Ballin described his murals at the Title Guarantee and Trust Building in a pamphlet published in 1931:
“The fifth panel is devoted to an incident that ended the isolation of the pueblo and made possible the metropolis. That incident was the coming of the railroad to Los Angeles in 1876. A few years before, the Southern Pacific had extended its transcontinental line to San Francisco. On September 5th, 1876, there was celebrated the completion of the extension through the San Joaquin Valley to the southern city. A brass band met the train, of course. With the markets of San Francisco and the East thereby opened to its 7,000 inhabitants, Los Angeles was to begin its growth.

 
At the lower left of the panel Ballin has given a glimpse of the pueblo of the fifties clustering about the old plaza, the mountains looming to the north. Adobe homes, like crumbs, lie in the empty valley. This was the view of Los Angeles had by the first railroad expeditionary party sent out by the government in 1853."

In this panel, Ballin again affirms what Carey McWilliams described as "the Spanish fantasy past" - a romantic version of the region's history that idealized its Spanish colonial heritage for having brought European civilization to the savage Indians and lamented the state's decline under Mexican rule, thereby positioning the United States as redeemers of Southern California's former glory. While in previous panels he had highlighted the romance of the "The Spanish Period" and cast the American takeover of the region as peaceful and orderly, here he focusing on the coming of American civilization in the form of the railroad. Ballin's "pueblo" is small, barren and dying, the adobe homes appearing "like crumbs," while the approaching train is strong and powerful. It surges like a juggernaut through pastoral scene, and will eventually destroy the Mission, its people and its culture included in the frame. A band plays, underscoring the notion that this development is to be celebrated, not condemned, because of the inherent superiority of American society, technology, and civilization.

There is a sense of moral ambiguity conveyed in this panel, however, that contrasts from the others Ballin painted at the Title Guarantee and Trust Building. Although the piece underscores the inevitability of destruction brought by the train as it ends the "isolation of the pueblo" as he described it, Ballin also included a large, indigenous figure in the center of the piece, his head lowered as if lamenting the tragic loss of his culture and society that approaches. While his face is hidden, that of his young child is not, invoking innocence and purity. The adult figure is clearly a noble savage, once strong, now weighted by his failure to defend his land, his family and his culture. 

The panel suggests that Ballin wanted to draw a distinction between his historical interpretation and racial attitudes and those of many of his American peers. The band and crowd celebrate the arrival of the train, unconcerned for this noble savage and the destruction the train will cause. By depicting the arrival of the railroad in this way, Ballin signals to his audience that they should not be so ignorant, and recognize that the United States' rise to power in Southern California, while inevitable, had consequences that must be considered. Ballin calls on his viewers to honor and remember Los Angeles' days as the "pueblo."

At the same time, Ballin's vision of the non-white residents of the pueblo as noble savages also echoed the racial logic held by many Anglo residents at the time. Many local employers, for example, viewed those of indigenous heritage, and often mestizos living in the borderlands, as conquered people, too primitive and simple to understand capitalism and therefore willing to accept sub-standard wages and working conditions and fulfill the region’s need for unskilled labor. Their views were supported by sociologists studying under Emil Bogardus at USC, who argued that Mexicans were naturally suited as "peons" because of their indigenous blood, fit only to occupy the lowest ranks of the socio-economic hierarchy. Here Ballin surrounds his figure with artifacts from a wide variety of tribal groups in the southwest, mixing different cultures to signify his figure's indigenous origins and blending those with symbols of the Spanish missions. The figure's face, and individual identity, is obscured, his dark skinned body serving as an allegorical representation. Ballin's noble savage, while a sympathetic and tragic hero, also reinforces the prevalent notion that the residents of the pueblo were naturally and inevitably conquered because of their inherent inferiorities to western technology and civilization and continued to suffer in poverty because of their lingering inability to compete in modern American life.¹ 

Image courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Charles Young Library, University of California Los Angeles.
Appears in the Hugo Ballin Papers, collection number 407, Box 17, Folder 1.

Ballin's quotation appears in his pamphlet, "Murals in the Title Guarantee Building," (Los Angeles: Title Guarantee and Trust Company, 1931).

1. Historian Douglas Monroy shared an extreme example of the assumptions made by local employers, citing one who said: “we want Mexicans because we can treat them as we cannot treat any other living man. We can control them at night behind bolted gates, within a stockade eight feet high, surrounded by barbed wire. We make them work under armed guards in the fields.” Quotation appears in Monroy’s article, “Like Swallows at the Old Mission: Mexicans and the Radical Politics of Growth in Los Angeles in the Interwar Period,” The Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 14 no. 4 (Oct. 1983), 454.