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Claus Spreckels

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Claus Spreckels
Claus Spreckels
Born(1828-07-09)July 9, 1828
Lamstedt, Kingdom of Hanover (now Lower Saxony, Germany)
DiedDecember 26, 1908(1908-12-26) (aged 80)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
OccupationIndustrialist
Known forFounder of Spreckels Sugar Company
SpouseAnna Christina Mangels (1830-1910)
Children13, five lived to adulthood: John Diedrich (1853-1926), Adolph Bernard (1857-1924), Claus August (1858-1946), Emma Claudina (1870-1924), Rudolph (1872-1958)
Signature
Claus Spreckels Sugar Factory in Potrero Point in 1892

Adolph Claus J. Spreckels[notes 1] (July 9, 1828 – December 26, 1908) was a German-born major industrialist in both California and Hawai'i during the kingdom and republican periods of the islands' history. Spreckels founded or was involved in several enterprises, most notably the company that bears his name, Spreckels Sugar Company.

Early life and family

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Spreckels was born in Lamstedt, Kingdom of Hanover, today Lower Saxony, Germany. Spreckels was the eldest of six children of the farmer John Diederich Spreckels (1802–1873) and his wife Gesche Baak (1804–1875), a family that had occupied a homestead in Lamstedt for many generations. He grew up in Lamstedt and attended elementary school. After the bad harvests of 1845 and 1846, the resulting inflation and hunger crisis reached its peak in 1847; Spreckels emigrated to the United States in 1848 at the age of 19 to start a new life, with only one German Thaler in his pocket.[1] In 1852, he married his childhood sweetheart, Anna Christina Mangels (September 4, 1830 in Ankelohe [de], Kingdom of Hanover, Germany – February 15, 1910, San Francisco, California), who had immigrated to New York City with her brother three years earlier. They had 13 children, five of whom lived to maturity: sons John Diedrich (1853–1926), Adolph Bernard (1857–1924), Claus August ("Gus"; 1858–1946), and Rudolph (1872–1958); and daughter, Emma Claudina (1870–1924), who married Watson Ferris Hutton.[1] The remaining children died in childhood, in several cases, within a few months of each other, either from diphtheria or from other unspecified pandemic diseases, possibly cholera.[2]

Developing California

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The family first settled in South Carolina, where Spreckels opened a grocery-store business. Within a short time, they moved to New York City, then in 1856 relocated to San Francisco, where Spreckels began a brewery. Spreckels entered the sugar business in the mid-1860s and came to dominate the Hawaiian sugar trade on the West Coast. His first refinery, built in 1867, was at Eighth and Brannan Streets in San Francisco, but by the late 1870s, the Brannan Street facilities were running at capacity, so Spreckels chose a site in Potrero Point to open a larger sugar refinery with water access.[citation needed] He called his concerns the California Sugar Refinery.

Spreckels used some of his wealth to purchase, beginning in 1872, the former Mexican land grant Rancho Aptos, a large tract of ranch and timber land in Aptos, California. He built a large resort hotel, and not far away, an extensive ranch complex. Spreckels was one of the original investors in the Santa Cruz Railroad, which began operation in 1875 and passed through his land on its run between Santa Cruz and Watsonville.[3] On the Aptos ranch, Spreckels began to experiment with growing sugar beets. He induced others in the area to plant sugar beets, as well, and built a small refinery in nearby Capitola in 1874, where it operated for five years.

