RELATIONS OF DECIDUOUS AND CITRUS FRUITS 357 



growers understood these fruits, while the orange to an English-speak- 

 ing people was an unsolved problem. The long list of deciduous fruits 

 had varieties to suit the taste and ambitions of all planters and the 

 opportunity for selling many different fruits and their different products 

 seemed illimitable. "The world for a market" seemed a reasonable 

 proposition, for deciduous fruits and their products had been shipped 

 to eastern markets since the first overland railway was opened in 1868, 

 and very large prices were attained, just often enough to be alluring. 

 No citrus fruits had been shipped out of the State on a commercial 

 scale, and no one knew that they could be, profitably. The central and 

 northern districts threw their full strength into the deciduous fruit 

 interest and the result has justified the effort, for, at the present time, 

 the annual shipments of deciduous orchard fruits fresh dried and 

 canned ; the grape, both fresh, as raisins and as wine and brandy, has 

 reached a total value of about sixty millions of dollars almost all of 

 it from the regions of California north of the Tehachapi Mountains. 

 The engrossing requirements of this grandly successful undertaking 

 gave northern growers, packers and capitalists no leisure to think seri- 

 ously of citrus fruit planting that was left for a decade and a half to 

 the special attention of the southern California people, and they de- 

 veloped it splendidly for the settlement and upbuilding of their portion 

 of the State reaching a total value of product sold beyond State lines, 

 of about eighteen millions of dollars. The chief reason, then, why, 

 although citrus adaptations were demonstrated very early in the upper 

 part of the State, the commercial planting was largely postponed to 

 the present decade, was that the people were too busy developing a 

 greater fruit industry to which their conditions were superlatively 

 suited. 



During the last few years new interest has arisen in citrus fruit 

 growing in northern California and all the scattered experiences of the 

 last half century are becoming of inestimable value in guiding this 

 planting aright. There are several important reasons why the north 

 has now turned to the orange. 



First : Deciduous fruit production has reached large volumes, mar- 

 gins have become reduced to those which assert themselves in any 

 well established and extensive industry, and some of the early glamour 

 has gone out of it. It will henceforth proceed soberly, and consequently 

 safely, to grand aggregates which no one can foresee, but it is readily 

 demonstrable that with the present rush of population to the more 

 wintry districts of the Pacific slope, the opening of Asiatic connections 

 and the victories being attained each year in the distant East and in 

 Europe, our production of deciduous fruits and their products will go 

 steadily forward. Increased interest in citrus fruit planting in northern 

 California is in no sense a menace to the deciduous fruit industry. It 

 is merely a new graft upon a very vigorous industrial stock. 



Second : Owing to natural conditions which will be briefly ex- 

 plained presently, orange growing can be pursued at the north without 

 competition with the main crop in southern California. The northern 

 California crop will be consumed before the bulk of the southern crop 

 moves from the trees. 



