PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 133 



MR. IRISH. Mr. Commissioner, and Ladies and Gentlemen: Before 



I begin speaking- you will permit me to say something. There has 

 arisen, not only in California, but throughout the republic, a problem that 

 lias been for years under observation, which concerns very materially, 

 not only the economics of agriculture and horticulture, but the social 

 and general life of the people. This problem is the lapse of the young 

 of the country, reared under rural conditions, from those conditions 

 to the city. In the period of our Revolutionarj- War only 3 per cent 

 of our people lived in cities, and 97 per cent of the men of brawn and 

 the women of courage who went through that great struggle in which 

 our liberties were established were rural people, living under country 

 ronditions. Now nearly 35 per cent of our population is in cities, and 

 that population is on the increase yearly. This lapse of young life from 

 rural districts and rural occupations is a problem that is being con- 

 sidered by economists and publicists all over the country. 



There is no doubt that man — ancient man — regarded his relation to 

 the land and its fruits as one of the most important to him. In that 

 book of Genesis, no matter what opinion we may have of its authen- 

 ticity as an historical narrative or of its value as an inspired book, there 

 is something that appeals directly to all men, and that is that part 

 of a tradition that is traced away back into Assyrian sacred literature, 

 in which an attempt is made to account for the presence of man upon 

 the earth as a part of the universe. As I say, whether it be of value 

 as an authentic historical statement or not, it is of the highest value 

 to every thoughtful person as an expression of ancient man's opinion 

 of what constituted nobility- of descent. It is in that verse, "God 

 created a garden eastward," and that was Eden, and out of that garden, 

 equipped with everything that grew upon the ground and upon vines 

 and trees — except, perhaps, with the loganberry, which is a modern 

 creation — in that garden man concluded he would place his origin, 

 his initial point. It has, I say, the highest value as an expression that 

 ancient man believed in his descent from the soil. Now we are start- 

 ing away from that ancient idea. The young of the country do not 

 place that high value upon descent from the soil that ancient man did. 

 In your country schools and in your schools in cities like this, a boy 

 may learn, in the literature with which he comes in contact, all about 

 the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome; he may 

 learn all about wars and captains and commanders ; he may acquire, 

 through the observation of literature, a knowledge and fondness and an 

 imaginative tendency toward every occupation on earth except the 

 rural industries. He picks up a city newspaper — we call it a metro- 

 politan paper— and what does he read? He reads there the pleas of 

 lawyers made to juries and to courts ; he reads the sermons of gifted 

 preachers; he reads about the cures and great achievements of physi- 

 cians and surgeons ; and when he looks through that metropolitan paper 

 for something which relates to the occupation in which his father is 

 engaged, he finds the farmer pictured as a hayseed, wearing whiskers 

 cut on the pattern of a goat's, with a toothpick in his hand and saying 



I I By Heck "and" Gosh-aU-hemlock. ' ' [Laughter. ] 



Now, what is the effect of all this ? It is to captivate the imagination 

 of the boy with the glories and the splendors of the city, of the excel- 

 lence of the work in the professions, and to inspire him with contempt 



