River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1907-12-26
A Letter from
California.

ly concerning my letters and for
that reason l will occasionally fill
little space.
AS family we are all we'll and
are enjoying as best we can the
blessings of climate and country.
There is only one Orange County
and we are only a small portion of
it. But about everything can be
raised here for food of man and
beast. Each locality has its own
speciality and yet some of nearly
everything adapted te the soil and
climate grows everywhere.
First of all, this is climate and
country in which there is rest for
neither the soil, the man nor the
beast. A farmer in California must
work equally hard in every one of
the twelve months. There is no
resting period. 1t is mp and at 1t
all the time.
Now they are blowing for barley
and getting ready to put in sugar
beets. 1t appears to me that the
ranchers put more work on ten acres
than Wisconsin farmers do upon SO.
Don't ever get the thought that
Southern California is lazy mans
paradise. He isn't in it. Within a
mile, the celery fields begin. This
is not a banner year for celery be-
cause too much was planted early
and great rain in October followed
by weeks of hot weather pushed it
forward too fast and blight hurt
little of it, but the later celery looks
very we'll. They are shipping out
something over 100 carloads per
week. Then, too, there is SO much
celery raised in the east that it prac-
tically controls the early market.
There are upwards of 5000 acres
planted in this celery belt this year
and if good, 5000 carloads. No
better celery land lies out doors
than in the valley of the Kinnickin-
mic north of River Falls and some of
the land on South Fork. 1t isr't
half so hard to raise as Some o. 5s'u
think.
But a letter from here without
saying something about the weather
would not be complete. First, II
has not frozen ice yet, we have had
a little wee bit of frost in low places
three or four times, but | have not
seen my thermometer showing worse
than SO. 1t ranges at 7 o'clock in
the morning at about SO to So. In
the middle of the day from so to IS.
l have had fire in my study twice
and do almost all my desk work
by an open north window. Do
some of you people sigh for this
exemption? Many of you remember
the Hon. Scion H. Clough, Circuit
Judge, who lived at Hudson and
Superior. He has a beautiful cot
tage in Santa Ana and he told me
the other day that it cost him as
much to keep warm here as it did
in Superior. (You can carry your
money in a cart when you go for
fuel and take the fuel home in
wheelbarrow.) l cite this case to
show that all persons are not in
a melting condition. The Judge is
in excellent health, enjoys the eli
mate and has only kind remembran-
ces of River Falls, Hudson and Su-
perior. Miss Bertha lives with him.
Santa Ana is a second edition of
River Falls, only larger one. 1t
has many beautiful walnut groves,
orange and lemon trees and flowers
in great variety. A charming town,
that does not tolerate saloon and
exterminates blind tigers. l wish
that Wisconsin could reach the
moral altitude of Southern Califor-
mia. On Monday l listened in Los
Angeles to an address by gentle
man from San Francisco. He said
recently a delegation of men visited
Southern California to find out if pos
sible why Southern California was
more prosperous than Northern Cali
fornia. This was their report:
In Southern California God is
revered as He is not in the North,
and in Southern California public
sentiment dominates the saloons
while in the northern portion the
saloons dominate. When I visit
such cities as Pasadena, Riverside,
Long Beach and other cities larger
than Eau Claire and know that
liquor selling is outlawed; when
such papers as all the papers of
those cities are Leo by the great Los
Angeles Times and Express in the
battle; and l remember beautiful
River Falls with its precious grow
ing boys, l wonder that the