[Newspaper]
Publication: The Los Angeles Examiner
Los Angeles, CA, United States
vol. 10, no. 193, p. 5; Sect. 4, col. 1
22.81 PER CENT
10-YR. GROWTH
OF L. A. HARBOR
Shipping Business, Even Exclusive
of Lumber and Oil, Shows
Immense Increase
FUTURE OUTLOOK IS BRIGHT
Wonderful Growth Also Occurs in
Manufacturing, Declares
Patrick C. Campbell
"In the past ten years the commerce of Los Angeles harbor, exclusive of the great shipments of lumber and oil, have increased 22.91 per cent; yet Los Angeles is just awakening to its immense possibilities as a maritime city," declared Patrick C. Campbell, manager of the harbor lands department of the Los Angeles Investment Company, yesterday.
Mr. Campbell had just completed an inventory of the growth of Long Beach, Los Angeles harbor and the city of Los Angeles as shipping and manufacturing points, and had found not only a tremendous growth in port receipts, but a wonderful increase in the number of manufactures. Great development was especially noted at the inner harbor, where millions of dollars are being expended in the building of new plants and and the enlargement of others. One of the big improvements is the addition of a monstrous new blast furnace to the California Glass Insulator Company. A big woolen mill on Inner Harbor tract of the Los Angeles Investment Company and more than a score of other manufacturing plants in the same vicinity are making this a center of industrial growth.
"Los Angeles has never been considered a manufacturing city." declared Mr. Campbell, "yet its manufacturing industries are increasing more rapidly than its business as a whole. This is considered a conservative statement by those familiar with the facts.
"In 1899 we had 534 manufacturing establishments, the products of which were valued at $15,134,000. In 1900 there were 1325 such establishments, with an output of $68,585,000. This year there are 2650 manufacturing plants, employing 34,654 wage earners, and the value of the products is estimated at $137,173,000.
"The harbor development is, in greater part, responsible for the growth of these manufacturing industries. The water freight rates that will shortly prevail have been the inducement, and the development of the port and the inner harbor have attracted vast sums of manufacturing capital. This increase in manufactures has just begun, I believe, and it will be but a few years until Los Angeles and its port districts will rank as one of the greatest industrial cities in the country. At present it is found by statistics to be the greatest manufacturing point on the Pacific Coast.
"In 1902 the port of Los Angeles received only 965 ships. Ten years later it received 2936 boats. From now on this increase will be of even greater percentage. The customs collections of 1902 were $278,159. Last year they were $719,880, nearly three times as much. In ten years the tonnage has increased from 356,731 to 2,553,300. The advent of the American Hawaiian steamship line will add not less than thirty per cent to the total tonnage."