ACTUAU RESULTS IN CALIFORNIA 163 



It has been only too common to plant groves that never 

 have been and never can be commercial successes. Cheap 

 land is bought and trees are put out in unfavorable loca- 

 tions, and all this with the practical certainty that the prop- 

 erty can be sold at a profit. For an orange or lemon tree 

 will look thrifty for a few years in almost any section of 

 southern or central California. So credulous buyers are 

 induced to invest, and they only become disillusioned when 

 the trees ought to bear paying crops but do not. 



However, transfers of property are so frequent that the 

 selling value of a grove does not rapidly become equili- 

 brated to its income value. By the time one newcomer 

 begins to be sceptical about his purchase there is a new 

 contingent of "greenhorns" to whom he can sell, and the 

 first man by that time knows enough to select a suitable 

 location, or more probably he decides that orange growing 

 is not his calling. Thus property values of unremunerative 

 groves are maintained at a fictitious level. Notoriously bad 

 groves have been known to sell three times in the same 

 year, each time at an advance, when veteran orchardists 

 agreed that they could never be profitable.* For present 

 purposes, the point is that these uneconomic groves do 

 nevertheless produce some fruit and that the supplies from 

 these speculative orchards depress prices for groves that 

 were planted for legitimate commercial purposes. 



Finally, of course, if the stream of "suckers" ever be- 

 comes desiccated these counterfeit groves will decline 



' Perhaps these remarks afford a clue to the often heard statement 

 that citrus growing in general is unprofitable. Many groves have 

 been planted with complete assurance that they could never be profit- 

 able. They were planted to sell, not to bear fruit. That the per- 

 centage of such counterfeit groves is considerable is indubitable, but 

 how large it is impossible to say. On the other hand, some groves 

 have been continuously and abundantly profitable, and this fact has 

 bolstered up property values for the whole industry. 



