798 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ism, that a lower, more mercenary political order still prevails. 

 Reform rests with the young men, who are organizing, regardless 

 of party, to work for the purification of politics, and with a new 

 conservative class the horticulturists. 



Stanford's railroad-builders, breaking down the mountain walls, 

 so that the world-spirit surged in, opened the way for new indus- 

 tries, and the same chain of circumstances that delayed the Cali- 

 fornia's realization of the end of his Utopia allowed the firm 

 establishment of a vast group of occupations before impossible. 

 Foremost of these was that varied and profitable industry which 

 some have called " intensive horticulture " the industry that 

 makes an acre produce more food value than a hundred acres of 

 wheat or corn. California made a new start, and escaped indus- 

 trial ruin, chiefly by reason of vineyards, gardens, orchards, seed- 

 farms, hop-yards, and the whole group of allied pursuits. These 

 industries educated a great number of cattle-raisers and wheat 

 farmers, supplemented by clerks and mechanics with their small 

 savings, into horticulturists. Thus California obtained a new and 

 very valuable class of conservative citizens, well out of debt, and 

 more intelligent than the ordinary farmer. The movement toward 

 horticulture, as a business, began when the Central Pacific was 

 completed, and went on steadily through all the years of ferment. 

 It was the most hopeful movement of the time, for it built up the 

 interior of the State, it broke up the great stock-ranges and wheat 

 ranches, and it promised to restore to California far more than 

 had been lost. As soon as horticulture became established as the 

 great future industry of the State, an era of immigration began, 

 first in southern California, then over the whole region. The 

 inevitable readjustment of forces and shifting of industrial cen- 

 ters followed, and is still in progress. 



For fifty years to come horticultural interests will probably 

 increase, and among horticulturists the skilled fruit-grower, own- 

 ing from ten to fifty acres of land, will best represent his class. 

 Such a person is likely to be more of a business man than the 

 average farmer, and is in closer relations to town and city life. 

 He is compelled to travel more, watches the markets and the 

 fields of invention closer, and represents, all in all, a finer type. 

 A California fruit-grower is in some respects akin to the middle 

 class of suburban dwellers near Boston and New York, with this 

 very important difference, that he actually and constantly makes 

 his living from the soil he owns. The one tendency of his life is 

 toward what may be termed " extreme Calif ornianism," for he is 

 growing almonds or oranges or something or other that can not 

 be produced at a profit in many other places on the continent, and 

 the " glorious climate " is his best friend. But, on the other hand, 

 he is in a skilled business, full of technical details, requiring 



