THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



climate where winters are long and stern, it settled in 

 treeless deserts, in a land of slight and peculiar rainfall, 

 and tinder a sky that never knows the winter. 



Finally, California is in its infancy, having recently 

 celebrated its forty-sixth birthday as an American com- 

 monwealth. Born in a paroxysm of speculation one of 

 the wildest the world has seen it has outlived a trying 

 experience of lesser economic epilepsy, and come to the 

 threshold of its true career strengthened and purified by 

 the extraordinary process. In less than half a century 

 several far-reaching changes have swept through the in- 

 dustrial and social life of the State, swiftly altering the 

 conditions of labor and of business. Even for those 

 living in the midst of these events it has been difficult 

 to read their significance and estimate their influence on 

 the ultimate character of the place and people. 



What wonder, then, that to the outside world Cali- 

 fornia has meantime appeared like a jumble of gold, 

 palms, and oranges, of gilded millionaires and hopeless 

 paupers, of enviable farmers living luxuriously on small 

 sections of paradise, and of servile alien laborers herded 

 in stifling tenements ? Such are the conflicting aspects 

 of the Golden State to those who view it from afar. What 

 are the facts ? 



The literature of California is prolific. Perhaps no 

 other locality in the United States has been so often writ- 

 ten about. In dealing with a place which presents so 

 many strange and fascinating features it is easy for praise 

 to become extravagance. This is now so well understood 

 that it is commonly thought that the words " Cali- 

 f ornian " and " veracity" are seldom synonymous. But 

 the truth is that visitors from abroad have contributed 



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