PROCEEDINGS OP THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION; 169 



There are two great obstacles to interesting people in the cultivation 

 of good health. In the first place, the normal baby born to healthy 

 parents has a tremendous vitality and power of adaptability to its 

 environment, which distinguishes it from the little tree. This gives 

 rise to the impression that with the baby the proportions of food and 

 sleep, air and sunshine, work and play, are of little consequence. In 

 the second place, from fifteen to twenty years are required to mature 

 the crop, which since the days of slavery has had no directly quotable 

 market value when . produced. 



It can be demonstrated, however, that good health is a valuable crop. 

 Each of us, for example, expects to live to be at least sixty or seventy 

 years old. And if we come of good stock, have been carefully culti- 

 vated and have developed good habits, we ought to live this long. Yet 

 each of us knows of a number of friends with similar expectations who 

 became blighted and died, some of tuberculosis, some of typhoid fever, 

 or malaria, or diphtheria, or scarlet fever, or any one of a hundred 

 other causes. When we stop to think of it, most of them died before 

 the age of thirty or thirty-five. The twenty years or more they might 

 have lived would have been most valuable to the prosperity of Cali- 

 fornia. Many of these friends have been young men with families. 

 Each man's labor would have provided at least $1,000 a year, which 

 means a loss of at least $20,000 to $30,000 for his family. Even if he 

 carried a $5,000 or $10,000 life insurance policy it was still poor busi- 

 ness to die. 



Suppose this young man had come out to your neighbor's farm to 

 pick fruit and had contracted typhoid fever as a result of unsanitary 

 conditions, which his employer permitted to exist in violation of the 

 State law. (Professor Herms has just explained to you how r this infec- 

 tion may be transferred by flies.) And suppose this young man's wife 

 should sue your neighbor for damages and you were drawn for jury 

 duty, would you award her a competence to care for her babies, or 

 would you ask your minister to present evidence of some manifestation 

 of Divine Providence in your neighbor's negligence? California has 

 over six hundred deaths a year from typhoid fever alone. 



Dr. Woods Hutchinson has somewhere remarked, "It is really not 

 so wonderful that we are alive when we consider the length of time 

 we have been at it since the original man passed the spark of life on to 

 his descendants." The wonder is that in these millions of years we 

 haven't learned to live longer. Within the brief period of recorded 

 history the average length of life has been gradually lengthened. In 

 certain countries this increase has reached fifteen and even twenty 

 years, but the average length of life is still considerably below forty 

 years. The addition of one year to the life of each citizen of California 

 would be equivalent to adding 100,000 people to our industrial popula- 

 tion. Is not this added population the thing for w r hich our boards of 

 trade and chambers of commerce are striving? 



The Sacramento Valley farmers recently pledged themselves to 

 spend $50,000 in advertising for additional settlers. Is it not probable 



that they would also invest in good health if it can be proved to be an 



equally good investment? 



Every active horticulturist knows in a general way how much 



nursery stock is lost each year through the ravages of plant diseases. 



