PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 261 



The philosophy of the occultists and theosophists teaches that in each 

 incarnation there is something either of good or of evil, generally both, 

 coming to each individual, and the votaries of those teachings call that 

 something Ego. Well, by the intensity of my leanings toward horti- 

 culture, it seems that in my Ego there must be some good coming to 

 me out of that business, and as my early experiments with production 

 were so disheartening it has occurred to me that whatever of good is in 

 my Ego connected with horticulture may be in the transportation of 

 the products, and so I am now demonstrating along that line. 



To be entirely serious, however, for the moment, we are now touch- 

 ing upon a. subject of most vital interest to the industry and, as I look 

 around upon the thousands of acres in this fine valley so admirably 

 adapted to the purposes of the fruit-grower, I can not help being 

 impressed with the part that is to be done by the electric railway in 

 the great development which is to take place in this valley, and the 

 importance to the local growers of having this local line here to cooper- 

 ate with them. 



"While giving to transcontinental lines their just due, and while they 

 are of immense importance to the whole State, yet it is as they stand in 

 their relation to the whole State, and not so much to particular localities, 

 that their importance is to be considered. It is to the local line that 

 we must look for those particular facilities which are to count as most 

 potent factors in local development. A transcontinental line, strung 

 out, for instance, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific, has many and 

 varied interests to consider and does not, because it can not, concen- 

 trate upon any one locality, while the local line must concentrate all 

 its efforts on its locality. It makes very little difference to a local 

 line in the Sacramento Valley how much freight or passenger business 

 originates in Reno or Los Angeles, which are questions of the greatest 

 importance to the transcontinental lines and must be considered even 

 though they affect the local line unfavorably. But the local line must 

 understand all about the business originating in and for its locality, 

 because that is the vital issue of its existence, and being the vital 

 issue of its existence it must be fostered and nursed and ex- 

 tended to the utmost, because out of its locality, and there only, 

 must the local line produce the only revenue possible for it to obtain ; 

 and consequently it must, and will, pay greater heed to the needs of 

 the community, and therein it is the ally of the producer. By working 

 in smaller units it is possible to give more frequent and more rapid serv- 

 ice, a service most suited to such a locality as ours; and without 

 being invidious at all, I say frankly, because the Northern Electric 

 Railway is a local line and because it must get its revenue locally only 

 and can get none from any other source, it should have all the local 

 business in the section through which it operates; and if the people of 



