300 SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY 



striking dissimilarity, although Pennsylvania, as a State, is much 

 better — that is, much closer farmed than New York. 



But j'Ou will say it is the natural tendency of mankind to congre- 

 grate in cities, and we must expect a larger growth of citizens than 

 rustics. To this remark I would answer that there is a meaning to 

 these statistics not at first apparent. In the older nations of the world 

 where all the available land is utilized, it follows as a matter of course 

 that the towns should count a larger increase than the country, but 

 not larger in proportion to the last accepted population. I mean that 

 taking a city with 150,000 inhabitants and the surrounding country 

 with 30,000 in 1877, it stands to reason that in 1878, with an equal 

 increase in town and country of 20 per cent., there will be still more 

 l^eople in the city than in the country, but it does not stand to reason 

 that the city should receive a gain of 20 per cent, and the country only 

 10. In America the question presents still broader aspects. Here the 

 country is only just dotted with people, whilst the cities are already 

 becoming crowded, That the country needs development, and that 

 the cities can take care of themselves, is an axiom which most of us 

 will only regard as a postulate. Unless a man can secure a big ranch 

 like his neighbors, he thinks he cannot get on, and would rather wait 

 for something to turn up in the city than go in the country and turn 

 up something for himself. And so the country is fought shy of by 

 people of small means, and the few already there increase and mul- 

 tiply their possessions, leaving the people in statu quo, whilst the 

 cities increase and multiply their numbers of struggling humanity. 

 Until a belief in and a knowledge of how to work small farms is 

 engendered, this state of affairs will continue, and the development of 

 the country will be retarded. 



I am aware that the fault, if not crime, of land absorption is not the 

 ultimate aim of every farmer in California, but neither you nor I can 

 close our eyes to the fact that the mammoth farms of California are 

 as great an evil as the immense landed estates of the English nobility 

 about which we so gloomily shake our heads. In fact, I do not know 

 if the home evil is not the greater, for the aristocratic domains are 

 very frequently under the care of several tenants, this subdivision 

 insuring culture. In the fifty and seventy-five thousand-acre farms 

 of California there is no subdivision among tenantry, and what is 

 infinitely worse^ — there is no subdivision of crops. 



We have only to look at one of these gigantic fields which lies 

 beside the Sacramento River to secure an example of this style of 

 farming. In a farm of sixty thousand acres, all arable land, forty- 

 five thousand are in wheat. At a low calculation the product should 

 be nine hundred thousand bushels of wheat, which, at eighty-five 

 cents a bushel, will bring $765,000. Now I know that at first blush, 

 this seems a magnificent style of doing business, the only way to 

 farm, in fact. Contrasted with the plodding, quiet fashion, this gar- 

 nering of three-quarters of a million at one harvest is like walking 

 on stilts across the Continent compared to making a journey in a 

 Pullman palace car. There is a fact or two back of this which some- 

 what takes the gilt ofi' the gingerbread. The owner of this princi- 

 pality has been farming it for ten j^ears; ten times $765,000 makes 

 $7,650,000. What a fortune from farming in a decade! But where 

 is this seven million and over? Failure in crops occurring two years 

 out of every five makes a slight debit; unlike the vari-cropped farm, 

 you see, the failure of the one crop means the failure of the whole. 



