As a consequence, Los Angeles owns the towns, ranches, and cattle ranges so that merchants, householders, ranchers, and renters have no title except in a relatively few instances, to the land upon which they live or to the house or store they occupy. Los Angeles could sell or lease or refuse to sell or lease land to cattlemen, homes to residents or stores to merchants and sell or refuse to sell water to those who had lived all their lives and would die on the devastated land.
As a result, the relations between the city and the Displaced Persons of the two counties were those of victor and vanquished.
In 1935 the city succeeded in getting an act passed by the legislature which prevented any town from becoming incorporated without the consent of 60 per cent of the property owners. The purpose of the act seemed fair enough when it was announced that it was designed to save the towns from both political demagogues and crackpots running amuck in California and it became a law.
But there was more than the eye could see. Its real object had been to strengthen the strangle hold of the Los Angeles Water and Power board upon Owens Valley. Since it owned the towns it could now prevent their incorporation. There had been some feeling of security under a resolution of the Water and Power Board which had declared that merchants, cattlemen, and residents—all of them lessees, would be given preference in new leases and renewals of old ones.
In 1942 the resolution became a scrap of paper, and ranchers, cattle men and householders were advised that their leases would hereafter be renewed by a method of secret bidding.
Thus the residents of Owens Valley learned that the labor of years had brought no security. As one beaten old timer told me, “We’ve been kicked around so much I’m used to it. I helped blow those ditches two-three times, to turn that water loose on the desert. I know when I’m licked.”
Resentment in Mono county, which provided more of the water taken by Los Angeles than Inyo, was even more aroused and smoldering hatreds were ready again to blow up a ditch. The two counties constitute the 28th Senatorial district.
Brown’s success in the Assembly had not gone unnoticed in the neighboring county of Mono. “We need that fellow Brown,” a prominent citizen said, and others repeated it.
Again Charlie put his suitcase in his car, filled the tank. “We’ve never had anybody from this side at Sacramento,” he told a friend standing by. “I’m running for the Senate.”
“Know anybody up there?”