THE ORANGE IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA 



429 



First : Deciduous fruit production has reached large volumes, 

 margins have become reduced to those which assert themselves in 

 any well established and extensive industry, and some of the early 

 glamour has gone out of it It will henceforth proceed soberly, 

 and consequently safely, to grand aggregates which no one can 

 foresee, but it is readily demonstrable that with the present rush 

 of population to the more wintry districts of the Pacific slope, the 

 opening of Asiatic connections and the victories being attained 

 each year in the distant East and in Europe, our production of 

 deciduous fruits and their products will go steadily forward. In- 

 creased interest in citrus fruit planting in northern California is in 

 no sense a menace to the deciduous fruit industry. It is merely a 

 new graft upon a very vigorous industrial stock. 



Second : Owing to natural conditions which will be briefly 

 explained presently, orange growing can be pursued at the north 

 without competition with the main crop in southern California. 

 The northern California crop will be consumed before the bulk 

 of the southern crop moves from the trees. 



Third : All California oranges have characteristics and quali- 

 ties which are recognized as of distinctive excellence, and therefore 

 have a commercial advantage, which, under a wise system of pro- 

 tection against free entry of cheap tropical fruit, enables them to 

 compensate the high grade American labor which is employed in 

 their growth, packing and marketing, and leave a reasonable return 

 to require the grower's effort and investment. This being so, the 

 production, so long as protection is continued, justifies extension 

 of the effort to produce an American orange for Americans. 



Fourth : Semi-tropical fruits are nature's demonstration of the 

 existence in a place of a climate which promotes health, comfort 

 and a maximum of physical and intellectual attainment in mankind. 

 Probably all that is urged against tropical climates as enervating 

 and depressing of human standards is true, but not a word of it 

 applies to an arid semi-tropical climate, in which the blessing of 

 dry air and freedom from the debilitating effect of temperature 

 extremes rejuvenate the old and weary and bring the young to 

 stature and stalwartness which all newcomers notice in the rising 

 generation of Californians. Of the existence of such conditions' 

 a well-grown orange of the California type is unimpeachable evi- 

 dence. It has brought a hundred thousand people and a hundred 

 millions of capital to southern California which would not have 

 come otherwise. In the conscious strength with which northern 

 California has recently awakened to make systematic effort for 

 settlement and development, the orange is accepted as an exponent 

 of the possession of those natural characters of sky and air and 

 soil, constituting the most desirable environments of human life 

 the highest desirability in the location of a home. 



