Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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

I first came across this in another bookA Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age As I have become more concerned about the level of rampant fraud that has overtaken much of the private sector I decided to order this book.

What this book deals with is not 1 but at least 2 swindles in which the "Julian Petrouelum Corporation" figured. In the early 1920's one C.C. Julian formed the above named "business" and began running ads in the Los Angeles newspapers, employing colorfull language as a sales gimmick.

Julian would these ads urging new residents of Los Angeles, who had just come into money to invest in his corporation where he claimed that his oil wells in among other places Santa Fe Springs CA, where Juilan claimed there was more oil than there was in Texas.

The book goes into the hucksterrism of Santa Fe Springs where inside the various tents there were bars and houses of prositution.

Quite early Julian begins to run afoul of the "Corporations Department of California" which is claiming (correctly) that there has been an overissuse in the amount stock of sold.

This happens at the same that Julian has also run afoul of the powerful and hated Harry Chandler and the "Los Angeles Times" who are aligned with Standard Oil and who are denouncing Julian and people like him.

It then turns out that the "Corporations Commissioner" for California is a former employee of the Times and a personal friend of Chandler's.

But Julian IS a con-artist of the 1st order instead of using the money that he gets through his subscriptions on plants and equipment etc. he uses it instead to lead a highly hednostic lifestyle.

In 1924-25 Julian sells his "corporation" to an even bigger crook, S.C. Lewis who begins to develop an even bigger swindle the so-called "Million Dollar Pool" in which the most wealthy people in LA were involved in a conspiracy to defraud as many as 40,000 residents of Los Angeles of thier money.

The so called "Julian Pete" collapses there is lots of tough talk about
vox-populi by the D.A. but "deals" are struck and only very few of the crooks were ever brought to justice.

I highly recomend this book, it is well worth whatever you pay for it.

This book is banal. I was hoping for more sophisticated analysis. This is an area of California history that deserves better than this effort.

It's a real slog trying to get through this badly written, repetitive, and seemingly pointless work. With the fascinating real-life stories he had to work with, it's a wonder the author could produce such a dull book. It reads like a very rough first draft; very unprofessional.