HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 93 



unsurpassed even by the world-renowned Italian a 

 climate that at once gives life and strength to the 

 newly arrived invalid and renovates broken-down con- 

 stitutions from other climes. In short what other 

 country presents so many inducements to the man of 

 the northern states, who is six months chilled with 

 frost and four months living in snow-banks; or the 

 man of the south, who once a year flees from the 

 pestilential heat; or the western man, whose first 

 god is his rifle as a protector from the Indian? To 

 establish the fact that this is the best country to 

 live and die in, seventy-five in one hundred who 

 leave this state return again,, fully satisfied that 

 California is the country !" 1 



It is interesting to note that this declaration was 

 not made from any idea of the decline of mining, for 

 none was anticipated. The gold product was still 

 going at upwards of fifty millions a year. It was 

 merely the awakening of the public mind to a greater 

 industry of which California was capable and the 

 direction of effort and investment toward its realiza- 

 tion. Agriculture was not either a successor to nor 

 a supplanter of mining, for the latter still continues 

 as a great industry, and made an output for 1920 

 valued at nearly two hundred and fifty millions of 

 dollars for all kinds of mineral substances. 2 How- 

 ever, agriculture supplemented mining and has 

 attained an annual value of output two or three times 



1 Rept. of "Visiting Committee" to investigate Calif, farms : 

 in Rept. of Calif. State Agr. Soc., 1857, p. 30. 



2 An official enumeration of the mining products is given in 

 the Appendix D. 



