166 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[ November, 



her isolated volcanic peaks, her towering 

 domes of granite, steep and awe-inspiring 

 mountains, deep and fertile valleys, desolated 

 plains, spacious bays, navigable rivers, beauti- 

 ful waterfalls, inexhaustible mines, forests of 

 giant trees, such as are nowhere else seen— 

 these, all these are hers. 



She is yet a youthful state, liaving been ad- 

 mitted into the Union in 1850, only 29 years 

 ago. Although 29 years of age, she to-day 

 has a population of 700,000 souls, over one- 

 seventh of whom are Chinese. I have it from 

 the best of authority that there are over 100,- 

 000 Chinese on the Pacific coast to-day. I 

 have but a word to say of the Chinese. They 

 are noted for their industry, economy, sobri- 

 ety, are true to those in whose employ they 

 are, are of a well behaved and peaceful dispo- 

 sition, kind in their manner, are very prompt 

 in the payment of debts; and perhaps more 

 than any other people, are disposed to interfere 

 with or molest no one, and attend to their 

 own business. There are 30,000 of them in 

 San Francisco alone, mostly engaged in the 

 laundry business and peddling fruit and vege- 

 tables. I'd put them up against the world as 

 laundrymen. It is to John Chinaman that 

 San Francisco owes it that she is the cleanest- 

 collared and best starched-bosomed city on 

 the continent. John is a perfect laundry. He 

 is hard on the clothes however; he does not 

 rub them as a Pennsylvania wash-woman 

 does, but with a brush made of very stiff 

 bristles he scrubs them, &c. 



One morning I met an old "forty-niner, as 

 he called himself; he came to California in 

 1849, and he told me that he had no idea then 

 that in the red, sunburnt soil in that country, 

 there could ever be raised either crops of 

 grain or of vegetables. He said he stood there 

 in a land of desolation, hundreds of miles 

 beyond the pale of civilization, kicking the toe 

 of his boot into the sand and wondering what 

 such soil was made for anyhow. That very 

 spot to-day is part of the richest valley on 

 this continent. When the old forty-niner 

 came there he never dreamt that in less than 

 thirty years from then, in that same valley, 

 he would see steam used as a motive power in 

 ploughing the ground and threshing the splen- 

 did crops of grain. Would a man have told 

 him then that would he live thirty years and 

 visit that same place and there see machines 

 that could head and thresh and clean and bag 

 2,000 bushels of wheat per day, he would with- 

 out any hesitation have put down the man 

 who told him so as a confirmed lunatic. And 

 why should he not, when there are persons 

 in this room here to-day who cannot help but 

 doubt the truth of my assertion when I say 

 that this is actually the case ? Nevertheless 

 it is true. The wheat is not cut close to the 

 ground. The heads are merely taken off and 

 the straw left on the field. 



When the glad tidings of the discovery 

 of gold reached the east, it gave a stimulus to 

 immigration to that country. Since the day 

 when the first particles of gold were discov- 

 ered in the tail-race of Sutter's .saw-mill, in 

 the county of El Porado, many of our most 

 progressive, persevering and energetic young 

 men in the land came here and cast their lot 

 in this empire of mineral and agricultural 

 richness, and have built up one of the wealth- 

 iest and greatest states in our union. During 

 those thirty years California has minted 

 millions of its gold, her farms have raised 

 billions of bushels of wheat, corn and barley, 

 and millions of bales of alfalfa. Her orchards 

 annually yield in abundance the most luscious 

 fruit the world produces, her vineyards cover 

 thousands of acres in which grow the finest 

 clusters of grapes found in the markets, and 

 above all she raises a crop of boys and girls 

 who in a few short years will merge into 

 manhood and womanhood in whose counte- 

 nances are visible such evidences of health as 

 are seldom seen. It is no wonder indeed that 

 California has escaped the effects of the recent 

 panic of '7.S as she has, and it is almost 

 impossible for one to see how there could be 

 any possible complaint of hard times, or how 

 business could be depressed, the crazy state- 



ments and wild theories of the uncouth 

 bellower of the "sand lots" to the contrary 

 notwithstanding. 



