The San Francisco call., 1898-12-29
OUR SEMI-CENTENNIAL.


 holding of a great exposition Tn this city in - Iooo-IooI in celebration of the seni-centennal anniversary of California admission into the Union.
 Acting thereupon committee on preliminares was appointed and organized, and many prominent cti- zens came to the front with their approval of the project, expressed in interviews published in our columns. The subject is now renewed by members of that committee with spirit indicative Of the growth of determination and set purpose to push the project to a conspicuous success
 Pride in personal record and family history is a manly sentiment which safeguards the good order of society Pride in the story of ones State, in the recollection of its distant beginnings, in the who laid its foundations, in the workers who have wrought convert its natural into wealth, is high element in the progress and prosperity of a com monweat.
 Surely no State more deserves such pride than ours, and people more capable of giving to 1t the most impressive expression.
 When the variety of our resources is considered, there no part of the world with such field of pro- duction to illustrate Minnesota builds an Alhambra cf ice, Iowa palace of corn, Illinois castle of coal Pennsylvania of iron and steel. These illustrate either object of novel interest the great industry which is the main dependence of the people of those States If that industry fail, that their foundations disturbed and their people dis queted by the agonies of change to something else that will support population and commerce.
 It is not so with California Here we can build palaces of the cereals of coal of gold silver copper and quicksilver, dug from mines; of wine of many vntages and varieties; of oil ripened in our olive orchards. We can raise walls of onyx, marble, granite, sandstone, slate, basalt, soapstone and asbestos. We can build of the greatest variety of coniferous woods found in association and growing of can ornament them with the greatest variety of ve- neering woods found anywhere together. We can pile up pyramids made of 400 different varieties of grapes, luscious in many colors and fringe and ornament the structure with the guava pomegranate, date banana loquat, medlar and the Japanese kaki, the fruit of the gods In association with these may be shown great commercial deciduous fruits, the peach in fifty varieties, the apricot, nectarine cherry prunes and plurns of many sorts that they need separate catalogue We build miniature city oi twenty varieties of the orange lemon and ime the shaddock grape fruit and citron, and scent the scene with the cinnamon shrub the camphor tree and the bay. California icorice and ginger, cotton and honey apples almonds walnuts, wine berries, and tewildering variety of what field and garden yield, be added to show the vast reach and range of resources and prove to the world that here is a laboratory in which. nature enables mans labor to produce from the soi and from the mine so much ot use in commerce that no man can say which industry in the future may lead the rest, where many offer themselves to the varying and capacities of a of making living and supplying the wants of distant people.
 Add to these the foreign production in which we deal and for which we exchange our surplus and the handiwork of mechanics and shipbuilders, and the products of the sea, from herrngs whales and the mind is almost stunned by the display made pos sble in this fifty-year- old State Rightly managed such exposition will draw people from all the world and will fix California more firmly than ever in the attention of the nations.
 When political turmoil needs vacation in the Legislature this subject should be brought the tention of that body, and along the lines of definite plan it should extend such preliminary encourage ment is needed, and the mighty project should be- gin at once to take form and shape.