Abe won again, knocking Ortega out in the 19th of 45 rounds. Abe also fought in the middleweight range, losing on points in 25 rounds to Panama Joe Gans. When Abe fought Kid Norfolk (William Ward) on January 18, 1914, in Colon, he had spent three hours earlier in the day selling newspapers on the USS Minnesota. Abe put up a valiant fight, but he lost on points in fifteen of the 25 rounds. Despite the defeat, the audience cheered him for his sportsmanship. Kid Norfolk wanted to keep the boxing gloves as a souvenir, but Abe also wanted them and suggested an after-the-fight match to see who would get them. The Kid declined the offer, and Abe kept the gloves.19

In the course of his career Abe fought other boxers in a variety of venues. These included exhibitions and challenges in private clubs, amateur bouts, demonstrations on U.S. Navy ships for and with sailors, and prizefighting for a purse and/or a take at the box office. Many of these contests were for little or no money. Abe notes that on occasion he was cheated because he neglected to examine the little details of a boxing agreement. Nowhere in his autobiography does he mention having a manager, though he does say on occasion that someone was his trainer for a particular fight. Abe’s name does not appear on the web site for the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame because he never won a championship in the United States. This is an injustice that should be rectified, given Abe’s record of most fights by one person, his unusual career, and his support for the U.S. Navy in peace and war.20

Abe Hollandersky reckoned his boxing career as running from 1905 to 1926, a period that would include both his amateur and professional years. In 1926 Abe was 39 years old, and his boxing days were essentially over. He doesn’t mention his last few fights, but he acknowledges that the match he fought in Honolulu around 1926 really tired him out and that it was his last professional bout.. It is at that point that he settled on the West Coast, operating a newsstand in Long Beach where he could still sell newspapers to sailors on U.S. Navy ships. It also put him in proximity to Hollywood, where he would spend several enjoyable years in the movie business. 21

Round Three: Abe in the Movies

Abe Hollandersky was notoriously vague about his movie career as to exact dates. Having fought his last professional bout in Honolulu in 1926, he returned to the mainland for less strenuous work. He stopped off in San Francisco to see "my friend," Mayor James Rolph, who advised Abe to go to Hollywood and try out for the movies. He could sell papers when the fleet was in and chat up directors for bit parts in films. Abe thought this was a good idea. Directors were always on the lookout for men who looked like underworld characters, and boxers and wrestlers fit the role of hoodlums, thugs, gangsters, and all-around tough guys who could make a scene in a saloon, warehouse, or sports arena look more authentic. The cauliflower ears probably helped. "Of course, I don’t give Clark Gable any competition; but when they need a character for a seaport scene, boxing, or a ‘rough mug’ bit, I usually get a call," he wrote in his autobiography. "I can act without much making [sic] up on which saves the studios some money." 22

Academy award-winning screenwriter Budd Schulberg noted the connection between the Jews in the motion picture industry and Jewish prizefighters. "In Hollywood in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s we responded with unabashed ethnic pride to the exploits of our local Jewish champions," he said. "Mushy Callahan (Morris Scheer), Jackie Fields, Newsboy Brown, and Maxie Rosenbloom were not only sports heroes but personal friends." 23

Abe’s first foray into filmmaking followed on his visit to a casting director he had known back east. He was in luck; the studio needed an underworld character. The director told him he would get a call the following week, but Abe forgot about it, and went aboard Navy ships selling papers and magazines for the next two weeks. The casting director finally made contact with him and summoned him to the studio. The film’s director said Abe was too short. Abe exploded in mock despair: "I am too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work; I was too good for the welterweight division and not good enough for the heavyweights; I am too old to fight and too young for a pension; I have stayed too long in Los Angeles to be told I am too short for Hollywood. What do you expect of me, anyway?" 24

Abe was given high-heeled boots to increase his height, and he was told he would be playing a taxi driver (Abe doesn’t explain why a taxi driver would need high-heeled boots or would be too short if he were sitting in a cab for the scene). He waited until he was seated in the car to tell the director he didn’t know how to drive.

Despite this inauspicious beginning, Abe found employment in the movies, his outgoing personality making it easy to win friends among actors and actresses. "I have played with Wallace Beery, George Raft, Max Baer, Myrna Loy, Zasu Pitts, Monte Blue, Mary Astor, George O’Brien, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jack Dempsey, Mary Pickford, and a host of others," he recalled. "They’re all real folks, and good friends of Abe, the Newsboy. The bigger they are, the more human they are." 25

On occasion a film would include a scene where a foreign port or Navy vessels were in the background. Having traveled around the world courtesy of the U.S. Navy, Hollandersky found the errors in such scenes laughable, but he knew better than to correct the filmmakers. "After all, I got paid only for acting, and not directing. If they make a mistake in a movie, the public will probably not notice it anyway." 26

Hollandersky enjoyed meeting people, and it is difficult at this distance to judge just how well he knew the Hollywood stars he name-dropped. The Internet Movie Data Base has no listings for Abraham (or Abe) Hollandersky, which is not a surprise since he said he played bit parts that would go uncredited. Several photographs in his autobiography show him in scenes from Dressed to Kill, Across the Pacific, and Roadhouse Nights. The book also contains many autographed pictures of film stars from the 1920s-30s era, and enough of the inscriptions are of a personal nature to demonstrate that they knew him and enjoyed his company and friendship. Making movies is a hurry-up-and-wait business, and the actors and actresses who were "real folks" and not egocentric would have plenty of time to enjoy Abe’s stories about his adventures. 27

Round Four: Writing the Autobiography

Around the time that Abe began doing bit parts in motion pictures, he decided to tell the story of his life in book form. This would be a formidable project for someone who confessed to being functionally illiterate, but Abe proved equal to the task. While visiting New York he hired a secretary, rented a hotel room, and spent several days dictating his autobiography to her. She then typed up the manuscript. Back in Hollywood he told Bull Montana (a former professional wrestler who played feature roles in numerous films in the 1910s-1930s) about his problems finding a publisher. Montana told him to go back to New York and that he would give Abe a thousand dollars to subsidize the book. Abe turned down the generous offer, but later had second thoughts, recalling that "if I had taken his thousand dollars and put it into my book, as he advised, I would have got out the book that much quicker." 28

Abe had a different idea about how to raise the money. He sold advance notices of the book to his Navy friends, saving the money until he had enough to publish the book. The first edition came out in 1930. Abe called it The Life Story of Abe the Newsboy, Hero of a Thousand Fights. The publisher was the Abe the Newsboy Publishing Co. Abe took the profits from his book and used the money to reprint the book in successive editions. It cost him $12,000 to print the first edition. 29

The autobiography has all the advantages and disadvantages of a self-published book. The profit went directly to Abe instead of a commercial publisher who would have doled out a small royalty. As income permitted, he could print new editions, which he did, so that twenty-five editions were published by 1961. The second edition came out in 1936, to which Abe added another three chapters. Thereafter the book was reprinted almost yearly, and in 1943, 1949, and 1952 two editions were printed in each of those years. After the second edition was published in 1936 the text remained the same in subsequent editions. What changed were the photographs that Hollandersky added to his text. The location of the pictures in the book changed from one edition to the next, and since the pictures were included in the pagination, the page numbers were different even though the text was unchanged.

The lack of editing or index creates problems for readers. Abe essentially was telling stories to the secretary, and his recollections went into digressions that were chronologically out of sequence. Thus the bits and pieces of Abe’s early life must be dug out of the text as Abe thought about events. Most of the book is devoted to Abe’s boxing career, especially his bouts in Panama, South America, and the Caribbean. Abe spoke in the vernacular of the early 20th century, and some of his remarks are politically incorrect by today’s standards, though commonly used at the time.

Later editions of the book included more recent photographs of leading naval officers, and the number of famous admirals who personally inscribed messages to Abe is positively astounding. Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, Admirals Arleigh Burke, William Halsey, William D. Leahy, Chester W. Nimitz, Ernest J. King—the list seems endless. And they are not just "fan" photos. Many officers inscribed "to my old friend" or commented that they had known Abe since their days as midshipmen or ensigns—friendships that had endured for forty or more years. Abe was a familiar figure as he boarded ships in various harbors to sell newspapers, stage a boxing exhibition, or travel with the fleet to foreign lands. As the years passed he amassed a huge scrapbook of photographs, correspondence, and newspaper clippings. Another frustration: many of the newspaper stories are undated, as is the "Believe It or Not" cartoon in which Robert Ripley lauded Abe for "1043 [sic] battles." 30

Abe’s work as a newsboy never really ended. He recounted being present when the first U.S. Navy ships went through the Panama Canal, and he was on one of the ships, the USS Charleston. Abe took a thousand newspapers with him. Five hundred were stamped "This paper was bought by [sic] Abe, the Newsboy, on the Pacific Ocean" as the ship entered the canal from the Pacific side. Eight hours later, the Charleston passed through to the Atlantic side, and Abe sold the other five hundred papers. These were stamped, "This paper was sold by Abe on the same date, in the Atlantic Ocean." Abe recalled, "The boys bought me out because it took both papers to make the souvenir complete, one paper bought on the Atlantic and the other on the Pacific, the same day. That’s where I proved that I was the world’s greatest newsboy." 31

For the rest of his working career Abe sold his book as well as newspapers to the sailors of the U.S. Navy. He paid back the faith of the sailors who had ordered the book before its publication, and he paid back the Navy for its kindness to him by including dozens of photographs of ships, officers, enlisted men, chaplains, and interesting places. He dedicated the book to "my Dearest Friends, THE PRESIDENTS and OFFICERS AND MEN of the U.S. NAVY." High praise came from high places. From Admiral William D. Leahy came a handwritten letter, reproduced on p. 350 of the 13th edition in 1949:

Your true story of the progress of a poor and almost friendless newsboy through the years that made you a friend of many of our greatest statesmen and a friend of all the navy, is thrilling. I read it from cover to cover last night without stopping and closed it with a wish that the American youth of today would all be inspired with the high ideals of service, courage, fairness, and consideration for others, that throughout the years have guided you always forward to brighter days, more friends, and better effort. It should be an inspiration to them.

With expressions of regard believe me,

Most Sincerely,

　　　　William D. Leahy.

When Leahy wrote the letter he was Chief of Naval Operations, and he wrote it on March 26, 1930, a decade before he and other naval leaders would be put to the test of war. When World War II began, Abe would be ready to help the Navy out in his own inimitable way. But first he had to get married. 32

Round Five: Abe Falls in Love

It was while Abe was in Los Angeles in 1926 that he met the woman that would one day be his wife. He went into a stationery store to buy envelopes in which he planned to send the latest Los Angeles newspaper clippings about the death of film director William Desmond Taylor to his brother Sol. Taylor was murdered in his home on February 1, 1922, and to this day the question of who did it has been argued about. New revelations about the crime periodically surfaced about the people involved in the case, including actresses Mabel Normand, Mary Miles Minter, and Minter’s mother, Charlotte Shelby. Four years after the murder, the newspapers were still covering the story.33

"A sweet little girl waited on me and sold me the envelopes. Right away I fell in love," recalled Abe. Her name was Freda Weinberg, and she reminded him of a childhood friend in New London. Unfortunately, they started off—well, Abe started off—on the wrong foot. The Taylor murder was still keeping Los Angeles buzzing, and everyone knew about it and had an opinion about who did it. One of the chief suspects was Mary Miles Minter, considered by Abe to be a "wild actress," and a likely killer. When Freda asked Abe if she knew Minter, Abe tossed off the remark that "If you know one woman you know them all." Freda was offended by this comment and said she never wanted to see him again. Abe quickly apologized for his rudeness, but Freda wasn’t satisfied. She said she was only waiting on him "because I’m hired to wait on all kinds."

Abe left the store to sell newspapers and magazines to the sailors who had arrived at San Pedro. On returning to the store he again apologized. "But she wouldn’t pay any attention to me," he lamented. When the fleet sailed to Australia, Abe went with it. He didn’t return to California for a year and a half. When he did, he went back to the stationery store. Freda still worked there. Abe apologized to her again, but she still treated him coldly. So Abe tried another strategy. He stopped by the store daily and said, "Good morning, everybody." The other employees responded, but not Freda. However, he slowly wore down her resistance. She started to say "good morning" to him along with the other employees. He asked her out to lunch, but she refused. Freda thought him an "awful homely man," an accurate enough description, given his battle scars and cauliflower ears. One of the girls in the store suggested she go out with him so he could have "a chance to show his good qualities or queer himself forever."

