358 CALIFORNIA FRUITS : HOW TO GROW THEM 



Third: All California oranges have characteristics and qualities 

 which are recognized as of distinctive excellence, and therefore have 

 a commercial advantage which enables them to compensate the high 

 grade American labor which is employed in their growth, packing and 

 marketing, and leave a reasonable return to require the grower's effort 

 and investment. This being so, the production, so long as protection is 

 continued in adequate amount, justifies extension of the effort to pro- 

 duce an American orange for Americans. 



Fourth : Semi-tropical fruits are nature's demonstration of the ex- 

 istence in a place of a climate which promotes health, comfort and a 

 maximum of physical and intellectual attainment in mankind. Prob- 

 ably all that is urged against tropical climates as enervating and de- 

 pressing of human standards is true, but not a word of it applies to an 

 arid semi-tropical climate, in which the blessing of dry air and freedom 

 from the debilitating effect of temperature extremes rejuvenate the old 

 and weary and bring the young to stature and stalwartness which all 

 newcomers notice in the rising generation of Californians. Of the exist- 

 ence of such conditions a well-grown orange of the California type is un- 

 impeachable evidence. It has brought a hundred thousand people and a 

 hundred millions of capital to southern California which would not 

 have come otherwise. In the conscious strength with which northern 

 California has recently awakened to make systematic effort for settle- 

 ment and development, the orange is accepted as an exponent of the 

 possession of those natural characters of sky and air and soil, constitut- 

 ing the most desirable environments of human life the highest desira- 

 bility in the location of a home. 



Fifth : It is but a corollary of the foregoing that the successful and 

 profitable production of citrus fruits is par excellence the motive force 

 in promoting colony efforts and in drawing into horticulture the class 

 of people which constitutes the most desirable element in the upbuild- 

 ing of a great State people who know what is noble and desirable in 

 human life and desire it for their children ; people who know how to se- 

 cure what their aspirations and tastes approve ; people who by intellect- 

 ual force and training and by successful professional and industrial 

 experience are prepared for attainment in the higher horticultural arts 

 and in the new commercial efforts which make those arts profitable. 

 The splendid development of southern California communities upon a 

 horticultural bases points the way to achievements in other suitable 

 parts of the State, and the citrus fruits become then the token, not alone 

 of superior natural endowments, but of the type of manhood which can 

 use them to the best advantage. None know this better than the south- 

 ern California people themselves, and it is a demonstration of the desir- 

 ability both of the natural resources of northern California in citrus lines 

 and of citrus fruit culture itself, that in all the newer citrus regions 

 at the north, there are to be found among the leading planters and 

 promoters, southern Californians who have sold their early plantings at 

 the south at high prices to newer comers and have started anew in the 

 northern districts, where they find cheaper land, more abundant water 

 supply and fruit which is marketed at an earlier date. 



