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CHAPTER II.

CONDITIONS LEADING TO THEIR ORGANIZATION.

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HE history of the settlement and development of California is a marvel. There has been nothing like it in the world's history. The circumstances of its settlement led to its colonization by people of wonderful vitality; the charm of its climate, the fertility of its soil, the characteristics of its topography, its flavor of old buccaneering legend, culminating in the wonderful romance of the annexation and gold-seeking epoch, combined to insure it such an amount of gratuitous and enthusiastic advertising as no country and no community ever before received. The romance of the gold era was followed by the romance of the wheat era, with its great farms, whose furrows were miles long, in following which the plowman starting in the morning returned to his startingplace only in time for the noon-day meal, and whose soil, fabled to be of inexhaustible fertility, yielded stores beyond measure to the granaries of the world; this, in turn, was followed by the fruit idyl, far more attractive than the wheat industry, and, for a time, surrounding California with a halo of rural blessedness which was a lure to the world. Whatever has been done in California has been great of its kind.

The hold which the fruit industries of California gained upon the imagination of the world was astonishing. The frost-pinched denizen of colder climes pictured to himself the fortunate orchardist of California as one whose happy days were passed in shady nooks, wherefrom he idly watched the gradual ripening of golden fruit in sun-kissed orchards, or recruited waning strength in gentle exercise among the laden boughs, whose luscious burden should presently supply his every want.

That was the picture. As a matter of fact, fruit-growing in California is not only one of the most risky of industries, but is

necessarily pursued with longer continued, more unremitting, severer, and more prosaic labor than any other agricultural business in the world. There is no more romance in digging about fruit trees than there is in digging post holes. It is far harder to plow an orchard than a grain field, for the trees are in the way. I would as soon saw wood as to stand on a ladder all day long, straining every nerve to reach high branches that I can't reach, in pruning, thinning, or picking. I know no occupation more certain to produce backache than the continuous packing of fruit, whether sitting or standing The sun-kissed orchard in August has a usual temperature of one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit, which, in the moist. atmosphere of the east, would mean death to most of us, and which, while safe enough in California, is about as desirable a place for a white man to stay out of as exists. The waste of the "luscious golden fruit" which accumulates about a packing-house, is about as nasty a mess as I know of. As for leaving the work for others, if there was ever a business requiring the constant, unremitting, and individual attention of its owner, who must, withal, have no mean account of technical skill, it is the fruit business. The owner depending on his orchard for an income, who attempts to conduct its operations from a hammock in a shady nook, may contemplate with certainty an early visit from the sheriff, on business of the most pressing nature. It is only the keenest of men who can make money by delivering a perishable food product in a market twenty-five hundred miles distant by land, in competition with food products raised on equally good land, held at one-half the price per acre, and which pays not more than a tenth of the freight. The men who do this do not operate from hammocks.

This contrast of the actual with the expected conditions of our fruit industry is necessary to an understanding of the origin and growth of our cooperative societies. A certain glamor with which the poetic instinct of mankind has surrounded the fruit industry rendered a large element of society an easy prey to real-estate interests which existed in California on the magnificent scale peculiar to the state, and which

exploited the fruit business during some years with a wonderful ardor and success. It became the fashion to own fruit farms, and no family belongings were complete without one. It was proven, as plainly as figures could prove anything, that the ownership of a small fruit farm insured competence and comfort after four years; it might be earlier, but that was not promised, and there were some so cautious as to admit that five or six years might elapse before really satisfactory net incomes would be assured; but that was the limit, and during the craze it was firmly believed by the majority of Californians that a man or woman with no knowledge of horticulture might safely purchase land at from $100 to $300 per acre, on credit, and, by paying a few dollars per acre for a few years for planting and cultivation, secure from his property an income which, in a few years, would pay off the debt and leave him comfortably provided for life. The result, of course, was a rush of teachers, clerks, and others with fixed incomes, to buy fruit farms on instalments. Ordinarily prudent merchants invested on a larger scale; there was a great influx from the east, especially into southern California, whose orange groves-really very profitable for some years—were a wonderful attraction to visitors from colder regions; large grain farms were subdivided into fruit plots, until in some districts one could ride for miles amid a constant succession of orchards; and the whole state was alive with prosperity and hope. The great savings banks almost alone kept their heads, and would lend no money on orchard property.

