Los Angeles herald., 1892-12-21
STHE VALUE OF LAND.

When all other arguments against
Southern California are exhausted, then
those newspapers which are directly in
terested in decryihg the manifold ad-
vantages she offers to home-seekers fall
back upon what they deem an irrefuta-
BILE argument that her arabic lands are
held too high. We do not think SO.
The value OF land in the country is a
good deal like the value OF land in oul
larger cities. Retail trade sites com
mand higher rental than manufacturing
sites, and they are, in turn, more valua-
BILE than property which is used for the
erection of private residences. Money
commands 10 per cent interest here for
nearly every business purpose, and
hence the values of land for cultivation
are aboot that sum on which their pro-
ducts will yield an income of 10 per cent
annually.
Now there are farming lands in the
older states held quite as high as any in
California. Take the Kentucky blue
grass counties of Scott, Fayette, Bour-
bon and Woodford, in which the chief
avocation is the grazing OF highly-bred
horses and cattle. Lands there run
from eighty to four hundred dollars, ac-
cording to their stage OF improvement.
A small belt of land In the vicinity OF
Kalamazoo, Mich, has shown itself pecu
liarly adapted to the cultivation of eel
cry. This belt of celery land is barely
$500 acres in extent, and yet gave en-
ployment to over 1000 persons this year
and has exported nearly 100000 worth
of celery up to the present writing.
Hence it is no wonder that such lands
are held at prices varying from 5000 to
$3.50 per acre.
Just 30 with fruit lands in Southern
California. Walnuts pay best along the
Southern Pacific line between Downey
and Santa Ana, while oranges are
deemed the more profitable crop be-
tween Lsmanda Park and San Bernar-
dino; and lemons yield enormously
on lands lying between Ivanhoe and
Burbank, to the northward OF this city.
Up in the Cahuenga valley there is
frostless belt where people grow toma-
toes and peas in the very dead of win
ter, which they sell from four to seven
cents per pound, according to quality.
You can 60 up into the Sacramento
valley or the Willamette valley, in Ore
gon. 1t is the same story in either To-
cality - men hard at work from one
years end to the other growing grain
for export to the United Kingdom. In
olden time sc or 80 bushels of wheat to
the acre was no unusual yield, but it
was crop that gradually impoverished
the land, because the farmers gave no
Sabbath day to the soil. Wheat first,
last and all the time SO reduced the Ca
pacity of the land that now there ere
miles and miles OF land that do not yield
80 bushels per acre. Meanwhile, the
middlemen's taxes 20 on from year TO
year; freight, interest, insurance, cost of
sacks and threshing, exchange, commits
sion, and losses by rats consume the
substance of the crop, and the primary
producer gets next to nothing out of his
land.
Here the case is different with the
truitgrower. The adjoining territories
OF Arizona and New Mexico afford
market for much of what we raise; and
the surplus has to 60 no further east
than Chicago, in any event, to meet
with spesdy and regular sales. All ex-
penses paid, the Oregon farmer thinks
himself we'll paid if he gets $25 per acre
from his land, clear OF freight and ex-
penses; and almost any good farming
land in the great Willamette is worth