Claus Spreckels

Claus Spreckels, Adolph Claus J. Spreckels originally, ( born July 9, 1828 in Lamstedt in the district of Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, † December 26, 1908 in San Francisco ) was a leading U.S. producer of sugar ( "Sugar King" of Hawaii and California) German descent, who rose in Hawaii and California to one of the most successful German -born entrepreneur.

Biography

Youth and Family

Spreckels was the eldest of six children of the farmer John Diederich Spreckels (1802-1873) and his wife gift Baak (1804-1875) from Lamstedt near Cuxhaven in Lower Saxony. In Lamstadt he grew up and attended elementary school. After a difficult time in agriculture in northern Germany, he emigrated in 1848 as a 19 -year-old from the United States. In 1852 he married his childhood friend Anna Christina defect ( 1830-1910 ), who had emigrated with her brother in 1849 to New York City and worked as a housemaid. Both had 13 children, five of which reached adulthood: John Diedrich ( 1853-1926 ), shipowner, sugar producer, newspaper owner, and then leading investor in San Diego; Adolph Bernard (1857-1924), financier and Oilman; Claus August (1858-1946), independent sugar producer in New York; Rudolph (1872-1958), a leading banker and representative of the " Progessivism " in California as well as the daughter of Emma C. Watson Ferris Hutton, born Spreckels, who was due to their first marriage in heated argument with her father and, therefore, from 1898 to 1904 in London lived.

Beginning of the entrepreneurial career

Spreckels first settled in Charleston (South Carolina) and took over after a stint as an employee of a grocery store, which he led until 1855. The relocation to New York in 1855 was accompanied by the acquisition of a wholesale and retail store in Manhattan, which he ran with his brother Claus defect.

In 1856 he sold his business in New York, the family moved to San Francisco around and there he acquired a grocery business, which he sold in 1857 for $ 50,000. Here he founded in 1857 together with his brother Peter and his brother Claus Spreckels lack a brewery, the Albany Brewery. On the regional market soon he was for several years the market leader. He sold his shares in 1863 for $ 75,000.

Ascent to the sugar king

Spreckels bought with this money lands in California and Hawaii and built beet and cane. For a stay in Germany, he examined the cultivation of sugar beets and deepened his knowledge in the sugar refining, probably at Hennige Jacob & Co in Magdeburg.

He rose at the end of the 1860s into the profitabele sugar business and has made great gains. He bought equipment from a bankrupt U.S. refining and brought them to San Francisco. Was established in 1867 its first sugar refinery in San Francisco on 8th Street, corner of Brannan Street, which he expanded on and developed by him with operational machinery. In 1881 he developed the most advanced equipment in America.

In the independent Kingdom of Hawaii dominated and controlled it in 1876 soon all the sugar trade. He built cane in the Sandwich Islands, bought on the island of Maui 40,000 acres of land and built an irrigation system. By bribery he expanded his economic power monopoly. The sugar cane was processed in its four factories in and around San Francisco. In the late 1870s, its production capacity was too small for its first site and he built at Potrero Point, San Francisco from his company significantly. The company was now called California Sugar Refinery.

From May to October 1887 Spreckels visited Austria, France, Belgium and Germany to study the methods of cultivation of sugar beet. He then moved to production with beet sugar. Already in the 1880s he had financed agricultural experiments with beet seeds. It was the Western Beet Sugar Company in the Pajaro Valley in Watsonville, Santa Cruz County south of San Francisco. To this end, he imported machines and beet seeds from Germany, and German immigrants formed the local farmer from. Related thereto railway company and its shipping company also transported the beet to its factories in San Francisco.

Struggle for the monopoly

Until about 1893, he was able to maintain its leading position with bribes, corruption and hardness in Hawaii. His monopolies and controls in Hawaii then he lost in the 1890s. 1887, formed a Sugar Trust, represented by the American Sugar Company of the East Coast, which was dominated by the third generation of the German - American entrepreneur Henry O. Havemeyer. However Spreckels rejected a proposed engagement. A fierce rivalry began.

