Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-05-25
NEEDS OF THs STATE.

California needs immigrants, not only
those who come here to spend wealth ac-
cumulated elsewhere and live in our beau
tiful cities and enjoy our landscape and
climate, but those who have given hos
tages to fortune and have wives and chill
dren for whom they must earn q living and
make q home. Our large tracts of land
Will be subdivided under the pressure of
large and willing population which de-
mands them for homes. We want q popu-
lation of agriculturists, people of rural
tastes and instincts, who know how to live
on the soil and direct ita fruitfulness to
their profit and the gain Of the State. In
directing foreign immigration scheme
care should be taken TO invite here people
fitted by hereditary habit to the physical
characteristics of the section they are to
inhabit. For instance, Holianders who
have been bred for generations behind the
dykes that keep out the sea, who 90 to
their fields in bost on nsnal and carry
their cattle to pasture on RATS, are not the
people to settle on our foothills and noun
tain slopeE, nor upon onr arid plains where
the corn and wine depend on artificial irri-
cation. Their tastes and traditions relate
to humid climate where lifs is warfare
against the sea, and they are not fitted for
/ life on mountain slopes nor for the friendly
relations and slAvish dependence ON their
old enemy the water, which are implied by
life in the fiat, hot valleys.
Some months ago, the ISmes. believing
that the time WAS here for eomprehen-
sive immigration policy, suggested that An
effort be made to attract to California an
| immigration from Bohemia. They are
Slav people. living in the Bomerwald
mountains OF Austria. They began mi
grating about thirty years ago, and the
stream was formerly directed largely to
Iowa, mainly by the influences oi The SIoran
AmeTicI.y, paper in that State published
in their language, and now thousands of
them are settled there, and in Wisconsin
and Texas. They are rural people, ex-
pert vine-dressers and wine. makers, With
! unusual skill as hortieaiturisss and farmers
of small tracts. They would fit exactly the
cereal industries OF California, because their
bread corns at home ara rye, barley and
wheat. Their agricultural history in
other States is that they took lands reject
ed by other tiileTe, hills and clay slopes,
and, by their iRstinctively skiliful tiliage
and unresting industry, turned them into
gardens of richness and wealth, Their in
genuity in producing crops Of vegetables,
those things included in the comprehensive
hoosier word "truck," is marvellous, and
on their lands no corner is lefs for oeeu-
pancy by weeds. The angles Of the fence
bear raspberries, sDd wet places are forced
into service TO produce oaiers 20 tie up the
vines and make baskets 20 market fruit in,
and where neither gram nor fruit nor vege-
tables will grow they plant flowers. They
are people OF natural good tsate, as shown
in the ornsmentation of their humbless
architecture. We never saw the lowliest
Bohemian cottage that was without it's bit
of scroll or carving that gave a charming
border TO porch or Intel or softeued the
sharpness of an angle. Along with their
desirable good tastes, industry and heredi-
tary fitnessto our foothills and mountain
slopes, they are q moral and orderly peo-
pie. Long deprived by the Austrian
| Government of full educational privileges
they seek learning here for their young
with an eagerness which VIII not be de-
MED and IN the second generation they
become so thoroughly AmeTieanized as to
| be indistinguishabls except by the ORR
entail form of their names. As they over
| flow from agriculture into the arts they
make the most patient and skiliful OF ar
| tisans, and in the States named many are
| in commercial pursuits, for which they de-
yelop decided talent. For variety of
reasons we should seek these people IN
their mountains and invite them TO Cali
fornia. Large sections OF our State are
adapted to them. They are nos only will
inp emigrants, bat tie Austrian Govern
meat nuts no osstecle y their way. for
they are. unwilling subjects of q GEM Ger
man power. Theic ailinities of blood and
language are with Russia, and st their cap
ital, Prague, 10 an active propaganda of the
Pan. Slayist movement which seeks autoa-
omy of the Slavic race under the headship
of regenerated Russia.
The French and Swiss are not migratory.
Germany puts restrictions upon the out
going of her restless people, 80 nowhere on
the Continent can we lock with such conf
dence for desirable population as to the
Slavs. Heretofore they have been com.
monty confounded with the Cossacks, and
have been set down as sort of horseback
folk who travel with gun and spear; bat
this estimate is wholly inapplicable to
them. The immigration they have sent to
this country, SO far. has come by Bremen
and Hamburg, and its tide may be swollen
to thousands every year, and may rise high
upon our mountains and foothills ii only
our advantages are put to them in their
own tongue, and there be certainty Of
lands ready for their settlement in tracts of
suitable size.
The Times wishes as forcibly Is possible,
and lt cannot more forcibly than the facts
warrant, to impress upon all the agencies
and activities embarked in securing immi-
grafton to California, the merits OF these
people and their value TO our Industries
and our citizenship. .-[Oakland Times.