SECOND DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 455 



other places I might name, the farmer nurses the hope of a crop clear to 

 the tail of the thrasher, and when he hauls away three sacks to the acre, 

 and sells for $4 50, and notes a loss of about $4 cash per acre expended, I 

 fancy it makes a Merced wheat farmer satisfied even with his hard lot. I 

 understand how cheaply you can farm, and how the genius and enter- 

 prise of your Stockton inventors and manufacturers have reduced the cost 

 of harvesting to almost a song, comparatively, and that, as wheat growers, 

 you are highly favored. I admit all this. What I am quarreling with 

 you about now is that you are doing with your soil, in planting to wheat, 

 what Governor Stanford would be doing with his blooded mares, if he were 

 giving to the world $150 mules instead of $40,000 horses, such as that sold 

 the other day at auction, in Kentucky. 



If you will drop in upon that highly civilized community of Riverside, 

 and look around, you will see what I mean. Here is land but a few years 

 ago an arid desert, selling for $1,000 per acre, and showing fair interest on 

 that figure. Jump on the cars and visit your neighbor at Fresno. Behold, 

 the magician's wand has swept over these hot sandy plains and desolate 

 waste places, and the inspired people have with their own hands beaten 

 back the raisin exports of Spain, and almost driven them out of the Amer- 

 ican market. Land not many years ago valueless is now worth almost all 

 a man is minded to ask for it. The products of Fresno can pay passen- 

 ger time for transportation to New York and Boston, and leave to the 

 grower more profit per pound than you can get per pound for your wheat 

 in Liverpool, and he is producing five times as many pounds to the acre. 



I am leading up to this proposition that nowhere in any of the great 

 valleys of California where land is suitable for irrigation, as yours is, and 

 where water is attainable for that purpose, can the owner afford to pursue 

 the old methods; nor can communities be built up to any high degree of 

 prosperity without resorting to irrigation in regions situated as most of 

 your great valley is. 



From my standpoint I consider the three counties of San Joaquin, Stan- 

 islaus, and Merced in many respects the most highly favored of any like 

 area in the State. Your central position is one of great strategical import- 

 ance in your battle with transportation. All competing lines of railroad 

 to our metropolis must pass by or near to you. You are within cheap and 

 quick communication with the navigable waters of the State; you have an 

 immense area of irrigable land, and you have water in abundance to put 

 on it; your climate leaves nothing to be desired. To my mind, such con- 

 ditions in California mean simply bullion, the dies, the molds, the furnace, 

 and nothing wanting but a little fire to turn out the twenty-dollar pieces. 



I know what the wheat farmer is saying to all this. I am perfectly con- 

 scious that he will not stop much longer to hear me talk such heterodoxy, 

 but I beg him out of courtesy to a stranger, who has come a long distance 

 for the privilege of talking a little modern nonsense, to hear me a moment 

 longer. 



Experience teaches, and statistics show, that the irrigated lands of the 

 globe are the most profitable as they are the most productive. In our 

 climate successive crops can be produced each year. Fewer acres will 

 sustain a larger population. The lands become intrinsically more valuable, 

 and retain their productive capacity longer. The water not only brings 

 out the fruitfulness of the soil, but is itself a fructifier. Practically water 

 increases the acreage. If he is a benefactor who makes two blades of grass 

 grow where one grew before, how much more is he a benefactor who makes 

 two acres of land out of one. Irrigation to the million acres of your noble 

 valley means creating a million more acres. 



