The record-union., 1895-03-12
STAND By THE STATE BOARD OF
HORTICULTURE.

STAND BY THE STATE BOARD OF
HORTICULTURE.
How will it profit the State to abandon
an economic work and transfer the func-
tions of the body prosecuting it to new
and untried agency?
The horticultural interests of California
constitute the crown of all our industries;
they embrace the highest promise TOR the
prosperity of California; they have at
tanned that position under the wise and
vigorous policy of the State Board of
horticulture, at cost per annum that is
insignificant compared with the invalu-
able results achieved.
Let the faculty of the State University,
upon scholarly lines, do all it can to en-
gage public attention and forward
knowledge upon the subject-and 1t may
do much-but let the immediate admins
tration OF practical work remain in the
hands of practical men, close to the peo-
pie in the broad and popular sense.
The State in this matter should have
regard for the rules OF business sense.
There is no firm or business organization,
having in its employ an agency that is
serving it to its profit, diligently and
vigorously, that will for a moment think
Of disnissing it and substituting a new
agency, untried and experimental and
largely Independent of it, with no reason-
able promise of better or more economic
service.
But that is precisely the stupid thing
that it is proposed the State shall do in
this matter Of the State Board of Horti-
culture. 1t is advised that the State
Board shall be dismissed, and that all the
results of its labors, its goods and chat
tells, the library and instruments it has
accumulated, be turned over to the State
University which is under the govern
ment Of body over which the State has
really no control, body it can only re-
quest to do, but cannot command.
1t will be simply impossible for the de-
partme of the University to attend to
the important work of inspection and
quarantine Of incoming plants excep
through hired agency, and that cannot be
of any broader intelligence. nor more en-
ergetic than the instruments with which
the State Board has done it's efficient
work.
The members of the State Board are
now and have been all practical
fruit growers; they are citizens who
have made study of horticultural
conditions-not only a vocation but a
pride. They have served the State
through all the changes in the personnel
of the board without fee or reward, have
given their time and means 10 the ad-
have at no time neglected any duty i'm
posed upon them.
1t cannot be expected that any branch
of the University faculty will bring to the
work the same disinterested spirit, or
give to it the same devotion, or take in it
the same pride. The faculty at the best
degree OF scholarly pride in discharge of
duty and the achievement of purpose,
but it will remain and always must that
its labors are for pecuniary reward, and
this is said without in the slightest degree
rejecting upon body Of advanced edu-
Gators of which the State is proud and
with whom the people are entirely sat-
isfied.
Our fruit products are worth to the
State S2O,OOO,OO0 annually and give en-
ployment to $4,000 persons; they repre-
sent many thousand homes, and promise
to take first place in all our hopes of pro-
gression. Such an important factor in
State growth and development ought to
remain under the fostering care of
board that has witnessed it's inception
and had so much to do with it's promotion.
The State board was born of the neces-
sites of horticulture in California. 1t
was erected III response to an irresistible
demand by our fruit-growers, who are at
the same time among the largest of our
taxpayers. The reasons for the erection of
the board have not decreased in number
or in necessity. They are even greater
than in the outset. The work of the board
in the betterment of conditions has made
it all the more necessary that this work
shall be continued, and if so, by what
hands better than those that have
achieved 80 much in the past?
To use the Language of the convention of
1893, referring to single branch of that
work: THE State Board of Horticulture
having been created by the fruit-growers,
and being under their control, is the
proper party to pursue this investiga-
tion"-namely, the introduction of para
sites to crush out the in sect enemies of
fruit-growing.
ASSEMBLY BILL 500 yesterday pass ed
the Senate. 1t hangs this morning by the