I 



EDITORIAL 



IN every agricultural commonwealth there are definitely marked stages 

 in the evolution of the ownership of land and the uses to which the soil 

 is put. It is a matter of record that Staten Island, New York, was once 

 traded away by the Indians for a pair of blankets. In a similar way 

 far vaster holdings have changed hands for similarly paltry consideration, 

 all along the moving frontier, throughout the history of our country. In 

 the palmy old days of padre and hidalgo the lands now lying between the 

 borders of California were generously parceled out into immense tracts 

 known as Spanish grants, many of which were princely holdings that had 

 yet to be surveyed or even explored. In the days of a young civilization 

 and a sparse population land is cheap because the methods of turning it 

 to use are crude and insufficient and inadequate to develop its crop value. 

 The most archaic use to which an agricultural area can be put is that of 

 grazing. Up to the present generation the aggregate of the California 

 arable lands have been abandoned to this use, or, we may almost say, 

 this lack of use. What nature offered by way of stock-feeding grasses, 

 without tillage or irrigation, was the current measure of land value. 



It is impossible in a few words to trace the change that has come over 

 the land in this respect within the past two decades. Many agencies have 

 worked together In bringing it about. Colonists have poured into the State 

 — people with small means who must needs tackle small projects or none 

 at all. The large landed capitalists who previously had been characteris- 

 tically "land poor," began to see their advantage in cutting up their hold- 

 ings and letting the newcomers in. From the standpoint merely of sub- 

 sistence, also the rapidly growing population of California demanded such 

 a change, for the sake of garden truck to supply local markets. Again, 

 the surpassing success awaiting horticulture became amply demonstrated, 

 and when an acre in oranges or peaches or nuts is easily worth tenfold 

 its primeval value in grain, it is sheer folly to hold to the old stagnation 

 and the old traditions that grew out of the Spanish days. 



Finally, the recent scientifically developed irrigation has lent its power- 

 ful influence toward making the grazing-lands available for the purposes 

 of varied farming. On the one hand the rapidly growing local and Eastern 

 market has made intensive and varied farming the logical destiny of the 

 land, and on the other the persistent scarcity of labor has confirmed the 

 need of small subdivisions of the farm lands, in order that every farmer 

 may be, in a large degree, his own laborer. 



In the meantime collateral influences have been growing, in the light 

 of which we say, in the happiest sense, that farming is not what it used 

 to be. In the preceding number of FOR CALIFORNIA it was shown how 

 mountain-developed electricity was making the farmer's life a veritable 

 luxury, — lighting his house, and even his barn; moving his farm machinery 

 and doing his farm work; giving him talking communication with the world 

 about, and interurban transportation almost throughout the State. From 

 the standpoint of the conveniences and attractions of modern living, there- 

 fore, farm life in California has escaped from that isolation which in other 

 days restrained so many from the agricultural life. In the California of 

 to-day the farmer is a suburbanite, with the facilities of modern city life 

 closely linked with the delights and health-giving surroundings, and withal 

 the substantial rewards, of ideal practice in husbandry. 



