Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-01-19
The California Craze.

II 10" years ago LII was ING flOflld
craze that swept over the country. Then
ell that was necessary for a man dissatis-
fed with mis- circumstances anc SUR ound
lngs, was to emigrate to the land of
health and oranges. He could lie ia the
shade and drink in the balmy air, while
boxes of golden fruit prepared them
selves for market, and raisea him in short
order to the height of afiiuence. This
notion was not thoroughly dispelled until
long after pretty nearly the whole pen
1nsula had been plated into town lots,
until orange farms had sold for from
$1,000 per acre upward, until hundreds
and thousands of people of moderate
means had put their whole resources in
to few acres of land from which they
would get not penny of return for four
or five years, and until, weakened by
fever and worn out with malaria, numbers
of them had dragged themselves back to
their Old homes to warn others against
an imitation of their folly
This lesson was not enough. Centur-
les are not long enough, it appears, to
prote ct simple folk from the recurrence
to the same folly under the same tenn pta-
tions. For few years back it has been
the California fever that ragged, and this
year it continues. The great land craze
that has swept the coast from San Diego
upward has filed the imaginations of the
myriads in haste to be rich. They think
only of the perennial sunshine, of tenn
peratures bounded by limit of twenty
degrees rise or fall or fruit farms which
yield profit of $1C0 per acre when
planted with almonds or prunes or the
raisin grape, and with the fortunes that
mature when all other crops fail, from
the rise in land values. The rush to Cali
fornia is now at it's height. Trains leav-
ing Kansas City are run almost daily in
two or three sections. The railroads
reaching Southern California nave bor-
rowed rolling stock from other lines to
accommodate travel, and still they are
actually forced to refuse tie carry passen
gers by reason of failure of facilities. A
large part of this travel, of course, is the
regular winter migration of the well-to-
do who seek milder climate. But much
of it consists of colonies going out for
permanent residence, deceived precisely
as the Florida people were deceived in
their time.
If it is possible to get men and women
whose dl cams are haunted by the glowing
circulars of real estate agents to listen
to reason, they ought to be saved from
the fate upon which they are blindly
rushing. California is a delightful state
in many particulars. For the wealthy,
probably no region offers greater attrdc-
tions for winter soiourn. For man
with, say 5000 or more, who can afford
to put $4,000 into fifteen or twenty acres
of land, and live on the remainder until
his fruit farm is yielding and he himself
has learned the business, it will do very
we'll as permanent home. The proba
bility is that he will find out what other
men have been learning for few thous-
aud years past; that one climate, taken
through the average of decade, has just
about as many attractions and as many
drawbacks as another. But, if no better
off, he will be little Or none the worse.
For the ordinary emigrant, however, with
his fortuLe to make and his home to
build, and without large resources behind
him, Southern California to day is about
the worst possible destination. He Will
find land values risen to a point which
they cannot by any possibility maintain.
He will find thousands of new corners
like himself, searching for means of sub
sisteEce. and pressing the wages for every
kind OF service down to the starvation
point. He will find section absolutely
dominated by one railroad corporation,
and that as rapacious and remorseless as
any in the country. He will be lucky if
he can get back among his old neighbors,
to start over again with experience as his
only capital.
As single instance, it is stated that a
party, which recently went out from Win
nebago City, in this state, is Disguised
and homesick. The FL Dorado for which
they hoped appears to be paradise OF
land agents. The inducements held out
to an immigrant vanish as soon as MS
ready capital has been placed in inflated
lots, or in farm land about whose resour-
! ces and whose culture he knows nothing.
He must fill himself with the reflection
| that he has nothing but his own folly to
blame. It seems as If no amount of rep
etition would teach the mass of peopis
that there is no place in the world, IN
less it be Rider Haggard's Central Africa,
where nature feeds man whether he Ia
bors or is idle, and where wealth may be
had for the mere asking. The foolish
viii continue 20 be humbugged and TO
pay dearly for their folly. But if there
are others who now mediate in joining
| the California caravan, let them consider
| this plain and disinterested advice: Stay
| at home until you have made yourself
| thoroughly acquainted with the country so