Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-09-19
an IMPORTANT ADDRESS.

an IMPORTANT ADDRESS.
We print in full in this issue the annual
State Fair address, synopsis of which
was delivered last evening before the
State Agricultural Society, by Mr.. VIM. H.
Mills. We invite a careful and full read
ing of this document because of its i'm
portant character as statistical paper and
the pew lines of treatment it strikes out in
considering the chief claims of California,
and in meeting the main objections that
are raised to the State at the East.
We venture the challenge that not be-
fore in the history of the State have the
absorbing questions treated been so prac-
tically elucidated, so clearly, completely
and forcibly analyzed, or so vigorously
handled. 1t has long been needed that
some one should take up and treat this
matter of the relation of the State, with its
wonderful productive capabilities, to
geographically distant markets, and an
swer the objection that confronts all Cali
ifornians when abroad, that California is
TOO far removed from market centers. This
Mr. Mills has done and he has invested
the subject with such interest that even
cold figures take on warmth and color, and
a severely commercial paper becomes an
essay of rare attractiveness and interest.
1t will make pamphlet that will be of
Immense value to the State in two ways
first, in educating our own people in the
right direction of thought and argument
with which to meet the Eastern inquiry !;
second, in informing and convincing the
Eastern mind Of the great truths that
form the suhstructure of all for which Cal
ifornia claims Eastern attention.
The essayist has shown, with the direct
ness, cleorness and vigor characteristic of
his ST. that this State has but just en-
tered n the era of true development
We hanging by adaptation to methods
ana Us unknown to the first half of
thc years of our Statehood, and
mu he primitive character of which
still o.t., to us. Our growth has not kept
pace, despite our rare natural capacities,
wit the growth of other States west of the
M:,s ssippi. Why this is so, the essayist
makes perfectly clear, and why we have
reached and passed into the realm of
change for the better, is lucidiy demon
strated.
There is made no complaint of the past;
1t was natural that such conditions as
dominated for more than two decades
should result from the phenomenal popu-
iation drawn to the State by the discovery
of gold, and it was natural, too, that
the social, political and industrial in
fuences that so peculiarly distinguished
the pioneer era should result from the
environment of the men of that period.
There followed that primitive condition,
the era of stock speculation and silver
mining upon Change, an era the essayist
Justly pronounces the most injurious of any
period of time in the history of the State.
In the later and new era of true develop
ment we have entered upon State build
ing, with the productive capacity of the
soil as the corner stone of the structure.
1t is work, however, that was begun in
the nedian era just referred to, but ac-
quired noticeable momentum only in re-
cent years, so that we now really stand but
upon the threshold of the newborn era
OF State development.
The geographical position of the State is
then brought to the attention, and then
the relation to it of economic and rapid
communication and transportation systems.
The deduction is made through logical
argument that is simply indisputable, that
economic communication is the equivalent
of physical contiguity, and in that truth is
the haven Of all our hopes for California.
As the means of economic communication
increase, says the essayist, the area OF
profitable production expands. A hun
dred years ago twenty-6 FIVE miles circuit of
wheat land represented the average
market area of nearly all profitable pro-
duction; now its radius is not less than
three thousand two hundred miles.
One of the most important and forcible
portions of this comprehensive address is
the authors treatment of the question OF
the cost added to the retail value of an
article by reason of the expense of its
transportation. In showing that such cost
is really inappreciable, he has pricked a
popular fallacy and put indelibly of rec
ord an important truth. Further on he
shows that economic transportation brings
soils and climates into competition in
every market, and these reflect the effect
of systems of labor, of methods of produc
tion, the favoring conditions of soil and
climate, and the elimination of distance