PROCEEDINGS OF NINETEENTH FRUIT GROWERS' CONVENTION. 89 



less than he could buy good dried fruit. I have seen Chinamen go to 

 market and sell, right by the side of me, boxes that they said weighed 

 165 pounds. I had them weighed, and they weighed exactly 100 pounds. 

 It demoralizes the market and will drive us all out. 



Mr. Walton: Upon that point there are serious objections. I will 

 point out one: A man who rents to a Chinaman feels that he is an irre- 

 sponsible person, and binds him up tight by a contract to control that 

 fruit. They immediately make a respectable shipment, say a carload, 

 and some gentleman representing the buying firm rides through the 

 country and sees this fruit and fixes a price. Then there is a consulta- 

 tion between the owner of the orchard and the Chinaman, and the owner 

 unites with the buyer, regardless of the protests of the Chinaman, and 

 makes a sale right then and there, long before any of the fruit is fit for 

 market. It is a very serious question to the fruit industry. 



General Chipman : I live in a county where there is more encourage- 

 ment given to Chinese as tenants than in any other county in the State. 

 The question is: Shall we rent our lands to Chinamen? There are a good 

 many views on this aside from the one affecting our taxes as fruit- 

 growers. I am not going to touch on that subject. It does affect the 

 fruit industry and the prices of California fruits in the East to have a 

 cheaper quality sent on from this State. If you sell a cheap quality of 

 some article, people will buy the cheaper quality. Now, you come with 

 me to the town of Vina, where they have Chinese labor, and you can- 

 not come to any other conclusion than: We ought not to rent our lands 

 to Chinese. Fifty to one hundred Chinese came there, and lived in one 

 house as large as this room. They did not come to live there. They 

 were practically a nuisance in that town. I do not blame the people 

 for running them out. I was in the county when they went out. That 

 was the way it was for twenty years. They had no school-houses. I 

 am in favor of driving them out of the country, and all we have to do 

 is to stand by the American programme of building up towns and 

 school-houses. 



Senator Hall, of Placer: I shall say just one word on this occasion. 

 I do not advocate, in any way, letting ranches to Chinamen. Some o{ 

 the reasons why so many men let their ranches to Chinamen are that it is 

 well known throughout our section of the country that Chinese can make 

 money on a place where a white man cannot, and that white men are 

 unable, at the rate that fruit sells for, to make a living, and, in order to 

 get something out of their orchards to live on, have to rent to Chinamen, 

 who can live cheaply. There was really nothing else to do except to let 

 those ranches to Chinamen, under the circumstances. Still, the China- 

 men, through their industry and persistency, succeed not only in paying 

 their rent, but also get a little profit out of it. 



Looking over this body of men and listening to their ills my sympathy 

 goes out to those who are struggling against fate. First, we had the ques- 

 tion of freights and transportation, and the difficulty of getting markets 

 in the East. Then there was the last straw of all to break the camel's 

 back — the Russian thistle, making its way from the South to the North. 

 What are the fruit-growers going to do? It seems to me as though every 

 man was desirous of running from the business, and that there was no 

 prospect in the future toward making a success of the business. I wish 

 that some man could state some way to overcome these obstacles in our 

 way, eventually making the business a success. 



