EVOLUTION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 



high results. The Riverside colonists not only exhaust- 

 ed their own sources of information on the subject of 

 citrus culture, but induced the State Department at 

 Washington to make its consuls in semi-tropical coun- 

 tries their agents. In this way they were enabled to learn 

 all that foreign horticulturists knew about the business. 

 They made constant progress in improving the standard 

 of their fruit, their most marked triumph in this direction 

 being the production of the Washington navel, or seedless, 

 orange. Their orchards represented all the choicest 

 varieties, which were cultivated with the highest skill. 

 The original colony tract of two thousand acres has been 

 gradually extended until it includes ten thousand. The 

 shipment of oranges has risen to over four thousand car 

 loads annually, realizing a million and a half of dollars. 



The projector of Riverside had framed his prospectus 

 on the lines of co-operative effort. We have seen that 

 the enterprise speedily became private and speculative in 

 character. This result was mostly due to the necessity 

 of using large capital for the initial development, and to 

 the fact that the colony included a group of individuals 

 who possessed considerable means. Possibly the same 

 result might have occurred in Utah if the Mormon pio- 

 neers had not enjoyed a fortunate equality in the matter 

 of poverty. In Utah there was no capital except labor 

 and brains, and these admitted of no other form of en- 

 terprise than pure co-operation. 



The speculative instinct which took possession of River- 

 side and ran a mad race through southern California, ac- 

 complished much good, as well as much evil. And in the 

 end the pioneer orange colony returned very closely to 

 the original ideal of its founder. The principal irriga- 



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