The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties [Paperback]

Jules Tygiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 21, 1996

Here is a saga of the roaring twenties, with its glorification of business, its get-rich-quick mentality, and its paucity of government regulation--which bred speculation, corruption, and corporate chaos throughout the country. The Great Los Angeles Swindle exposes the schemes of C. C. Julian and his Julian Petroleum Corporation, known familiarly to thousands of Los Angeles residents as Julian Pete, thanks to Julian's folksy weekly newspaper ads. The Julian Pete swindle ranked with Teapot Dome as one of the great scandals of the era and symbolized the failure of 20s boosterism and speculation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After the discovery of major oil fields near Los Angeles in the early 1920s, the city, the author shows, fell prey to promoters promising instant wealth to all. In this extensively researched study, Tygiel, a professor of history at San Francisco State University, describes the rise and fall of the Julian Petroleum Corporation. Courtney Chauncey Julian, a speculator who struck oil at Santa Fe Springs, used flamboyant and creative advertising to persuade thousands of small investors to buy shares of his company. When ownership of the firm was transferred, the overissue of stock and other fraudulent financial operations resulted in Julian's failure, as well as a series of political scandals that, according to the author, symbolized the corruption of the Roaring Twenties. Tygiel provides a wealth of detail that will be of interest to urban historians and economists. Illustrations.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Just as gold attracted fortune hunters to California in the 1840s, the oil boom of the 1920s in Los Angeles prompted the emergence of boosters and entrepreneurs who were con artists working in the medium of securities fraud. Born of the boom mentality, the Julian Petroleum scandal was made possible by frantic speculation characteristic of its era; it emerges as a true ancestor of the junk bond scams of the eerily parallel 1980s. Tygiel (Workingmen in San Francisco 1880-1901, Garland, 1992) uses voluminous contemporary resources, including the FBI's file on C.C. Julian, to produce the first complete telling of this saga of greed. An authoritative business history, Tygiel's detailed work carves out its own scholarly turf between Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities (LJ 11/15/87) and Bryan Burroughs's Barbarians at the Gate (LJ 1/1/90), exposing the failure of moral and personal values. For collections in American business history.
Susan E. Parker, Harvard Law Sch. Lib.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 398 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (December 21, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520207734
• ISBN-13: 978-0520207738
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #839,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maginificent LA History, August 3, 2002

By 

Timothy S. Hays "A Reader in Westchester County" (Westchester County, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties (Paperback)

For those of who grew up in Los Angeles during the 1960s, much of the past was obscured, unless you went to the Huntington Library or had access to good oral history from those who lived in the City of Angels while it was growing up, in the 1920s and 30s. My parents never told me of the great oil land grabs, although they were a big part of Angeleno lore. My mother the historian was more aware of the auto companies' diabolical shutdown of the street-car system in the late 1940s, and of the Hollywood Blacklist period, than of the land-and-resource grabbers.

Tygiel has thoroughly researched this history of the pitchmen and speculators who ripped through fertile Los Angeles looking for black gold. Sleazy-though-lovable salesmen, corrupt (and virtuous) district attorneys, town fathers-- all are portrayed here by an unbiased journalist and student of L.A. history who should do more books on the subject.

I am a fifth-generation Californian who has lived in New York for many years, and I thirst for more history of my hometown (Los Angeles) at every turn. Jules Tygiel has sated that thirst for the time being with his cogent take on the LA of the (fictional) Chinatown era. Now, he should get a three-book deal to write even more about the period, which I shall earnestly await.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ripping story, well told, May 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties (Paperback)

This book reads like a well-written detective story, with fascinating characters, unforseen plot twists, and a breezy narrative style. It is, unbelieveably, a true story, which makes it even more mind-boggling.

For native Angelenos, another fascinating feature of the book is the history of the city's development. This was a formative period when city fathers were just beginning to aspire to civic greatness. Tygel has woven LA's history through the book and dropped in wonderful historical tidbits.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating narrative history, March 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties (Paperback)

Con-men, scandal -- this well-written narrative history of Los Angeles in the 1920s reads like a great movie. Recommended!