"On Rather Hard Terms" - Letter from F.P.F. Temple to William Workman, 20 November 1875.
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By the late nineteenth century, Los Angeles and its business sector were experiencing a prosperous era. In the 1860s and first half of the 1870s, Los Angeles underwent its first sustained period of population and economic growth. For the Workman and Temple families, however, it proved to be a period of dual extremes, from financial abundance to a devastating failure. F.P.F. Temple and his father-in-law, William Workman, after first operating with Isaias W. Hellman in Hellman, Temple and Company, opened the Temple and Workman Bank in November 1871. The bank was in one of the several buildings known as the Temple Block, located at Spring, Main and Temple streets, now the site of the City Hall. While initially popular, this poorly managed and unregulated private venture became, in a statewide panic in 1875-1876, the first major business failure in the city and a shattering loss for the Workman and Temple families, resulting in financial ruin and the loss of most of their substantial landholdings. The narrative of extreme highs and lows on both personal and business levels is reflected through these artifacts from the Homestead Museum's collection, including a letter from Temple to Workman about securing a loan for the institution, a stereoscopic photograph of the location of the bank, and William Workman's bankbook.
The letter concerns Temple's arrangement of a loan with San Francisco capitalist Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin for the Temple and Workman bank, but "on rather hard terms." Temple describes the unpleasantness of his task, the tight control of money in the economic downturn, and the expectation that all would turn out well in the end. Within weeks, however, the borrowed funds were withdrawn by depositors and the bank closed permanently in the mid-January 1876.
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2021-10-20T21:54:02-07:00