Harriman’s fusion perspective made sense to growing numbers of workers, union leaders, and their sympathizers in the general populace who were tired of the high-handed, antidemocratic, and often corrupt ways of the city elite. He promised to undo the antipicketing ordinance “half an hour” after he was elected and to investigate real estate deals tied to the Owens Valley aqueduct project, from which Otis and his friends had profited enormously. Before the aqueduct was officially begun, and the decision made to conclude it at the outer edge of the San Fernando Valley, Otis’s syndicate had purchased two-thirds of the valley’s land, much of it considered worthless before the arrival of cheap water.