Spreckels family net worth

The Character of Claus Spreckels

The character of Claus Spreckels is perhaps exemplified by this story: In 1895, Spreckels began construction of the Spreckels Building in San Francisco, and when completed it was the tallest building in the city. But Spreckels was annoyed because smoke from two plants of the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company were smudging the sides of the building and annoying his tenants. He asked the president of the utility, Joseph B. Crockett, to help reduce the soot, but was rebuffed. In answer, Spreckels in 1899 founded the Independent Electric Light and Power Company and engaged in a ferocious rate war with the older utility.

The rate war and dogged competition forced the San Francisco Gas and Electric Company to merge with all of its rivals–except Spreckels who would not merge, but offered to sell his new company. The San Francisco Gas and Electric Company had no choice but to buy, at a handsome profit for Spreckels. The successor company of all these smaller companies is now the Pacific Gas and Electric Company!

Claus Spreckels (1828–1908) emigrated from his homeland of Germany to the United States with only seventy-five cents in his pocket, built a sugar empire, and became one of the richest Americans in history alongside John D. Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates. Migrating to San Francisco after the gold rush, Spreckels built the largest sugar beet factory of its kind in the United States. His sugar beet production in the Salinas Valley changed the focus of valley agriculture from dry to irrigated crops, resulting in the vast modern agricultural-industrial economy in today’s “Salad Bowl of the World.” When Spreckels gave America its first sugar cube, he became the “Sugar King.”

The indomitable Spreckels was a colorful and complicated character on both sides of the Pacific. A kingpin in the development of the Hawai‘i-California sugarcane industry, he wielded a clenched fist over Hawai‘i’s economy for nearly two decades after occupying a position of unrivaled power

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