Abe and Freda went to lunch, and afterward she said, "Do you know, you’re not such a bad fellow, after all." Abe met her friends and acted at his best behavior. Freda invited him to her home during the Jewish High Holidays. Then a girl friend of Freda’s met with Abe and asked him if his intentions were serious. When he said he was, she volunteered to "arrange a match." Abe turned her down, saying this was something he wanted to do for himself. He continued to court her, and after three years she accepted his proposal of marriage. "I am the homeliest man in the world and yet I won the sweetest girl in the world," he said. "And so my long career of fighting comes to an end." 34

Abe and Freda were married on June 7, 1931, at the synagogue of the Hebrew Sheltering Home in Los Angeles. Guests included "civic leaders, actors, and sporting figures," and, naturally, many high-ranking Navy officers, including Admiral J.V. Chase, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet, and Rear Admiral W.T. Cluverius. The "celebration ball" was held at a hall in Long Beach, where Abe claims there were "nearly 7,000 guests." The two photographs of the dance that appear in his autobiography suggest a much smaller number, but Abe did invite the U.S. Navy, and enlisted men seem to have honored this open invitation. Abe covered the expenses through the profit he was making through the sale of his book. Sailors were his best customers. Now a married man, Abe observed, "Some of my married friends tell me the big fight is just commencing." 35

Round Six: Supporting the Navy

Abe Hollandersky’s love affair with the United States Navy lasted almost his entire life. In the second edition (1936) of his autobiography Abe remarks that he had been involved with the Navy for 41 years, putting the start of the love affair in 1895 when he was about seven years old. This would be from the day the kindly officer gave him permission to sell newspapers on Navy ships at New London.

The test of Abe’s loyalty to the Navy came with the entry of the United States into World War I. His eye defect kept him from military or naval service, and he decided to do something about it. He went to the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital in New York and had the operation. "They just took a knife and cut a certain muscle," he said. "My eye ached like a toothache the first night, but the pain was much less the second day and soon wore off." He now had "Two eyes looking straight ahead instead of one eye watching the other." However, Abe’s new look came at a high price. As a young man, his crossed eyes detracted from his face, and with his brown eyes now looking straight, he had the battered face of a boxer.

Nevertheless, Abe went to the Submarine Base at New London to enlist in the Navy, now that the eye defect was gone. But he was told that his cauliflower ears prevented him from enlisting. Abe volunteered to have his ears surgically corrected, but that offer was also turned down. The problem was Abe’s lack of a high school education or its equivalent. When Fighting Bob Evans ran the Navy, education wasn’t that important. The new Navy, however, was more complex than a generation earlier. Abe volunteered to go to high school (he was now thirty years old), but the problem with that idea was that by the time he was graduated, the war would be over.

The Navy had a different job in mind for Abe Hollandersky. "They made me boxing instructor where five thousand recruits to the Naval Reserve were encamped on the great pier" at New London. A captive audience of wealthy young men would learn self-defense, and, incidentally, buy their newspapers solely from Abe, the only newsboy authorized to be on the pier. It soon turned out that the young millionaires, as Abe called the recruits, were involved in some other work. A man approached Abe on the pier and asked to buy a copy of the New York Times. Abe grew suspicious when the main paid him a dollar for the paper, then asked, "What’s the name of that ship out there?" pointing to a camouflaged Navy ship.

"I don’t know," Abe replied.

"Are they making any ammunition here?"

"I don’t know."

"How many men are there here?"

"I don’t know anything about it."

"You sell papers here, don’t you?" the man asked.

"Yes, I sell papers. All the news that’s fit to print is in that paper you just bought."

At this point the man opened his coat to show Abe that he was a Secret Service agent. "Kid, you’re all right." It turned out that the young recruits were making net traps to catch submarines. The nets were being strung around Long Island Sound. Farfetched though it may seem today, the concern about enemy submarines was tangible. Before the war the Deutschland, a German submarine, had visited New London. Abe had even sold newspapers to the crew of the submarine!

The reservists finished making nets and went out to serve on submarine chasers. "I didn’t get to sea, but my millionaire friends did," recalled Abe. "And I would have given a million dollars to be in their shoes." 36

As Abe’s service as a boxing instructor demonstrates, his relationship with the U.S. Navy involved more than selling newspapers and magazines to sailors or staging boxing exhibitions while traveling gratis to Australia, Panama, or some other country. He mentions working with the Navy by aiding the Santa Barbara earthquake disaster that struck the city on June 29, 1925. His efforts following the Long Beach earthquake on March 10, 1933, was more immediate. "Winding up a fairly good business day, and attending the Navy fights, I was leaning against the side of a brick building, waiting for a ride to Los Angeles," he recalled. "Suddenly I felt something push me forward, and I quickly turned to square off with my adversary, when Wham! the whole building collapsed. If the wall had fallen outward I wouldn’t be dictating this story now."

Abe dusted himself off, ducked away from a falling street lamp, saw people running around in panic. He saw the side of a hospital building give way, exposing the rooms where patients lay in bed. Someone called to him, and he recognized a sailor friend who had rented an automobile. The friend offered to drive him to Los Angeles. As they drove off, aftershocks hit the area, and a huge crack opened in the street. When they got out of the car to look at it, a broken oil pipe drenched them with oil. They finally made it to Los Angeles, but it took them three hours to get there.

The next day Abe returned to Long Beach and, showing his Navy passes, entered the stricken area. "The Navy was landing boatload after boatload of blankets, medical supplies, etc.," he recalled. "However, I was glad to help unload the boats at the dock." The Navy set up temporary hospitals to aid the injured, ran emergency electricity lines from the generators on the battleships moored in the harbor, and restored telephone and telegraph lines. Abe observed with pride, "Not only did the boys in blue save hundreds of lives in this emergency, but they proved a godsend to the thousands of sick and injured and those suffering from exposure and hunger. In one day the Navy made thousands of friends." 37

Abe was 54 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the Second World War. Based in Long Beach, with a store at 715 West Seaside Avenue, Abe was an eyewitness to the expansion of Navy facilities and the dramatic increase in personnel that the Navy demanded. He became involved in the Navy Relief Society, an organization providing financial counseling, interest-free loans, thrift shops, and other programs to Navy service members and their dependents. When Abe learned about the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), he went to work getting women to join the auxiliary that enabled men to go from shore posts to sea duty. Abe would meet a girl, show her his huge scrapbook filled with Navy photographs and stories (as well as his boxing career), describe the work the WAVES were doing, and likely as not persuade her to enlist. 38

But it was as an unofficial recruiter for the Navy that Abe did his most remarkable work. On the beach for the duration of the war, Abe began recruiting young men to join the Navy, talking to them when they came to his newsstand, and putting in time at the local Navy recruiting office. The numbers of men who credited Abe with helping them decide to join the Navy grew and grew, from dozens to hundreds. By the end of 1943 the number had grown to more than 1,700 recruits! Lieutenant Commander L.D. Blanchard, in charge of naval recruitment in Southern California, presented Abe with an Award of Merit on December 7, 1943, the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. The certificate stated that "Abe the Newsboy" of Long Beach, California, was "awarded this certificate in acknowledgment of his patriotic contributions to the war effort in obtaining the enlistment of over 1700 recruits for service in the United States Navy." On the margins of the certificate were handwritten congratulatory messages from Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and Admiral William D. Leahy. Abe put the certificate in his treasured scrapbook and reproduced it in later editions of his autobiography. It should also be noted that Abe was an enthusiastic promoter of the sale of war bonds. 39

Abe did not confine his recruiting endeavors to the Pacific Coast. After the war he visited the Navy recruiting station in Brooklyn, New York, and started signing up enlistees in the postwar Navy. Forty years after slugging Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Hollandersky was still in love with the U.S. Navy. 40

Round Seven: Testimonials

Abe was making the news even before his encounter with Theodore Roosevelt. On occasion he was recognized for helping people in distress and in life and death situations. In 1906, prior to meeting the President on the Mayflower, he saw a woman and a small boy hanging on to a wagon for dear life as the horse ran out of control. As if in a scene from a Horatio Alger novel, Abe chased the horse, caught its bridle, and dragged the horse’s head down, all the while dodging its hoofs. With the horse finally under control, Abe checked its mouth and found a cockle burr that had lodged in it, causing the horse to bolt.

A second adventure involved a young woman adrift in New London’s harbor. Admiral Evans had given Abe a small boat to enable him to visit the Navy ships and sell newspapers as President Roosevelt had authorized. Abe spotted the woman and rowed out to her. At first she said she didn’t need any help. But the tide was running out, and she was drifting out to sea. Abe boarded her launch and tried unsuccessfully to start the gasoline engine. The gas tank was empty. Abe then tied a line from his rowboat to the launch, and proceeded to tow the launch back to the dock of the Hotel Griswold. The unidentified woman "thanked him cordially" for the rescue.

On another occasion, Abe saved a man and woman from drowning. He was returning from the USS Nevada in his rowboat when he saw a man and woman struggling in the water. Abe grabbed the woman by her hair to keep her head out of the water while the man held onto the side of the rowboat. The USS Florida was nearby and crewmen heard Abe calling for help. A launch was dispatched and aided the couple. Praised for his action, Abe said, "Glad I was there, that’s all. I would have done the same for anybody."

Abe performed yet another rescue in the harbor when a fisherman on the pier stumbled and fell into the water. Abe was returning from selling newspapers to Navy ships at anchor. He rowed to him, grabbed him by the coat collar, and pulled him up into the rowboat, which nearly capsized. Abe’s constant presence in the harbor as he rowed from ship to ship to sell newspapers, combined with the inevitable accidents that could and did occur in the harbor, made him a sort of natural lifeguard whose deeds received considerable publicity in the local newspapers. 41

Throughout his career Abe saved the newspaper articles and testimonial letters in his scrapbook, much of the material being included in either the text or as photographs in his autobiography. Taken together, they validate Abe’s performances as boxer, news vendor to generations of Navy seamen, bit player in movies, and long-time supporter of the U.S. Navy. As a letter to Abe from the New London Chamber of Commerce dated January 20, 1927, stated, "No one can say that Abe the Newsboy has been crooked and ‘fixed’ a fight. Clean living, clean thinking, clean acting can and does pay in professional sports." 42

In the postwar era, after forty years of selling newspapers to the U.S. Navy, the commendations he had received over the years became more reflective and reminiscent about his decades of service. Abe enjoyed letters from senior naval officers that recalled how they first met the cross-eyed young man who came aboard to sell papers, witnessed his boxing exhibitions on board a ship, or how they enjoyed reading his autobiography, with its numerous photographs of Navy ships, officers, and crewmen. 43

In October 1956 the U.S. Navy honored Abe with a testimonial dinner at the San Diego Naval Training Center’s Toastmasters Club. More than a hundred people attended the event, including Captain R.C. Houston, assistant chief of staff for operations, Commander E.H. Rickel, assistant chaplain of the 11th Naval District, officers and enlisted men who were members of the Toastmasters Club, and other dignitaries. The topic for the evening was Abe’s career. After the tributes, Abe said, "My mother told me to be honest and that I would be repaid. And look what I got. I got a testimonial dinner just like [Adlai] Stevenson. I’m the proudest fellow in the world. I could cry." 44

In 1957, a full half-century plus a year after Abe met Theodore Roosevelt, he was accorded what must have been a life-long dream for him: a rank in the U.S. Navy. The certificate reads, "Be it known that Abe the Newsboy having sufficiently demonstrated his love for the sea, and having undeniable talent in matters nautical, AND having forsaken all others, WAS, on this thirtieth day of July , 1957, irrevocably and gloriously installed as an HONORARY CREWMEMBER of the United States Ship KEARSARGE (CVA-33)." The certificate was signed by Captain W.T. Shields and co-signed by "Davy Jones." Not just any ship. An aircraft carrier! 44

The Final Round: Looking Back

Abraham Hollandersky passed away on November 1, 1966, a month short of his 79th birthday. Rabbi Monroe Levens of Congregation Tifereth Israel officiated at the funeral. Abe was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in San Diego, the city where he and Freda had lived since the end of World War II. Freda lived in San Diego until her death on June 23, 1988. They had no children. 46

In Abe’s career as a news vendor he took pleasure in personally selling newspapers to Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman, all of whom provided Abe with autographed pictures for his scrapbook. He also sold newspapers to Andrew Carnegie (who paid for it with a five-dollar gold piece), John D. Rockefeller, Damon Runyon, Robert Ripley, Irving Berlin, and an enormous number of sports figures, film actors and actresses, and high ranking naval officers, not to mention the uncounted sailors and civilians. Several generations of Navy servicemen enjoyed his autobiography, many of them taking the time to write and tell him how much they enjoyed the book. In text and photographs, the autobiography tells three compelling stories: Abe as news vendor, boxer, and number one fan of the U.S. Navy.

Abe didn’t say how many copies of his book were published, but twenty-five editions may well add up to as many as 20,000 copies (and this is only a guess). It is definitely not a rare volume; copies can be bought on Amazon.com for anywhere between $15 and $100, depending on the edition, condition, and if autographed.47

Although Abraham Hollandersky appears in some sports reference works and books on Jews in sports, many sources overlook him. This is less Abe’s fault than the failure of authors to deal with boxers besides U.S. title holders. One need not be a champion or Olympic gold medal winner to have an interesting story to tell. Abe is not an elected member of the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. A vote for Abe is long overdue.

ENDNOTES

　1. Edwin A. Falk, Fighting Bob Evans (New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1931), includes a frontispiece photograph of the President and his wife, Evans, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Although the picture is undated, it coincides with Roosevelt’s visit to New London. Several unidentified people also appear in the photograph.

