CLAUS

SPRECKELS (1828–1908)  , American capitalist, was born in Lanstedt, Hanover, in 1828 . In 1846, to escape army service, he emigrated to the United States and became a grocer . In 1856 he removed from New York City to San Francisco, where he set up as a grocer, then a brewer, and later a sugar refiner . He gradually obtained control of most of the sugar refineries on the Pacific coast; he was able to undersell his competitors because he bought his raw sugar in Hawaii, where he purchased large plantations and contracted for the produce of others . He built a large refinery in Hawaii, and his influence with the Hawaiian government was for a time paramount . By financing the Pacific Steamship Company he was able to reduce the freight charges on his sugar, and he also introduced various improvements in the methods of manufacture . It was he who built the railway from Salinas to San Francisco, by buying which the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe first made a through line into San Francisco . Spreckels died in San Francisco on the 26th of December 1908 . His eldest son, John Diedrich Spreckels (b . 18J3), became proprietor of the San Francisco Morning Call and succeeded to his father's steamship interests; and another son, Rudolph Spreckels (1873– ), became president of the First National Bank of San Francisco .