6 



persuasion. A genuine prosperity in our State will bring us a reinforce- 

 ment of industrial population uninvited, except by the cogency of pros- 

 perity itself. 



The gold-seekers formed the basis of our population ; they laid the 

 foundations of our social and political structure ; they made the mold 

 in which the elements of our civilization were cast. They were an enter-' 

 prising people to the very verge of being speculative and adventurous. The 

 influences of primitive conditions are very difficult of eradication. The 

 pioneer population of any country gives direction, color and character to 

 its growth. The primitive conditions, therefore, exert an influence upon 

 the character of populations long after those conditions have passed 

 away. We are by no means entirely emancipated from the influences 

 of our earliest environment. The speculative spirit is at war with 

 methodical and plodding industry. The diligent industry and methodi- 

 cal habits, to which we are so much indebted for the development of our 

 agricultural and horticultural industries, are attributes of more recent 

 growth ; hence it may be truthfully said that our population, but forty 

 years old, has less than twenty years of development, when those enter- 

 prises and industries relating to its real and permanent sources of pros- 

 perity are considered. When success in the search for gold ceased to be 

 as hazardous as a lottery, and successful mining became dependent upon 

 more thoughtful and intelligent methods, for many years the attention 

 of the world was withdrawn from California. This attention was revived 

 with the stock speculative period, the most injurious period in our his- 

 tory. During the many years of its pernicious prevalence, our best enter- 

 prise and a large portion of our capital were employed in the discovery 

 and operation of silver mines. In spite of all these, however, the good 

 work of creating a commonwealth, founded upon the enduring industries 

 invited by the fertility of the soil, had gone on, and since the subsidence 

 of the speculative period, has made year by year gratifying progress. 

 Great commonwealths cannot be founded upon the exceptional and the 

 unusual. The wealth of every State and every nation is found in the 

 industrial capacity of its people, and in the direction of this industrial 

 capacity in producing the natural and legitimate objects of human de- 

 sire. It is, therefore, fairly within the lines of reasonable representation 

 to say that the foundations of California, which are to endure and are to 

 grow into an empire of wealth and population, were laid less than twenty 

 years ago. The real and enduring industries of our State are less than 

 twenty years of age. In this great respect our annals are misleading. 

 We were admitted a State into the Union forty years ago, but the Cali- 

 fornia of the first twenty years of this period saw its morning of promise, 

 its midday splendor of romantic adventure and its declining afternoon. 

 The new creation of this commonwealth is now in its earliest dawn. 

 Our annals may therefore be justly divided into the California of history 

 and the California of prophecy. Forgetting the past and looking to the 

 future, the first consideration which arrests our attention is our geograph- 

 ical position. 



