Imperial press and farmer., 1902-05-17
General Barnes to E. il. Hartman.


 was recently delivered at a banquet rendered to E. H. Hartman in San Francisco a few days ago. It is diffi- cult in reading this speech to deter mine accurately just what General Barnes meant, but the reader can peruse the following extract and draw his own conclusions. 1t is certainly worth reading:
 MT. Hartman, you have been wei comed by these commercial organiza- tions to California, but, sir, you do not know quite what that welcome means. It means sir, that if you conduct your road according to the wishes of these organizations, or if you allow them to conduct it for you-if you allow them to regulate fares and freights, if you give them the rebates and concessions they demand, if you place yourself i'll their hands to be dealt with as they will-you will be a much loved man. But if, tremendously, you attempt to manage the road in your own way and for the benefit of the corporation, if you are deaf to the advice of these commercial gentlemen, it were better for you that you had never been born. These commercial bodies now so cor dial will have their way with you and yours, for you will never learn the heights or the depths of a California traders desires or demands until eX- perience has taught you that which you can never learn from traffic laws and tranSDOrtatiOn tables
 We have a press in California-as you may live to know-a free, omnis- cient, omnipresent and omnipotent press whose office is to run the world and whose principal virtue is that charity which covereth a multitude of sins. Patience, mildness and benignity are the handmaidens of that charity, and the Sermon on the Mount supplies the editorial texts for that press. But if you do not allow the press of Cali fornia to manage your road, if you persist that a railroad man knows more about railroads than does an editor, you had better never have seen this city, for your scalp will be hung to dry on the dome of the City Hall, and you will be hoisted higher on the journalistic gibbet than was Haman of old.
 Our people, too, think they know a good deal about running a railroad, and you must take advice from the citizen on the curbStOne.
 MT. Hartman, you have made a slow progress through California, and have inspected, for the first time, the route of the Southern Pacific Company. You have seen more of the State than many of us and no doubt have formed high impressions of it's productive ca pacity. And what you have not seen has no doubt been told you by the i modest and diffident CalifOrnian-never so modest and diffident as when speaking of what we Californians have been and are. You have heard of the Yosemite Valley-we scooped it out; of | the lofty mountains builded them; | of the Washingtonia Gigante, whose frondent tops were staring at the sun when Solomon was a baby - we planted them; and of the balmy eli mate, which is but the breath of the California nostrils!
 we made this State, we placed it where it is on the map, we poured the Pacific Ocean about it, we shaped It's bays and gave it's rivers their courses, we arched the bright blue sky aDove it people and not wholly unconscious of our greatness.
 "YOu know of our products You know, too, perhaps, of the orange groves extending from San Diego to