200 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



was constructed, and the waters of the Pacific and the Atlantic were bound 

 together by lasting ties of steel. 



With equal energy and speed the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Rail- 

 road Company pushed westward its road, until the orange groves of San 

 Bernardino and of Los Angeles, and the port of San Diego, were reached. 

 Freights and fares were reduced. This reduced tariff of freights rendered 

 possible the sending of the fruits of California to Eastern States, and with 

 profit to the producer. Reduced fares caused residents of Northern States, 

 who formerly sojourned in Florida during their rigorous winter season, to 

 visit California when the frosts and snows were around their own northern 

 homes. These visitors found the mildness of our winter climate equaled 

 that of Florida, while California, in the salubrity of its climate and attrac- 

 tive scenery, surpassed that land of flowers. Railroads have annihilated 

 the obstacle of distance; and cheapness of fares that of the former great 

 expense of immigration to the Golden State. Many of the former large 

 land holdings in Southern California had been divided up into small tracts 

 and sold, and the owners of these small tracts had planted them with vines 

 and fruit trees. Actual experience showed that a few acres planted to vines 

 and fruit trees yielded the owner a larger net revenue than would many 

 acres devoted solely to wheat growing. Our eastern visitors on their return 

 home gave true reports of the mildness and salubrity of our climate, the 

 attractiveness of our scenery, and of the productiveness of our soil. The 

 possibilities of California as a great agricultural, wine, and fruit producing 

 State became known east, and the tide of immigration of wealthy and ener- 

 getic farmers swept over the barriers of intervening space and reached 

 Southern California. Lands there appreciated largely in market value; 

 lands in other portions of the State are showing a like increase. Statistics 

 embraced in the published reports of this society show that the citrus fruits 

 can be grown from the foot of Mount Shasta, on the north, to the southern 

 borders of San Diego, while in our greater as well as in our smaller valleys, 

 on the foothills and on our mountain ranges, and on the mountain sides 

 themselves, are grown the table, the wine, and the raisin grape, the prune 

 and the apricot, the pear and the nectarine, the peach and the fig, the wal- 

 nut and the almond, the plum and the olive; equaling in flavor and in 

 abundance those produced in any other climate. Lands valuable for wine 

 and fruit growing are too valuable for grain raising alone, and although 

 large and remunerative crops of grain are raised in California, and our 

 fields of golden wheat are the just pride of the State, enhanced value of 

 real estate is causing owners of large tracts of land, in Central and North- 

 ern, as well as in Southern California, to divide up their large land holdings 

 into smaller tracts, and selling these smaller tracts to persons seeking to 

 engage in wine producing, fruit growing, and in gardening. 



It is not in agricultural productions alone that California is now making 

 rapid progress. The wages of mechanics are higher here than in the East- 

 ern States, the cost of living less. The tariff of freights alone affords to 

 many articles produced by our manufacturing industries all needed pro- 

 tection. The car shops of the Central Pacific Railroad Company in our 

 capital city are turning out cars and locomotives equal to those produced 

 by eastern manufactories. Our harvesters, of California invention, and of 

 California make, are the admiration of eastern tourists. And the Union 

 Iron Works of San Francisco have entered into successful competition with 

 eastern ship-building works for the construction of armored cruisers for the 

 National Government. 



The greatest works of antiquity, the firm-based pyramids of Egypt, the 

 magnificence of King Solomon's temple, the colossus of Rhodes, the walls 



