Appendices 373 



Inquiries as to the handling of California wines are being 

 received by San Francisco dealers that show that if the 

 American tariff be placed in operation in the West Indies a 

 large trade can be expected to be built up in Cuba and Porto 

 Kico, where the middle and upper classes are accustomed to 

 drinking Spanish and French productions, and will welcome 

 the pure and low-priced vintages of California. In time, and 

 if the trade be pushed, the Philippines will take off our hands 

 millions of gallons of our low-grade wines, and it has been 

 suggested that if the Government of the United States would 

 place wine on its ration list so that it might be mixed with 

 the unhealthful water of the tropics, the lives of many of the 

 troops whom it will be necessary to maintain in the Philip- 

 pines and the Antilles would be saved, and at the same time 

 the vinicultural industry of California would be greatly bene- 

 fited. Taking all these possibilities and probabilities into 

 consideration, our annual average production of 20,000,000 

 gallons of dry wines should be as a drop in the bucket, and 

 the time should not be far distant when every hillside in 

 California should be set out in vines, and the amount of wine 

 produced for home consumption and for export to our new 

 territories and to other markets which stand ready to receive 

 them, should rival that of the famed countries of Southern 

 Europe." 



Raisins. 



California produces as fine a raisin as that of Malaga, 

 and one that keeps much better and is far cleaner. I 

 have not lived in Fresno, which is the chief raisin dis- 

 trict (it has about 35,000 acres in Muscat gi'apes, about 

 three-fourths of California's raisin acreage), but I know 

 from reliable sources that raisin-growing is a pleasant 

 and profitable occupation, and that the industry was 

 never more prosperous than it is at the present moment. 

 The crop for 1899 was 66,000,000 pounds (not counting 

 the raisins consumed in the State), an increase in one 

 decade of nearly 50,000,000 pounds : a result which must 

 challenge the serious attention of the would-be vineyardist. 



