Humboldt County Historical Society

Home

HCHS Board

Programs/ Events

Humboldt Historian
quarterly journal

Historical Articles
printed in the Times Standard

Membership

Research Library/
Photo fees

Bookstore

Preservation/
Education

Resources/
Collections

      Historian Index

      Collections List

      General Information Headings

      Census Index

      Wills Index

It's hard to imagine a newspaper headline reading, "Eureka Elects a Socialist Mayor," but such indeed were the headlines on June 22, 1915, when Elijah Falk, running on the Socialist ticket, became mayor of Eureka, beating out his closest competitor, Lawrence F. Puter, by just 3 votes. A recount at Puter's insistence confirmed the numbers: 1787 to 1784.

Nor was Falk the only Socialist elected on that day to city government: Joseph Bredsteen won the race for Councilman of the 5th ward, and W. H. Colwell became Superintendent of Streets.

In fact, the Socialist party had been gaining support on the North Coast for over a decade and had stood candidates for mayor and councilman in the past two elections. In the 1913 mayoral race, Joseph Bredsteen, editor of the Labor News, a Eureka weekly, lost to W. S. Clark, with voters reportedly uniting in support of Clark to defeat the Socialist candidate. Bredsteen had also run in the 1911 election, losing that year to F. W. Georgeson. The Humboldt Times of June 19, 1911, stated, "The Socialists won only one victory and that was in an acknowledged Socialist ward." That victor was Councilman G. M. McDaniel, elected by the fifth ward.

Socialism had at this time assumed a place in the national consciousness, so that in 1914, when Henry Ford announced that he was doubling the pay of his workers, reporters asked if he was a Socialist. Formed in 1901, the Socialist Party of America added steadily to its ranks until 1912 under the charismatic leadership of Eugene V. Debs, who actually visited Eureka in 1916, perhaps in honor of its first-and only-Socialist mayor.

This maverick mayor, Elijah Falk, was of the well-known family of lumber entrepreneurs, and had been the leading millwright of his day before devoting himself to politics. His brothers Noah and Jonas owned and operated several mills, most notably at Elk River, in addition to becoming businessmen and bank presidents in both Eureka and Arcata.

Was Elijah Falk a renegade in this family of self-made men apparently dedicated to the principles of capitalism? Probably not. In his book, Falk's Claim, Jon Humboldt Gates notes that when the lumber union began to organize in Humboldt County, the Elk River mill was one of just four mills to grant the union's demands of higher wages and free board. Noah Falk already offered free board and now readily met the wage increase. It would appear that alienation of workers and management was not a part of the Falk ethic.

Nevertheless, that Elijah was some kind of aberration in his own family was the strategy employed by certain of the citizenry in an effort to discredit him. Rumors that Falk had been disavowed by his own sons resulted in this advertisement in the Humboldt Times, taken out by Falk's sons, Charles and Curtis, both physicians practicing in Eureka: "June 16, 1915. We have been informed that it is being persistently rumored about town that we are opposing the election of our father for mayor, on the grounds of his physical condition and his political affiliations." They assert that these rumors are "unqualifiedly false."

There is a clue to what the phrase "on the grounds of his physical condition" refers to in this May 29 notice in the Labor News, in which an implied protest can be heard: "Falk recovers from pneumonia. His unusually rugged constitution pulled him through an attack that would have been fatal to other men." The small weekly Labor News also printed Falk's down-to-earth platform, recapped here in his first address to the city: "I recommend that we take steps to crush our own rock at the city quarry…that a flat rate be established under which large users [of gas and light] shall get no lower rate than the smaller ones…that everybody's meat, even that of the farmer, shall be inspected without [unfair] restrictions."

The aforementioned ad by Falk's sons is all the more notable for its being the only advertisement taken out on behalf of candidate Falk in any of Eureka's newspapers. Falk himself did not advertise, not even in the Labor News, and his name is conspicuously absent from the mayor's race as staged by the Humboldt Times and the Humboldt Standard. Both papers refrained from hardly even mentioning Falk's name.

The race between Falk's opponents, however, was spirited in the dailies, with the Humboldt Times backing Captain Walter Coggeshall, owner and operator of the Coggeshall Launch at the foot of F Street, and the Humboldt Standard backing the stronger candidate, Lawrence F. Puter, a lawyer, and chairman of the Democratic Central Committee.

Puter, a tireless booster for the city, is also remembered as something of a dandy and a gadfly. He was certainly a colorful character: a star of the amateur light opera, a popular master of ceremonies, and an eccentric dresser. In a Times article collected at the Historical Society, Will Speegle recalls that Puter's "red socks were a diversion on one full-dress occasion," and that he "blossomed forth with a Panama hat long before the hoi polloi were even thinking about putting on the 'straw pile.' Puter also enjoyed dropping names-counting Grover Cleveland and William Jennings Bryan among his friends-and was accused by his colleagues of monopolizing distinguished visitors to the town.

The most vigorous clash in the dailies occurred when the Times took Puter to task for not buying locally in the construction of his house, a bungalow at 2434 E Street (still standing). From the architect to the moldings to the furnishings, "even the shingles on Mr. Puter's roof were imported-when we have idle shingle mills and millions of the best redwood shingles lying in the mill yards and wharves awaiting a market," railed the Times on June 15. The next day Puter protested in the Standard that he did not even have shingles: his was a composition roof, but the Times was relentless: "Is Mr. Puter asking us to believe that the materials for 'composition roofs' are made in Eureka? [They are] made perhaps in Germany or the Eastern States-certainly not in Eureka." By linking Puter's name to Germany, whose battlefield successes against the Allies filled every day's headlines, it is suggested that Mr. Puter was not only a traitor to Eureka businesses, but an enemy of world peace.

Earlier that year, before the Mayor's race began, the Standard had criticized Puter for saying in the San Francisco Bulletin: "There is not an idle man in Humboldt County." Said the Standard on January 11, "It is palpably untrue as all of us well know…there is no gainsaying that there are idle men here and that conditions are a long way from normal."

This presence of unemployment and idle shingle mills in Eureka, together with the war in Europe, may have contributed to a seriousness among voters at this time, aligning many of them with Elijah Falk and his no-nonsense proposals.

At any rate, while the two daily papers were squaring off, each asserting victory for its chosen candidate, Falk quietly stole the election. One senses that Eurekans of 1915 were as surprised as we would be today to wake up and find an avowed Socialist had been elected mayor.

As mayor, Falk had some successes: he did purchase Haw's rock-crushing equipment for the city, and a recall, instigated by H. L. Jackman, manager of the Western States Gas & Electric Company, when Falk began an investigation of its finances and sought flat rates for all users, came to naught. However, in the 1917 election Falk was soundly defeated by George W. Cousins. The city government, wrote the Humboldt Times on June 19, 1917, "was swept clean of Socialists." By this time the United States had joined the Great War and foreign philosophies were feared. According to that day's Times, "Americanism was the watchword throughout the day."

Elijah Falk returned to private life, and he must have enjoyed good health, because he lived to age 92.