STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. IIB 



modic efforts, stability and continuity of purpose is wanting in order 

 to insure the greatest permanent increase and consequent prosperity. 

 With us, so much of a pcrishabk^ nature is produced that our local 

 markets are continually glutted with prime articles which will not 

 bear exportation, consequently are worse than lost to the producer. 

 In order to become a truly prosperous people, we must learn to utilize 

 our resources to a better advantage than dumping them into the bay, 

 or allow them to rot in the field, for the want of a better market. 



Every dollar's worth of any product raised, which will take the 

 place of a like article imported, is a dollar saved to our material 

 wealth. We are wasting millions of money annually in the use of 

 imported articles which could better and more cheaply be raised at 

 home. The growth of wealth and prosperity does not consist in the 

 amount produced, but in the savings of such production. With all 

 our wonderful annual yield of gold and grain, our permanent gain 

 receives but little increase, for the reason that our imports are, upon 

 the average, equal to our exports. Before we can hope for any great 

 or permanent prosperity, this condition of things must change. We 

 manufacture half a million jjounds of sugar annually, and import 

 for our own consumption seventy-eight millions of pounds, when 

 there is no valid reason why we should not produce the whole 

 amount. AVhile butter and cheese are almost spontaneous products, 

 we annually import hundreds of thousands of pounds. Bacon and 

 lard are imported in still greater quantities. AVine, which could be 

 made to run in rivers, is exported from France at our expense. Nuts 

 and prunes and raisins, of which we should annually export millions 

 in value, are boxed up in Germany, France, and Spain, and shipped 

 20,000 miles in order to supply our little wants. So it is with many 

 other products which could be mentioned. 



Encouragement for the future rests in the fact that our wild oats 

 have about all been sown, and consequently we, as a people, will 

 soon settle down to legitimate business. Our resources are not yet 

 half developed. The country must be more thickly settled, by a 

 hardy, industrious, frugal people. The river floods must be utilized 

 by turning them on to the sere deserts of our inheritance, that they 

 may be made to yield up their treasures. This subject of irrigation 

 is one of the deepest concern to the future welfare of the State. 

 Under an Act of the Legislature, approved May 14th, 1862, in con- 

 junction with another Act, approved April 2d, 1870, all the waters of 

 California now used for the purposes of irrigation are claimed and 

 controlled by individuals and corporations. An Act of Congress, 

 approved July 26th, 1866, provides that whenever, by priority of pos- 

 session, rights to the use of waters, for mining, agricultural, and 

 manufacturing, or other purposes, have vested and accrued, and the 

 same are recognized and acknowledged by local customs, laws, and 

 decisions of the Courts, the possessors and owners of such vested 

 riglits shall be maintained and protected in the same; and the right 

 of way for the construction of ditches and canals, for the purposes 

 aforesaid, is hereby acknowledged and confirmed. Under the sanc- 

 tion and protection of the laws enumerated, many water claims have 

 been hied, and large amounts of capital invested in the construction 

 of canals, dams, and ditches. To such an extent, in fact, has this 

 matter run, without direction or control, that an absolute monopoly 

 of the waters of the State will, unless soon checked, be in the posses- 

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