452 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



to ourselves generally. Take for example petroleum oil. Less than ten 

 years ago it was discovered. Now we produce not far from fifteen million 

 gallons, and rank third among the States in this product. 



I cannot stop to show you our vast wealth in timber, now rapidly disap- 

 pearing from western forests, and nearly gone from the eastern regions, 

 thus adding immensely to the value of our own forests. 



With the decline in values of wheat and wool, and through the energetic 

 and faithful efforts of our fruit growers, the Evolution of California brought 

 us to confront a new and by far the most important condition of our develop- 

 ment yet unfolded. 



Gold was no longer king; wheat had ceased to hold its scepter over us; 

 wool had become a slave instead of a master. 



Here we were struggling against the world in wheat growing, with a dis- 

 advantage of transportation remorselessly immovable, and always against 

 us; our lands were growing less productive; prices were falling; new areas 

 of wheat land, were opening elsewhere to cut us off from the world's mar- 

 kets; our population was but slowly increasing; lands were being aggregated, 

 and monopolized in large holdings; our matchless climate was given no 

 economic value; wheat land in California was valuable only as other wheat 

 land of the globe, in ratio with its productive capacity, and lands not 

 capable of growing cereals had a value only for grazing sheep and cattle, 

 and in small tracts lost all value. 



The light had begun to dawn upon Southern California. Water and 

 climate and enterprising effort were doing their work. From 1880 to 1886 

 the increase in population in San Bernardino County was 128 per cent; in 

 Los Angeles, 116; San Diego, 102; Fresno, 89; Santa Barbara, 73; Tulare, 

 66; San Luis Obispo, 63; Ventura, 60; or an average of 87 per cent in these 

 eight counties. 



In those six years the great wheat counties of San Joaquin and Colusa had 

 gained but 9 per cent; Sacramento County, with a wealth of undeveloped 

 resources, gained but 3 per cent; Butte County, famous for wheat and wool, 

 had actually fallen off in population. In seventeen counties of the State, 

 from 1880 to 1886, there was an absolute loss of population, and that loss, 

 too, had fallen upon some of the best counties in the State. Even our 

 bonanza year in wheat led to no change; a decadence followed in the very 

 counties where the crop was largest. There were silent forces at work 

 north as well as south of the Tehachapi. We of the north had not the 

 advantage of competing lines of railroads to cheapen our transportation, 

 and, more than all, to sound the praises of our great resources all over the 

 East; we had not the unmistakable certificate of climate found in orange 

 groves and olive orchards; but large plantings had been going on in all 

 kinds of fruits, including the orange and the olive; our signal office stations 

 were recording the truth of meteorological observations from Red Bluff 

 south through all our valleys; that noble army of fruit growers were per- 

 sistently making their way into eastern markets; the wine makers were 

 astonishing the world with the excellence and abundance of their products. 

 As if by magic there seemed to dawn upon the vision of the people of the 

 United States that a new California had been discovered, and the golden 

 period of 1849 seemed to be repeating itself. 



What was all this necromancy? The trains of the Central Pacific had 

 been bearing the people to and fro from the Atlantic and Pacific for fifteen 

 years or more, but they had come and gone and seen nothing. 



I will tell you the secret. The farmer of the northwest looked through 

 his frosted window towards the setting sun; he read and was convinced 

 that it was shining upon a land where the orange and the olive grow, and 



