STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 13 



the profit of wharfage and storage. The aggregate of these items 

 upon this year's surplus will not fall short of three million dollars. 

 I most earnestly com mend this suggestion to the careful < ton si deration 

 of the intelligent and enterprising farmers of this State. 



During the year our State has been visited by a gentleman holding 

 credentials as Commissioner of Agriculture for the Government of 

 Great Britain. The object of his visit to California was to ascertain, 

 first, our capacity for the production of breadstuffs and beef, and sec- 

 ond, the probable future persistency of this capacity. This inquiry 

 on the part of the Government of Great Britain grows out of tin; 

 fact that the facilities for transportation of beef and breadstuffs are 

 such, that they may be produced in this country and transported to 

 the consumers in England cheaper than they can be produced on 

 the other side of the ocean. 



The freight rates from the great centers of the West, and from the 

 Atlantic seaboard, are so low that the beef and breadstuffs raised in 

 Nebraska and Kansas are delivered in the markets of England at a 

 rate below the cost of home products of that country. The question 

 is already mooted, as to whether the lands of England and Ireland 

 may not be more profitably devoted to other products than bread- 

 stuffs and beef. The present disturbed relation between the tenantry 

 and the landlords of Ireland, grows out of the fact that the staple 

 articles of human food are produced in America and transported at 

 such low rates as to very greatly reduce the profits of the tenants, 

 thus reducing his ability to pay the rents heretofore obtaining. It is 

 already manifest that America will raise all the breadstuffs and beef 

 for the European market, and more than successfully compete with 

 the production of these staples in those countries. This result is due 

 to two leading causes: First, the progress made in the invention and 

 application of agricultural machinery. Within a quarter of a cen- 

 tury the labor of each operative agriculturist has been supplemented 

 by labor-saving machinery, augmenting the productive power to an 

 almost incredible degree. It is the sober conclusion of investigators, 

 that the agricultural machinery employed in the United States is 

 equal to the productive capacity of three hundred million men. A 

 single farmer in this State has, chiefly through the aid of agricul- 

 tural machinery, raised nearly one million bushels of wheat in a 

 single season. There is an instance in this State of a single farm of 

 fifty thousand acres being cultivated by the employment of less than 

 three hundred men. Before the advent of machinery, the same 

 results could not have been attained by the employment of five thou- 

 sand men. 



The second cause is to be found in the increased facilities and con- 

 stant downward tendency in rates of transportation. The beef raised 

 in the very heart of this continent, even at the foot of the Rocky 

 Mountains, is served fresh on the tables of England. In both these 

 directions the limit of possibilities has not been reached. We have 

 scarcely entered the broad domain of labor-saving invention, while 

 the great science of transportation is scarcely beyond its first infancy. 

 From where Ave now stand we see approaching the time when the 

 fruits of our valleys will appear on the tables of London and Paris as 

 fresh as when picked from the tree and vine. Estimated by a com- 

 parison of the cost and facilities of transportation, San Francisco is 

 nearer to London to-day than the City of Buffalo was to the City of 

 New York at the beginning of the century. The unmistakable ten- 



