STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 331 



and the estimated depth of the Darien, the cost can be reduced to sixty 

 millions; and if Chinese labor be employed, can be accomplished in four 

 years. 



RAILROADS IN RUSSIA. 



On the continent of Europe, our friendly neighbor, Russia, has built a 

 railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, thus connecting the head and 

 heart of the empire by a large artery, like the connection between the 

 head and heart of the human body. And now a great work, the rail- 

 road from St. Petersburg to Odessa, draws near to completion. This 

 iron path, the original survey of which was twelve hundred miles in 

 length, runs through thirteen degrees of latitude and connects the Baltic 

 Sea on the north with the Black Sea on the south, thus uniting the 

 extremities of the empire. Simultaneously with the inception of these 

 grand movements, the Emperor abolished serfdom, by which the 

 shackles of servitude fell from millions of human limbs. Here, in our 

 own country, after connecting by a network of railroads all the most 

 populous sections, American citizens took hold of a line that stretches 

 across the continent and brings together the extremities of the Republic. 

 Simultaneous with the inception of this great work, and before its com- 

 pletion, we extinguished African slavery. Thus it would seem that the 

 shackles of bondage which have fallen from human limbs have been 

 forged into chains of communication which bind together nations and 

 communities in close bonds, making the inhabitants of distant sections 

 more and more one people, and stamping upon them the impress of unity 

 consolidated with humanity. 



Verily the world moves, and we in California must move with it or be 

 left behind in the race for business and empire. 



While California produces twenty millions of bushels of wheat per 

 annum, upon the acres under cultivation, she has uncultivated lands of 

 equal fertility, capable of producing fifty millions more. While she has 

 at least fifty mines producing, she has a hundred more of a second grade 

 lying idle and unworked. If she could quadruple her product of wheat, 

 and double her product of gold and silver, with a like increase of wool, 

 barley, wines, and fruits for export, and if she could manufacture those 

 common articles of prime necessity, for which we are daily sending 

 money out of the State to pay for, what an overflowing prosperity there 

 would be upon the whole State. How San Francisco would grow up 

 and spread out, street after street, and wharf after wharf, along the 

 water front, with countless dwellings and blocks of warehouses. Across 

 the ocean there are two empires which have greatly redundant popula- 

 tions. 1 mean China and Japan, and they are wishing to come to us in 

 immense numbers. As laborers the}' are industrious, patient, skilful, 

 docile, temperate, quiet, orderly — and it is greatly to be regretted that 

 the question of employing them has entered the arena of politics and is 

 being subjected to the tests of passion and prejudice, when it should be 

 viewed by the calm e} T e of reason. To say that we shall not have cheap 

 labor of some kind, is virtually to declare that no more land shall be 

 ploughed, no more mines opened, and no more manufacturing done, and 

 this is equivalent to sa} 7 ing that all the industrial interests of California 

 shall collapse, and that widespread ruin shall be the result. I affirm 

 that at this day no State can thrive by sending its staple products three 

 thousand miles away to a foreign country to be manufactured, and then 

 buj'ing them back from the foreigners, and bringing them borne to be 

 consumed, at a greatly enhanced price, by the men who produced them 