In 1888, Spreckels established the Western Beet Sugar Company in Watsonville, which was at that time the largest beet sugar factory in the U.S.[4] By 1890, Spreckels' main growing operations had shifted to the Salinas Valley, so he built the 42-mile narrow-gauge Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad to ship his sugar beets from the fields near Salinas to Watsonville.[5]

Spreckels Temple of Music in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

In 1899, Spreckels opened an even larger factory closer to the main sugar-beet fields. He named the new factory Spreckels Sugar Company. A company town grew up around the plant, and still exists as Spreckels, California. The town and the sugar factory were important in the early life of novelist John Steinbeck, and several scenes from his novels take place there.[2][6]

In the 1890s, Spreckels helped found the national sugar trust and renamed his San Francisco property the Western Sugar Refinery, and continued to increase his control over the Hawaiian sugar trade. This control over the industry was irksome to Hawaiian planters not directly affiliated with Spreckels and his associates. At the end of the 1890s, they attempted to break free. In 1905, the planters established a cooperative refinery in Crockett, California, the California and Hawaiian Sugar Company (C&H). The Spreckels dominance in sugar was broken, but the Western Sugar Refinery continued operation in San Francisco until 1951.[citation needed]

Spreckels was the president of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad, which was founded in 1895 and sold to the Santa Fe Railway in 1900. The railroad built a line that competed with the Southern Pacific through the San Joaquin Valley between Richmond and Bakersfield. The railroad was welcome competition for shippers who were strangled by Southern Pacific's monopoly on shipping rates in the valley.[2] Today, this route is BNSF's main route to Northern California.

In Hawaii

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Spreckels' interest in Hawaii's sugar industry began in 1876. Prior to that time, Spreckels had opposed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, which increased the Kingdom of Hawaii's access to the American sugar market, because he feared that the low tariffs on Hawaiian sugar would hurt his business. However, Spreckels eventually decided to establish his own plantations in Hawaii and traveled there one year later.[7]

In 1878, Spreckels founded Spreckelsville, a company town along the northern shore of Maui. To do so, he purchased and leased 40,000 acres (160 km2) of land. That same year, Spreckels incorporated the Hawaiian Commercial Company with Hermann Schussler, a San Francisco area engineer best known for overseeing construction of the Crystal Springs Reservoir. In 1882, the company was reincorporated as the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company (HC&S).[8] By 1892, Spreckelsville was the largest sugarcane plantation in the world[7] and employed thousands of immigrant farm laborers from Japan,[9] Korea,[10] China,[11] and other countries.

Spreckels became friends with Walter M. Gibson, adviser to King Kalākaua. Together, they made arrangements where Spreckels would lend the king money and in return, Gibson and he would increase the Spreckels' land holdings and water rights. However, Spreckels fell out of Kalākaua's favor in 1886.[notes 2]

He purchased the Pacific Commercial Advertiser in Hawaii in 1880 and became a publisher. This paper later became known as the Honolulu Advertiser, and prior to its demise in 2010, became one of the largest newspapers in circulation in the United States. Spreckels' conservative, pro-monarchy slant caused him to fall from favor in the business community, and he eventually sold the newspaper.

Claus Spreckels also lent his assistance to William Matson when he first founded Matson Navigation Company. Matson had been captain of a vessel, engaged chiefly in carrying coal to the Spreckels sugar refinery. Spreckels financed many of Matson's new ships, including Matson's first ship, called Emma Claudina and named for Spreckels' daughter.[13]

In 1893, following a bitter lawsuit that pitted him against his two youngest sons, Gus and Rudolph, as well as the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, which he opposed, Claus Spreckels handed off his Hawaii properties and businesses to his business partner William G. Irwin and his two eldest sons, John and Adolph, with the intention of focusing his resources on his beet sugar business in California.[14][2] Viewed as an opponent of the newly-established Provisional Government of Hawaii, on July 9, 1893, Spreckels found a death threat graffitied on his house and went into self-exile from Hawaii on July 19. He left on the SS Australia, vowing to "return to see grass growing in the streets of Honolulu." Spreckels returned only once to Hawaii, in 1905.[citation needed]

Infighting between his sons and their waning interests in their Hawaiian businesses led to the disolution of the Spreckels family businesses over the following decades and their takeover by Hawaii's emerging Big Five sugar companies. Following a brief takeover by Gus and Rudolph, the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company and Spreckelsville were taken over by Alexander & Baldwin in 1898, and the remaining Irwin and Spreckels businesses merged into C. Brewer & Co. in 1909.[14]