Plant the counties Alameda, Butte, Colusa, 

 Contra Costa, El Dorado, Merad, San Joaquin, 

 Santa Clara, Sonoma, Sutter and Yolo amid 

 the glens of Scotland, among the Alps or the 

 plains of Lombardy, within the dykes of Hol- 

 land, and give to it a population of Germans, 

 Swiss, Italians, Belgians or Austrians, make 

 them the owners of the fee of the soiI,aad they 

 would consider themselves immeasurably 

 blessed with unthought of riches, and they 

 would never dream to complain of hard times, 

 as the people of the East are so apt to do 

 when they are not only blessed with the 

 necessities of life but are enjoying so many of 

 its luxuries. 



Popular education is on the asceiuleut in 

 California, although the adoption of the new 

 constitution has given it a backset; yet I have 

 reasons to believe that in the near future the 

 constitution will again be revised, and steps 

 will be taken to bring the thousands of chil- 

 dren in the state who are growing up in utter 

 ignorance into the schools and educated. It 

 may surprise you how large a percentage of 

 the children do not attend school at all. 

 After I tell you, you will be still more sur- 

 prised that Dennis Kearney has no more 

 followers than the last election indicates. 

 There are to-day 136,000 children of school 

 age in California, of these 73,000 go to school, 

 although some of them but a small portion of 

 the year, while 63,000 do not attend school at 

 all. Think of it, 63,000 children growing up 

 in ignorance. Is it a wonder the brayer of 

 the sand-lots has the following he has ? 

 Take those children into the schools, educate 

 them, and you will make such citizeus out of 

 them that when they come to exercise their 

 rights to the elective franchise they will sweep 

 Kearney ism from their state and it wiil forever 

 be a stranger in their midst. 



Garden vegetables grow with a luxuriance 

 that is not found elsewhere; beets, radishes, 

 squashes, pumpkins, onions, cabbage, aspara- 

 agus, melons, citrons, beans, peas and twice 

 as many others which do not grow with us, 

 and hence know very little of. 



Cabbages weighing 15 lbs. are wonders in 

 N. Y. In San Francisco they are common; 

 whole fields of cabbage heads weighing 20 lbs, 

 each have been grown, and hard solid heads 

 with no loose leaves, weighing forty-five and 

 fifty-three lbs. each, are on record. One cab- 

 bage which did not make a head grew to be 

 seven feet wide, throwing out leaves three 

 and a half feet long on each side. 



The largest squash produced in California 

 weighed 260 lbs., and the vine which l>ore it 

 had several others weighing over 100 lbs. 

 each. E! «where 60 lbs. is a very large squash, 

 and there is scarcely a record in the Atlantic 

 States of a greater |Weight than 100 pounds, 

 which has been frequently surpassed here. In 

 1857 one squash vine on the ranch of James 

 Simmons, in Yuba county, produced 130 

 squashes weighing in all 2604 lbs. In the 

 same year J. Q. A. Ballon, at San Jose, grew 

 two squashes weighing 210 and 204 lbs. respec- 

 tively. 



The largest California onion weighed 47 

 ounces avoirdupois, and measured 22 inches 

 in circumterence. 



The largest beet weighed 118 lbs— five feet 

 long, and a foot in diameter. It was three 

 years old. The first it grew so large that 

 because of its size it was reserved for seed, but 

 it disap7)ointed its owner, and instead of 

 producing seed the next year, merely kept on 

 growing, and reached the size of 86 lbs., and 

 the following year got to 118. Such beets 

 can be grown in abundance. A. beet of 20 

 lbs. is a wonder in New York or Loudon; 

 here it is too common to attract more than a 

 glance. Beets are frequently from 3 to 4 

 feet long so that it requires no little trouble 

 to dig them out. 



The largest common turnip weighed 26 lbs; 

 largest carrot 10 lbs. ; largest watermelon 65 

 lbs. ; largest tomato measured 26 inches in 

 Circumference. 



Our vegetables grown in the open air are 

 in the market during a greater part of the 

 year than any other of the United States. 