　2. Abe Hollandersky, The Life Story of Abe the Newsboy, Hero of a Thousand Fights (Los Angeles: Abe the Newsboy Publishing Co., 1949). Unless otherwise noted, all references and pagination are for the 1949 edition.

　3. Sam Orbaum’s web site is www.samorbaum.com. Ken Blady, The Jewish Boxers’ Hall of Fame (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc., 1988), pp. 71-76. Hollandersky recalls Roosevelt as saying "that lots of people believe that ‘a Jew wont fight.’ The idea that Roosevelt (not "lots of people") made this claim may be due to a misreading of the quotation in Hollandersky, p. 27. Orbaum’s review calls Abe’s blows a "pummeling," even though Blady did not use the word. Despite some errors of detail, Blady’s chapter remains the only secondary source to treat Hollandersky’s career in some degree. Blady considers Abe’s autobiography "ghostwritten," but the rather disorganized narrative, occasional error in spelling of names, along with Abe’s saying he was "dictating" the book, argues otherwise.

　4. Quoted in Nathan Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life (New York: William Morrow, 1992), p. 10.

　5. Paul Grondahl, I Rose Like a Rocket: The Political Education of Theodore Roosevelt (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), pp. 81-92, 149, and 314.

　6. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1913), p. 181. Author Douglas Century, in Barney Ross (New York: Nextbook/Schocken, 2006), p. 189, relates a similar, though much more violent, story about Jewish gangsters in Chicago who met a Nazi official coming to the city to address the Bund. A Jewish precinct captain provided the men with police uniforms. The police "escort" took the Nazi from the train station, "drove him to a secluded street, beat him half-dead with pipes and baseball bats and sent him back to Germany."

　7. Hollandersky, p. 2.

　8. Ibid, pp. 125-128.

　9. Ibid, pp. 131-133.

10. Ibid, pp. 442, 449.

11. Ibid, pp. 198, 215. Kipling’s poem was written in 1898.

12. Ibid, pp. 216-218.

13. Ibid, pp. 221-224.

14. Philip Roth, Patrimony: A True Story (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), p. 203. See also Peter Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 145-146: "Whether appropriated as public symbols or as part of their neighborhood’s social world, flamboyant Jewish boxers, more than any other group of athletes, confirmed Jewish toughness and the will to survive, while providing vivid counterpoint to popular anti-Semitic stereotypes."

15. Allen Bodner, When Boxing was a Jewish Sport (Wstport: Praeger, 1997), p. 7;Century, pp. 34-35; Harold U. Ribalow and Meir Z. Ribalow, The Jew in American Sports (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1966), pp. 129-136.

16. Bernard Postal et al, Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports (New York: Block Publishing Company, 1965), provides a brief sketch. Abe is absent from Sam Andre and Nat Fleischer, A Pictorial History of Boxing (New York: Bonanza Books, 1981), which emphasizes the heavyweight division champions more than others. The omission is surprising as Fleischer knew Hollandersky for many years. Abe is also missing from the chapter on boxing in Stanley B. Frank, The Jew in Sports (New York: Miles Publishing Company, 1936).

17. Hollandersky, p. 406 and 1961 ed., pp. 462-466.

18. Hollandersky, pp. 128-129/

19. Ibid, pp. 292-316, 385.

20. E-mail from jewishsportslegends@earthlink.net author, September 9, 2007.

21. Hollandersky, p. 384.

22. Ibid, pp. 384, 389, 411. Trevor C. Wignal, The Sweet Science (New York: Duffield and Co., 1926), pp. 33, states that Abe had fought 1,039 fights. Since the book was published in 1926, and Abe’s autobiography, first published in 1930, gives the same number, 1926 seems the most accurate date for Abe’s hanging up his gloves.

23. Budd Schulberg, in his Foreword to Bodner, p. xi.

24. Hollandersky, p. 389.

25. Ibid, p. 411. George O’Brien and Victor McLaglen were prize-fighters earlier in their careers. Jack Dempsey appeared in seventeen films, fourteen of them between 1920 and 1935.

26. Ibid, pp. 411-412.

27. Abe’s captions on photographs indicate that two films in which Abe was an extra were Dressed to Kill and Across the Pacific. These should not be confused with later films that had the same title.

28. Hollandersky, p. 388. Abe mentions "being in a cool room in New York" and "dictating the story" on p. 294.

29. New York American, March 24, 1930.

30. The Ripley Museum could not put a precise date on the cartoon which most likely appeared around 1927-28. Tony Martin, Manager, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum (Hollywood), to author, February 26, 2004.

31. Hollandersky, p. 344.

32. Ibid, p. 350.

33. A number of books have been written about the Taylor murders, including Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, A Cast of Killers (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1986); Robert Giroux, A Deed of Death (New York: Knopf, 1990); and Charles Higham, Murder in Hollywood: Solving a Silent Screen Mystery (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). These and other authors disagree on many details about the case, especially Kirkpatrick and Giroux, as seen in their vehement exchange of letters in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 19 and 26, 1990.

34. Hollandersky, pp. 388, 390, 407-408. Damon Runyon, in the New York American, March 24, 1930, wrote a large column about the courtship, observing that Abe was relying on the profits from his autobiography to help pay for the wedding.

35. Hollandersky, pp. 340, 372-373, 408, 410.

36. Ibid, pp. 352-355. Abe’s work as a boxing instructor received a commendation from H.C. Gearing, Jr., Commander, U.S. Navy, who praised Abe as having "always shown his willingness to entertain the servicemen and has always given his best." Letter from Gearing "To Whom It May Concern," February 11, 1925, reproduced in Hollandersky, p. 453.

37. Hollandersky, pp. 412-413.

38. Undated clipping in Hollandersky, p. 496; W.A. Maguire, Captain, USN, to Hollandersky, June 12, 1943, reproduced on p. 425.

39. See photo on p. 466 and news clipping on p. 467; also 1961 ed., p. 9.

40. "Famed Newsie Signs ‘Em Up for the Navy," New York Journal-American, September 11, 1947.

41. Articles are quoted and reproduced in Hollandersky, pp. 356-357, 376-380.

42. New London Chamber of Commerce to Hollandersky, January 20, 1927, reproduced in Hollandersky, 1961 ed., p. 454.

43. Examples include Harry S. Morris, Provost Marshall’s Office, U.S. Naval Training Center, San Diego, to Hollandersky, March 3, 1947, p. 483; Lt. Frederick Clifford, USN Ret., to Hollandersky, January 31, 1951, p. 479; Admiral W.M. Pechtel to Hollandersky, August 21, 1952, p. 234, and Admiral Arleigh Burke to Hollandersky, November 9, 1956, p. 19, all in 1961 ed.

44. Clipping reproduced in 1961 ed., pp. 206-207. Abe’s reference is to Adlai E. Stevenson, presidential candidate in the 1956 election.

45. Certificate reproduced in 1961 ed., p. 115.

46. San Diego Union, November 2, 1966. Abe’s closest (and only) relative on the Pacific Coast was his brother Sol.

47. Although Amazon.com makes it easy for anyone seeking a copy of the autobiography to purchase one at a reasonable price, Kessinger Publish’s Rare Imprints, located in Whitefish, Montana, offers a paperback reprint (which of the editions being reprinted is not specified) for $38.95. A vigorous protest against this company, accusing it of copyright infringements, is "Book Pirates! Diary of an Amateur Sleuth," Denny Hatch’s Business Common Sense newsletter, July 18, 2006, online at: www.businesscommonsense.com/enews/fullStory.bsp?sid=32029&var=story.

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Emil Harris:

Los Angeles First Jewish Police Chief,

1839-1922

 

by Norton B. Stern & William M. Kramer

Publisher’s Note: We found this rather extensive paper about Emil Harris, a well-known Los Angeles Police Chief, in the files of Rabbi Kramer. It looks as if it was published somewhere, but we know not where. Some notes indicate it was written in the early 1970s. 　　　　　　　　　　—DWE

Emil Harris was not a typical policeman-if you can stereotype the police. But then, in the eighth decade of the nineteenth century, Los Angeles was not a typical American town. Long forgotten lawman Emil Harris served the city and county of Los Angeles in matters routine and adventurous. His career ranged from patrolman to chief of police and his responsibilities from quieting drunken Indians to deep involvement in the famous case of the infamous bandit, Tiburcio Vasquez, as well as his efforts to head-off the tragic events of the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871.

Who was Emil Harris? He was German-born, pioneer in youth work in Los Angeles as a gymnastics instructor, a champion marksman, a devoted Odd Fellow, Turnvereiner, and Jew.

Emil Harris was born in Prussia on December 29, 1839. In 1853, in the company of an aunt, he came to the United States where some members of his family had previously settled. After living in New York for some time, he set out for California where he also had relatives. In 1857 he took passage on the North Star to the Isthmus of Panama and made the land journey to the Pacific side where he boarded the ship John L. Stevens for San Francisco, arriving there in March.

In San Francisco he had intended to learn the printing trade and actually began to work in this field, "but the work did not prove congenial and he soon left." Subsequently Harris was employed as a waiter in a Kearny Street restaurant. Later he went to work in his uncle’s Stockton billiard hall. He and his uncle returned to San Francisco and founded a cigar business as a partnership. Two years afterwards, Harris’ uncle acquired "a billiard hall of eight tables at Visalia," California. Harris managed the establishment until the business was sold. He then returned to San Francisco where he was naturalized on March 18, 1867.1

On April 9, 1869, Emil Harris arrived in Los Angeles.2 There he was employed as a barkeeper at the Wine Rooms on Main Street.3 He quickly became involved in civic life. In June 1869, he registered as a voter. Working in the commercial center of the city, he was aware of the need for fire protection. "Probably the first attempt to organize a fire company ... was made in 1869, when a meeting was called on . . . November 6th, at Buffum’s Saloon, to consider the matter."4 Among those present were Henry Wartenberg, who was chosen as president, and Emil Harris.5 Wartenberg was a leader of the Jewish community, having been president of the Hebrew Benevolent Society since 1864.6 As a partner in a tannery, he too knew of the pressing need for protection against the disaster of fire.7 In October 1871, Emil Harris was elected first assistant foreman of the Fireman’s Company.8

At the end of 1870, Emil Harris was appointed a patrolman of the Los Angeles Police Department.9 In his new capacity he continued his civic work in the general community while acquiring a well-deserved reputation for brilliance as a pioneer detective of the California southland. Almost at the beginning of his police career, Harris became a major figure in the events of Calle de los Negros and the Chinese massacre of 1871. Los. Angeles was a small town with a big underworld. The "Nigger Alley" area was the heartland of local vice.10 There was prostitution, gambling, a number of low saloons, and frequent violence often culminating in homicide. Indians, Mexicans, Caucasians and Chinese met there in a kind of reservation of impropriety.

While contemporary accounts11 generally ascribe the Chinese massacre in the alley as having been the result of a tong war between rival Chinese factions which resulted in the murder of a Caucasian, a retrospective view by local historian Major Horace Bell suggests that it was a race riot which had been triggered by Robert Thompson, who attempted to steal $7,000 from a Chinese merchant. Thompson was killed by Sam Yung (or Yuen), who had revealed in open court on the morning of October 24, 1871, that he kept this sum "in a trunk in the rear of his store." That afternoon Thompson entered the store of the Chinese businessman on the pretence that he was there to serve a warrant and to take Sam Yung into custody. When the merchant refused to leave his store and funds unprotected, there was an "ensuing scuffle" in which "the Chinaman shot Thompson dead." A careful reading of the Los Angeles Daily Star account of the cause of the massacre tends to support Bell’s version against the racist account in the press. The story of the killing of Thompson gives evidence that it was done by Sam Yung as a defense of his property and person, and not as a lawless act of a semi-civilized Chinese involved in a tong war, as portrayed in the contemporary news media.12 Subsequently, more than twenty Chinese were killed by the mob and some "forty thousand dollars was taken during the sack of Chinatown."13

Officer Emil Harris was among those who made every effort to control the mob and prevent the loss of life and property among the Chinese. He tried to place them in protective custody, but

The infuriated mob followed. Cries of "Hang him!" "Hang him!" "Take him from Harris!" "Shoot him," arose in every direction. The officers proceeded safely with their prisoner until their arrival at the juncture of Temple and Spring Streets. Here they were surrounded, and the Chinaman forcibly taken from them. ...14

In his testimony the next day during the Coroner’s Inquest, Emil Harris, after being sworn, said:

Between five and six o’clock yesterday evening, while on duty on Commercial Street, . . . I heard some shots fired and ran toward them to Los Angeles Street, and saw an excited crowd in front of Negro Alley. . . . [The Sheriff] requested me and all citizens willing to obey the laws to stand along side of him; a great number volunteered, and others, more excited, wanted to force their way into the houses . . . the excited multitude got the upper hand . . . one Chinaman came running out [and I] heard a cry by some white persons, "Here is one!" and I succeeded in capturing him . . . when some parties unbeknown to me, about 100 or more took him from me [and] that was the last I saw of him. They cried "Hang him" . . . [Later] a Chinaman called me by name; I told him to come out and I would protect him if I could. . . . I suppose the one taken from me was the first one hung. .15

At the conclusion of his testimony it was clear that Harris felt that none save one of the Chinese killed was culpable, and that the officer had attempted to save the celestials from the mob. This, in spite of the testimony. of his coreligionist, Mendel Meyer, who said that "the Chinamen shot at white people, [and] at the officers . . . [including] Harris."16

The Coroner’s Jury of eleven included five citizens of the Jewish faith : Herman Fleishman, M. Levy, B. Simon, P. N. Roth, and Leopold Harris. Another witness who testified before the jury was the merchant, David Solomon.17 On the grand jury named to bring charges against those arrested during the massacre, were the pioneer Jewish merchants, Samuel Norton and Kaspare Cohn.18

Three months after the tragic events in Negro Alley, the attitude of the Chinese community toward Emil Harris and his fellow officer George Gard, surfaced. The Chinese were aware that the two had attempted to protect them, their lives and their property from the attackers. The local press carried this item:

A Present. —Officers Gard and Harris, were yesterday the recipients of a beautiful gift, consisting of Chinese embroidery, presented by the Wing Chong company, as a testimonial of their appreciation of services rendered from time to time.19

"From time to time" was a euphemism for the Chinese massacre of 1871. Emil Harris was one of a minority who knew that the peril of lawlessness posed greater problems for Los Angeles than did the so-called Yellow Peril.20

The most famous bandit in southern California history was Tiburcio Vasquez. Those lawmen who took part in his capture became the most famous of that day. San Francisco’s Alta California, the leading newspaper of the metropolis of the Pacific slope, wrote of Harris’ part in the taking of the outlaw.

