ORANGE CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 57 



they claim it to be. He has fine lands and a beautiful home. 

 He has fruit trees and vineyards sufficient, when in full bearing, 

 to afford him a fine income. But it is all. entirely worthless 

 without water; and this is all he has for himself, his wife, and 

 his children. If the company withhold water from him, he is 

 ruined. If they continue to furnish him as they have been do- 

 ing, and he understands that they are under no legal obligations 

 to do it, he feels that he is living only on sufferance; that he is 

 entirely dependent on the good will of the present officers, and 

 that though he may be secure in the favor of these, he knows 

 not how soon a new set may ruin him. 



"Another has brought from the East fine stock the best 

 breeds of cattle and hogs and, allured by the advertisements 

 of large water supply, he buys land, builds a house, sows alfalfa, 

 and is just beginning to develop his useful industry, when he 

 learns that the company do not recognize any legal claim on 

 them for a future supply of water; and, rather than place him- 

 self permanently at the mercy of a corporation, he sells his fine 

 stock at a sacrifice, and finds himself nearly destitute, and liv- 

 ing where he may be utterly ruined, whenever the company 

 shall so please to do. 



"When hundreds of families with valuable homes and or- 

 chards, vineyards, and orange groves are depending on the 

 water supply in which they have rejoiced for a few years, what 

 is to hinder the ditch owners from buying other lands below, 

 and taking a half or the whole of the water supply from the first 

 settlers to supply the new purchasers? 



"If the settlers undertake to protect themselves by buying 

 water stock, is there any limit to the number of shares the com- 

 pany may issue, if they are unscrupulous enough to organize for 

 a large issue? 



"If the company have twice the quantity of land that their ir- 

 rigating ditches can supply, what assurance has the first pur- 

 chaser that the last purchaser will not deprive him of half his 

 water just at the time when his orange grove shall have come 

 into bearing? Or what assurance, other than verbal promises, 

 has the last purchaser that he will get any water at all, if the 

 first purchasers should be regarded as prior appropriators ? 



