TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



175 



forth the objects of such union, were sent broadcast throughout the 

 State; officers were elected whose names carry weight along lines of 

 actual achievement in agriculture and horticulture; names, facts, and 

 statistics were solicited by the corresponding secretary that the work of 

 registration might go on. 



The objects, as stated, were: 1. For the benefit of each separate 

 county and its workers; 2. To circulate useful information, to com- 

 pare methods of different districts and counties, and to encourage and 

 stimulate (a) farming, dairying, stock-breeding, bee-keeping, poultry- 

 keeping, etc., (b) fruit and flower growing for profit, landscape gardening, 

 arboriculture, forestry, etc., (c) the management of estates as employers 

 and employed, (d) the encouragement of working amateurs in the 

 making of fruit gardens as distinguished from fruit orchards, etc. 



This was done before the organization of the Merchants' Exchange 

 and business men of San Francisco into a promotion committee^' to 

 advertise the resources of California and to promote its settlement. 



Women are already engaged in the various industries referred to, 

 and their record is phenomenal. Facts and statistics only need record- 

 ing, co-ordinating, and representing in order to become important 

 factors in co-operation and in "promotion work." For want of a vig- 

 orous method to this end, many inquiries have come to me, as corre- 

 sponding secretary of a prospective " Union of Women in Agriculture 

 and Horticulture in California." The International Union of the 

 women of seventeen countries has been responsible for these inquiries, 

 as well as the separate unions formed in a few of these countries. The 

 women of California have no bureau of information to which practical 

 women can apply for knowledge of opportunities and conditions for the 

 making of homes upon the soil in California ; nor are they represented, 

 individually or collectively, in organizations of men. It is in the 

 power of organized bodies, such as the Fruit-Growers' Convention and 

 the Promotion Committee, to solicit and register the efforts of both men 

 and women upon the land in this State ; first of all, to recognize and 

 assert that the growth from within the State, as already peopled, is 

 quite as important as prospective growth from without. I would there- 

 fore suggest to this Convention that special efforts be made to accept 

 and to follow up the initiative already taken by the " Women's Agricul- 

 tural and Horticultural Union of California," and its incorporation 

 into all "promotion work" of whatever sort already undertaken by 

 men. 



Having printed and distributed all that I can say in detail upon this 

 subject, I shall only add that one need not be an agriculturist or horti- 

 culturist to be intelligently interested in the economic problems of one's 

 State, nor to know "where one's bread and butter comes from," to 

 earnestly wish to help in the work of organization. As for plan — the 



