290 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



"When the farmer is so fortunate as to produce a 

 surplus and desires to send that surplus to the best 

 markets, whether at home or abroad, he finds that 

 not only the carrying facilities within his own coun- 

 try but even those of the high seas are as effectually 

 united and combined against him as if owned and 

 controlled by one man, and though the article he 

 has for sale bears a high and remunerative price in 

 those markets, the exorbitant freight demanded and 

 forced from him for moving it leaves no profit. 



"The customs of these men have grown so burden- 

 some and exacting that in many portions of the 

 State large quantities of perishable products, such as 

 fruits and vegetables, are annually allowed to go to 

 waste rather than send them to market, and the 

 producers are unwilling losers of millions." 



It is also interesting to note that though several 

 pages of such aggressive agricultural doctrine were 

 spread in the Eeport of the State Agricultural Society 

 in 1872, not a word about it ever appeared after- 

 wards, and the Eeport for 1873 shows changes in the 

 list of officers. Even now, nearly half a century 

 later, it is clearly discernible that commercial and 

 transportation interests realized that the farmers 

 were getting troublesome, and caused the leaders of 

 malcontent to be displaced by those who would confine 

 the activities of the State Agricultural Society largely 

 to horse racing, which they did very thoroughly for 

 a decade or more. 



However, the farmers of 1872 were not wholly cast 

 down by the disaster to their project for a state-wide 



