PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 99 



counts, $248,531.16; United States bonds for circulation, $100,000; 

 other bonds and securities, $221,243.44; cash and sight exchange, 

 $231,936.59."' 



You will notice that, exclusive of the two and one-half millions 

 loaned on real estate secured by mortgage, the assessor failed to get 

 four per cent of what appears to be taxable property. How many 

 counties in this State are similarly situated? Would it profit the public 

 in general if the assessors would get busy? Has the public concluded, 

 by reading Controller Colgan's report for 1906, that there was, in 

 reality, no money in the State, and that it would be sold out for taxes, 

 hence the late financial flurry? 



In summing up the case, the farmer finds that he is never repre- 

 sented in the courts or the legislature. He finds that he is obliged to 

 move to town to get the advantages of schools. He finds that his inter- 

 ests, are looked upon all over the United States as the goose that lays 

 the golden egg and a safe beast of burden to carry the responsibilities 

 of the tax-shirker. He finds that in one or more counties of California 

 he is paying eleven times as much for the support of schools, bridges, 

 and roads as is being paid in some counties of Western states that 

 have as good or better schools, bridges, and roads, and also that he has 

 but a small voice in electing the men who spend the money. He finds 

 that his interests are being sacrificed on the altar of prejudice in order 

 to carry out the ideas of an un-American institution born on foreign 

 soil. While in the East he finds himself looking back at the old, 

 abandoned homestead, whose destruction is a monument to the greed 

 and avarice of his fellow men, in the Middle West, through more con- 

 genial and equitable laws of Canada, a foreign country is sapping the 

 life blood of the country, as well as depleting the ranks of the once 

 defenders of the nation's life. I predict that when California is as old 

 the conditions will be as bad, unless it is rescued from the hands of 

 incompetent men controlled by unscrupulous tax-shirkers. To show 

 you that it is no dream, note the increase, in the cities of California, of 

 $201,000,000 in real estate and improvements in five years — nearly two 

 and one-half times greater than the increase in the country for the 

 same time. Yet the country's increase in personal property is one fifth 

 larger than that of the cities; although on the farms there are no banks, 

 no department stores, no merchandising or manufacturing, and no 

 Nob-Hill castles to furnish. What think you? 



Is it time to begin to assert ourselves? Shall we proceed to wipe out 

 the unjust laws, or just "resolve"? 



THE CHAIRMAN. The next number on the program is a very 

 interesting subject by Mr. Paul Shoup, "Common Interests of Fruit- 

 Growers and Railroads." Ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure 

 in introducing Mr. Shoup. (Applause.) 



