26 Fruit Fanning for Profit in California. 



FEUIT EANCHINa IN CALIFOENIA, OE 

 "OBJECTIONS" AND ANSWEES. 



To fhe Editor of Weekly Times. 



Sir, — If you think it wortli while to insert the following few 

 facts abont California, which are the 'Hruth and nothing but the 

 truthj" it may cause many young Englishmen to pause before 

 leaving in many cases good appointments in the old country and 

 coming out here to try their fortunes at fruit ranching. In the 

 first place, the industry in most places (except in a few excep- 

 tional cases) is wholly overdone, and the profits, in the millions 

 of pamphlets which are distributed, are placed, to say the least, 

 at figures which are realizable once in 10,000 oases. Labour is 

 excessively dear, and, when it comes to a ranche where it is 

 forced to have outside help, in most cases it is best to be the hired 

 man in preference to the owner. 



Another drawback is, that the Britisher out here is at a great 

 disadv^antage ; he gets no assistance, is looked on rather as an 

 interloper by his American neighbours, and fair sport for all they 

 can get out of him. 



Young fellows with good constitutions and used to manual 

 labour may be able to withstand the intense heat and malaria of 

 the interior valleys where the raisin industry is mostly carried 

 on ; I say intense heat and malaria, because that is never men- 

 tioned in Calif ornian reports, and so I think it well to dispel the 

 illusion that all the State is so healthy, because it is not. Along 

 the coast, and in many of the valleys near the same, the climate 

 is as perfect as it can be, and life made as pleasant as it can, 

 when one has some money over and above what his ranche may 

 bring him ; but when he has to depend solely on the latter, and 

 fondly believes he is going to make a small fortune, he will find 

 that a Californian fruit ranche is hardly the thing. 



I have been out here a year, been in every valley where fruit 

 is the industry, have worked on ranches, and have lived on in the 



