THIRTY-FOl'RTH FRUIT-GR(3WERS ' COXVEXTIOX. 137 



goiiiir to do it/" Look you. this morning's paper I The trains are not 

 able to bear the immigration from our shores across the iOth parallel to 

 the rich lands of the Canadian Northwest. V^y ? I will answer it, and 

 remember the answer, because you need it in California. Because they 

 selfishly exhaust the humus, the life, from the soils of the glorious 

 AYest of America, and have left it for their descendants and future gen- 

 erations to rebuild it. It ought to be a crime, and the law ought to say 

 so I applause), that men who are given for a time — a short time this life 

 is — the right to cultivate the soil, shall exhaust its wealth to put it in 

 their pocket and to jingle it until the clods of the valley cover their 

 carcasses. No man has any right to take that wealth upon which we 

 live, and upon which three hundred million, I believe, will live here in 

 the year 2000 — but how will they live ? Look you, how the forests are 

 depleted — the relation of the soil to the fruit. Look you, how when the 

 forest is gone the moisture is gone — the relation of the soil to the fruit. 

 Look you. when the storm comes and the rush from the mountains 

 washes out the lields and carries them to the seas, that the humus is 

 going with it — ^the very thing upon which man lives and depends for a 

 living, because all things eventually go back to the soil for a living. 

 The brick blocks that are in this city, the brick blocks in Los Angeles 

 and San Francisco, however high they may tower towards the heavens, 

 come from your soil and mine — you and I, who dig in the soil. The rela- 

 tion of the soil to the fruit, we must have this humus. Potash we are 

 rich in : they are poor. Potash is easily gotten — $60 a ton, a pound 

 to the tree ; about $30 to ten acres at $3 to an acre : but they only put 

 on about 200 pounds to the ton in a two per cent high grade fertilizer — 

 enough, as I will show you. 



Now. I don't want to keep you too long. Nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 

 potash — these things, which you see Professor Alackie said about the 

 nitrogen. Look at it. Nitrogen I Humus is the storehouse. Look at the 

 storehouse. Look at the supply. You have to buy it — buy it in green 

 fertilizer or barnyard manure or nitrate of soda, and use them. What- 

 ever else you may use, you must use that. But the time comes when 

 you may have enough temporarily. But don't you go year after year 

 or you will suffer : for the soil is depleted, and the soil is your bank, and 

 the smaller the deposits the smaller the capital, and the less the income. 

 Nitrogen is the thing that we need in our soils, and the relation of the 

 soil to the fiiiit is not right unless you have more and more. See you 

 now, the comparison of the bank again — the greater the deposit, the 

 greater the income : the greater the capital, the greater the income : the 

 gi'eater the supply, the greater the dividends. Do you hear Chapman 

 talk about dividends sometimes ? Do you see his Yalencias going out to 

 the market at $3,300 a car ? What he can grow with $10 you have got 

 to put twenty in to get it. and it pays you. only your dividend is not 

 as big. 



Now. keep your bank full. See that your deposits are not overdra^Ti. 

 See that the law is preserved in this soil, that the relation may be cor- 

 rect between it and the crop that brings the dividend. Buy nitrogen — 

 you can hardly get too much. Perhaps I dwell too long upon that. 



Now. the soil not only is the storehouse but it is the stomach. A sick 

 stomach : a sick man. a puny man. a growling man. God help the 



