THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



351 



ertheless a fact that irrigation benefits even these. The 

 product is of better quality, more uniform in size, color- 

 ing and marketable qualities; especially is this true 

 of fruit; besides the farmer, fruit grower or gardener 

 is always sure of a crop if he can sxipplement nature's 

 offerings with artificial irrigation. 



From one de Anjou pear tree, fully matured in the 

 C. H. Lewis orchard in 1906, thirteen boxes of high 

 grade pears were harvested, which sold for $5.50 in 

 New York City per box, or $71.50 less freight, from 

 one tree in a single crop. The great yields of individual 

 trees the past season passed unnoticed in the rush of 

 events. 



The foremost enterprise of which Medfordians 

 are justly proud is the Iowa Lumber and Box Com- 

 pany. This company annually manufactures into fruit 

 boxes for the fruit trade of southern Oregon and Cali- 

 fornia fully 7,000,000 feet of pine lumber. It em- 

 ploys upward of 100 men nearly the entire year. This 

 factory also manufactures all kinds of building material. 



Medford also has a planing mill, E. W. Gray, pro- 



from $2.50 to $4 per week. 



In the fall of the year girls are able to make from 

 $1.50 to $3 per day employed in packing fruit. There 

 is a great demand for girls during the fruit packing 

 season and the greater part of the work is done by 

 them. The fruit packing season begins with peaches 

 and Bartlett pears in August, and later comes the later 

 varieties of pears and following them the apple crop. 

 Usually the season will cover from two to two and a 

 half months. 



Attention should be directed to the great diversity 

 of products for which this valley is noted. In the 

 early pioneer days it was found thaf the valley pro* 

 duced within itself everything necessary for sustaining 

 life in comfort even to the item of salt, although the salt 

 produced at the old Meadows works costs about as much 

 as the gold washed from the gulch placers. Bread, meat, 

 fish, game, fruits of all kinds, wool for clothing, hay 

 for forage, timbers and lumbers for dwellings and con- 

 struction work of all kinds, iron, copper, the precious 

 metals, only short in the item of fusing coal, to enable 



Mount Shasta, as seen from Southern Pacific trains. 



prietor, which manufactures building material. 



Medford has a flour mill, established in 1887, A. A. 

 Davis, proprietor. It has a daily capacity of eighty 

 barrels. 



Medford also has a feed and chop mill, Edward 

 Russ, proprietor. 



Medford has a soda water manufacturing plant and 

 bottling works, P. C. Bigham, proprietor. 



Medford also has a foundry and machine shops, 

 Trowbridge & Danielson, proprietors; a steam laundry^ 

 D. C. Wilson, proprietor ; a creamery, Gaddis Brothers, 

 proprietors ; a vinegar factory, an ice manufacturing 

 plant; an electric light plant and water pumping sta- 

 tion, which the city owns and operates ; marble and gran- 

 ite works two Hicks and Kershaw and F. W. Wait, 

 proprietors; two brick yards, Childers Bros, and G. W. 

 Priddy, proprietors. 



Carpenters are paid from $2 to $3.50 per day ; ma- 

 sons from $4 to $6; lumbermen from $1.50 to $2.75; 

 common labor, from $1.50 to $2; farm labor, from $20 

 to $30 per month ; women or girls for house work, 



any occupation to be carried on in the manufacturing 

 line of old methods; and now this deficiency is more 

 than made good by utilizing of nature's forces in the 

 transmission of power over the electric wires. 



When one pauses to reflect what this one item in 

 the valley's progress means to future generations, it is 

 almost appalling to speculate upon the changes which 

 it will make in men's ideas of agricultural and manu- 

 facturing possibilities. The one matter of irrigating 

 from the water bearing gravel which underlies much 

 of the valley by pumping with electric power will revo- 

 lutionize fruit culture locally, within the next ten years. 

 In many localities, at a depth of not more than forty 

 feet, an abundance of water can be found for all pur- 

 poses, and within a decade, Medford will be surrounded 

 with elegant country homes, with land fertile as the 

 Nile, irrigated from pumps belonging to the owner and 

 independent of all corporate and extraneous influences, 

 due to the fact that nature has provided the means, and 

 man of later day proclivities is quick to realize on such 

 possibilities. 



