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skill in other countries, is a process of impoverishment. Keeping in 

 view that we are now addressing our Eastern friends and answering 

 Eastern inquirers, we may say to them in perfect good faith that our 

 manufactures are largely in their infancy, and that the conditions here 

 favor the successful prosecution of manufactures. With respect of 

 manufactures, we are perhaps behind any or all of the Eastern States. 

 Our people are beginning to realize this. We are beginning to under- 

 stand that when we ship away from our State raw material to be tanned 

 into leather, and the leather to be converted into footwear, we are 

 shipping from us the opportunity of creating wealth, an amount which 

 is readily measured by the difference between the value of the rawhides 

 and the value of the footwear manufactured from the rawhides. Like- 

 wise the wool which is raised by our people is shipped in the staple, and 

 we lose the opportunity of adding labor and skill, which would give us 

 the value of the cloth manufactured. At the end of a year, in the ledger 

 account of the industries of a great commonwealth, the test of its 

 wealth-producing capacity is the amount of value added to raw material 

 by labor, skill and intelligently directed industry. Our protection of 

 breadstuffs is certainly not overdone. We would find it a difficult task 

 to overdo the production *of precious metals, the 'manufacture of iron, 

 or manufactures of lead and copper. Thus we may truthfully proclaim 

 to the world that California offers an opportunity for field culture, manu- 

 factures and mining such as no other State in the Union may claim; that 

 none of the industrial pursuits of our country are even at the meridian 

 of their development; that all without exception await the vitalizing 

 influence of enterprising capital and industry. 



THE QUESTION OF IABOR. 



For many years the people of the world were taught to believe that 

 California was not an inviting field for honest industry in the realm 

 of common labor. This was true of its early history. The distance to 

 this State and the cost of getting here, and the rate paid to common 

 labor in this State were all such as to operate as a discouragement to the 

 coming of an intelligent, self-respecting European labor. The compe- 

 tition also of Chinese labor was an additional discouragement. But it 

 is chiefly with the labor market of to-day that we are to deal, and while its 

 adequate treatment would be beyond the reasonable space allotted in a 

 paper of this kind, some of its most salient features will be considered. 



It is a regrettable fact that the unions of skilled laborers are opposed 

 to all efforts to induce their craftsmen to come to this State. Their ob- 

 jection, if we are to trust the expressions of their representatives in con- 

 ventions, is that the coming of additional men produces a condition of 

 things menacing to the maintenance of high wages. The fundamental 

 error of all this is that growth of population in any country is attended 

 by the expansion of its industries and the increase of employment 



