FRUIT INTEREST IN STATE DEVELOPMENT 57 



INFLUENCE OF THE FRUIT INDUSTRIES UPON 

 CALIFORNIA DEVELOPMENT 



Enlistment in California fruit growing has proved exceedingly 

 satisfactory to tens of thousands of people in the various ways 

 along which they have approached it. The fruit districts are full 

 of cottage homes sheltering families of those who have begun with 

 small investments and have made a good livelihood, and often con- 

 siderably more, from a few acres of fruits grown largely without 

 expenditure for hired labor. The study of the needs of the tree or 

 vine and ministering to them by personal effort has brought new 

 health and new incentive to the worn and weary who have taken 

 up outdoor life and activity in California fruit growing with a wise 

 choice of location, land and fruits, for obviously in all investments 

 one must be wise as well as willing. 



In large operations hundreds have notably succeeded by pur- 

 chasing good land in large tracts at low rates and making ample 

 investment for its development and improvement. Some of the 

 most delightful of our towns and villages have arisen as a direct 

 result of such employment of capital. Well established communi- 

 ties, well churched and schooled, well provided for in local trade 

 and transportation and widely known citizens, have followed invest- 

 ment money and devoted effort in colony enterprises. 



Hundreds, also, have purchased large tracts of wild land and 

 have developed fine estates for their own personal gratification, 

 with thriving orchards of all kinds of fruits, rich pastures tenanted 

 with improved livestock, parks, gardens and buildings comparable 

 with the estates of the European nobility, except that California 

 conditions favor freedom and variety in outdoor effort unknown in 

 Europe, and command proportional interest and enthusiasm. 

 Estates for winter residences in California are exceptionally desir- 

 able, not only because of natural advantages and greater possibili- 

 ties of development, but because of the advanced standing of the 

 State financially and socially. 



All of these lines of effort, then home-making in a small way, 

 colony enterprise and private estate development have yielded on 

 the whole great satisfaction and success. Fruit growing has been 

 the central idea in nearly all of them, but it is obvious that activity 

 in any productive line begets opportunity for other lines, and so all 

 branches of agriculture have advanced and the diversification is 

 highly desirable. Opportunities in manufacture, trade and profes- 

 sional effort of all kinds have been quickly seized and developed 

 with much originality and success. Fruit growing has created them 

 all and has in turn been advanced by all, for every accumulation 

 of capital promotes it. Successful toilers in all lines become 

 planters. The ancestral delight of the race, to sit beneath one's own 



