50 PROCEEDINGS OF NINETEENTH FRUIT GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



Africa to London, and arrive there in good shape. What is possible for 

 these countries is possible for us. Why do we sit down supinely and 

 neglect that route which will obviate this matter of low prices? We 

 can then send our pears, which are worth 1 cent a pound here, to Lon- 

 don, where they will bring 3 to 4 cents apiece. I might say the 

 expense would be a tithe of the present expense for transportation, and 

 also of refrigeration. I do not know much about the refrigeration of 

 cars going East, but I do know this: The Hotel Del Monte has a cold- 

 storage chamber. I take their apples there about the end of October 

 (Newtown Pippins, chiefly), and they will keep those apples in the 

 cold-storage room the half of the ensuing year, and then will take them 

 out as fresh and waxen as when the fruit arrived from the orchard. 

 Why can't we send our fruits wholesale by this plan to European 

 markets. 



Another thing I want to bring to your notice: Years ago, if you had 

 seen a map of California, with the productions marked on it for 

 the use of schools, you would find its exports set down as hides and 

 tallow. If you take a geography ten years old, and look at the Argen- 

 tine Republic, you will find its exports: Horns, wool, hides, and 

 tallow. Do you know that the Argentine Republic in six months 

 of 1894 shipped 1J000,000 tons of wheat to the European markets? 

 They are gradually changing from a pastoral people to an agricultural 

 people. California made the same change about 1867. Hides and 

 tallow first, then wheat. We are now finding California to be not only 

 a wheat country, but also a fruit country. In the Argentine Republic 

 the conditions of climate, etc., are much the same as those of California. 

 You will find they will be a fruit country in years to come. Our wheat 

 competes with theirs now, and what can our wheat-growers do with 

 10,000 miles to get to the front door of the Argentine Republic at Buenos 

 Ayres in our race to Liverpool. We are handicapped by this distance 

 of 10,000 miles, more or less. Can we overcome this? Certainly! You 

 can have this canal cut. It has been talked about for nearly four 

 hundred years. A man named Galvez, three hundred years ago, talked 

 about it to Charles Vth of Austria and Spain. In the year 1551, a 

 survey was made of this very Nicaragua Canal — so for three hundred 

 years our canal has been talked about. It is being talked about to-day. 

 Will this convention permit that state of things, all talk and no action, 

 to go on? Will it permit this handicap of 10,000 miles against our 

 wheat and fruit to continue? To send a ship with refrigerator cham- 

 bers twice through the tropics is a very long and hazardous attempt, but 

 by going through the Nicaragua Canal you get but one third of the torrid 

 zone's heat, and then see what is gained? It makes all the difference 

 in the world to us to be enabled to "get our fruit to market in London, 

 where, as I was saying, pears, which now bring a cent a pound, will bring 

 there 3 to 4 cents apiece, or butter worth in San Francisco 10 cents a 

 pound may be taken to a market where it will bring 20 cents, or beef 

 worth from 5 to 5? cents a pound to where it is worth from 8 to 10 cents 

 a pound. Do you want this route opened, gentlemen? I think we all 

 want it done. Now, why is it not done? There isn't any one who 

 knows why. I think, perhaps, I can tell you. It is because it is 

 everybody's business, so no one does it. 



Gentlemen, we of the Pacific Coast are the ones most interested. We 

 have the most at stake. Our business is languishing. Mortgages are 



