AGRICULTURE. 271 



buy, and can profitably use, with his supply of capital ; and 

 as irrigated land is much dearer, and requires a larger expen- 

 diture for cultivation by the acre, it is evident that the aver, 

 age farmer can neither buy nor manage one-tenth so much as 

 he could of dry valley land. These principles must be quite 

 clear to men of intelligence ; and they are verified by the 

 results. We find, for instance, that in Utah, where the tillage 

 is done almost entirely by irrigation, the average size of the 

 farms is only thirty acres ; and in Wyoming, where irrigation 

 is also necessary, the average is twenty-five acres; while 

 Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the next lowest, have more 

 than ninety acres, and California, under the influence of its 

 large dry ranches, four hundred and eighty acres. If we com- 

 pare the counties of California, we find that one-half of the 

 farms in Los Angeles are between three and fifty acres in size, 

 or more than twice as many, relatively, in 1870, as in Mon- 

 terey and the San Joaquin Valley, where there were then few 

 irrigating ditches. It is notorious that there are more land- 

 owners and more thorough cultivation in 'proportion to the 

 area at the cities of Los Angeles, Anaheim, and San Jose, the 

 chief irrigation centers of the State, than in any dry-soil dis- 

 tricts. This should be a complete answer to those who argue 

 that irrigation will help to concentrate the ownership of the 

 land in the hands of a few, and reduce the farm laborers to 

 greater dependence. 



195. Reclamation. The reclamation of the tuie and 

 swamp land is a matter of vast importance to the future of 

 California. The tule land occupies three million acres along 

 the banks of San Francisco, San Pablo, Suisun, and Hum- 

 boldt Bays, and the San Joaquin and Sacramento Rivers, the 

 greater portion of it being in the heart of the State. The soil 

 is rich, and needs only to be protected against floods and high 

 tides, to equal in prodiution the best land in the State. This 

 protection is afforded by dykes, twenty or thirty feet wide a 

 the base, and five feet at the top, with a height varying from five 



