ADDRESS OF E. P. CLARKE 



In one of his letters to Timothy the Apostle Paul speaks 

 of a class of men who are ''ever learning and never able to 

 come to the knowledge of the truth"; and that very accu- 

 rately describes the condition of the growers of oranges 

 and lemons in California. For nearly fifty years they have 

 been studying and experimenting but they cannot claim 

 today to have reached a position where they feel sure even 

 of the fundamentals of an industry which has become one 

 of the greatest in the state. California produces annually 

 over 40,000 cars of oranges and lemons, bringing nearly 

 $20,000,000 every season to the growers. These figures 

 would seem to spell success and in a limited sense they do ; 

 but the growers do not know but that they ought to be 

 producing 50,000 or 60,000 cars as easily as 40,000 ; and they 

 are quite sure that on much of their acreage they ought to 

 be producing better fruit. On questions of methods, on 

 the problems of planting, irrigation, fertilization, pruning, 

 frost protection, and other essentials in the business, they 

 are still in the primer and I might almost say in the kinder- 

 garten class. 



There came recently to Riverside, one of the great 

 centers of the orange industry, a wise man from England 

 and sometimes when they are wise there they are very sure 

 about it. This particular wise man was one of that type; 

 and after a few days' stay "in our midst," as the country 

 editor would say, he proceeded to tell us that everything 

 we did about the orange and lemon business was all wrong. 

 He told us that we did not know how to plant our orchards 

 properly in the first place and then that our methods of 

 applying the water, cultivating the soil, fertilizing, etc., 

 were improper and the wonder was that we raise any 

 oranges at all. I am not quite sure but that he holds that 

 the sun rises and sets in the wrong place in Riverside; 

 certain it is that he found pretty much everything else 



