THE TRUTH ABOUT CALIFORNIA 



is that for California it is tho first of blessings. The 

 fall in wheat prices has broken the land monopoly which 

 kept labor servile and gave tho most fruitful of coun- 

 tries to four-footed beasts rather than to men. Not until 

 nearly all great ranches had been mortgaged to their 

 full capacity, not until the failure of prices had made 

 the debts intolerably burdensome and brought their 

 owners face to face with disaster, was it possible to 

 open the country for its best and highest uses. With 

 the supremacy of wheat will go the shanty and the 

 "hobo" laborer, to be followed in time by the China- 

 man. In their places will come the home and the man 

 who works for himself. Civilization will bloom where 

 barbarism has blighted the land. There are localities 

 where the cultivation of grain can be pursued, but the 

 semi-tropical valleys of California were plainly intended 

 for better things. 



Irrigation, drainage, and cheap transportation are close- 

 ly related as economic problems in the great interior val- 

 leys. William Hammond Hall, the former State engineer, 

 has predicted that within fifty years the waters which rise 

 in the mountains and meander through these valleys to 

 the sea will all be utilized to moisten and fertilize the 

 soil, and then be turned into canals, serving the double 

 purpose of drainage and transportation. He claims that 

 it is feasible, from an engineering stand-point, to con- 

 struct such works, and to propel trains of freight-boats 

 by electricity at a speed of six miles an hour. If this 

 shall be done, the gain to the State will be beyond all 

 calculation, provided the works be owned by the public. 

 It is by no means an idle dream when considered in con- 

 nection with ultimate California. 

 K ur> 



