TWELFTH DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 739 



to engage in that employment. Make the employment of men brutal, and 

 you must depend upon a brutalized class to fill the positions it offers, a 

 class that will become more embruted by the character of its treatment. 



Hence we are cursed in California by Chinese labor. The Chinese ques- 

 tion will solve itself as soon as the character of the employment afforded 

 to the young men of the Anglo-Saxon race is worthy the dignity of a man. 

 The Chinese substitute themselves for the higher races when the employ- 

 ment offered involves the personal degradation of meals eaten hog-fashion, 

 out of a trough in a wagon in the field, where the bed-chamber is found in 

 the straw stack or in the stable with the horses. When the labor offered 

 iuvites the laborer to no higher degree of personal cleanliness, and personal 

 dignity, then self-respect will soon be lost; and when self-respect is lost the 

 character becomes dangerous. Within a comparatively short time nearly 

 a dozen atrocious murders have been committed in this State in lonely 

 farm-houses. Some of these have been committed by Chinese, notably 

 Captain Wickersham and his wife in Sonoma County, and Mrs. Billou in 

 Colusa County; but there have been others, equally horrible and atrocious, 

 committed by white men. Chinese labor has been well suited to condi- 

 tions of industry in California, because the employments offered were 

 congenial with their lack of all sense of cleanliness and personal dignity. 



We stand to-day upon the threshold of the most prosperous era that 

 California has yet known; it is the home-building period. We are being 

 subjected to a peaceful invasion of thousands who seek our shores, not for 

 our wealth of gold, but the greater wealth of things that gold cannot buy — 

 climate, soil, and natural beauty of scenery. Over the unsightly scars upon 

 our State's fair bosom they will plant the vine and orange grove; the scarlet 

 of the pomegranate will blaze beneath our sun, the olive flourish, and the 

 palm, for victory and peace. It is to our shame that with but few excep- 

 tions we have allowed strangers to take the initiative in this era of 

 improvement. These people who are coming bring wealth, bring taste, 

 bring the intelligence to direct labor. They will bless and beautify the 

 land which they invade. But the sympathy of every person of thought 

 must go out to a class that, however undeserving, belong to our State, and 

 whose interest is endangered by their coming. The class referred to are 

 the young people who have been born and reared in California, growing up 

 to man and womanhood, not realizing their opportunities, nor how blest is 

 their condition in comparison with the youth of older States; and I say to 

 them, in all sincerity, secure a little of the land you live in before it is too 

 late. Do not sell your glorious birthright for a mess of pottage; secure a 

 home; keep it; work by the day, if necessary, to make your first improve- 

 ments on it; build a home. It is the home-builder who is the mainstay of 

 the nation; not the man who wrings, at the least expense, the last drop of 

 revenue from his possessions to support his family in the city or send them 

 to Europe; who educates his girl to adorn fashionable society and marry 

 some titled foreign loafer, and his boy to enter some kid-glove profession, 

 whose income is often the fruit of human misery. There is a dignity, an 

 honor, an independence in a country home, engaged in rural and agricult- 

 ural pursuits, that no profession can ever know; and the man who realizes 

 this, who teaches his children these truths, who makes a home in the 

 country, and adds a yearly value by improvement to his property, who 

 pays his taxes cheerfully, whose life attests that he understands and 

 appreciates the motives of the founders of this great commonwealth, is the 

 true citizen. 



This district is a grand one, its resources almost boundless, our crops 

 never fail, thousands of dollars are realized yearly from the lumber, the 