Harris was one of Vasquez’ captors, and stood his hand with coolness and courage, ready to go for that notorious bandit on "a short call." He took, with the others, strong chances for his life; but strategy secured the robber without loss of blood. The fact that he was there and ready with his rifle to do his part, redounds to Harris’ credit.21

In April 1874, when Sheriff William R. Rowland of Los Angeles County heard that Vasquez was in the area, he determined to make up a stand-by posse to be ready if there was an opportunity to capture him. Vasquez had a well-deserved reputation for murder and robbery, committed by himself and his gang. Historian Robert Greenwood states succinctly: "Vasquez emerges as perhaps the major figure in California outlawry."22 On May 8, 1874, California’s Governor Newton Booth issued a proclamation of reward, offering $8,000 for Vasquez’s arrest if delivered alive and $6,000 if he should be killed during his apprehension.23 Sheriff Rowland’s special posse included some of the most trustworthy citizens who could counter violence with marksmanship and physical strength. They included:

Mr. Albert Johnson, Under Sheriff; Major H. M. Mitchell, attorney at law of this city; Mr. J. S. Bryant, city constable; Mr. E. Harris, policeman; Mr. Thos. Rogers, of the Palace Saloon; Mr. D. K. Smith, a citizen of this county; Mr. B. F. Hartley; Chief of Police and Deputy City Marshal, and Mr. [George] Beers, of San Francisco and special correspondent of the San Francisco Chronicle.24

On the evening of May 13, 1874, Sheriff Rowland learned that the Vasquez party was at the ranch house of "Greek George," which was near the mouth of Nichols Canyon, in what is now West Hollywood. The posse was secretly assembled at Mitchell’s law office in the Temple Block and moved out at 2:00 a.m. on the morning of the 14th. At daybreak the party made a run to "Greek George’s" house.

Through an open door, Vasquez was seen at the breakfast table, and [Emil] Harris, followed by the others, made a quick dash for the house. A woman waiting on Vasquez attempted to shut the officers out; but Harris injected his rifle through the half-open door and prevented her. During the excitement, Vasquez climbed through a little window, and Harris, yelling, "There he goes !" raised his Henry rifle and shot at him. By the time Harris had reached the other side of the house, Vasquez was a hundred feet away . . . then the officers used their shotguns. . . . Underneath one of the beds was found Vasquez’ vest containing Charley Miles’ [stolen] gold watch, which Harris at once recognized. The prisoner was asked whether he was seriously hurt and he said that he expected to die . . . asking Harris to write down some of his bequests. . . .25

In later years Harris was to regard his part in the Vasquez capture as "one of the most interesting recollections of his life," and he retained the bandit’s rifle in his personal possession.26 Just over a week later the Committee on Police of the Los Angeles City Council recommended that Harris be dismissed from the force for having been out of the city "without consent, as required to be obtained by ordinance, and had disobeyed the orders of the Marshal.27 It was undoubtedly Harris’ expertise as a detective that got him into this difficulty, for as in the Vasquez case in which he had been deputized by the county sheriff and thus was absent from his city police duties, he was frequently called upon by other law agencies, including the United States Marshal’s office for service in the area and even as far as into Arizona Territory.28 Harris’ supporters on the city council "warmly defended" him and "eulogized him as one of the captors of Vasquez," and the matter was quietly dropped.29

Harris’ reputation was now so firmly established that he was entitled to every benefit of the doubt. As the Star had reported: "He has detective qualities second to no man in the State; is brave, cool and energetic and just the man to have associated in such a hazardous undertaking [as the Vasquez affair].30 Emil Harris was a remarkable officer on a most interesting force. At the end of 1871, the local press made an observation which still holds true: that the police force of Los Angeles was small in numbers when compared with other cities of like importance. The force consisted of six officers operating under the marshal, who was the chief of police. They were divided into two watches of three men each. Two were mounted officers "on fleet horses." They received one hundred dollars per month salary while the four patrolmen received eighty dollars a month.31

In 1872 the Star reported that there was a marked improvement in the force with few offenders escaping arrest and punishment.

While it is apparent that the improvement extends throughout the entire police force, and that each and all policemen are faithfully endeavoring to discharge their duties; the large number of arrests lately made by officers Gard and Harris seem to deserve special mention. They have succeeded in "working up" and ferreting out some very important and difficult cases, and through their energy and vigilance, many rough and dangerous customers have been caught and placed in the hands of the law.32

The paper recommended that it would be to the benefit of the community if George Gard and Emil Harris could be assigned to special duty in order to utilize their skills fully, "besides special officers or detectives should be men of stability, good judgment, sobriety, and great discretion. All of these qualifications, we believe, are embraced in the officers above mentioned."33

Emil Harris’ methodology as a detective is basically unrecorded, however, the evidence of his ability is written large across the pages of the Los Angeles press. When a carpenter by the name of Grant lost such valuables as a silk velvet vest, two pairs of sleeve buttons, and a hair watch-chain, he informed Harris of his losses. "That expert and efficient officer fixed his suspicion on . . . Charles Miller . . . and found all the articles in his possession..34 When the old skating rink of Los Angeles was robbed, it was Harris who "after diligent investigation, succeeded in getting a clue, and ... arrested the burglar..35 When R. M. Towns lost his valuable gold watch, he gave Harris the case to work up. "Harris fetched the timekeeper, and Mr. Towns has now got his watch." The paper noted that "there is a real interesting batch of details connected with the case."36

In the Los Angeles of the 1870s, Harris seemed to know every law-breaker and potential lawbreaker among the populace. The city numbered under 10,000 during the period. Harris used his firsthand knowledge with a speed and energy truly remarkable. When Charles Norton’s house was entered by a thief, Harris was given the case and "captured his man in five minutes."37 Officer Harris and his partner, Gard, quickly solved a watch theft that involved a man from Compton, which showed "the shrewdness and competency of the officers," who were pronounced "hard to beat on either a warm or cold trail."38

Harris’ job kept him on the go beyond the limits of the pueblo. He "arrived from San Buenaventura . . . with three-fingered Jack and lodged him in jail.39 Another time he returned from San Francisco bringing back a bogus detective with a passion for counterfeiting greenbacks.40 When another passer of counterfeit bills was known to be in Los Angeles, Harris was assigned to the case. He "immediately started for Wilmington, considering that the most likely point from which the criminal would try to escape.. The Star account observed that Harris’ "surmises were correct" and the captured criminal was brought to the United States Commissioner.41

Emil Harris saw his share of violence. When pistol shots were fired at the Chinese servant of Judge H. K. S. O’Melveny, the policeman was informed and after an examination of the premises and questioning, went directly to the house of a suspect and asked if there was a pistol there. The weapon was found with blood on it and a young man of the household was found with a bandaged finger. Harris got his man who "assigned no reason for the act except his dislike of Chinamen.42 With two colleagues Harris pursued "two Frenchmen who got `obstreperous,’ and commenced firing off six-shooters." The officers went for them and the men broke and waded across the Los Angeles River and shot at the policemen. The latter located a hack and overtook the culprits, lodging them in jail.43 Even on his day off Harris could not give up the scent and on one occasion used his free day to chase up a nearby canyon looking for an outlaw.44

Harris, whose interest in youth work will be discussed later, was the friend and protector of children. With his friend, George Gard, he succeeded in stopping a runaway mule, thereby preventing imminent injury to some children then crossing the street.45 The same two lawmen investigated a burglary at the German schoolhouse. They learned that a group of boys were the burglars. They left the culprits to their parents for proper castigation for the theft of books and slates, and such. The police were promised that every article stolen from the school would be replaced in good condition.46

One night in 1873 a horse thief absconded with a beast from in front of the Pico House. Harris "nabbed the fellow" and while taking him to jail experienced an attack on his person. He must have been a very tough horse thief because the account noted that "Harris . . . had his hands full in getting him to the lock-up.47 In an earlier encounter when escorting two men to jail, two other men tried to relieve him of his prisoners. Fortunately for Harris it was only four against one and as the Star told it, "Four men [were soon] on their way to jail surrounded by officer Harris. Bully for Harris."48

Religion was not without its part in the criminal annals of early Los Angeles. The headlines noted "The Church Thief Caught.. Gard and Harris had captured the scoundrel who had robbed the local sanctuary. The officers had figured that a man recently accused of stealing the blankets of a person rooming with him, was the kind of man to steal from a church. "Officers Harris and Gard deserve great credit for . . . this case."49 In a cryptic item, the local press announced that "a ‘resurrectionist,’ actively engaged in `raising Cain’ on Main Street, was consigned to the ‘City Tombs’ yesterday by officer Harris.50

Harris’ work included bringing prisoners back to Los Angeles from various parts of the state and he became well known in many communities. His opinions and knowledge were solicited widely. When he returned from San Francisco in December 1877, the press reported that he had observed the political procession of the Workingmen’s Party and that it "was one of the largest and most orderly he had ever seen—not a drunken man was visible within the lines."51 In Ventura, he was the source of information used by the local paper on the capture of Santos Sotelo, one of the notorious Sotelo brothers.52

The public respected Harris and the criminals had cause to fear him. When a miscreant was at large, the Star could say with comfort, "We think Emil Harris will fetch him ere long."53 Hitting Harris could be expensive. "Jas. Lawrence, the menagerie man, was arrested yesterday and fined $20 for striking officer Harris..54 When one Richard Stillwell drew a knife on Harris, resisting arrest, the officer tried to take the weapon from him but met with more resistance and assault. "Officer Harris . . . in order to save himself, shot Stillwell, the ball passing through the muscles of the left arm, in a slanting direction, and entering his body . . . the wounded man was then deprived of the knife."55

Emil Harris was not only a protector of life and limb, but was also concerned with keeping secure the property of the local merchants and seeing that they were not victimized by fraud. It was Harris who discovered that a stolen forty-five dollar overcoat had been sold for four dollars to a local merchant.56 Harris arrested the man who burgled an Aliso Street store relieving it of several pairs of pants and boots and other sundry items.57 What the press called "One of the most important arrests and captures [resulting] . . . from goods obtained under fraudulent designs" was made by Harris and two associates. Harris was praised for his part in the capture of the embezzler of merchants and was given the honor of taking the prisoner to the San Francisco jail.58

The business section of downtown Los Angeles included a large number of Jewish merchants who found in their coreligionist, Emil Harris, a protector, defender and friend. P. N. Roth, owner of the Lafayette Store on Main Street, suffered the loss of two hundred dollars worth of clothing and other articles by a disgruntled employee. Harris and Gard located the suspect and submitted him to relentless questioning. "Those diligent and efficient officers . . . succeeded admirably in working a conclusion out of the premises given them."59 This achievement undoubtedly relieved the pressure on the town marshal, who had permitted the two to be out of town the previous month in pursuit of counterfeiters in the desert. The marshal has been severely criticized for leaving the town under-policed, while Harris and Gard spent four weeks in the service of federal authorities.60

Wolf Kalisher, the man who in October 1862, succeeded Michel Goldwater 61 as vice president of what is now the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, was the victim of the attempt on the part of "some unregenerate rascal" to steal his horse. Fortunately, Kalisher was approaching the yard of his store in the company of policemen Gard and Harris, and the frightened thief made a getaway sans horse.62 Not exactly a major crime at the Kalisher store premises occurred when the two officers caught a thief stealing the merchant’s copy of the Los Angeles Daily News. However, the News thought it was newsworthy.63

