454 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



And now, Mr. President, to come nearer home, let me ask what District 

 No. 2 has done, is doing, and must do to give her standing, power, and 

 influence in this grand development? 



As States are the units of nations, so in our system counties are the units 

 of States. I wish to say a word as to the four units composing the Second 

 Agricultural District of our golden State: The great valley of California, 

 embracing one third of the agricultural lands of the State, is included 

 between the foothills of the Sierra Nevada on the east, and the Coast Range 

 on the west. Its length from the Tejon Mountains on the south, to Red Bluff 

 on the north, where the valley properly terminates, is about four hundred 

 miles, with a varying width from over sixty miles to less than forty miles. Its 

 total area is about seventeen thousand six hundred square miles, or eleven 

 million two hundred and sixty-four thousand acres. This great valley is 

 broken into two divisions, and are known as the Sacramento Valley and 

 the San Joaquin Valley. 



Professor Hilgard, in his " Agricultural Features of California," termi- 

 nates the Sacramento Valley on the south at the Calaveras River in San Joa- 

 quin County, and he gives it about six thousand two hundred square miles, 

 or three million nine hundred and sixty-eight thousand acres. This would 

 make the area of the San Joaquin Valley eleven thousand four hundred 

 square miles, or seven million two hundred and ninety-six thousand acres, 

 nearly double the area of the Sacramento Valley. I suppose the counties 

 of your district embrace at least one third of this vast territory, or about 

 two million five hundred thousand acres. 



A comparison of your assessment roll for the last four years discloses 

 some significant facts. 



From 1884 to 1887 your four counties declined in assessed valuation from 

 a total in 1884 of $66,900,014 to $63,410,349 in 1887, a loss of nearly $3,- 

 500,000, and yet one year later, in 1888, your valuation leaped to $71,765,979, 

 a gain in valuation over 1887 of over $8,250,000. This rapid increase in 

 valuation is shown in nearly all the valley counties. The boom in Southern 

 California has had the effect, I am sorry to say, to materially advance 

 taxable valuations elsewhere, without bringing with it the immigration and 

 the purchasers which the rise in values would seem to indicate must have 

 followed. I will in a moment notice the drift of immigration in the State. 



All these years the price of the leading product of your soil has been 

 declining, until the margin of profit has almost disappeared. You are get- 

 ting some of the new population, and you are feeling the impulse of the 

 changes going on elsewhere in the State, through your assessment roll, as I 

 have shown. In fact, you ought to have more than doubled your assessment 

 roll as well as your population, for you have a vast area of irrigable lands 

 as rich as can be found, and you have every known advantage anywhere 

 existing in the State. 



It seems to me that you are prostituting the highest gifts bestowed on 

 any of our people, by keeping up this incessant agricultural monotone of 

 wheat, wheat, wheat, when you have the most richly endowed portion of 

 the entire State, and the source of the greatest wealth of any like area in 

 the State. 



I would not speak so plainly if your position were not assured, and if 

 you had not within your grasp the highest possibilities. Don't allow your- 

 self to be offended until you have heard me through. One good crop in 

 three in San Joaquin, Stanislaus, or Merced means pretty nearly as much 

 as three crops in some other portions of the State where wheat growing is 

 impoverishing the soil and pauperizing the owner. When your crop fails, 

 it is total, I understand, and you lose only seed and cost of seeding. In 



