The San Francisco call., 1899-09-30
TRADE AND IRRIGATION.

| industry. If a people have surplus OF these
- products they have nothing to exchange and
therefore have commerce. A few years ago the
cry all over California was that we planting
orchards and vineyards SO extensively that We would
ruin ourselves by overproduction. Still the planting
went on. The surplus increased. Wherever a great
surplus of the articles Of commerce is found the
mercial ingenuity OF man Is at work to find mar
ke The annual increase in our fruit output has gone
on, but the overproduction is not apparent The
State Board of Trade made an exhibit of fruit in
all forms, at Hamburg Immediately the orders from
Continental Europe began to flow in to such
tent that European Governments driven to find
preteXts for artificial interference with the OF
trade But this temporary hindrance has not chilled
the mercantile ingenuity of people, and this year
the driers and Gamers of California fruit have
larger market, better demand and are making
money than ever.
We looking for trade in Asia and Oceanca
The of getting it not occult. They involve
Sorcery We need not conjure for it with charms
and invocatons, seek it with sword and rife
We must find out what the people with whom
seek commercial exchange require. and then must
produce it in larger volume and at lower cost than
anybody else, and the trade is ours.
General Chipman has recently quoted Ii Hung
Chang to the effect that China has passed the point
OF self-suppy of food for her people. Her popula-
ton has headed and passed the capacity of the rice
crop to feed it. 1t has been proved in India and in
China that relocating Asatics readily substitute wheat
for rice. While wheat is of the early steps away
from grazing the land with sheep and cattle, and is
not the highest to which land in California can
be put yet on millions OF acres in this State it must
always remain the best use because their soil and
situation are not such as to make change of uses
profitable. In wheat and other products of the soil
must for generations seek that surplus which will
be the basis OF our trade with the Orient.
This makes stability of production the one over
mastering necessity in our commercial situation We
say deliberately to the bankers and business men OF
San Francisco and the other cities OF California which
handle the trade of the State that future lies in the
soil We cannot improve our climate, for 1t is in
comparable None other in the world is so affection
ate to the soil None other kisses it into such de-
light of fruitfulness None other is adapted to win
from the land such bewdering variety of the com
forts, necessaries and luxuries of life. But the ele
ment climate and the tireess sunshine cannot WOO
crops out of land without water. Water is the
gastric juice of the soil. The land of California is
productive than other land because it is richer
in plant food, but that food must have water as its
solvent before it can feed the plant If the animal
stomach have no gastric juice solvent it may be
crammed with food while the animal starves for lack
of nutrition. Without water as solvent the richest
aluvium shows verdure and nourishes plant
life With water the desert, rich in all the mineral
elements which the plant cells transmute into human
food blossoms and bears like the garden planted
eastward in Eden"
Therefore let US not be diverted from the funda-
mental requirement of California commerce It is
water, water everywhere.
Our typographical situation is such that all the
water needed forever is ours for the taking Two inn
mutable laws of nature hand it to us. Evaporation
and gravity work while sleep. Man has no
monopoly on them, and can neither arrest nor ac-
celerate them. But he may harness them to his pur-
pose.
The proposition to invoke the resources Of the
State government to impound flood waters and
thereby irrgate every available acre and bring it into
action is proposition to increase our trade with
Asia and with all the world At present in the waste
of this water is the waste OF all this land that it might
serve of all that it might produce Of all the profit of
that production and Of all the commerce it would
generate and of all the the State might derive
from its advance by cultivation This is a waste of
money that might build schoolhouses and maintain
Schools and is a waste of the power of population,
which would come if invited by the stability OF pro-
duction which the storage of water will once e8-
tablish.
We are reasonable when we say that no land on
earth ever wasted as much as California by her in
attention to this subject
Every interest here is involved, and all should be
reused to cooperation in the effort to secure the
action OF which the State alone is capable.
None can dispute the direct connection between
water storage and foreign trade, and now when our
commercial sensbilities so aroused is the time
to strike
IT. under the law, mans house is his castle, what
is woman,s2 It's not according to policeman