428 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



The growth of our wine and brandy interests has been immense, and has 

 necessitated the building of enormous wineries by Mr. L. J. Rose, the San 

 Gabriel Wine Company, Mr. E. J. Baldwin, and many other corporations 

 and individuals in different portions of Los Angeles County. So great has 

 been the increase in the acreage devoted to the grape that these facilities 

 for crushing are even now grossly inadequate to handle our crop. Time was 

 when Los Angeles County had to rely upon San Francisco and northern 

 and central California for a market for her oranges, lemons, limes, and 

 nuts, and when the total export of oranges was only about five millions a 

 year. Last season fully twelve hundred carloads of oranges were shipped 

 to the East from this county alone, the enlightened policy of the railway, 

 which imposes a freight rate that only amounts to sixty-seven cents a box, 

 admitting of their sale in Chicago, St. Louis, and other eastern cities, with 

 highly remunerative results. The indications the coming season point to 

 the dispatch from Los Angeles alone, in single weeks, of more oranges 

 than were formerly consumed in the whole State of California in a year. 



During my thirteen years knowledge of Los Angeles County, I have seen 

 her petroleum interests expand from a mere trifle to gigantic proportions, 

 the present output running up to millions of dollars yearly, and our petro- 

 leum beds ramifying all over the county. There is little doubt but that 

 within a short time the natural gas that is one of the great elements of the 

 wealth of Pittsburgh will be one of the sources of our prosperity, and will 

 add manufacturing possibilities to those with which we are already so richly 

 endowed. 



Ladies and gentlemen from abroad, I have dwelt somewhat strenuously 

 on the great development which has characterized Los Angeles County, 

 but I have done so because my personal observation has been most exact 

 where I have lived. Los Angeles claims no monopoly of the immigration, 

 the possibilities, or the prosperity of Southern California. From all quar- 

 ters the lover of this section receives assurances of unexampled settlement 

 and prosperity. The whole State is prosperous, but Southern California is 

 splendidly in the lead, and Los Angeles is facile princeps amongst the 

 Southern California counties. A career varied and stimulating lies ahead 

 for every county in the group, and the State of South California may be 

 seen emerging radiant from the adumbra of the near- future. Neglected 

 for decades, it is at last beginning to be realized that most of the real 

 wealth of the State lies here. We have the corn, wine, and oil of the com- 

 merce of all ages. It will not be many years before the region south of 

 Point Concepcion will be by far the most populous portion of the State of 

 California. It will be a highly desirable and eclectic population. It will 

 devote itself to the vine, the olive, the pomegranate, the orange, lemon, 

 lime, and other staples for which the demand is conterminous with the 

 globe. In the exceptional prosperity begotten of such a state of things, we 

 shall be all sharers alike — San Diego, San Bernardino, Kern, Tulare, Ven- 

 tura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. There may be degrees in our 

 growth, but the advance of all cannot fail to be right royal. 



By all means we ought to stick together. We ought to cultivate a pride 

 of section, and such gatherings as the present are admirable agencies for 

 developing this feeling of patriotism. For decades we have been slighted 

 in order that the counties immediately aligning the bay might have the 

 whole whack at the State Treasury. The northern and central counties 

 have nothing in common with us. They have a splendid destiny of their 

 own, but nothing identical with ours. Climatically, geologically, and in 

 every other way they are different from that matchless land of ours which 