Controversies

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Spreckels had an often-contentious relationship with other powerful business figures and interests, both in the United States and in the Kingdom of Hawaii. This was reflected in frequent negative publicity for Spreckels, particularly in the often yellow press that characterized much of American journalism of that era.[15][2] One such rivalry would grow into a family enmity between Claus Spreckels and his sons and Charles and M. H. de Young, owners of the San Francisco Chronicle, culminating in the attempted assassination of M. H. de Young by Adolph B. Spreckels in 1884.[2][16][17] Allegations by the Chronicle and other critics included the claim that he practiced slavery on his Hawaiian plantations, that he acted as a pimp for King Kalākaua, and that he had defrauded stockholders in his company.[2]

Allegations of slavery on Hawaii plantations

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Like other owners of sugar plantations in Hawaii prior to American annexation, Spreckels employed laborers on the contract labor system,[7][8] a system having some features of indentured servitude, in which an immigrant laborer contracted to work for a single employer for a set period (typically 3-5 years) for a low wage as repayment for the cost of passage to Hawaii.[18] Spreckels was a strong advocate for continuation of this system, arguing that sugar could not be produced economically without a reliable supply of cheap labor.[7][8] This led him to oppose the annexation of Hawaii by the United States, something that was supported by many powerful Americans in Hawaii, as the use of contract labor was illegal in the United States under the 1885 Alien Contract Labor Law and other laws.[8][19]

In the 1880s, the Chronicle began running articles alleging that the laborers on Spreckels plantations were effectively enslaved, that his plantations engaged in unacceptable labor practices, and that the living conditions of the laborers were inhumane, with some of this coverage getting attention in the larger national press.[15][20] The majority of San Francisco newspapers of the era, however, did not endorse the Chronicle's reporting on the issue, claiming that the labor conditions on Spreckels plantations were acceptable and, in fact, much better than those on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, a position later supported by independent investigations by the Portuguese and Norwegian governments.[20]

Negative publicity about Spreckels Hawaiian operations continued to follow him even after the divestment of his Hawaiian operations in 1893. In 1900, an incident took place in which 114 Puerto Rican migrant laborers were transported to Hawaii under coercive and inhumane conditions. News of the plight of these laborers as they were being transported to California for shipment to Hawaii became a cause célèbre in the American press, particularly in San Francisco. The laborers were recruited and trafficked by labor agents who, according to most accounts, were hired by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association,[21][22][23][24][25][26] though some stories linked the agents to Claus Spreckels.[2][27][28][29] John D. Spreckels issued a statement via his newspaper, the San Francisco Call, claiming that neither he nor Claus Spreckels had anything to do with the recruitment of these laborers.[27]

Death

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Spreckels died on December 26, 1908, in San Francisco, and was buried at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma.[30] With his death, his second son Adolph assumed the management of Spreckels Sugar Company.

Legacy

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On Claus Spreckels' death, his second son Adolph assumed the management of Spreckels Sugar Company. The company remained under control of Claus Spreckels descendants until a 1949 buyout by Charles Edouard de Bretteville, a relative of Adolph's wife, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels. The de Bretteville family sold their interest in 1963 and it passed out of the family entirely. As of 2025, Spreckels Sugar Company is still in business, owned by the Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Cooperative.[31] The company is headquartered in Brawley, California in the Imperial Valley and operates a beet sugar factory there. It currently sells granulated sugar in bulk to the food and beverage industry, with a secondary business in beet molasses and beet pulp that is sold for commercial yeast manufacture and for animal feed.[32][33]

The Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company (HC&S) continued operation as a division of Alexander & Baldwin (A&B) for over a century after Spreckels left the company. In 1902, HC&S closed the Spreckelsville mill and moved its main operations to Puʻunene. Later in the century, A&B would sell of the valuable coastal land on which Spreckelsville was situated for real estate development and the unincorporated community of Spreckelsville still exists as a community. The original California HC&S corporation incorporated by Spreckels and Schussler in 1878 was formally dissolved and then reincorporated in Hawaii in 1926. The company shut down operations entirely in 2016, by which time it had been the last remaining sugar producer in Hawaii.[citation needed]

In 1899, Spreckels gave the city of San Francisco a classical-style outdoor music structure (known as "the bandshell") to frame one end of the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park. The official name of the structure is the Spreckels Temple of Music.

