PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



79 



special work and methods to the corresponding secretary of the Women's 

 Agricultural and Horticultural Union of California. As this call is 

 answered, there will be an increasing registration, which will lead to a 

 bureau of information and exchange: and to a social organization 

 based upon the natural conditions of our soil and its increase. It will 

 open up and publish to the world advantages and inducements to home- 

 loving, home-making people to come to our State in increasing numbers 

 for suburban life. 



About one hundred statements have been gathered, and represent 

 various interests carried on by women, singly or in family relations. 

 The record is remarkable, but far from complete as a directory. It 

 represents industrial effort in homestead extensions from one acre to 

 one thousand acres, yielding support to many families, and better still, 

 making of the family a community partnership. It also shows the 

 tendency toward healthful growth in the diversions of home-making 

 folk, in efforts to beautify and enrich barren surroundings on roadside 

 and in garden. 



Other countries are far in advance of us in opportunities for the 

 training of young women as well as men upon these industrial lines — 

 notably England and Denmark. 



At the suggestion of the California delegate to the great International 

 Convention of Women held in LondoD, 1899,, a Woman's International 

 Agricultural and Horticultural Union was formed. Each of the ten 

 countries represented pledged themselves to organization upon these 

 lines and to report in turn to the International Union. English and 

 Canadian women have organized. Belgium is about to do so — also 

 Argentina. 



At the Fruit-Growers' Convention held in San Francisco, in Decem- 

 ber last, a step was taken toward such organization in California. Its 

 object as shown in the prospectus is: To circulate useful information, 

 to compare methods of different districts and countries, and to encourage 

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

 poultry-keeping, etc.; {h) fruit and flower-growing for profit; (c) land- 

 scape gardening, arboriculture, forestry, the management of estates 

 as employers and employed; [d) also the encouragement of working 

 amateurs. 



To this might well be added the words of Monsieur Henry, of the 

 Societe Centrale d'Agriculture, at Brussels, speaking of the Union: " It 

 has practical and social tendencies; 1. To afford enlightenment on the 

 methods of different countries in the agricultural work of women; 

 2. To make popular such operations, and to retain the young girl in the 

 country, and to provide her there with an honorable means of gaining 

 her living." He also said of the woman taken from town to the 

 country: "'She will like it or she will be bored by it; she will only like 



