commonwealths for mineral production. It was and remains a 

 great gold producing State, so rich in production that compara- 

 tively few Americans think of it except as a gold producer, yet 

 the practical fact is that during last year, during the year before, 

 during each year for a decade her agricultural production has 

 aggregated more for the single year than her entire production of 

 gold during all her history! Here Mississippi may well find a 

 lesson. And what are California's productions? Not cotton or 

 corn or cane, the staples of the South, not so much the wheat 

 or potatoes or barley of the North, or indeed any other staples, 

 as those ill-considered trifles on which the Mississippi planter 

 looks askance the berry, the small fruit, the minor vegetable, 

 which is here relegated to the fence row or the neglected garden 

 corner. And why do Calif ornians not grow the staples for which 

 their soils and climate are no less adapted than those of the 

 interior? Merely because they cannot afford it. Corn cannot 

 be grown with profit on land worth a hundred dollars an acre, 

 nor cotton on three-hundred-dollar land, nor cane on four-hun- 

 dred-dollar land; while the berry and fruit lands of California 

 are worth five hundred, a thousand, even several thousand dollars 

 per acre. Now when will Mississippi take heed of California's 

 example? When she does, the boll weevil, now seen as a calam- 

 ity, will be viewed as a blessing. The orange and the lime may not 

 indeed flourish here as there, save in the southernmost part of 

 the State, yet the fig, the apricot, the prune, and the berry may 

 be made to fit this soil and climate ncf less than those of the 

 Pacific State indeed if one would look at the map of the wond 

 and trace the lines of temperature and rainfall with risk of ir ost 

 and 1 danger of excessive sun one would be compelled to coa- 

 clude that this commonwealth is adapted to practically every 

 production of the temperate zones of both hemispheres. Truly 

 the potentialities of this commonwealth have been but hilt* recl- 

 ized! 



Let it not be supposed that the State is stagnant industrially 



19 



