64 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



people of the country— the most peaceful, the most useful, the most 

 faithful labor that California ever had. Why not do that ? 



It is proper for me to say that I have no direct, personal interest 

 in this question at all. I own three ranches. My production is such 

 that I can not employ Asiatic labor, because it is mixed farming and 

 the handling of live stock. "Except for domestic servants in my house 

 I have no need to employ Asiatic labor, because it is not adapted to 

 the industries in which I am interested. And how is it with the white 

 labor which I have to employ? On my ranch in Kern County I pay 

 a farm hand $40 a month. He has a good room to sleep in and as good 

 a bed as my son, who is superintendent of the property. He eats at 

 the same table at which my son eats and at which I eat when I am 

 there. This is the twelfth month in the year 1907, and I have there 

 now the twelfth ranch hand I have had this year. He works a month, 

 takes his $40, goes to town, throws it down his throat, and that is the 

 last of him. You ask the ranchers in the San Joaquin Valley and they 

 will tell you the same story. The crying need on those ranches where 

 mixed farming is practiced is for the white labor that will come there 

 and do labor that it can perform, that has not these burdens that attach 

 to the primary processes of labor. They cry for white labor and can 

 not get it, and when we who are practicing mixed farming, who offer 

 steady employment at high wages the year around, and good food — 

 when we can not get white labor to do our work, in the name of God 

 where are you going to get labor to do yours! In Tulare County the 

 alfalfa went back into the ground last spring because white men could 

 not be hired for the harvest. All over the San Joaquin Valley crops 

 were lost and wasted upon these ranches where mixed farming was 

 practiced. When white labor in California won't go willingly for 

 high wages and good treatment and do the work that is attached to it, 

 what are you going to do with those primary processes of labor? 



This labor situation is a burning issue, I tell you, ladies and gentle- 

 men, in California, and if we are to maintain our progress, if our cities 

 are to be built up out of the profits that are wrought from the land, 

 then this problem must be solved by the only possible solution, giving 

 us access to that labor which is nearest to us, the best adapted to the 

 uses to which we want to put it. And let us not go on saying something 

 because Denis Kearney said it, but let us look into the facts for our- 

 selves. 



As I told you, I am absolutely disinterested personally, but I know 

 the crying need of my neighbors. I go among them; I think my face 

 and voice are known in nearly every rural community in California, 

 and I am determined that there shall be one public man in California 

 who will lift his voice in behalf of the rights of the rural producer 

 (Great applause), who is trying to mind his own business and not dic- 



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