PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS 9 CONVENTION. 55 



rural production of different kinds know that in many of the important 

 and necessary primary processes of that production it is impossible 

 for you to get reliable, persistent, and faithful white labor, so called, 

 to perform these processes. In all of the stoop-over work of this State 

 white men are not found. It has been tried by the raisin-growers of 

 Fresno for twenty-five years, and no man there has yet succeeded in 

 getting reliable, long-legged, long-backed white men who will work all 

 day in a stoop-over position, or squat with heads down, in a tempera- 

 ture of 110°, and save the raisin crop. All of you know that this year, 

 if you had had a bumper crop of fruit of any kind on your trees or 

 your vines, a large percentage of it would have been wasted for lack 

 of labor to harvest it. The fruit-growers of California have done well 

 during the past season, because they had a small crop and a large price. 



The importance of the fruit crop to every country community and to 

 all of the business operations of every country community is shown 

 by what was told me by one of your most successful farmers over in 

 Sutter County last night. When I asked him if the local banks had 

 been in distress, he said no, because the crop this year had brought a 

 big price, had been sold, the money paid for it and put into our banks, 

 and neither banks nor people had felt any of the monetary stress and 

 pinch that have been felt so badly in other parts of the United States. 

 So that the harvesting and marketing of your crops are of the greatest 

 importance to every form of business in every one of our rural commu- 

 nities and in every one of our rural centers of population, like Marys- 

 ville. Suppose this year you had had to harvest a bumper crop, that 

 you had had to harvest twice or three times or four times as much 

 fruit, the same being on your trees or vines, to get the same gross 

 result in money. You would have found it impossible, if my information 

 is correct — and I have been widely informed throughout the State — 

 you would have found it impossible to secure the labor to harvest and 

 market your perishable property successfully. The fruit on tree and 

 vine does not wait for a crew to go off to town Saturday night and 

 get drunk and straggle back Monday and Tuesday, and some of them 

 not at all. AYhen your crop is ready for harvest and to go into market 

 it must be cared for. This labor that is not willingly performed by 

 white workingmen is done, and has been done in the past, accurately 

 and faithfully by Asiatics, and especially by Chinese. (Applause.) The 

 short-legged, short-backed Asiatic performs all of the stoop-over work, 

 the squat work. He stands any temperature. He works in every sun 

 and clime, and as far as the Chinese are concerned they faithfully per- 

 form their contract and keep their promise, whether the eye of the 

 employer is on them or not. (Applause.) The first inroads made upon 

 that supply of labor w T ere made under the shelter of the cry of "Cheap 

 labor." You are not concerned in the cheapness of the labor, but in 



