64 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



and the creation of ducal establishments thereon 

 may have been even desirable from the point of 

 view of holding an unpopulated country with endowed 

 landlords and a self-supporting army of retainers, 

 but it was not only an anachronism after American 

 occupation but a serious obstacle to development. 

 Ownership of arable land in large tracts has always 

 been popularly condemned in California and, 

 although such holdings have been disintegrating for 

 several decades, the inheritance of the Spanish 

 grants and the aggregation of land in Spanish style 

 by grant or otherwise have always been detrimental 

 to the State. It was adding to the evil influence of 

 the grants to allow the original owners of them to 

 be robbed of the land by unprincipled lawyers and 

 greedy speculators. 



Although the Spanish conception of exemplary 

 agriculture and rural life was not acceptable even to 

 some of the early Americans who became citizens of 

 Mexico, and although these policies and methods were 

 almost universally rejected by the pioneers of the 

 American occupation, it is indisputable that an 

 inheritance from the old regime entered into the 

 conceptions and forms of enterprise of the new. 

 It consisted in a new point of view of largeness as 

 desirable in individual enterprise. This largeness of 

 plan embodied itself not only in a new idea of the 

 amount of land that a man should acquire but of 

 his supremacy over the agencies and methods em- 

 ployed in production. Under the Spanish system, 

 a man could ride and drive great droves of stock 



