Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1900-10-25
FIFTY YEARS OF CALIFORNIA.
A Drama That Could Happen Only in
America,

A Drama That Could Happen Only in
America.
Half a century comes to an end on
the 9th of September of the current
year since California, taken from the
lap of Mexican Incidence and tossed
into the arms of American adventure
ers, was delivered at the bosom of Co
lumbia, an infant state, with gold mug
gets III her fists and ships of COM
merce at her feet. The story of these
fifty years, considered even without
the enthusiasm which the contempla-
ton of unusual things stimulates, is
one of those remarkable dramas of
human history that can happen only
in such a country as America.
beginning in an environment of
attn laziness and religious content
ment, plunged suddenly into a Whirl
of money-getting, with all the attend
ant unconyentionaIities vices and OPP
portunities, separated by 1000 miles
from the then farthest western set
Elements of the country, and with no
resources other than her own, the
Golden State has had a long and note
worthy struggle to build herself up
into the full glory of statehood which
she now unquestionably begins to
possess.
For more than ten years after the
first rush of immigrants, California
did almost nothing but tear the earth
to pieces to find gold. With $4,000
square miles of territory to wander
over, with no use for the land other
than to make it yield nuggets and
dust, the prOSpectors went at the work
on 4 scale whose vastness has since
stamped itself on all the doings of
the community. Inventing gigantic
hydraulic dredges. they dug holes in
the banks of streams and washed
away the sides Of mountains, reckless
~ and without regard to the future,
Within nine years from the time Mar
shall picked up the first shining piece
of ore in the taiI-race Of Suffers mill.
$3.50 000, 900 had been contributed to
the worlds supply of gold, and mar
ket values and prices everywhere were
beginning to be affected. The sense
Of bigness at home and bigness abroad
mingled itself with the sense of the
ease, good-felIowship and the compar-
atiye iTosponsibility which character
lied the life of the time
Yet, although such was the great
richness and the breadth of things
when considered in lump, and al
though aulh was Californias initial
contribution to the worlds history,
the benefit to the individual was
slight With 100000 men in the state,
nipe-tenths Of whom were engaged in
actual mining, it was estimated that
the average remuneration to the miner
was only $500 per year-a very mea-
ger mOrSCl of reward for men who
had struggled across the deserts or
roughcd it around the Horn and over
the IsthmUs in the hope of becoming
rich. As the first decade closed the
miners worked back to the seashore
and the cities leaving the foothills
SCARED with the ruin they had
wrought, yawning with the evidences
of the power of their inventions and
sold. Huge hills stand for the pres
ent day washed half away or ripped
and followed to the depth of hundreds
Of feet until their natural shape is
as much distorted as if a volcano or
an earthquake had been at work
among them.
Men who could not find work in
the placers, or whose claim petered
out so that only Cinnamon could find
profit in working them, turned to the
old standby of farming Here again
the territory to be exploited was wide
and unoccupied. Most of the richest
land was held in Spanish grants of
great acreage, and the new farmers
were brought at once into the pres
ence of the idea of large fields. In
stead of occupying and tilling 40 to
100 acres, as was done in the eastern
states, the Californians thought them
selves poor when they could not have
above 400 acres. As lately as in 1870
there were in the state over 5000
farms of 1000 acres each, while the
average farm comprised over AGO
acres. Ranches of 10000 or 10000
acres are still common. Big farms
suggested big implements. California
invented and contributed to the farm
ing business of the world the multi,
tiple gang plow and the combined har-
vester and thresher, which subse.
quently aided the Dakotas and other
northwestern states in the great pro.
duction of wheat by which st. Paul
and Minneapolis, and afterward the
phenomenal city of Duluth, were made
thrifty and notable.
'''To the amazement of all who ey