The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-01-03

was paying dividends of per cent month.
MI Mason sold his block OF stock for $780,
COO. Most men would have been satisfied at
| 20 years of age to have such a sum and to
| settle down to an easy life The old mans
ambition, however, was set ON achieving
| fortune ahead Of anything he had ever pos
sessed.
In 1891 he removed with his family to Los
! Angeles and, believing that prosperity in
| silver mines was at an end for his day, he
began studying the god mining region in
Kern county, Cal: For seven or eight months
peaks OF the Sierras in Fern county, near
Ca!iente. No fatigue was too severe for him,
and no food too coarse. He was intensely
proud Of being the Oldest active miner. He
was as ceaselessly active in acquiring infor-
| nation there he had been in Arizona but
he now had the satisfaction of knowing that
ne mad capital to work with when he got
ready, and that his family lived in comfort
and ease. With Daniel w. Ewarts, of Sacra-
quartz gold mine for 5000. The mine was
equipped with machinery and after the first
week 1t began, to pay. A month later 1t
months the mine paid 5000 over and above
expenses. Then a syndicate bought the mine
and machinery for $4,000. Mr.. Mason's am
work He built beautiful home among the
orange grove Of San Gabriel valley, and
there he lived happily, surrounded by his
last year he and two grandchildren went on
a long tour to Europe. He was stricken with
pneumonia at Coronado and he died sud
denly. His estate amounts to fully $95, Geo.
Among his requests Is 81, 900 for the man at
Newark, who looked after his family while
1t might be thought that a man who had
had a college education and inherited for
tune, who had failed four times in a business
career OF twenty-eight years-twice as dry
goods merchant, once as a farmer and once
as the head Of a seminary-and who had
reached his 18th year with not dime of
assets, besides having family Of three
grown-up children and several grandchi' dren,
had little prospect of ever achieving financial
success in any direction. Ex-Assemblyman
Hugh E. Williams, who has thousands OF
acres of the most fertile soil in Ventura and
Santa Barbara counties and lives in one
Of the finest houses in Southern California,
was in just that condition when he was IS
years old-somewhere along about 1873. To-
day, in his serene old age-he is about so
now-he loves to tell how he finally achieved
success.
He was born at North Adams, Mass, and
went into business at Buffalo Then he failed
Then he became a school teacher, and was
not a success at that Next he tried business
at Adrian, Mich. When the annual crops
failed, and he could not make collections, he
Des Moines, 10. After struggle of six years
he saved money and began life anew as
farmer. In the course of ten years he was
burned out and prairie fires took two success
sive grain crops and his cattle were lost Then
he was sold out in foreclosure proceedings.
After few years of clerking for merchant
seminary at Humboldt, 10. Four years Of that
took every cent he could rake together and
he was left without dollar when he was
a gray-haired man. His two sons had died
and he was left with several grandchildren to
care for He was voted a failure by all
who knew him and he could get nothing to do
to earn a living for his family.
One day his wife received a present of
500 from brother in Massachusetts.
Ashamed, but not discouraged, over his thirty
years of failure Williams resolved to get
far away from his old-time friends by com
Ing to California. ard to work as he had
never done before for his family, and at the
it, from the world: There were no rail-
roads in Southern California in those days,
and the only towns of any size. were San
Diego, with 1900 population, and Los An
geles, with 5000 population-about 100 miles
apart A weekly steamer from San Fran
cisco, 500 miles north, afforded the only con-
nection with the outside world Mr.. VIII
liams and his family came down the coast
from San Francisco to Los Angeles in Novem-
Der. 1873 There were eight persons in the
family and after selling their household
goods at Humboldt and paying fares to Los
Angeles they had 1910 left to start life with
in new country. Leaving his family IN
an adobe house at Los Angeles, Mr. williams
went to see what he could do. He travelled
over to the Workman ranch NOW the superb
country seat Of Lucky Baldwin,, twenty
miles to the eastward. There he saw what
water the soil Of this region. A few
weeks were spent in hunting up tract Of
some water course. He went forty miles
southeast and found the kind Of soil he want
ed near the Santa Ana river, between the
sites where the beautiful towns of Cotton and
Riverside have since grown up.
It Is long story, full Of amusing, pitiful
and curious details the story of how Mr.
Williams and his family created magnificent
fruit farm in the midst of a desert When
the rough board shanty had been finished for
their habitation, and when they had bought
a horse and agricultural tools, less than $40
left with which large family had to
begin life in a lonely valley. For months all
the family slept beds made of heap of
straw with blanket thrown over 1t, and ate
from boards laid across sawhorses. There
was not a white person within twelve miles |
Mr. Williams worked like Trojan. He felt
that this time he must succeed, If at all
He took up quarter section Of land under
the homestead law, and with his own hands
cleared and planted twenty acres of it in
apricots. One who has never broken virgin
soil and pulverized 1t to fit 1t for fruit trees
we're manual labor required. Then there were
several years of waiting for the crops and
incessant cultivation to be done. People who
once in a while went that way in the years
of the Williams famtly's struggle for success,
say it pidful to Mr. Williams, his
wife and daughters, day after day in the boil
ing summer sun, hauling water from the
Santa Ana river in a barrel on wheels and
laboriously pouring a bucketful in a shallow
hole about the roots Of each apricot tree.
That the beginning Of irrigation on the
81 COO, 900 scale as practiced in Southern Cali
forn:a twenty -four years later. The family
gained livelihood in all sorts OF ways. One
OF the girls taught schoo, to the Mextcans
down the valley toward Temescal. Another
daughter did dressmaking at times for the
Mexicans, who paid in corn, beef and mutton,
while Mr. Williams worked with a surveying
party whenever an extra man was wanted.
In four years the trees came Into bearing
and in five years they were in FULL bearing. A
score of families had moved into the neighbor-
hood by that time, and the Williams family
were quite comfortable. But when the first
and second apricot crops were gathered and
dried after weeks of work, there was no
market nearer than Los Angeles-some fifty
miles away-and that a very poor one
in those ante-railroad days. So for weeks and
months chief article of diet on the family
table was apricots. There were baked,
ste~ed, desicated, preserved apricots and pies
and buildings of apricots made in a dozen
gone into orange growing against the advice
of the incoming American families. But he
had watches the climate for Ave years and
he knew what to expect. By 1879 the settle
ment at Riverside had grown and the new
town of Pomona was starting. That helped
ern Pacific railroad was built from Los An
geles toward New Orleans, and it ran close
by the Williams ranch. That brought sew
eral thousand people into the valley.
Mr.. Williams sold third of his property for
81 600. Then he had a market for his april
cots, and got several thousand dollars in one
year for his yield. few years later his
orange trees came into bearing, and he got
So so box for the fruit on the trees. In 1884
his income from his apricots and oranges
was more than $1,000 He bought more land
and sold 1t a year later at an advance of
$4,000 Then he sold his home and the or
chards about 1t for more than 600. The
famous boom of Southern California began
in 1886 when the Santa Fe railroad built into
the region and Mr.. Williams bought and sold