200 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



that gives us our varied productions not possible to be grown elsewhere; it 

 is our climate makes life easy and delightful the year around, then why 

 not insist upon its value — actual money value — as a factor in our claims. 

 Precisely what it is worth per acre has never been reduced to a formula 

 except by our enterprising and much to be admired neighbors of Southern 

 California. In most parts of the State lands are for sale at prices no 

 greater than equally rich lands in the Mississippi Valley. The climate is 

 thrown in. Except for invalids of certain types, there is no substantial 

 difference in the climate of the great valleys from Shasta to San Diego. 

 The Sacramento Citrus Fair last year showed that every variety of fruits 

 grown in Southern California was being grown in all these northern coun- 

 ties, and at Oroville there is now a veritable orange boom. The fact was 

 brought out that Northern California produces oranges and other fruits a 

 month earlier in the season. Lands are much cheaper here, and yet, as I 

 have already shown, the tide of immigration is all south. We must con- 

 gratulate our southern neighbors and acknowledge their greater enterprise 

 and push, but at the same time we must inquire into the causes which 

 give all our gains in population to one section, and endeavor to find a rem- 

 edy. Nothing will probably stop the flow into this favored region, and I 

 would not stop it if I could, but as a Northern Californian, I would start a 

 further and independent flow elsewhere. 



In these United States in 1880 there lived over forty-four millions of 

 people, in regions where the minimum temperature ranged from five degrees 

 to fifty-five degrees below zero, and about one million and a quarter where 

 the minimum was not below fifteen degrees above zero, which is the 

 extreme minimum reached in our great valleys, and is below that of most 

 localities in them. It is these millions, who are locked up in snow and 

 ice half the year, and who are forced to suspend farming operations and 

 practically hibernate and live half the year on the products of the other 

 half, who are longing to find a country where the rigors of climate are less 

 exhausting, where they can work the year around — it is these who are 

 seeking homes in our heaven-blessed land. 



THE LABOR QUESTION — THE CHINESE. 



The relation of the labor question to our prosperity is intimate and im- 

 portant. We have an element among us, the Chinese, which will as long 

 as it exists in our midst, be a source of direct and positive injury. It is 

 not to the point that the agitation does more harm than the cause; it is not 

 to the point that demagogues ride this hobby into power and travel rough 

 shod over vital interests; it is not to the point that treaty compacts must 

 be kept, and that we have no right in morals or in law to oppress these peo- 

 ple; all this is true; yet the irritating disease is here and must be removed. 

 The very fact that men are brutal and unjust toward the Chinese; the very 

 fact that politicians selfishly keep up the crusade, and would sacrifice 

 individual interests of others, only make it the more desirable to remove 

 the cause. Last Summer, when thousands of eastern people came here on 

 cheap fares, they found us in a state of social eruption and rebellion; they 

 found irresponsible persons leading the masses to the ruin of the farmer and 

 fruit grower; they found the hateful boycott threatening legitimate trade 

 and business; they found depression and general dread of inability to gather 

 our crops; they found a social strife threatening the disruption of all ties of 

 friendship in this fierce resolve to drive out the Chinamen forthwith; the}'' 

 found a determined effort of organized men to dictate how and by whom 

 business should be conducted and by whom it should not be; hundreds of 



