88 PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



ranchers are being converted slowly to the necessity of fostering the 

 institutions that keep their products within the boundary of their own 

 protection, and of eliminating the power of the speculator. But when 

 the next step in this line of evolution is taken, and the ranchers of our 

 State have learned to stand together and trust their own, as do railroad 

 and other corporations, then we shall have a solidarity that will fulfill 

 the prophecy, and we shall be the empire State of the Union. Owe 

 historian has said, and we may reiterate, "There is but one California 

 in all the world, and the world is beginning to recognize it." 



NECESSITY FOE AGEIOULTUEAL EDUCATION. 



Remarks by JULIA SHAFTER-HAMILTON, of Marin County. 



My ideas on farming are purely practical. I was left some eight 

 years ago with 16,000 acres of land in Marin County to look after, and 

 the conclusions I have had to reach were reached on a practical basis. 

 I studied and learned and tried to understand. The Shafter ranches at 

 Point Reyes are well known to all men interested in cattle in California, 

 and I speak from the standpoint of a large landowner who sublets, and 

 not as one running his own property. One of the most serious questions 

 with us is how to get men of superior knowledge to run ranches. What 

 is the use of acquiring these superior conditions, if we can not obtain 

 men of superior knowledge? When I took my ranches I had to depend 

 almost altogether on the peasantry of Europe, but I think we ought to 

 bring our own children up to agricultural pursuits. Men are too anxious 

 to get the money out of the land and expend it on the education of their 

 children along professional lines, and are not willing to return anything 

 to the land through the same channels — the education of their boys in 

 agricultural pursuits. It was too easy at the start to extract the money 

 from the land, and thousands of dollars have been taken from it and 

 turned into channels where none of it would return to the land. Boys 

 have been taken from the farms and educated and employed in the 

 cities in less remunerative, and in my judgment far less dignified, 

 callings, for where is there a life with more freedom or more dignity 

 than that of the farmer? Gentlemen, what are we to do in order to 

 bring men of capital back to the country, where they will not be handi- 

 capped for lack of funds, in order to bring back the productiveness of 

 the soil? Why is it that most men with capital are putting their sons 

 into the overcrowded professions and mercantile lines, where there is so 

 much failure, and where certainly the conditions do not bring about as 

 normal, as healthy, and as dignified a life? Why are they not teaching 

 them that from which they often have sprung? My father made his 

 money in his profession, but then returned to the occupation in which 



