168 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



California production has more than kept pace with 

 the increase of the population of the country and ren- 

 dered the importation of several kinds of fruit almost 

 nominal, besides participating in the American ex- 

 port trade. However, this was not simple nor easy 

 to achieve. They began to push fruits and fruit 

 products eastward by rail in 1870. Their progress 

 was slow and the obstacles baffling. Mankind had 

 never been called on before to lift ripe fruit more 

 than a mile high twice while it was being trundled 

 two or three thousand miles forward in ordinary 

 freight cars over poorly ballasted tracks. Again, the 

 first overland shippers were required to pay in ad- 

 vance for freight as much or more than has since 

 been sometimes considered a fair average selling 

 value at an eastern point for a carload of fruit. The 

 situation was full of pomological and commercial 

 problems. In short, growers who began distant mar- 

 keting of their product had to learn what fruit to 

 grow, how to grow, pack and load it for long transit 

 and how to sell it to get their freight money back. 

 The orchards and vineyards were attacked by many 

 pests and diseases from which the planters of the 

 first two decades had declared the State forever 

 free. 1 



Under the incentive of distant trade, California 

 fruit-growers have naturally become important fac- 

 tors in transportation. They have been influential 



1 Distribution of pests has been checked for many years by 

 enforcement of rigid quarantine laws and in 1921 a statute 

 was enacted requiring that all local and distant nurserymen 

 shall be licensed before they can sell trees and plants in Cali- 

 fornia. 