Harris wasn’t perfect. Maybe it was his background as a bartender that made him occasionally slip up when dealing with a drunk. One such was arrested by Harris on suspicion of having stolen a watch, but "was discharged upon proof that the article came into his hands by fair and not foul means." 64 A little earlier the Star briefly noted that a John Doe drunk had been arrested by Gard and Harris and thereupon "pitched into the officers, and was by them pitched into jail." 65 On another occasion the press described a drunk taken in by Harris as "an obstropulous [sic] inebriate cavorting around loose on Main Street." 66

Harris’ involvement with the Chinese massacre of 1871 was part of an ongoing relationship with the Celestials. One night Harris learned that a "Chinawoman" had been beaten up by Sing Lee, one of the leaders of Chinatown. Investigation validated the report and Sing Lee resisted arrest. "The sight of a revolver caused him to change his mind and resort to bribery." Harris and a fellow officer "were obdurate, and . . . a fine of $10 [was] imposed by the Mayor."67

Emil Harris was sent to San Diego to arrest a Chinese woman who was employed as a domestic by George P. Marston, an important San Diego community leader. There were those who accused Harris of retrieving the woman so that she might be brought back to the control of her Los Angeles Chinatown master. In response to that charge, Mr. and Mrs. Marston wrote Officer and Mrs. Harris, indicating "that they were sorry that Mr. Harris, who is a true Christian [sic !] gentleman, should have been misjudged." 68

The trained eye of Harris maintained surveillance of the Indian community of Los Angeles. He was in at the arrest of one Luis Mayet "caught in the act" of selling liquor to Indians.69 On another occasion it was noted that "Three sportive aborigines, on a bender, were arrested by officers Gard and Harris ... they will ornament the chain gang." 70 A third incident involving Indians and liquor was recorded : "Two semi-drunken squaws were arrested yesterday by officer Harris for having stolen a ham, and were sentenced by the Mayor to abide in the city hotel for twenty-four hours."71

A visitor to Los Angeles in 1869, the year that Emil Harris arrived in the city, noted that: "There are many foreigners living here, . . . but principally Germans and German Jews."72 The integration of Germans and Jews of German cultural background was an important fact of the social structure and the civic leadership of the town. Many Jews of eastern European origin had acquired Germanic culture as part of the general emancipation of Jews following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic period. In Los Angeles the Turn Verein movement provided the vehicle for the expression of Germanic culture by Jew and gentile.73 This advertisement appeared for the first time on May 19, 1870, in the Los Angeles Daily News:

The Gymnasium is now open at Mrs. Wiebecke’s [beer] garden, Alameda Street, near the depot. Application for membership or admission must be made to Emil Harris at Wine Rooms on Main Street or F. Morsch at Heinisch’s on Commercial Street.74

A few days later it was announced that Harris had been named the gymnastics instructor of the Turn Verein society.75 The first major news report of the German group read:

A number of our German citizens met last Saturday evening for the purpose of effecting an organization to provide calisthenic exercises and recreation for those who may desire it. The following officers were elected: C. C. Lips, president; L. Lichtenberger, vice president; C. F. Heinemann, treasurer; I. Cohn, secretary; H. Schalberg, property man; Professors F. Morsch and E. Harris, Instructors. A committee was appointed to secure a suitable place for the erection of a gymnasium, hall, etc. At present the society have their apartments at Wiebecke’s Garden, near the Depot. . . .76

Evidently Professor Harris was a success, because at the general meeting held by the Los Angeles Turn Verein a year later, "E. Harris was elected First Instructor," and his coreligionist, Isaac Cohn, was re-elected secretary.77 Shortly thereafter, "By the kind invitation of Mr. Emil Harris, leader and instructor," a reporter for the News visited the Turn Verein hall for one of its semi-weekly practices. He observed that "Nowhere else in the city can a more interesting sight be witnessed than that afforded by the athletic exercises and feats of the members." The journalist was impressed by the fact that a significant part of the program was devoted to working with boys "of all ages and sizes from the half-grown lad to little fellows of eight, and all seem alike proficient and active." An accolade for Harris and the Teutonic group was bestowed by the writer:

The skill of the pupils does great honor to the ability of the leader, and to his activity as well, as he must set the example on each new movement. The Germans are far in advance of our people in all that regards physical culture. . . .78

Emil Harris’ work with youngsters was a pioneer example of group work in the southland. It anticipated the boys’ club work of a later era. The first anniversary of the Turn Verein "was a decided success. The Round House garden was crowded with visitors." Harris’ publicity attempts were fruitful. Six boys were given awards for "best turning." The young gymnasts were, in the order of proficiency: Frederic H. Fleishman, Herman Gerson, Isaac Benjamin, John Schick, Isidor Fleishman and Harry Bell. Four of them were Jewish. Other award recipients included Otto Weiss and Henry Katz.79 A surprise award went to "their leader, Mr. Emil Harris," who received "a fine silver-mounted horn . . ."80 Another report indicated that the performance consisted of exercises "on the horizontal and parallel bars in which great strength and skill were shown." The account was humorously headed, in German, "Watch on the Rhine." The Turn Verein anniversary event reflected "well deserved credit" on Harris, "whose proficiency in the art gymnastic is well known in this city."81

The Turn Verein also provided a social setting for the community and the grand balls and masquerades were important parts of the Los Angeles social scene. At various masquerades Harris appeared in black face, as Boss Tweed, as Uncle Sam, and as a mammoth rooster. Mrs. Harris came as a puritan woman, as the spirit of semi-tropical California, bedecked with fruit and flowers, as the Queen of Spain, and as a roving Irish lad—"We have seldom seen a more perfect makeup than was this character of Mrs. Harris, and she could speak the brogue too."82 The strangest event occurring to the Harris family at one of the masquerades showed the prejudice of the period.

He [Emil Harris] also took the character of a Chinese vegetable vendor, but this latter character was difficult to sustain, as the numerous maskers went for that "heathen Chime," and soon broke him up in his business.83

Very often the Harrises won prizes for their costumes, including a silver fruit dish presented to Mrs. Harris and a pair of sleeve buttons for her husband who portrayed, in the words of the Star, "the Nigger Dandy."84

The Turn Verein Germania had a military section. The rifle division listed its officers in 1876: Emil Harris, captain; Conrad Jacoby, lieutenant; E. Neitzke, sergeant; W. Marxsen, first corporal; and Charles Gollmer, second corporal.85 When Captain Harris received his sword it was in time for the May Day parade in which he led the Turn Verein’s military company.86 When the rifle section planned target practice in East Los Angeles at their own shooting range, Harris assured the public, through the daily press, that every precaution was taken to prevent accidents and "that it is utterly impossible for anything of an untoward nature to happen." To accommodate the expected crowd at the rifle practice, "Trains on the East Los Angeles Street Railroad will run every half-hour."87 The shooting match in the fall of 1876 saw Emil Harris win the top award, the silver medal for rifle marksmanship. "He has to win once again when it will become his permanent property."88 In the summer of 1876, Harris had been re-elected to another six months term as rifle section captain.89 In 1902, J. M. Guinn recorded that Harris was one of ten to organize "the Turner Germania, which has grown to be a very important organization, with five hundred members."90

Emil Harris was a very active member of one of the most important fraternal orders, the Odd Fellows. In 1960, Dr. Max Vorspan, vice president of the University of Judaism, Los Angeles, called "the venerable secretary of the I.O.O.F." and was informed that "no Jews now or ever," were active in the Odd Fellows of Los Angeles.91 Emil Harris was only one of many local Jews active in the order. In fact, one of the founders and the first Noble Grand (president) of the first Odd Fellows Lodge, Los Angeles No. 35, was Morris L. Goodman.92 Goodman also was the first Jew to hold political office in the southland, serving as a member of the first Los Angeles city council in 1850. Henry Wartenberg, who was a Los Angeles city councilman and member of the council police committee in 1868, as well as president of the Hebrew Benevolent Society, was a major dignitary of the Odd Fellows. By 1870, Wartenberg was the Worshipful Grand Marshal of the I.0.0.F. Grand Lodge of California and also Deputy District Grand Master.93

Emil Harris was elected Noble Grand of the second Odd Fellows lodge to be organized in Los Angeles, Golden Rule Lodge No. 160, on December 30, 1870. Lodge officers had been installed the preceding year by Henry Wartenberg, when Harris occupied a lesser post.94 The leading Jews in the community were on the committee of arrangements for the celebration of the fifty-second anniversary of the Odd Fellows, during the year Harris served as Noble Grand. These included Wartenberg, Isaias W. Hellman, Isaac Cohn, Constant Meyer, Bernard Katz, Solomon Lazard, Harris Newmark, and Herman Jacoby.95 In 1900, Harris was the only charter member of Golden Rule Lodge still alive and living in Los Angeles.96

The Jewish and gentile Germans of Los Angeles were not only at the heart of the power structure of the community, but they also sought to directly influence the voters by the endorsement and support of "good government" candidates. An ad hoc group called the German-American Elective Union was organized in September 1874. Its purpose was described in a resolution proclaiming: "We will support only good and honorable citizens for office. without distinction of political differences." Among the active Jewish members of the Elective Union were Isaac Cohn, Henry Fleishman and Emil Harris. Harris was on the committee assigned

... to see that a full registry of voters is secured, and if any Germans have not become citizens, provided they are entitled to the rights of citizenship, to assist them in procuring their naturalization papers.97

Two days after a meeting of the Elective Union on September 27, 1874, at the Turn Verein Hall, where presumably a caucus was held, the Star began to print a series of announcements : "For City Marshal—Detective officer Emil Harris desires to announce himself as a candidate for our next City Marshal."98

Emil Harris, though a local officer, was by 1874 known statewide as an exceptional lawman, a brilliant detective. The San Francisco Alta wrote: " . . . Emil Harris is up for the office of City Marshal of that flourishing city.... Los Angeles cannot do better than reward him with the office of Marshal."99 The Star expressed its agreement, noting that the Vasquez capture was

. . . only a drop in the bucket of Harris’ achievements. He is constantly doing good service, and our people have long wanted a chance to reward him. They will do it very handsomely on the 7th proximo.100

The Star demonstrated its total support for Harris’ candidacy by reprinting the comments of the San Francisco Examiner. Both the Examiner and the Star said that Harris’ election would be "gratifying to his many friends in San Francisco, Stockton and Marysville, in all of which he formerly resided, and is well known and well liked."101

Emil Harris ran as a candidate of the Citizens’ Ticket, which was opposed by the Peoples’ Ticket, the Farmers’ Ticket, the Peoples’ Reform Ticket, and Independent Nominations. The Citizens’ Ticket was led by Frank Sabichi and included, in addition to Harris, two other members of the Jewish community, Henry Fleishman, running for city treasurer and Bernard Cohn, running for city council.102 On December 3 and 5, 1874, the Star made its strongest editorial endorsement of Harris.

We do not know that Mr. Emil Harris will thank us for referring to him, but we are extremely anxious to place ourselves on record in his favor. We have yet to meet a businessman or property holder who has not openly expressed a preference for this honest and efficient officer. It may not only be said of him that he is seemingly always on duty, but successfully so; for hardly a day passes that he does not capture a pickpocket, a burglar, a robber or a horse thief. Mr. Harris is strictly temperate, competent and brave as a man dare be. We have heard a great many people say they would turn out next Monday if it was only to vote for Harris to contribute to the elevation of a model and praiseworthy officer.103

The editorial of December 5 further emphasized Harris’ detective ability and the terror that it struck in the hearts. of those who broke the law.

