502 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR WATERMAN. 



President Shippee introduced Governor Waterman. 



He had seen a sample of what San Joaquin County could do in the 

 State Fair at Sacramento, where he had been on the committee that 

 awarded it the premium. Yet it did not prepare hirn for the magnificent 

 display in this Fair. As he viewed these magnificent agricultural exhi- 

 bitions in the State, he thought of California as it was in 1850, when 

 people paid a dollar or a dollar and a half each for onions, and only 

 bought potatoes once a week; when they hadn't thought of agriculture, 

 and had but little means of following it. He described his two-acre home 

 on the Feather River, which was valued principally for its spring. They 

 never thought of mining there, but after he left some fellow came there 

 and made a fortune mining it. He had a five-acre pasture which he 

 thought much of as a pasture, but another fellow made a fortune there. 

 We didn't begin to know the wealth we had, or what a State we had as yet. 



Southern California's success, to which Mr. Irish had referred, was due 

 to prompt action. There they were in the habit of conceiving a project 

 one moment and putting it into execution the next. They had built a 

 railroad in fifteen days, and did everything that way. He was much 

 attached to Southern California, and thought much of California as a 

 whole. There was but one California in the world, and we have it here. 

 We have sixty or seventy millions of our own people to back us, and more 

 across the Atlantic who want to come, but we wish they would stay away. 

 We want this great land of ours for our posterity, and want it to be a rich 

 heritage. We want California to be and to see it the greatest in the 

 Union, as it deserves and has the ability to become. What could be pro- 

 duced in this State, we did not ourselves know. Whatever we have tried 

 has succeeded well, and we have tried much, but much is still to be tried 

 to develop our wonderful resources. He hoped and believed we should see 

 California realize all that he had prophesied for it. 



A round of hearty applause followed these remarks, which were delivered 

 without any attempt at oratory, but in a very earnest, business-like tone, 

 that evinced how earnest was his desire to see the State win the place it 

 deserved. 



