456 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



You don't know airything about raising fruit, and you are too old to learn. 

 Very well. You know how to raise grass and feed it to stock, and there is 

 three times the profit in that over wheat growing. Do you know that the 

 hay crop of the United States is more valuable than the wheat crop? It 

 is so. This highly evolved and developed animal called man pays less 

 for his flour than he does for forage for his domestic animals. 



One acre of your rich irrigable land will produce more value in grasses 

 than any ten in wheat, year in and out. 



You don't want to raise grass or fruit. Very well. Sell half of your 

 land to some one who does. Loan the money at 6 per cent interest and 

 you will have more money at the end of the year than you have been hav- 

 ing, unless you continue to raise wheat on the land reserved. 



Mr. President, I have heard the groans and lamentations of your farm- 

 ers for years resounding throughout this great valley, and as far north as my 

 home. I have heard them pray for rain (and when a California rancher 

 prays you may know he is in trouble) ; I have heard them praying for rain 

 when we were having twenty inches, and you were burning up with six. 

 Why is it in ail these years you have not seen how much more greatly 

 blessed you were than we. In your noble valley, washing the parched 

 shores of the grandest domain on earth was all the water you needed flow- 

 ing useless to the sea, charged with fertilizing properties, but above all 

 carrying in its bosom the elements to make you all rich and furnish homes 

 for a million souls. 



You have treated your land like the gods treated Tantalus, who was 

 placed in the midst of a lake whose waters receded as he tried to drink, 

 and was left to die of thirst. Like him your parched earth cried out as 

 the waters flowed past babbling and joyous, yet regretful, to the sea. 



Let me halt a moment at this point and show you the movements of 

 population to this State. Let us see if we cannot draw a lesson of value 

 to us on this same subject of irrigation. 



I have prepared a table showing the changes in population of certain 

 representative counties of the State, including your four counties, and the 

 County of Fresno, in the San Joaquin Valley; five representative counties 

 in the Sacramento Valley, and three in the southern part of the State. 



The Federal census of 1880 gave a population of four and three tenths 

 to each school child in the State. We have had no general census since, 

 but we have a school census each year, and assuming this ratio of four and 

 three tenths to be the same now as in 1880, we easily find our population 

 by consulting the county school census. I have done this, and I ask your 

 careful consideration of the result: 



County. 



1S80. 



1886. 



1888. 



Gain in 

 Six Years. 



Gain in 

 Eight Years 



Merced 



San Joaquin... 



Stanislaus 



Tuolumne 



Fresno -. 



San Bernardino 

 Los Angeles ... 



San Diego 



Sacramento --- 



Colusa . 



Butte 



Yolo 



Yuba.... 



5,656 



24,354 



8,751 



7,848 



9,478 



7,786 



33,379 



8,618 



;:i,:;!ii 



13,118 



18,721 



11,772 



11,270 



6,622 

 26,626 

 10,501 



6,920 

 17,987 

 17,759 

 71,415 

 17,376 

 35,411 

 14,285 

 18,137 

 14,099 



9,150 



6,757 

 27,098 

 10,320 



6,811 

 25,202 

 25,296 

 117,175 

 34,713 

 30,997 

 14,013 

 17,999 

 13,850 



9,447 



966 

 2,272 

 1,750 

 *928 

 8,758 

 9,973 



38,066 

 8,758 

 1,020 

 1,167 

 *584 

 2,327 



*2,120 



1,101 



2,744 



1.569 



*1,037 



15,724 



17,510 



73,796 



15,724 



2,606 



895 



*722 



2,078 



*1,823 



* Loss. 