Spreckels negotiated around 1888 with the authorities of Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia and invested, supported by public opinion, over four million dollar to build the world's largest refinery in Philadelphia, which started production in 1889 and soon doubled the capacity. In his quest for the production of inexpensive sugar he gained popularity. The U.S. government under President William McKinley in 1890 increased the tariff on sugar to protect the producers. Agents of the Sugar Trust destroyed even machines Spreckels factories. Ended the " sugar war" was only in March 1891. The Sugar Trust California was forced to close. Now Spreckels sugar was king of the West. The Sugar Trust in 1892 bought its refinery in Philadelphia for about 7 million dollars.

From 1896 Spreckels built for $ 2.5 million the world's largest beet sugar refinery in the Salinas Valley in California. In addition, he bought another 6,000 acres of farmland. In 1919, his company 66,000 acres of land owned or leased. Investments also was in a network of roads, railway lines, pumping stations, irrigation canals, wells and pipelines in the new company town. The farmers formed their own cooperatives and sugar refineries in California and Hawaii, and with the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C & H) from 1906 in Crockett in Southern California was its supremacy broken decisively.

The Western Sugar Refinery existed until 1951.

Entrepreneurs in other areas

During his Hawaii time Spreckels was involved in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, known as newspaper The Honolulu Advertiser, which he controlled financially. In 1888 he sold his publishing interests in the Hawaiian Gazette Company.

He financed in 1879 the shipping company JD Spreckels & Bros. for its Hawaii business, which was in 1881 incorporated into the Oceanic Steamship Company. The sailing ship Claus Spreckels drove in 1879 in record-breaking run from Honolulu to San Francisco in less than ten days. Equipped with a steam boiler drove the Claus Spreckels in 1883 in six days this route. 1885, the steamboat service to New Zealand and Australia was extended. Spreckels also supported the shipowner William Matson and was involved in the Matson Navigation Company.

On the island of Maui, a network of narrow gauge railways developed.

Since 1890, the Pajaro Valley Railroad Company. He had a 42- mile rail line from Spreckels to Salinas (California ) build to Watsonville in California for its sugar factories. Spreckels broke the monopoly of the Southern Pacific Railway. 1897, the gap from San Francisco to San Joaquin Valley Railroad was closed. Spreckels bought the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway and was also president of the Society from 1895 to 1901 until it was sold to the Santa Fe Railway. He also participated on a railway line in Sacramento.

In the 1880s and early 1890s he bought and built several blocks of office buildings in San Francisco. To 1895/97 was taken in San Francisco 's first skyscraper, the tallest building west of Chicago. Spreckels eventually owned property worth more than $ 11 million in San Francisco and San Diego. He also founded an independent energy company, the Light and Power Company in San Francisco.

Personal

On a list of the richest Americans of all time it has been on the position # 40.

Spreckels was a family man with a sociable character, despite his professional stress. The Evangelical Lutheran Spreckels family was an "institution " in California and also in the USA, a family with very different characters, which often lay with each other in battle.

Spreckels was a member of the most prestigious clubs in San Francisco, such as the Pacific Union Club, the Union League Club, the Merchant's Club and the San Francisco Art Association. He supported other clubs in San Francisco, including the Association of German citizens in 1853, the club Arion, the American Club of the Pacific Coast. He donated large sums for many public and non-profit organizations in California.

Spreckels maintained contact with his home region in Germany. Bremen was his most frequent target. He traveled more than two dozen times by Germany, most recently in May 1908. He lived from 1869 to 1871 in Germany for 18 months, in order to restore his health.

He died in 1908 of pneumonia.

Honors

• The place Spreckels in California got its name.
• The place Spreckelsville on Maui in Hawaii got its name.
• The great Spreckels organ, the Spreckels Organ Pavilion and Spreckels Theater Building in San Diego, named after the donor, his son John Diedrich ( John. D. ), named.
• The Central Tower in San Francisco also Spreckels Building is named after John D. Spreckels Claus and.
• The Spreckels Lake gate at the Golden Park in San Francisco is named after the family.
• The Claus Spreckels Street in Lamstedt was named after him.