2 weeks Ago By Steven Finacom
A century ago, UC Berkeley was preparing for the largest graduation in the city and university community’s history.“An estimated 2,600 students” at UC Berkeley would receive degrees in May 13, 1925, commencement ceremonies at California Memorial Stadium, the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported April 25, 1925.In April 1925, the private East Bay Water Co.
, long the target of complaints about inadequate service, was emphasizing plans for expanding Berkeley water facilities in advertisements. (photo courtesy of the Berkeley Historical Society and Museum) “This is the largest number of degrees in the history of the university and is an increase of approximately 100 over that of any other graduating class in the past,” the paper reported.The ceremony would include more than 600 students who had finished their degrees at the end of summer 1924 or in December 1924.
More water: In April 1925, the private East Bay Water Co., long the target of complaints about inadequate service, was emphasizing plans for expanding Berkeley water facilities in advertisements. This included more than 25,000 linear feet of new steel pipe mains up to 20 inches in diameter being laid in Berkeley to service West Berkeley factory districts and the rapidly developing neighborhoods west of downtown Berkeley in particular.
Panhandling: Do you think street scams for money are only a symptom of the present age? On April 23, 1925, John E.Clark, a man with “an honest face” but “years of experience at panhandling” who was “able to look a prospective benefactor in the eye and tell a hard-luck story that never fails to bring forth money,” told one of his tales to a man he met on a Berkeley street.The man listened carefully to Clark’s story of losing his job after a Richmond cafe where he worked burned and facing the prospect of having to walk to San Leandro.
The potential “benefactor” asked him to wait while he changed a bill in a nearby store. A policeman then arrived and took Clark into custody.The sympathetic man on the street turned out to be Berkeley police Chief August Vollmer, who had been told there was a man around telling that same story to everyone he met.
Vollmer had telephoned his officers from the store. At the Berkeley police station the supposedly destitute Clark was discovered to have “quite a roll of money on him,” after which “police gave him half an hour to get out of Berkeley.”Reading this article reminded me of an Easter Sunday years ago when I was driving through Berkeley on a neighborhood street and was flagged down by a woman who told a heart-rending story of her car breaking down on the Bay Bridge, being towed to Berkeley and needing money to take BART to work in Walnut Creek.
Related ArticlesBerkeley, a Look Back: Heritage group holding annual homes tour May 18Berkeley, a Look Back: A controversial school board campaign shaping up in 1925Berkeley, a Look Back: City’s church building boom underway in mid-1920sBerkeley, a Look Back: Construction starts on new commercial buildingBerkeley, a Look Back: 1925 plans announced for city’s first ‘skyscraper’I gave her $5. A couple of years later I mentioned this to a Berkeley police officer I knew, and he laughed and told me her name, that she was well known to the police and that she had made the same pitch for years to pedestrians and drivers in that neighborhood.Saving redwoods: Willis Jepson , a UC botany professor, gave an April 27, 1925, lecture on “The Last Giants” as part of a campaign to save old-growth redwood trees in California from logging.
UC faculty and administrators were key supporters of the Save the Redwoods League that had been founded just a few years earlier, in 1918.Theft: Four Berkeley boys “all under 15 years of age were taken into custody today by police Officer Frank Waterbury in charge of juvenile delinquency,” the Gazette reported April 18, 1925.They confessed to burglarizing two stores, one of them a toy shop, and stealing “goods valued at several hundred dollars.
” One of them also confessed to stealing books from a used book store and then selling them back to the proprietor. Their parents were asked to make restitution.Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.
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