There is not in the State a coo40

ler, braver, more self-possessed officer than Mr. Harris. He goes about his work without making any fuss. He walks quietly up to the offender, be he of high or low degree, and quietly leads him off to answer to his follies or offences, as the case may be. The evil doers of this section know him, and have a holy horror of him. Somehow or other he has a faculty of spotting them on sight. If they undertake to carry on any of their pranks, he invariably finds a clue which he follows up with unerring sagacity until the offender is imprisoned and the stolen booty recovered.104

The readers of the Star were led to feel that Harris’ election was assured. The paper carried a number of announcements that Jacob F. Gerkins had withdrawn from the race for city marshal in favor of Emil Harris. John J. Carrillo had an impressive following, but with the switch of support from Gerkins to Harris, the latter’s election seemed certain. The Star had even announced that Harris’ election was "a foregone conclusion." What is more, it said that "when Harris gets to be Marshal, there will be a general ‘get, out’ of thieves, . . ." It was remarked that "the robbers and thieves of Los Angeles are dead against him."105

The Star had forgotten the important Latin vote of Los Angeles. When all the votes had been counted, it was Emil Harris who congratulated John J. Carrillo on his successful candidacy for city marshal. Harris went down to defeat by the narrow margin of twenty-three votes.106 The defeat only strengthened Harris’ desire to win and increased the respect in which he was held by the community. Down with Harris went the slate. Later, however, those defeated in 1874 were to enjoy the sweet savor of success. The period of transition from Californio power to Anglo power was not yet complete. The Germans, of whatever faith, were honorary Anglos. When the latter group attained its majority, the balance of power shifted, and the outs were in and the ins were out. Three years later, lawman Harris would stand for the office again. Somewhat prophetically it was written : "Mr. Harris added large numbers to his list of friends by his manly canvass and will be found a much more formidable competitor in the next contest. ..."107

Harris continued in police work after his defeat at the polls. In 1875 we find him as a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff working in close cooperation with his recent opponent, City Marshal Carrillo. The two jointly were "to effect the arrest of the assassin" who had shot his wife through the heart at the Rancho Ballona.108 In 1876 Emil Harris was reappointed deputy by the sheriff. Harris and his partner, M. H. Mitchell, were described by the press as "two able and efficient officers."109 Harris remained formidable. "There are between thirty and forty suspicious characters in this city, who are known to have no respectable mode of earning a living. They are known to Emil Harris, the Marshal, and the police. . ."110

In 1877, the title of city marshal was changed to that of chief of police. Bernard Cohn, who had been defeated with Harris in 1874, was serving as a city councilman in 1877. It was he who moved that the city council should fill the office of chief of police by appointment, whereupon he nominated Emil Harris. J. F. Gerkins was nominated to the same office. The tally showed Harris-5, Gerkins-2, and two blank ballots. "On motion, Mr. Harris was declared [on December 27, 1877] appointed as Chief of Police" of Los Angeles, succeeding J. F. Gerkins."111 The press anticipated Harris’ victory and this time it was right. "It looks to us . . . as if the outcome would be Emil Harris."112 When the news broke it was reported about Harris, on the day before his thirty-eighth birthday, "He is young, energetic and indefatigable. He will make for himself a striking record of efficiency, or we are much mistaken."113 Even the newspaper which had supported Gerkins, reluctantly praised Harris as an efficient officer. It was further reported that, "Some warm personal friends . . . went to his residence to give him a serenade . . . to an empty house, as both Mr. and Mrs. Harris were [away] from home. ..."114

The Alta of San Francisco ran an article headed, "A merited reward."

Emil Harris, who has been elected chief of police in Los Angeles, is well known as the leader of the party that captured the notorious bandit Vasquez and deserves the thanks of the whole State, as well as the particular reward just conferred on him by the people of Los Angeles, for his gallant efforts on that occasion. During his term of office Chief Harris proposes to rid Los Angeles of the thieves that make that city a rendezvous and will deserve the thanks of the people of that section.115

On the first day of 1878, the Herald announced simply that Emil Harris had assumed his duties. Los Angeles had its Jewish chief of police. Jews were an active part of the political life of the city and county of Los Angeles. Later in 1878, an Anglo-Jewish publication of Chicago reported:

The following coreligionists hold municipal office in Los Angeles, California: Emil Harris, chief of police; I [saiah] M. Hellman, city treasurer; Charles Prager, [county] supervisor; Mr. B[ernard] Cohn is running for mayor and Samuel Prager is running for Tax collector. Just think of it, all of them Jews!116

One of the first activities of Chief Harris was to remove the tarnish from the stars worn by his officers. He complained, in January 1878, before the city council, that private parties possessed police stars "and that these stars were liable to be used for unlawful purposes." He also noted that it was the individual officer and not the force that owned the badges, and the officer "when discharged could retain the same."117 The council decided to replace the old stars with a new type and to retain ownership of these when issued. They purchased them from Simon Nordlinger, a local jeweler. 118 Harris was to have a unique badge of his own. On February 14, 1878, he received a call to appear at once before the city council. He assumed that the council wanted him to explain something about his request for an ordinance that would enable him to suppress the local opium dens.119 He was surprised when he was invited to sit among the council members,

but the climax of his surprise was reached when Mayor [Frederick A.] MacDougall, taking from his desk a handsome case, in a few well chosen words, presented him a fine gold badge as the insignia of his office. The badge is in the form of a shield, consisting of solid gold elaborately wrought and enameled. The face bears the inscription "Los Angeles Chief of Police" and the reverse, "Presented to E. Harris by his friends—Los Angeles, Feb. 14, 1878." Mr. Harris was entirely taken by surprise, but he managed to utter a few words of grateful acknowledgement for the honor conferred upon him. It was a very pleasant episode and one which the City Fathers seemed to enjoy most heartily.120

Harris’ duties as chief of police were somewhat more extensive than might be expected. All forms of deviant behavior were subject to his investigation. In addition to opium dens mentioned above, he was to control and restrict the operation of bawdy houses,121 to clear the sidewalks of "all manner of stuff that seriously interfered with travel,"122 to remove streetcar rails when they obstructed traffic,123 to collect bond money from prisoners seeking release, to collect the funds for business licenses,124 to inforce the sanitary ordinances when citations were issued by the health officer,125 to remove illegally stored gunpowder and ammunition,126 to investigate the hangouts of hoodlums,127 to inforce the rules against cruelty to animals such as the exhibition of the "so-called headless rooster,"128 and, judging by the volume of press reports, he spent a good deal of time as dog catcher and protector of man’s best friend.

It was during his term as chief that a dog pound was established at the cost of fifty dollars, to effect the "abatement of the dog nuisance."129 Harris received fifty per cent of the receipts from dog licensing and from June to late November, 1878, for example, he collected $160.50 for this.130 That the dog nuisance was a serious problem is indicated by the fact that Harris’ dog catcher had captured fourteen dogs one morning by eleven o’clock.131 Harris also supervised the recovery of lost dogs, such as that of Mr. Max Cohn of Mojave who had lost his valuable setter.132

Chief Harris was a professional. He wanted the image and the substance of a professional police force. Early in his term and subsequently, he communicated with the city council to inform them that his office and its furnishings were inadequate to the proper operation of his department.133 He said that his office did "not admit of any privacy," and during his term his headquarters was removed to the room previously occupied by Holbrook’s tinshop, adjoining the Dollar Store on Spring Street.134 It was during his administration that the council police committee examined the jail to see what repairs and changes were needed and arranged to furnish blankets when necessary for the prisoners. Twelve pairs of blankets were acquired and a window was placed in the "female cell."135 Harris also suggested that officers be reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses incurred when arresting people outside of the city. The council adopted the proposal and funded the program from fines collected from convicted persons.136

As chief, Emil Harris gave his men orders and he personally supported them in their activities. When he recovered a horse "which had been hypothecated" from a citizen, he dispatched two officers to find the thief. Spotting a gang of tramps he assigned an officer to watch them. This worthy saw the vagrants entering an empty freight car and proceeded to lock them in for the night.137 Concerned about the safety of lawmen, Harris asked that drivers of the chain gang carts be provided with arms, since some prisoners had escaped and the overseer of the chain gang needed assistance to maintain custody.138 When duties increased, the chief sought and was given authorization to engage four extra policemen for a month. He made his selection from fifty applicants.139 Harris needed to protect his men because there was no shortage of citizens who baited the department.

The cry of police brutality was heard in 1878. An anonymous citizen said in a letter to an editor that there were "certain members of the community" ready to obstruct the machinery of the law. Some had accused the chief of police of misconduct in the "incarceration of a raving maniac." The letter writer indicated that "meddlesome, self-sufficient" persons objected to the police using "the necessary force and no more." He felt that "If you want good officers and those who will faithfully perform their duties, you must protect and encourage them in all lawful" activities.140 The sentiment was indicative of the public concern for an efficient force in a community which was just emerging from its frontier lawlessness. Emil Harris addressed himself to this problem of the gradually emerging city.

The chief was a man of insight and instinct. When a local woman resisted going to court by lying down on the sidewalk and refusing to move, Harris had only to talk to her for a moment or two whereupon she arose and went quietly. On another occasion a man who was thought to be insane was brought to the police station. The chief determined that he was ill and suffering from a serious headache.141

Two of the major cases of which Harris took personal charge were those of the Temple and Workman Bank robbery and the murder of T. Wallace Moore. The 1878 bank robbery was solved by the chief following a brilliant analysis of the physical evidence which showed him that it was an inside job designed to look like that of an outsider.142 Harris’ work on Moore’s murder began in 1877 and continued to its successful conclusion while he was chief. The press noted that Harris had shown sagacity in his pursuit of the criminal and used a methodology which employed many ingenious disguises.143

Juvenile delinquency was an old problem when the city was still new. Harris personally took charge of police efforts to discover the perpetrators of a number of petty thefts which were suffered by local merchants including Louis Lewin, M. W. Childs and Samuel Hellman. The main objects stolen were knives. Detective work determined that juveniles were guilty and a boy of eight was leader of the gang. The boys denied their guilt. "Finally the chief convinced them that further denial would be useless." Whereupon the lads took the chief to the place where the stolen articles were buried. The press account made this summary observation:

The children, when first charged with the thefts, were as cool and self-. possessed as old hands and stoutly denied that they had anything to do with the robberies. . . . The youngsters are all respectably connected and go to one of the city schools.144

Two juveniles, a boy and a girl, were reported missing, in love, and possibly eloping.

Chief Harris from the first suspected that the mother of the would-be benedict knew something of the movements of her son and therefore, set a watch on her movements. Yesterday morning his astuteness was rewarded by seeing her take a buggy and drive off. An officer followed her and was led to Santa Monica where he found the children.145

Harris was right. The couple promised to get married anyway when they reached eighteen. The boy’s mother did not object. The girl was a prospective heiress of $40,000.

It was the custom for the chief of police to report regularly to the city council and to provide them with a monthly statistical summary of the activities of the department. During Harris’ first month in office he informed the council that he had attended to their orders and was seeking a manner in which provision might be made for reimbursing officers "who have to leave the city in pursuit of fugitives."146 At the end of January 1878, his report included the following: six misdemeanor arrests, two for assault and battery, four for battery, one for assault, eleven for petty larceny, twelve for drunkenness, two for fast driving, three for assault with deadly weapons, one for grand larceny, twelve for trespassing, one for insanity, there was one defaulting witness, two arrested for resisting an officer, five for vagrancy, one for indecent exposure, two for cheating, and one for burglary. A total of $758.50 was reported stolen, of which $618.00 was reported recovered.147

Another example, that for November, 1878, is instructive. There were 138 arrests in the following categories : trespass, 58; drunk, 20; misdemeanor, 14; battery, 12; petit larceny, 9; vagrancy, 9; assault to kill, 5 ; grand larceny, 3; burglary, 2; and one each for abduction, arson, exhibiting a deadly weapon, fast driving, murder, and robbery.148

By the closing months of 1878, it was apparent that the Los Angeles city government was to undergo a major upheaval. By the end of the year every member of the city council was replaced following the election of December 2, 1878. Almost every city official was likewise out of office. Mayor Frederick A. MacDougall had died on November 16, 1878. Councilman Bernard Cohn, who had nominated Harris for the position of chief a year earlier, "was unanimously elected Mayor pro tem to fill the vacancy."149 In the closing weeks of their terms, Los Angeles had a Jewish chief of police serving under a Jewish mayor. This was the first and last time that a Jew was to hold either office in the City of the Angels.

At the end of Emil Harris’ term as chief, an incident occurred which momentarily cast a shadow on his otherwise exemplary service. On election day, December 2, one of Harris’ men, Officer Tribolet, who had been assigned to duty at the voting precinct located at the depot from which trains were dispatched to Santa Monica, came to the downtown area for lunch. He had left his post without being relieved by another officer, contrary to his instructions by the chief. At the unauthorized lunch break, Tribolet allegedly met a friend, a Frenchman, Jean Marie Levique, who told him that Aaron Smith was buying votes for $2.50 each.

At this time, Chief Harris came upon the scene and discovered that Tribolet was away from his post. He ordered him back to duty at the train depot precinct. Tribolet was later to claim that he tried to tell Harris about the vote buying. Instead of returning to his post, Tribolet went around the block, presumably to seek the opportunity of arresting Smith for vote buying. But Harris spotted him again and ordered his arrest. At the police station, Tribolet refused to give up his star, where-upon Harris had to strip it from him. Tribolet had gone for his gun, making it necessary for officers Thomas Rowan and Jesus Bilderrain to restrain him.150

A highly prejudicial report, later proven unwarranted by the facts, appeared in the Star. It was undoubtedly supplied by Tribolet. In this version Harris and his officers were accused of making a cowardly assault on a faithful fellow officer who was only doing his duty. This account gave as motivation for the affair a previous argument between Harris and Tribolet in which the chief was said to have removed the officer’s star "in the heat of excitement, but restored it after deliberation." Tribolet claimed that at the station he was the victim of "brave Tommy Rowan [who] held a huge knife at his breast, and the gallant Chief held aloft a chair in a threatening attitude."151 None of these allegations held up in the subsequent proceedings. It was to the small credit of the Star that after printing the libelous account it issued a provisional disclaimer. The next day Harris denied "in toto the version given in yesterday’s Star— and asks suspension of opinion pending legal investigation."152 It was the cool response of a professional officer.