 We have cabbage, lettuce, turnips, beets, car- 

 rots, cauliflower, parsnips, radishes, horse- 

 radish, celery, green onions, leeks, salsify and 

 parsley throughout the year; green peas, 

 beans, watermelons and cantaloupes from 

 June to November, tomatoes from May to 

 October; Lima beans and sweet potatoes from 

 June to September; asparagus from March to 

 July. Our tables are thus supplied with a 

 great variety of fresh and wholesome vegeta- 

 bles throughout the year. Garden vegetables 

 may be left in ground all winter. Potatoes 

 are sometimes not dry until January, and 

 turnips and beets are generally left in their 

 beds until they are to be sent to the market; 

 there is never enough cold to freeze them. 



Fruits. — As a fruit growing State, Califor- 

 nia takes a high position. In no part of the 

 world do fruit trees grow so rapidly, bear so 

 early, so regularly and so abundantly, and 

 produce fruit of such large size. Peaches, 

 pears, apples, apricots, nectarines, plums, 

 olives and strawberries are thrifty, healthy 

 and productive. 



In the California orchards fruit trees are 

 trained low, the lower limbs being within a 

 foot, or at most two feet of the ground. Men 

 do not walk under the trees or cUmb after the 

 fruit. The advantages of low training are 

 that the trees bear earlier, the trunk is shaded 

 and protected against the disease called sun- 

 scald; the earth about the roots is kept moist; 

 and the trees are protected against the wind. 

 The trees are planted much nearer together 

 (only half as far apart) in most instances than 

 in the Eastern States. This is an additional 

 protection against tlie sun and wind. The 

 ground is ploughed several every summer and 

 is kept clean. 



Fruit trees in California are generally as 

 large at two years old as they are in New 

 York at three or four years. The instances 

 of unusually rapid growth here are without a 

 parallel elsewhere. Cherry trees have grown 

 to be fourteen feet high in one year, pear 

 trees 10 feet, peach trees to have trunks from 

 two to three inches in diameter. These were 

 all f r(Jm buds on yearly stocks, and were well 

 provided with branches — not trimmed to gain 

 height. At Petaluma, a cherry tree two 

 years old from the graft, and three years old 

 from the seed, had a trunk 7| inches in cir- 

 cumference, a plum tree three years from the 

 seed was 11 feet high and had a trunk seven 

 inclies in circumference; and a peach tree one 

 year from the bud was eight feet high and 

 eight and a half inches in circumference. 



Apple orchards begin to bear fruit the 

 second or third year. 



In Alamedo county plum trees have grown 

 twelve feet in one year from the bud. 



Abundance of fruit. — Of the temperate fruit 

 trees California'has over 4,000,000. 1. 2,450- 

 000 apple trees; 840,000 peach trees; 360,000 

 pear trees; 243,000 plum trees; 122,000 cherry 

 trees; 31,000 nectarine trees, 78,000 apricot 

 trees; 19,000 prune trees. Total 4,143,000. 



2. Of the sub-tropical fruit and nut trees 

 there are 252,000, including 60,000 almond 

 trees; .58,000 English walnut trees; 50,000 fig 

 trees; 39,000 orauge trees; 38,000 oUve trees; 

 7,000 lemon trees. Total 252,000. 



3. Besides these, 30,000,000 grape vines, 

 14,000,000 strawberry plants, 1,000,000 rasp- 

 berry bushes and 500,000 blackberry bushes. 

 In all there are 44,500,000 trees, vines, plants 

 and bushes bearing fruit or nuts, covering an 

 area of more than 100,000 acres, or nearly 

 half an acre in fruit for every man in the 

 State. 



4. The trees generally are in good condition; 

 Cherries and plums are not troubled by the 

 curculio, and apples are free from worms. 



Grrqjes. — California is a favorite land of the 

 grape. The grape vine supposed to be the 

 largest in the world is at Montecito,near Santa 

 Barbara. It is of the Los Angeles variety, 

 was planted in 1795, has a trunk 15 inches in 

 diameter and its branches are supported by an 

 arbor 115 feet long and 78 feet wide. It has in 