A number of streets in Aptos, California, are named either for Claus Spreckels or for parts of his once-extensive estate. In addition to Spreckels Drive and Claus Lane, Polo Drive runs along one side of what was once Spreckels' polo field, now a Santa Cruz County park named Polo Grounds Park.[34] A shopping center called Deer Park Shopping Center sits at the edge of a formerly wooded Spreckels-owned area used by hotel guests and visitors.[35]

Other naming tributes to the Spreckels family include:

Notes

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  1. ^ His last name has often been misspelled in many sources as 'Spreckles', e.g., Google Books search "Claus Spreckles", Google Scholar search "Claus Spreckles"
  2. ^ Both the king and Gibson were in debt to Spreckels due to gambling and tired of his demands. Kalākaua was able to secure a loan from a London creditor and paid off his debt to Spreckels, freeing him of the latter's influence.[12]

References

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  1. ^ a b Spiekermann, Uwe (2011). Hausman, William J. (ed.). "Claus Spreckels: Robber baron and sugar king". Immigrant Entrepreneurship. Volume 2: The Emergence of an Industrial Nation, 1840-1893. (online book). German Historical Institute. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Bonura, Sandra E. (2024). The Sugar King of California: The Life of Claus Spreckels. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 9781496239082.
  3. ^ Collins, Allen (1995). "The Spreckels era in Rio Del Mar, 1872-1922". Santa Cruz Public Libraries Local History Collection. Excerpt from: Collins, Rio Del Mar: A Sedate Residential Community (self-published book).
  4. ^ Clark, Donald Thomas (1986). Santa Cruz County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Santa Cruz, CA: Santa Cruz Historical Trust. ISBN 9780940283008.
  5. ^ Monterey County Historical Society (2005). "Pajaro Valley Consolidated Railroad". Monterey County Historical Society. Retrieved March 4, 2025.
  6. ^ Clark, Donald Thomas (1991). Monterey County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary. Carmel Valley, CA: Kestrel Press. ISBN 9781880478004.
  7. ^ a b c d Teisch, Jessica (2010). "Sweetening the urban marketplace: California's Hawaiian outpost". In Miller, Char (ed.). Cities and Nature in the American West. Reno: University of Nevada Press. pp. 17–33. ISBN 9780874178470. Project MUSE chapter 367662.
  8. ^ a b c d Adler, Jacob (1966). Claus Spreckels: The Sugar King in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. LCCN 65-28712. OL 5954768M.
  9. ^ Kiyosaki, Wayne (2014). Talk Pidgin; Speak English: Go Local; Go American: The Japanese Immigrant Experience in Spreckelsville, Maui. AuthorHouse. p. 50. ISBN 9781496907516.
  10. ^ Chang, Roberta; Patterson, Wayne (January 2003). The Koreans in Hawaiʻi: A Pictorial History, 1903-2003. University of Hawaii Press. p. 43. ISBN 9780824826857.
  11. ^ Pryor, Alton (2004). Little Known Tales in Hawaii History. Stagecoach Pub. pp. 118–19. ISBN 9780974755113.
  12. ^ Clark, John R. K. (January 1989). The Beaches of Maui County. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 9–10. ISBN 9780824812461.
  13. ^ Cypress Lawn Heritage Museum (2020). "William Matson & Lurline Matson Roth". Cypress Lawn Heritage Museum. Retrieved March 4, 2025.
  14. ^ a b MacLennan, Carol A. (2014). Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai‘i. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. p. 91-92. ISBN 9780824839499.
  15. ^ a b German Historical Institute (February 18, 2013). "The coolie system and the yellow press: Criticism of the Spreckels sugar plantations". Immigrant Entrepreneurship. German Historical Institute. Retrieved February 18, 2025.
