FOREIGN COMPETITION. 15 



Field growth of staple vegetables on a large scale has been 

 continued by Americans, but even in this line he has often 

 been obliged to withdraw from competition with Chinese, 

 Portuguese and Italians with their cheaper labor supply 

 and living expenses. Great enterprises in live stock, 

 wheat, wool and fruit afforded opportunities more to the 

 American taste than vegetable growing. The American 

 settler had incomparably more energy and industrial am- 

 bition than his predecessors, the Mexicans, but he shared 

 with them a liking for doing his work in the saddle or on 

 the seat of a riding plow, cultivator or harvester. Within 

 a decade from the date of the American demonstration of 

 the unique fitness of California for vegetable growing 

 there arose occasion for frequent exhortations to Califor- 

 nia farmers to restore the garden to its proper place in 

 farm plan and policy, and yet California farmers neglected 

 to supply their own tables and the proper adornment of 

 their house yards until the ranch home in this land of 

 beauty and grand horticultural opportunities became a by- 

 word for unthrift and desolation. Fortunately there has 

 been such wonderful improvement during the last decade 

 that these epithets no longer apply to California country 

 homes. 



Competition with Foreigners. One of the difficulties of 

 the present situation is that while the American-born Cali- 

 fornian has decried vegetable growing, the immigrants 

 from southern Europe and eastern Asia have strongly 

 entrenched themselves in it. Now the competition which 

 the American grower has to encounter is depressing and 

 discouraging. And yet the situation is not at all hope- 

 less. The foreigners are not, as a rule, progressive. They 

 are frugal and industrious to an extreme and they under- 

 take a great deal to please their customers with variety 

 as well as low prices. In some points the American com- 

 petitor can learn from them to advantage. But it is quite 

 easy to surpass them in quality by constant effort for im- 

 proved varieties, which they are slow to introduce, and 

 to cheapen production by the use of horse labor and im- 



