Los Angeles herald., 1892-06-26
LETTER BAG.
Solving . Problem.

noticed paragraph in local paper 20
the effect that during the fruit picking
season there was scarcity OF labor in
California, and that certain growers
were making arrangements to import
labor from the east. There is some-
times scarcity Of labor for month or
so during the busiest season. This is
due to the fact that the wages for cou-
pie OF months are not sufficient to sup
port the extra hands through the bal
ance of the year. Ten months is q long
time to live on climate even in Cali
fornia.
One gentleman at least in the San
Joaquin valley is trying to solve this
problem in the only way it can be solved
satisfactorily. His plan is to measure
off some lots, erect houses on them and
sell the houses and lots on time and at
easy rates of interest to the workmen,
allowing them to pay for them in work.
He furnishes as much employment as
possible, and when not employed by
him the men seek employment else
where if they wish to do 30. Then in
the picking season the wives and chill
dren OF these men are on the ground
ready and willing to do the extra work,
the wages for which then 60 into circu-
lation and help build up the COM
munity: Some of the valley papers ad-
vertised this method considerably last
winter, showing it's benefits compared
with the ordinary method of sending to
Chinese employment Office for herd
of dirty Cinnamon or collecting few
ragged remnants of white men who had
been subsisting on climate for ten
months.
All along this coast there is the same
difficulty in finding hands in fruit pick
ing and hop picking season, due to the
fact that there is no provision for such
people to live during the balance of the
year, and the more labor is imported
from the east the more the case is ag-
gravated, unless provision is made for
permanent employment. The exorbit-
ant price at which land is held, and the
extortionate rates of interest initiate
against any plan of amelioration. This
dOg-in-the-manger policy of extortion
and greed is doing more to cripple the
development and injure the prosperity
OF this coast than any other thing. It
is like starving the goose that lays the
golden egg.
This is the reason that there should
be policy OF high taxation of unoccu-
pied or partially cultivated land in order
to break up the sy stem of landlordism
which is such curse to the country.
With present prices of land, rates of in
terest. and uncertainty of employment,
it is next to impossible for man with
out money to acquire home, and if he
brings money with him from the east to
buy a home then he has to compete
with pauper labor in an over-stocked
labor market.
Furthermore, the impoverished labor
market is bad market for the products
of the small farmer, gardener or orchard
ist. Home labor we'll employed and
we'll paid furnishes home market for
all these things, and those producers
who employ Chinese or other slave labor
are iDjuring their own business indi-
rectly in crippling. home markets and
home development as much as they are
making by saving in wages, to cay
nothing of the immoral effects and Of
fensive conditions of the SYSTEM Of
slavery they are fostering. s
1t is wonder some of those parties
that boast so much about protection OF |
American labor from foreign pauper |
labor do not apply some of the same
doctrine right here at home where it |
would do the most good. Protection |
from pauper labor and the conditions
that tend to pauperize laborr right at |
home is the very thingethat is needed to
promote the development of the eoun-
try, not only financially, but in every
other way that tends to make q acountry |
of homes for the people. And it need
not to be party question either; it is q.
question of the general public welfare,
which, by the way, is the real meaning
of the word republic. One thing. isvery |
apparent, and that is that astate of'pio-
lection under which it is necessary to.
resort to ball and chain or other me-
dieval methods of torture to make the |
conditions of labor in the jails any woree
than they are outside does not call for
much boasting. j. L. JONES.