Tribolet brought charges against Harris before the city council, which decided to meet as a committee of the whole to fully investigate the matter.153 At the hearing which opened on December 9, with Mayor Cohn in the chair, Harris counter-charged that Tribolet had admitted paying for votes himself and expected to make one hundred dollars in the illicit process.154 This provided the motivation for Tribolet’s charges, which were apparently designed to deflect attention from himself to Harris’ friend and coreligionist, Aaron Smith, who had been accused by the officer of the same charge of vote buying. Smith was a man of good repute, a member of the important Hebrew Benevolent Society, the compiler of the Los Angeles city directory of 1878, which had been published by the Mirror Printing House, and he was a partner in the firm of Smith and Walter, a pioneer carpet and wallpaper firm founded by 1870.155 At the hearing Aaron Smith testified that the charge against him was "false in every particular."156

With Tribolet admitting that bad blood existed between Harris and himself, with Officer Bilderrain supporting the chief in his testimony and with the established reputation of Aaron Smith, the action of the hearing board sustained Harris in his dismissal of Tribolet.157 Surprisingly, a further judgment was issued, in which Harris was held derelict in his duty for "failing to follow up the clues, as to violation of the election laws."158 One may speculate on the unusual decision of admonishing the chief on the word of an officer held by council and chief to be discredited. It is possible that Cohn, in his influential position, wanted to achieve two things by this mild rebuke of Harris: first, he may have wished to deny detractors a basis for claiming that there was any religio-ethnic preference or favoritism involved in the hearing. Second, he may have actually wished to protect Harris from any subsequent civil action by Tribolet or the newly elected city council, which was on the eve of assuming power.

When the all-new city council voted on a chief of police for 1879, Harris was hardly a serious contender. He received two out of fourteen votes on the first ballot and none thereafter. He was succeeded by the blacksmith, Henry King, after eight ballots were cast.159 Harris left the force.160

Emil Harris remained active in law enforcement after leaving the city police. He was almost immediately deputized for special work. One of his first assignments, in January 1879, was to convey a prisoner sentenced for murder to San Quentin prison.161 It is to be noted that with the rapid turnover of police chiefs in Los Angeles, these former officials were in many cases given the opportunity to continue to utilize their expertise as lawmen. Henry King, Harris’ successor, appointed J. F. Gerkins, Harris’ predecessor as office deputy.162

In March 1879, the local press reported that Emil Harris had established a private detective agency at number eleven Downey Block.163 Harris appears to have been among the first, if not the first, professionally experienced peace officer to become a private investigator and security officer. He combined his private practice with intermittent service on special cases for public law enforcement agencies and in the late 1880s he did, for a time, serve as a captain of police, under Chief James F. Burns.164 Somewhat earlier, Harris acted as a deputy constable assigned to the court of Judge R. A. Ling.165

The citizenry of Los Angeles was soon to appreciate the loss sustained when Harris and his experienced officers were out as a result of the change in city hall politics. Within a few months of his successor’s term, the local press gave sardonic voice to a widespread feeling that the new police department was inefficient in the prevention and prosecution of crime.

It is time for the police force of Los Angeles to show the stuff it is made of. Burglaries are abounding in this city, and they are committed by the same old set whom wide awake citizens, three weeks ago, felt a dread of as they saw them standing around waiting for a door or window that could be pried open. These fellows are still walking about, known, apparently, to everybody but the police. The police force is a costly one whose maintenance is only justified by its efficiency. The department in Los Angeles is quite justified in knowing as much as the average citizen does, and in shadowing the fellows who make life and property insecure. Spot these burglaries and follow up the burglars. If they are kept under the eye of efficient policemen they will find no time to break open and steal.166

From 1890 on, Emil Harris functioned as a private detective and in that capacity he handled business cases, served papers for attorneys, conducted a merchants’ patrol, acted as a notary and was associated with a related business, the Southern California Arms Company.167 His career as a private investigator, which he pursued for almost four decades, until 1918, was an extension of his highly respected public service. Herman W. Frank, a notable business and civic figure, engaged Emil Harris to solve a burglary of his store (Harris and Frank—Leopold Harris and Herman W. Frank). The store was located, from 1883 to 1906, at the southwest corner of Spring and Temple streets. Detective Harris quickly solved the case.168 On occasion, Harris was specially deputized so that he might make an official, rather than a citizen’s arrest, when taking into custody a suspect allegedly guilty of a criminal act against one of his clients.169 He kept up his skill as a marksman. In 1882, he won a first prize, a Winchester rifle, in a shooting match.170

Throughout his lifetime, Emil Harris maintained social, professional and fraternal ties to the Jewish community. His youth work in the Turn Verein in the 1870s was with a largely Jewish group. This same interest in Jewish youth was to see him, with his younger brother Max, become one of the prime movers in the founding of a Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Los Angeles near the end of 1887. At the first anniversary ball of the Y.M.H.A., significantly held at the Turn Verein Hall, Max served as chairman of the committee of arrangements as well as floor director and Emil was the chairman of the reception committee which welcomed 250 guests, "among whom were some of the prettiest girls in Los Angeles." Active members of the Y.M.H.A., included some of the most prominent young Jewish figures of Los Angeles. Among them were Siegfried G. Marshutz, later to be the founding president of the Southern California Jewish Orphans’ Asylum (now Vista del Mar Child Care Agency); Max Loewenthal, one of the pioneer Jewish attorneys of the city and the author of many of California’s fish and game laws; Henry W. Louis and Daniel J. Brownstein, early Los Angeles garment manufacturers; and Homer C. Katz, who was to be very active with the Native Sons of the Golden West.171

Emil Harris’ interest in Jewish life led him to affiliate with and support the first Jewish orphans’ home in the West, located in San Francisco.172 In addition, he is remembered as an early, prominent member of Congregation B’nai B’rith (now known as the Wilshire Boulevard Temple).173

Little is known about Harris’ family. His wife, Lede, was the recipient of a fine birthday gift from Emil in 1872:

Officer Harris yesterday filed a deed of a lot fronting on Main Street, valued at five hundred dollars, which he will present to his wife today as a birthday present, and no doubt agreeably surprise her.174

Six years later, Harris and his wife acquired a piece of property on the north side of Sainsevain Street from "Frau" Elizabeth Wiebecke, for $1,800. Mrs. Wiebecke’s beer garden had been the first site of the Turn Verein activities with which Emil Harris was so closely identified. Emil and Lede Harris held the property for only three months before selling it at a profit to Jacob Cohn.175

Emil Harris’ relationship to his brother Max was a close one. Max was ten years younger than Emil, and he was three inches taller than his detective brother, who measured a modest five feet seven inches.176 Max was active in the Jewish community and possessed a considerable estate.177

During the last three years of his life, Emil Harris was retired. He suffered from a heart condition and in 1919 was admitted to Lincoln Hospital for a brief period. His physician was Dr. Philip Newmark, a member of the leading Jewish family of Los Angeles.178 Dr. Newmark was in attendance when Harris died on April 28, 1921, at age eighty-two. The cause of death was listed as myocarditis.179 He was buried at Home of Peace Cemetery on May 1, 1921.180

Emil Harris’ death was regarded as the close of an era by the Los Angeles Times:

Finish will be written at the end of another chapter of the city’s early history . . . when funeral services will be held in the Riedeman Chapel . . . for Emil Harris, town marshal [sic] of the pueblo of Los Angeles fifty years ago . . . He was one of the best known peace officers in Southern California.181

Chief Emil Harris was a man before his time, the predecessor of those later officers who were to master scientific and psychological detection. He was an important pioneer of Los Angeles law enforcement. In his lifetime he justly enjoyed acclaim for his professional skills, courage and perseverance. He made rich contributions to the civic, fraternal, and athletic life of the City of the Angels. And his life story 1s a striking example of the abundant veins that are to be found by ethnic research into the history of the American experience, which is constantly producing new evidence to break down old stereotypes. Emil Harris was but one example of a pioneer western Jewish law officer whose career illustrates the variations in frontier Jewish life.

Endnotes

　　1 J. M. Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record of Southern California (Chicago, 1902), p. 1090; Great Register of Los Angeles County 1888, p. 48. Carol J. Cohen, Sheila Kaplan, George Marx and Jordan Monkarsh are California State University, Northridge, students who rendered assistance in research.

　　2 Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record, p. 48. The membership roll of the Pioneers of Los Angeles County shows April 9, 1867, as the arrival date, but the overall chronology supports the 1869 date. Annual Publication of the Pioneers of Los Angeles County 1902, p. 210.

　　3 Los Angeles Daily News, May 19, 1870, p. 2, c.3; Great Register of Los Angeles County 1875, p. 45, registered on June 25, 1869.

　　4 Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California 1853–1913 (4th ed.; Los Angeles, 1970), p. 405.

　　5 Los Angeles Daily News, Nov. 9, 1869, p. 2, C. 2, November 16, 1869, p. 3, c. 1.

　　6 Los Angeles Daily Star, July 12, 1870, p. 3, c. 1.

　　7 Henry Wartenberg was a partner of Wolf Kalisher in the processing of hides to produce leather goods. He also was very active in the Odd Fellows.

　　8 Los Angeles Daily News, October 22, 1871, p. 3, c. 1.

　　9 Los Angeles Daily Star, May 15, 1874, p. 3, C. 4.

　10 "Nigger Alley" or Calle de los Negros, did not refer to a Black community, but rather to a settlement of Californios who were regarded as being of swarthy complexion by the Anglos. See The Quarterly, Historical Society of Southern California, XXVI June-September 1944), 98, in which the Los Angeles Express, March 24,1877, quoted.

11 Los Angeles Star, October 25, 1871, P. 3, c. 2; Newmark, Sixty Years, p. 432.

12 Horace Bell, On the Old West Coast (New York, 1930), pp. 170-172; Los Angeles Daily Star, October 24, 1871, p. 3, C. 2; October 25, 1871, p. 3, c. 1. For another version see Paul M. De Falla, "Lantern in the Western Sky," The Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, XLII (Mardi 1960), 57ff.

13 Bell, On the Old West Coast, p. 176.

14 Los Angeles Daily News, October 25, 1871, p. 3, C. 1. See also Los Angeles Daily Star, October 27, 1871, p. 3, c. 5.

15 Ibid., October 26, 1871, p. 3, c. 4.

16 Ibid., c. 3.

17 Ibid., cs. 2—4; Los Angeles Daily News, October 26, 1871, p. 3, C. 1.

18 Ibid., November 9, 1871, p. 3, c. 2; December 3, 1871, p. 3, CS. 2–4.

19 Los Angeles Daily Star, January 31, 1872, p. 3, c. 1.

20 "After the ‘Massacre,’ the Chinese government made a vigorous protest and the United States paid a heavy indemnity." Marco R. Newmark, "Calle de los Negros and the Chinese Massacre of 1871," The Quarterly, Historical Society of Southern California, XXVI (June-September 1944), 98.

21 Los Angeles Daily Star, Nov. 21, 1874, p. 3, c. 1, quoting the Daily Alta California.

22 Robert Greenwood, comp., The California Outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez (Los Gatos, Calif., 1960), p. 13.

23 Ibid., pp. 258-259.

24 Los Angeles Daily Star, May 15, 1874, p. 3, C. 2.

25 Newmark, Sixty Years, pp.456—457.

26 Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record, p. 48.

27 Los Angeles Daily Star, May 22, 1874, p. 3, c. 1.

28 Ibid., July 4, 1871, p. 3, c. 2; July 20, 1871, p. 3, cl. 1; October 19, 1871, p. 2, c. I.

29 Ibid., May 22, 1874, p. 3, c. 1; June 12, 1874, p. 3, c. 2. A similar incident with similar results occurred in 1875. See Los Angeles Daily Star, May 2, 1875, p. 4, c. 2.

30 Ibid., May 15, 1871, p. 3, C. 4.

31 Ibid., December 13, 1871, p. 3, c. 1.

32 Ibid., February 5, 1872, p. 2, C. 3.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., September 12, 1874, p. 3, C. 1.

35 Ibid., December 1, 1874, p. 3, c. 1.

36 Ibid., December 25, 1874, p. 3, C. 2.

37 Ibid., July 25, 1874, p. 3, C. I.

38 Ibid., March 8, 1872, p. 3, C. 3.

39 Ibid., January 13, 1874, p. 3, C. I.

4° Ibid., October 19, 1871, p. 2, C. 1.

