192 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



must be some radical and serious cause for our slow progress. It should 

 be the present and persistent business of this region to find out this cause 

 and remedy it. 



FRUIT AND WINE VS. WHEAT. 



Growing naturally out of the question just discussed is the inquiry, 

 Shall we continue wheat culture without profit, or resort to something 

 offering higher rewards ? 



According to the report of the Department of Agriculture our wheat crop 

 in this State in 1885 yielded us $6 50 per acre of the acreage sown. The 

 average crop of the United States was less than ten bushels to the acre. 

 I do not think that our wheat crop can be shown to produce, one year with 

 another, to exceed an average of $8 per acre. Under the most favorable 

 circumstances the average net cost to produce this is $6 per acre, and in 

 many classes of land $7 50. Here is practically no margin of profit. It 

 is the average crop that tells upon prosperity. The individual instance of 

 profitable wheat growing is as much a snare and delusion as the instances 

 of phenomenal profits from grapes or apricots or pears. Neither the one 

 nor the other is a safe factor. I will not undertake to make a comparison 

 between the average profits of wheat and fruits for the whole State. We 

 have no very reliable data as to the acreage of fruits or yield. But I may 

 use the knowledge we all have and our own personal observation in sup- 

 port of the argument. Find me a distinctively wheat-growing county in 

 the State whose wheat industry is prosperous. Is it Tehama, Colusa, 

 Butte, San Joaquin, or any other? Find me a distinctively fruit district 

 in the State that is not prosperous. Is it Vacaville, Riverside, Fresno, 

 Napa Valley, San Jose, or any other? Are not wheat lands for wheat 

 growing declining in value? Are not fruit lands for fruit growing advanc- 

 ing in value, and rapidly? Are not wheat lands gradually becoming 

 impoverished and yielding less every year ? On the contrary, do not fruit 

 lands become more productive as trees and vines attain age ? 



SOME COMPARISONS. 



I invite you to the irrigated lands of Riverside, where we find one type 

 of the fruit industry. Consider what is being there done with 6,000 acres 

 of land; the numerous families they are supporting — to a degree in lux- 

 ury; witness the civilizing influences everywhere apparent; behold a 

 veritable pillar of the State. Now carve out 6,000 of the best acres of the 

 great wheat ranch of the late Dr. Glenn in Colusa County, being grown to 

 wheat by the Probate Court. Not a solitary family living there; troops of 

 nomads come and plow and sow and move on with their blankets; the 

 wild geese revel in their stead for some months; then return the nomads 

 with their blankets to head and thrash the unprofitable crop, only to pass 

 on again in their dreary tramp for work, leaving these rich golden acres to 

 be fallow one year in the sun, uninhabited and solitary, while the land 

 gathers strength enough for another abortive effort. Now let us consider 

 Riverside with her 15,000 acres of irrigated land, as she will soon have; 

 enlarge the picture, and what do we see ? A community with a population 

 greater than all Colusa County, presenting all the varied industries of a 

 happy and prosperous people. Turn again to this noble Glenn ranch (and 

 I select it because it is a noble ranch in all that nature can bestow), carve 

 out 15,000 acres of its choicest wheat land, and you have the same result 

 as before, only exaggerated and more uninviting. 