It may be useful to devote a paragraph to show in detail some of the errors in the calculations of inexperienced orchardists. In the first place, the cultivation of orchards is expensive. With no rain during the summer, the moisture must be preserved in the ground by constant stirring. The largest orchardists, employing unmarried help, who furnish their own blankets, and often live in cabins with rude bunks ranged one above another, like berths on shipboard, abundantly fed, to be sure, but otherwise costing nothing for keep, and employed and discharged according to the needs of the work, were able to reduce costs of cultivation to a compara

tively small figure; but to the small farmer with ten to fifty acres of orchard or vineyard, this was not possible. The men with whom he and his family must daily associate must be decent men, and to keep such he must make their surroundings decent. Especially the non-resident owner must have faithful men on his place, and house them comfortably. Nor could he be continually discharging them, and taking on new men. The succession of work is constant, and men must be there to do it. In a bearing deciduous orchard, as soon as the fruit is gathered, the pruning begins. In pruning full-grown trees an average of twenty trees per day is a day's work, or five days to the acre, or two hundred days of pruning to a forty-acre orchard, with a mouth more in disposing of the brush. The pruning over, the plowing and cultivation begin, and continue every day until fruit pits begin to harden. Then follows the thinning, often requiring three-fourths of the fruit to be laboriously picked off by hand, and always lasting until the earlier varieties begin to ripen. In the meantime there has been winter spraying with chemical insecticides -a tedious and expensive process-and summer spraying with other preparations for other classes of insects. When the harvest begins, more help must be employed. The eastern farmer finds it hard and expensive work to gather a burden of two to five tons per acre of hay or grain, which he cuts and handles by machinery; he would be appalled at the prospect of gathering a product of ten to fifteen tons, in pieces of a few ounces, each carefully picked by hand,* from the tops of trees, and always handled several times over. The harvest over the pruning begins again, and so on forever. The conflict with insects and parasites is unceasing. If undisturbed, they destroy the orchards, and there is a constant expense on their account. The loss of trees is very large; bad planting or poor cultivation impairs the vitality of many trees, and leaves them ready to succumb to the first injury, usually not actually dying, which would be desirable, but leading an unprofitable and expensive existence for years; sunburn destroys thou

* Except prunes, which are shaken from the tree and picked

sands; root-knot, thousands more; standing water in a wet winter is very destructive; and thousands of full-grown trees die annually, often fully laden with fruit, and for no cause whatever that can be discovered. A great loss also arises from the digging up or regrafting trees which have, after years of cultivation, been found unprofitable; it is not every tree that will be profitable in every place, and the infinite variety of soil and exposure, which is one of the attractions of California, vastly multiplies the chances of error in planting; nor do all varieties which thrive and bear well prove profitable; nor are varieties which yield profit in one locality sure to be desirable in other places where they ripen earlier or later; and it often happens that varieties for which there is a limited sale at fair prices, become utterly profitless when production is increased; and of the varieties which have to be sold fresh, there is not only the risk of crop failure which attaches to all plantings, but some years and from some localities they are found to 'carry" well, and arrive in good condition after long journeys, and sometimes they do not. In fact, there is no end to the variety of risks which assail the business from all sides, and the replanting and regrafting of orchards is constantly in progress, so that to this time I believe that fifteen years would be an extreme limit to assign as the life of a tree in California. Of course a great part of this tree loss is preventable; and the most competent and experienced have never suffered as severely as I have indicated, and perhaps no single orchardist has endured all the misfortunes which I have mentioned; but I am considering average conditions, and a certain amount of risk is inevitable. So that, even allowing for the better results which experience has brought, I can not put the expected average life of a fruit tree in California as above twenty years, or the average number of crops to be expected as over fifteen. There is also to be considered the inevitable deterioration of the soil, by reason of which, except in so far as it is combated by expensive fertilizers, the quantity and quality of the fruit crops will diminish as certainly as the quantity and quality of the wheat crop has diminished. Finally, it inevitably happened that, under the unreasonable stimulus applied, the produc

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