41 Ibid., August 30, 1873, p. 3, C. I.

42 Ibid., August 13, 1874, p. 3, C. 2.

43 Ibid., January 29, 1872, p. 2, C. 3.

44 Los Angeles Daily News, August 22, 1871, p. 3, C. 1.

45 Ibid., April 30, 1871, p. 3, C. I.

46 Los Angeles Daily Star, July 22, 1872, p. 3, C. I.

47 Ibid., October 25, 1873, p. 3, CS. 1-2.

48 Ibid., April 2, 1871, p. 3, c. 2.

49 Ibid., December 18, 1871, p. 3, c. I.

50 Ibid., April 21, 1871, p. 3, C. I.

51 Los Angeles Daily Herald, December 4, 1877, p. 3, C. 3.

52 Ventura Signal, July 28, 1877, p. I, C. 7.

53 Los Angeles Daily Star, September 13, 1874, p. 3, C. 1.

54 November 15, 1873, p. 3, c. 1.

55 Ibid., September 2, 1872, p. 3, C. 3.

56 Ibid., March 16, 1876, p. 4, C. I.

57 Ibid., September 1, 1875, p. 4, c. 3.

58 Ibid., August 17, 1876, p. 4, C. I.

59 Los Angeles Daily News, July 20, 1871, p. 3, c. 3.

60 Ibid., July 4, 1871, p. 3, C. 1.

61 Later the pioneer Arizona merchant and grandfather of Senator Barry Goldwater.

62 Los Angeles Daily News, May 9, 1871, p. 3, c. 1.

63 Ibid., January 28, 1871, p. 3, c. 3.

64 Los Angeles Daily Star, March 28, 1872, p. 3, C. I.

65 Ibid., March 12, 1871, p. 3, C. I.

66 Ibid., March 24, 1871, p. 3, C. I. 67

67 Ibid., July 19, 1871, p. 3, C. I.

68 Ibid., July 15, 1873, p. 3, C. 2; August 7, 1873, p. 3, C. 3. See also on a related affair, Ibid., February 24, 1872, p. 3, C. 3

69 Ibid., April 19, 1871, p. 3, C. 2.

70 Ibid., March I I, 1871, p. 3, C. 2.

71 Los Angeles Daily News, November 24, 1871, p. 3, c. 1.

72 Henry Eno, Twenty Years on the PacifIc Slope, edited by W. Turrentine Jackson (New Haven, 1965), pp. 196-197.

73 Lamberta M. Voget, "The Germans in Los Angeles County California" (Los Angeles, 1933), typescript [in the author’s possession].

74 Los Angeles Daily News, May 19, 1870, p. 2, C. 3.

75 Ibid., June 1, 1870, p. 3, C. 2.

76 Los Angeles Daily Star, June 3, 1870, p. 3, c. 2.

77 Ibid., April 18, 1871, p. 3, C. I.

78 Los Angeles Daily News, May 17, 1871, p. 3, C. 2.

79 Ibid., May 23, 1871, p. 3, C. 2.

80 Ibid., p. 3, c. 1.

81 Los Angeles Daily Star, May 23, 1871, p. 3, c. 2.

82 Ibid., October 9, 1871, p. 2, c. March 8, 1873, p. 3, c. 2; March 10, 1873, p. 3, c. 1.; March 1, 1874, p. 2, c. 3; March 7, 1875, p. 4, c. 2; February 13, 1876, P.4,C.5.

83 Ibid., March 8, 1873, p. 3, C. 2.

84 Ibid., February 13, 1876, p. 4, Cs. 5-6.

85 Ibid., February 29, 1876, p. 4, C. 1. Conrad Jacoby was the publisher of the Sud Californische Post, the first German language newspaper of southern California, which Jacoby had founded in 1874. Jacoby’s brother, Philo Jacoby, was the publisher-editor of The Hebrew of San Francisco and was well known as the leading strong man of that city, as well as a champion rifle marksman.

86 Los Angeles Daily Star, April 5, 1876, p. 4, c 1; April 6, 1876, p. 4, c. 2.

87 Ibid., April 30, 71876, p. 4, CS. 1-2.

88 Ibid., October 3, 1876, p. 4, c. 2.

ee Ibid., July 13, 1876, p. 4, c. 2.

f0 Guinn, Historical and Biographical Record, p. 48.

91 Max Vorspan and Lloyd P. Gartner, History of the Jews of Los Angeles (Philadelphia, 1970), p. 305.

92 Seventy-fifth Anniversary, Los Angeles Lodge, No. 35, Independent Order of Odd Fellows (Inglewood, Calif., 1930), p. 3.

93 Los Angeles Weekly Republican, December 26, 1868, p. 3, C. 1; Los Angeles Daily News, May 19, 1870, p. 3, C. 2.

94 Ibid., January 9, 1870, p. 3, c. 1; January 1, 1871, p. 3, C. I.

95 Ibid., April 19, 1871, p. 2, c. 4 (advertisement).

96 Guinn, Biographical and Historical Record, p. 48. Golden Rule Lodge No. 160, I.O.O.F., had been organized on July 9, 1869. J. Albert Wilson, History of Los Angeles County California (Oakland, Calif., 1880), p. 122.

97 Los Angeles Daily Star, September 17, 1874, p. 3, c. 1.

98 Ibid., September 29, 1874, p. 2, c. 5. City Marshal was the then-current title of the chief of police.

99 Ibid., Nov. 21, 1874, p. 3, c. 1, a reprinting of item from the Daily Alta California.

100 Los Angeles Daily Star, November 21, 1874, p. 3, c. 1.

101 Ibid.; December 6, 1874, p. 2, c. 2.

102 Ibid., Dec. 1, 1874, p. 3, c. 5; Los Angeles Daily Herald, December 5, 1874, p. 3, cs.

103 Los Angeles Daily Star, December 3, 1874, p 2, c. 2.

104 Ibid., December 5, 1874, p. 2, c. 1.

105 Ibid., December 4, 1874, p. 2, c. 3; Dec. 5, 1874, p. 2, c. 2; Dec. 6, 1874, p. 2, c. 2.

106 Another factor that may have contributed to Harris’ unexpected defeat was the substantial vote that went to B. Frank Hardee, the third candidate for marshal. Los Angeles Daily Herald, December 9, 1874, P. 3, C. 4.

107 Los Angeles Daily Star, December 9, 1874, p. 3, C. 1.

108 Ibid., April 4, 1875, p. 4, c. 3.

109 bid., March 7, 1876, p. 4, c. 3; John Steven McGroarty, Los Angeles From the Mountains to the Sea (Chicago, 1921), p. 365.

110 Los Angeles Daily Star, February 29, 1876, p. 2, c. 1.

111 Los Angeles City Council Minutes, December 27, 1877.

112 Daily Herald, Los Angeles, December 27, 1877, p. 3, c. 2. Earlier the same newspaper had reported that a caucus of the city council "stood four for Emil Harris and four for Chief Gerkins. This is mere rumor." Ibid., December 20, 1877, p. 3, c. 2.

113 Ibid., December 28, 1877, p. 3, c. 2.

114 Los Angeles Daily Star, December 29, 1877, p. 3, CS. 2-3.

115 Los Angeles Daily Herald, January 3, 1878, p. 3, c. 3, quoting the Daily Alta California, San Francisco, December 31, 1877.

116 The Jewish Advance, Chicago, August 9, 1878, p. 3, c. I. In addition, Maurice Kremer was the county tax collector and Solomon Lazard was the president of the quasi-official Chamber of Commerce, and had served as chairman of the "Committee of Safety" concerned with effective policing of Los Angeles in 1877. Los Angeles Daily Republican, August 4, 1877, p. 3, c. 2.

117 Los Angeles City Council Minutes, January 17, 1878.

118 Ibid., January 24, 1878, March 21, 1878. Simon Nordlinger had arrived in Los Angeles in 1869.

119 Los Angeles Daily Herald, February 15, 1878, p. 3, CS. 3-4.

120 Ibid. The tradition of presenting a gold star to the chief began with Harris and contin-ued with his successor, Henry King. Los Angeles Daily Star, Feb. 4, 1879, p. 3, c. 2.

121 Los Angeles Daily Republican, June 22, 1877, p. 3, c. 3. See also Los Angeles City Council Minutes, June 20, 1878.

122 Los Angeles Daily Republican, May 17, 1878, p. 3, c. I.

123 Los Angeles Daily Herald, January 4, 1878, p. 3, c. 3.

124 Ibid., January 27, 1878, p. 3, c. 3; Los Angeles City Council minutes, May 2, 1878.

125 Los Angeles Daily Herald, September 13, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

126 Ibid., October x 1, x878, p. 3, c. 4.

127 Ibid., October 4, 1878, p. 3, c. 2.

128 Ibid., October 2, 1878, p. 3, c. 2.

129 Ibid., May 31, 1878, P. 3+ C. 4.

130 Ibid., November 30, x878, p. 3, C. 4.

131 Los Angeles Evening Express, September 23, 5878, O. 3, c. 3.

132 Los Angeles Daily Herald, July 10, 1878, p. 3, c. 2.

133 Ibid., January 4, 1878, p. 3, c. 3, March 29, 1878, p. 3, c. 4; Los Angeles Evening Express, August 30, 1878, p. x, c. 2.

134 Los Angeles Daily Herald, August 31, 1878, p. 3, c. 2, December 13, 1878, p. 3, c. 2.

135 Ibid., February 8, 1878, p. 3, c. 4, February 15, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

136 Ibid., January 18, 1878, p. 3, CS. 4-5,

137 Ibid., February 6, 1878, p. 3, c. 4, February 20, 1878, p. 3, c. 2.

138 Los Angeles City Council Minutes, January 31, 1878; Los Angeles Daily Herald, February 1, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

139 Ibid., November 8, 1878, p. 3, C. 2; December 13, 1878, p. 2, c. 3.

140 Ibid., February 20, 1878, p. 3, c. 4; February 24, 1878, p. 3, c. 5.

141 Ibid., February 5, 1878, p. 3, c. 5; February 13, 1878, p. 3, c. 3.

142 Ibid., March 17, 1878, p. 3, CS. 4-5.

143 Ibid., April 16, 1878, p. 3, c. 3.

144 Ibid., February 24, 1878, p. 3, c. 6.

145 Ibid., January 12, 1878, p. 3, c. 3.

146 Ibid., January 11, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

147 Ibid., February 1, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

148 Ibid., December 6, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

149 Ibid., November 22, 1878, p. 3, c. 2; Los Angeles City Council Minutes, November 2, 1878. Cohn served as Los Angeles mayor from November 21 to December 19, 1878. Harris was a signer of a memorial tribute to Dr. MacDougall, which was published in the Los Angeles Daily Star, November 57f 1878, p. 3, c. 3.

150 Los Angeles Daily Herald, December 10, 1878, p. 3, CS. 3-4.

151 Los Angeles Daily Star, December 3, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

152 Ibid., December 4, 1878, p. 3, c. 2.

153 Los Angeles Daily Herald, December 6, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

154 Ibid., December 10, 1878, p. 3, CS. 3—4.

155 Los Angeles Daily News, October 13, 1871, p. 2, c. 2; Newmark, Sixty Years, p. 377. In 1890, Aaron Smith was a deputy auditor for Los Angeles County. Los Angeles City Directory 1890 (Los Angeles, 1890), p. 653. See also Los Angeles Daily Herald, November 18, 1882, p. 3, c. 2.

156 Ibid., December 10, 1878, p. 3, c. 4.

187 Ibid., December 10, 1878, p. 3, c. 4; December 11, 1878, p. 3, c. 2.

158 Ibid.

159 Los Angeles City Council Minutes, December 19 and 20, 1878; Directory of Los Angeles City 1878 (Los Angeles, 1878), p. 64.

160 Los Angeles Daily Star, January 4, 1879, p. 3, c. 3.

161 Los Angeles Daily Herald, January 9, 1879, p. 3, c. I.

162 Ibid., January 9, 1879, p. 3, c. 2.

163 Los Angeles Daily Star, March 23, 1879, p. 3, c. 3. The Downey Block was at the northwest corner of Temple and Spring streets in the heart of the business district.

164 Newmark, Sixty Years, p. 425. Burns was chief from April 1, 1889 to July 10. 1889. Official List, Chiefs of Police, Los Angeles Police Department.

165 Los Angeles City and County Directory of 1883-4 (Los Angeles, 1884), p. 112.

166 Los Angeles Daily Herald, May 28, 1879, p. 3, c. 3.

167 Los Angeles city directories, 1890 to 1918.

168 Herman W. Frank. Scrapbook of a Western Pioneer (Los Angeles, 1934), p. 92.

169 Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1885, p. 4, c. 5.

170 Los Angeles Daily Herald, January 21, 1882, p. 3, c. 3.

171 Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1888, p. 2, c. 2; Vorspan and Gartner, History of the Jews of Los Angeles, p. 317.

172 Pacific Hebrew Orphan Asylum and Home Society (San Francisco, 1886—7), p. 27.

173 B’nai B’rith Messenger, Los Angeles, June 7, 1929, Section two, p. 9, c. I.

174 Los Angeles Daily Star, March 26, 1872, p. 3, c. 2.

175 L. A. County, Deed Book No. 58, p. 635, No. 62, p. 292; Newmark, 60 Years, p. 409.

176 The Great Register of Los Angeles County, 1890, p. 37; 1892, p. 76.

177 Condon’s Blue Book of Wealth (Los Angeles, 1927), p. 173.

178 Dr. Philip Newmark was the first physician in charge of the Kaspare Cohn Hospital (now the Cedars-Sinai Hospital) in 1902. B’nai B’rith Messenger, Los Angeles, April 19, 1929, p. 3, c. 3.

179 Lincoln Hospital, 443 South Soto Street, L. A., Medical Records, for Emil Harris.

180 Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1921, Part I, p. 16, c. 8.. He is buried in the northeast section, row six grave forty-two.

181 Ibid., p. 6, c. 5.

 

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