Los Angeles herald., 1890-05-14
Improvements i'm the Line of
Production.
Relying Less on the Outside
for Necessities.
A Good Export Trade Springing up
in Special Lines.
The Demand of the Hour is the Opening of
Eastern Markets for the Peculiar Pro-
ducts Of California Soil.

mission dealers OF Los Angeles pTQSe-
cuted quietly by HERALD reporter for
few days past, reveals a decidedly
hopeful condition of affairs all round.
During the great boom excitement in
real estate the cultivation of the soil was
sadly neglected, and even many fine
orchards of various sorts of fruits were
allowed to go to ruin. 1t required few
years to draw men back to their legiti-
mate business, and to bring the soil
again under cultivation. During this
period Of excitement the importation of
the necessaries of life into this city for
the supply of all the surrounding sec
ton was prodigious. All sorts of
commodities that should have been
of home growth or manufacture
were brought in from Wiscon-
sin, Kansas, Nebraska and other
western states. 1t is most hopeful
phase of matters in the present time to
be able to say that this is nearly at an
end. The commission men say that we
rely little on other counties in the state
for what we produce. A great many
dairies have been set on foot in this sec
ton, and milk from Michigan is not now
found on the hotel tables. Butter was
imported here by the tons and hundreds
of tons to supply the home demand; but
there is an end of that drain on our re-
sources too. Nearly all the butter used
in the city at this time is made in the
surrounding country. There are two or
three cheese factories that are doing
well, and one factory for the manufac-
ture of condensed milk has been most
successfully set in motion. 1t is doing
we'll and it's goods are in great demand
here.
All the vegetables used in this section
too are produced here, with the exception
of potatoes, which had to be imported all
through the past winter, because of the
failure to get a crop in the ground here
on account OF the excessive rains. This
is now all changed and Kansas potatoes
will soon be replaced, indeed are now
replaced by new crop from the fields of
the section. From this on train loads of
new potatoes will go out of here to feed
the people of the northwest where new
potatoes are a rarety on the 4th of July.
Cabbage has been the great 60 all the
past spring in the way of exports from
Los Angeles. 1t would be difficult to
over-estimate the quantity of this vege-
table that has been shipped. At first
the shippers paid $18 to $40 per ton for
the crop, but as the demand grew and
competition became sharp, the price
raised until cabbage brought $40 to $50
ton. That has been the price
for many days past. A good
patch of this plebeian product yields as
high as ten tons to the acre, so that
growers here have been getting 5000 to
$500 an acre for their crops. 1t has not
been in isolated instances that these re-
suits have been reached, but dozens of
Chinese have been growing rich at the
business of raising cabbage. They pay
500 to $50 an acre for the land, and we'll
they can afford to pay that much near
the city, where they can get water to ir-
rigate it. 1t is rather humiliating to
have to say that nearly all of this money
has gone into the hands of the Chinese.
A Caucasian the other day said at ma
tionalist meeting, in this city, that the
farmer could not make anything out of
his crops. That may be generally true,
but will not hold good here in Los An
geles, as the speaker in question should
know if he ever tried to farm any field
more fertile than the steps of the old
court house.
All this is well, but it is only the
mere beginning Of the alphabet of what
ought to be done here in the way of
supplying the western states with vege-
tables. By November the stuff grown in
Wisconsin and Minnesota has become
stale from being buried in pits or in
cellars. From the last of that month
to the end of May all the large cities in
the northwest ought to be supplied regu-
larly with all sorts of vegetables from
here. The list is indeed endless.
Cabbage, cauliflower, celery, toma-
toes, string beans, peas, and green
corn are the principal articles. The
Santa Anita ranch and all the foot
hills produces all these all the year
round. The Baldwin hotel in San Fran
cisco is supplied with ears of corn and
tomatoes direct from the gardens of E.
j. Baldwin all winter long.
In times past men along the Cahuenga
foothills have made small fortunes an
nually off their crops OF early peas and
tomatoes, sent by express at enormous
charges, to the San Francisco market.
1t is quite possible to do the same thing
there today with the whole northwest as
a market. Vegetables should be sup
plemented with butter and cheese and
many others OF the productions of this
section. Look over the field and see
with half an eye that only a small patch
of ground here and there has yet been
put to bearing the products it is capable
of, while areas larger than a county in
the eastern states are still wild grazing
lands.
The fruit crops of this section have
not been touched upon here, and need
only the vaguest reference to open up to
the mind of the intelligent possibilities
in the way of trade with the east and
northwest to this section that are over
powering to the imagination in their vast
magnitude.
To create demand for the lands of
this eclectic section it only requires that
the markets be opened up for them in
all their rich variety. The field is the
whole continent. The amount that
would glut the markets of all the great
cities OF the country is so vast that no
effort of the imagination can grasp it.
A train OF twenty cars a day is nothing.
A train load of cabbage alone would not
begin to supply the demand, if the mar
kets were properly opened. There are
ten varieties of vegetables of which
train load a day would be nothing.
That amount would perhaps do
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