Southern Standard

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

What Are the Chances There for Men of Small Capital?

Capital is necessary for successful agriculture or horticulture in Southern California.

But where is it not needed?

In New England? In Kansas, where land which was given to actual settlers is covered with mortgages for money absolutely necessary to develop it?

But passing this by, what is the chance in Southern California for laborers and for mechanics?

Let us understand the situation.

In California there is no exception to the rule that continual labor, thrift and foresight are essential to the getting of a good living or the gaining of a competence.

No doubt speculation will spring up again.

It is inevitable with the present enormous and yearly increasing yield of fruits, the better intelligence in vine culture, wine-making and raisin-curing, the growth of marketable oranges, lemons, etc., and the consequent rise in the value of land.

Doubtless fortunes will be made by enterprising companies who secure large areas of unimproved land at low prices, bring water on them, and then sell in small lots.

But this will come to an end.

The tendency is to subdivide the land into small holdings—into farms and gardens of ten and twenty acres.

The great ranches are sure to be broken up.

With the resulting settlement by industrious people, the cities will again experience "booms," but these are not peculiar to California.

In my mind I see the time when this region (because it will pay better proportionately to cultivate a small area) will be one of small farms, of neat cottages, of industrious homes.

The owner is pretty certain to prosper—that is, to get a good living (which is independence) and lay aside a little yearly—if the work is done by himself and his family.

And the peculiarity of the situation is that the farm or garden, whichever it is called, will give agreeable and most healthful occupation to all the boys and girls in the family all the days in the year that can be spared from the school.

Aside from the plowing, the labor is light.

Pruning, grafting, budding, the picking from trees, the sorting, packing and canning, are labor for light and deft hands, and labor distributed through the year.

The harvest, of one sort and another, is almost continuous, so that young girls and boys can have, in well settled districts, pretty steady employment—a long season in establishments canning fruits; at another, in packing oranges; at another time, in packing raisins.

It goes without saying that in the industries now developed, and in others as important which are in their infancy (for instance, the culture of the olive for oil and as an article of food, the growth and curing of figs, the gathering of almonds, English walnuts, etc.), the labor of the owners of the land and their families will not suffice.

There must be as large a proportion of day-laborers as there is in other regions where such products are grown.

Chinese labor at certain seasons has been a necessity.

Under the present policy of California this must diminish, and its place be taken by some other.

The pay for this labor has always been good.

It is certain to be more and more in demand.

Whether the pay will ever approach near to the European standard is a question, but it is a fair presumption that the exceptional profit of the land, owing to its productiveness, will for a long time keep wages up.

During the "boom" period all wages were high, those of skilled mechanics especially, owing to the great amount of building on speculation.

The ordinary laborer on a ranch had $30 a month and board and lodging; laborers of a higher grade, $2 to $2.50 a day; skilled masons, $6; carpenters, from $3.50 to $5; plasterers, $4 to $5; house-servants, from $25 to $35 a month.

Since the "boom," wages of skilled mechanics have declined at least 25 per cent., and there has been less demand for labor generally, except in connection with fruit-raising and harvesting.

It would be unwise for laborers to go to California on an uncertainty, but it can be said of that country with more confidence than of any other section that its peculiar industries, now daily increasing, will absorb an increasing amount of day-labor, and later on it will remunerate skilled artisan labor.

—Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper's Magazine.