rthern California. While Los Angeles, according to McWilliams, was still almost two decades away from the beginning of its serious development as a city, San Francisco was already experiencing urban calamity on two fronts. As we read in California: An Interpretive History, by James J. Rawls and Walton Bean,
The year 1906 brought two crucial events in San Francisco's history: One was the disastrous earthquake and fire, in April, and the other, in October, was the announcement of the beginning of what turned out to be the most persistent graft prosecution in the history of any city on the United States (Rawls and Bean 242).
In other words, San Francisco was re-building itself both physically and ethically by the time Los Angeles was still developing for the first time.
The economies of the two cities through the decades after 1920 developed along completely different lines. These in turn affected the developing cultures of the cities. In Los Angeles, we find that major events and developments often have to do with water, with the need for water, the acquisition of water, corruption and power relationships and arrangements related to that need and that acquisition. The economy of Los Angeles in its development was closely connected to water. Oil also plays a major role in the development of Los Angeles and Southern California. It is also not unusual to find water and oil closely connected in the history of the economics of Los Angeles:
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company had become the first major industrial concern to locate a branch plant in Los Angeles because the city could promise the 8 million gallons of water a day that the plant would need. In the crucial petroleum industry, 77,000 gallons of water were needed t
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