  16. ^ Secrest, William B. (2005). California Feuds: Vengeance, Vendettas and Violence on the Old West Coast. Sanger, CA: Quill Driver Books. pp. 114–118. ISBN 9781884995422.
  17. ^ Brechin, Gray A. (2007). Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. California Studies in Critical Human Geography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520250086. OL 1995185W.
  18. ^ Clouatre, Douglas (2010). "Contract labor system". In Bankston, Carl L. (ed.). Encyclopedia of American Immigration. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. pp. 246–248. ISBN 9781587655999.
  19. ^ Siler, Julia Flynn (2012). Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure. New York: Grove Atlantic. ISBN 9780802194886. OL 16593169W.
  20. ^ a b Spiekermann, Uwe (2021). "Labor as a bottleneck: Entangled commodity chains of sugar in Hawaii and California in the late nineteenth century". In Komlosy, Andrea; Musić, Goran (eds.). Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations. Studies in Global Social History 42. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. pp. 177–201. doi:10.1163/9789004448049_008. ISBN 9789004448049.
  21. ^ Souza, Blase Camacho (1984). "Trabajo y tristeza - "work and sorrow": The Puerto Ricans of Hawaii, 1900 to 1902". Hawaiian Journal of History. 18: 156–173.
  22. ^ López, Iris (2005). "Borinkis and chop suey: Puerto Rican identity in Hawai'i, 1900 to 2000". In Teresa Whalen, Carmen; Vázquez-Hernández, Víctor (eds.). The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. Philadelphia: Temple University press. pp. 43–67 (pp. 44-49). ISBN 9781592134120. JSTOR j.ctt14bt09b.5. OL 19457185W.
  23. ^ Poblete, JoAnna (2014). Islanders in The Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawai'i. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. p. 27-31. ISBN 9780252096471.
  24. ^ Carr, Norma (2017). "Image: The Puerto Rican in Hawaii". In Rodriguez de Laguna, Asela (ed.). Images and Identities: The Puerto Rican in Two World Contexts. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. pp. 96–106 (pp. 97-99). ISBN 9780887386176.
  25. ^ Acosta Belén, Edna; Santiago, Carlos Enrique (2018). Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. p. 68-69. ISBN 9781626376755.
  26. ^ Guevarra, Rudy P. (2023). Aloha Compadre: Latinxs in Hawai'i. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 69-75. doi:10.36019/9780813565675. ISBN 9780813572710.
  27. ^ a b Medina, Nitza C. (2001). "Rebellion in the Bay: California's first Puerto Ricans" (PDF). Centro Journal. 13 (1): 85–95.
  28. ^ Natal, Carmelo Rosario (2001). Exodo Puertorriqueño: Las Emigraciones al Caribe y Hawaii, 1900-1915. Editorial Edil. ISBN 9781881725855.
  29. ^ McGreevey, Robert C. (2018). Borderline Citizens: The United States, Puerto Rico, and the Politics of Colonial Migration. Cornell University Press. p. 50-53. ISBN 9781501716157.
  30. ^ Kestenbaum, Lawrence (nd). "Index to Politicians: Spraker to Sprigade". The Political Graveyard. Retrieved October 22, 2022.
  31. ^ "History". Spreckels Sugar. Spreckels Sugar Company and SMBSC. 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  32. ^ "Home page". Spreckels Sugar. Spreckels Sugar Company and SMBSC. 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  33. ^ "About us". Spreckels Sugar. Spreckels Sugar Company and SMBSC. 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2025.
  34. ^ Hibble, John (November 15, 2022). "Polo in Aptos?". Aptos History Museum. Retrieved March 4, 2025.
  35. ^ Lyon, Mike (September 1, 2017). "Claus Spreckels in Aptos". Aptos Life. Retrieved March 4, 2025.
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