STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 181 



upon which it is deposited. The actual effect of this, sand upon the 

 productive capacity of the soil is shown in the exhibit. There is a 

 box of virgin soil, fine, rich, black alluvial deposit, which produced 

 this year eighty-one bushels of barley to the acre. By its side is 

 another box taken from a field which has been covered by the sand. 

 This field was also sown to barley, and produced no more than five 

 bushels to the acre. That is the enriching effect of debris upon 

 virgin soil. If the samples of the results of hydraulic mining upon 

 farming land were sent all through the State, and explained by one 

 of the Bear River farmers whose land has been destroyed, we think 

 the opposition to the drainage bill which has been developed in the 

 San Joaquin Valley and the southern counties, would be abandoned. 

 Certainly this or something like it ought to be done, and that without 

 delay ; and we do not believe that it would be possible to find testi- 

 mony so convincing as these few boxes of soil and lumps of " slick- 

 ens " constitute. 



THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION AND PRODUCTION IN CALIFORNIA. 



We hope that the farmers and business men of California will all 

 read the recently delivered annual address of the President of the 

 State Board of Agriculture, for it contains matter which concerns 

 them deeply. There cannot be any question so important to pro- 

 ducers as that of the method by which the staples they deal in are 

 to find their way to a market, and are to secure living prices when 

 there. These are the final problems of human exertion, in fact, and 

 therefore when it is stated that Mr. Larue in his address forecasts a 

 radical and most advantageous change in the lines and modes of 

 transportation, the interest farmers have in his speculations and dis- 

 cussions becomes apparent. And what Mr. Larue has said in this 

 address is not indeed news. To all who had capacity for reflection, 

 the progress of the Southern Pacific Railroad years ago indicated the 

 certain approach in the near future of a very momentous change in 

 the relations of the transporter and the producer. The latter has, in 

 this State, slowly struggled out of a condition of vassalage. The 

 middleman antedated agriculture, and while it was young he 

 absorbed its profits. For many years the distance to market, the 

 difficulty of ascertaining Liverpool quotations, the clannishness of 

 brokers, the servility of merchants, combined to deprive the farmer 

 of the cream of his industry. He was allowed to live, but he was 

 not allowed to flourish. But in spite of all these drawbacks the 

 agricultural area broadened every year, and presently the control of 

 the crop became too great an undertaking, even for such bold opera- 

 tors as Friedlander. The decline of the middleman and the rise of 

 the Grange were coincident, but while the middleman has not dis- 

 appeared altogether, neither has the Grange yet succeeded in doing 

 the full work for which it was invented. All this time outside agen- 

 cies, however, have been at work to change and ameliorate the situ- 

 ation. It was long since apparent that even if the middleman 

 should vanish utterly, and no obstacles any longer exist between 

 the producer and the merchant, the former would still be handi- 

 capped by the great distance, both in space and time, which sepa- 

 rated his staple from the market. This, of course, affected the mer- 



