The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1893-02-08
Big Ranches.

Big hancnes,
California has an unfortunate re-
putation for big ranches, which are
either idle in the hands of their
owners or are only partially utilized
for cattle and sheep raising, or for
the production on a large scale Of
wheat and wine. The most is never
made of immense tracts in the hands
OF one man. He cannot efficiently
manage so much property and he
must be able indeed if he can. enlist
the services of others on his behalf
anxious to bring out such results as
he himself would strive to attain.
Big ranches starve production and
scare away population. A man of
capacity, understanding land and
agriculture, prefers to work on his
own farm. AS soon as possible he
will leave the big ranches, where he
only earns wages and is subject to
dismissal at moments notice, and
where his inducements to marry and
bring up family are. not alluring.
But it is the working settler, the
man who will bring up a family and
cast in his lot with the country he
selects, that this State needs. Fruit
farmers who are cultivating twenty
or forty acres; farmers who are rails
ing wheat or grazing cattle and
sheep on homestead of one hun
dred and sixty acres, provided they
keep out of the clutches of the
moneylenders, are doing more pro-
portionally to build up California in
stability than the landowner who
waves his hand over map and says
he owns over a hundred thousand
acres here and more than that there,
a forest in the mountain untouched
by the ak and lake or stream I'M
available for irrigation. "Bring in
the population and divide the land
up should be the watchword of
rural progress.
1t is understood that the great
ranch of Miller & Lux in Kern coun-
ty is about to pass into the hands of
an Eastern and English syndicate at
cost of S2,50O,O0O. The syndicate
proposes to divide the ranch up into
holdings and to supply water at a
rental from lake which will be sold
with the ranch. If 400 families ag-
gregating 1000 individuals can be
brought into Kern county by this
change a good example will have
been set to other big ranch regions.
There is no intention to make the
scheme philanthropic. 1t is to be on
business basis. The families will
have money or approved credit to
carry them along for year. But it
is somewhat forbidding to have an
estimate formed that in ten years
the syndicate will have realized in
profits $10,0OO,OOO, four times the
amount of the purchase money.
Such an announcement will not
operate as an inducement to settlers,
for they will say that the syndicate
is earning much too high dividend.
Perhaps the syndicate is counting its
chickens before they are Matched,
for settler who has money will go
elsewhere for his homestead and will
secure reasonable terms.
One of the most pressing wants of
California is to see the interior more
thickly populated. Compared with
ehO 1alihSiS III OhlO, IuIldud, L GILL;
sylvania, New York and all over New
England, the rancher in California
has much in his favor in climate, fer
tility of soil and sunshine enough
for almost every product except
strictly tropical growths. He has,
over great areas of the State, not to
rough-hew his way by cutting down
timber, as in the East and in Oregon
and Washington. The disadvan-
tages of transportation and in hav-
ing a sluggish local market will be
overcome some day. A State which
has the area of France and is quite
equal to it in fertility, but has only
thirty-sixth or thirty-seventh of it's
population, will not forever be neg
lected by the enterprising people of
the United States.-San Francisco
Call.