THE CHANCE FOR AMERICANS 11 



Americans and it was soon given over to immigrants from the south 

 of Europe and China and has never been recovered. Field growth 

 of staple vegetables on a large scale has been continued by Amer- 

 icans, 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 ambition than his prede- 

 cessors, 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 demon- 

 stration of the unique fitness of California for vegetable growing 

 there arose occasion for frequent exhortations to California farm- 

 ers 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. Some aspects of this matter 

 will be presented in a following chapter. 



Competition with Foreigners. One of the difficulties of the 

 present situation is that while the American-born Californian has 

 decried vegetable growing, the immigrants from southern Europe, 

 China and Japan 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 

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

 frugal and industrious to an extreme and they undertake a great 

 deal to please their customers with variety as well as low prices. 

 In some points the American competitor can learn from them to 

 advantage. But it is quite easy to surpass them in quality by con- 

 stant effort for improved varieties, which they are slow to introduce, 

 and to cheapen production by the use of horse labor and improved 

 tools, while they plod along with hand methods and appliances 

 although it is only fair to admit that the Japanese are more progres- 

 sive and ambitious of leadership and proprietorship and therefore 

 more formidable rivals. However, if the California farmer should 

 put forth the same effort to adapt conditions to ends and to keep 

 himself at the very front in materials and arts of production in the 

 growing and selling of vegetables that he has employed in the grow- 

 ing and selling of fruit, we should hear far less of the superiority 

 of the foreigner in the vegetable garden. 



There have arisen during the last few years quite notable in- 

 stances of the truth of this claim, and almost everywhere in the 

 vicinity of towns some market gardens by Americans can be found. 

 The situation is well portrayed in the following paragraph from an 



