Imperial Valley press., 1916-12-27
CALIFORNIA BY Kathleen Norris


spected, successful, happy, put shot
through his brains; that one reeled
home, and sat for dazed hours in the
bay-windowed parlor and looked mute,
ly at the silk-clad, confident wife, and
the pretty daughter, just freed from
the high school, and the retinue of
sympathetic maids-ruined, and more
than ruined. Even today in the city,
a busy young stenographer, or a
school teacher, will point you out a
business block teeming with prosper
Gus life, with the philosophical smile
that is characteristic of the Califor-
nian:
'That belonged to my father before
the silver slump!"
This was long ago-for California.
For we measure phases by decades
rather than by centuries: 1870 is bur-
led in the past; have seen New Eng
land villages where the Revolution
seemed nearer, and the Civil war only
yesterday. Since 1870 so many things
have happened to California that she
may well regard vigilante committees,
land quarrels and gold fever as the i'm
pnlsive mistakes of her girlhood. The
lille, glowing flower garden, humming
with bees, that lies between her noun
tain chains, the imperial forests, the
empty harbors and untouched fields,
have welcomed the world in the last
forty years, and the world has poured
in.
California is the most cosmopolitan
of all the states. She has not only
ell the nationalities of Europe, but
she has the Oriental races, Mexicans,
Filipinos and Southern and Central
Americans walking her streets. She
has citrus plantations and oil wells
in the south she has every ordinary
farm product-fruits, vegetables, cat
tie, sheep, swine and poultry, wheat,
barley and corn-in her great central
valleys she has mines of all sorts, and
colossal lumber interests in the north;
she has an enormous wine industry,
and she provides not only herself, but
half the Union with salt and pepper
and spices. And within a few miles
Ct each other the humble potato and
the artisocratic alligator pear, or the
finest grapefruit in the world, are
found growing.
Even the dispassionate outsider must
admit that California is economically
the least dependent Of the states-a
fact that one happy memory of mine
substantiates. For, years ago, was
q small visitor on a thousand-acre
ranch which supplied every human
need, Except" the mistress used to
laugh, "the bones for my corsets. Oys-
ters, honey, leather, kerosene, cheeses,
homespun, wine, raisins, bricks and
flour were all placidly produced at
need! there were clear water springs
and even a delicious geyser of what
we called "soda water"
This was, of course, only an old
farmers whim. Yet it is possible
ItodayJ on forty acres of land, to have
a livelihood, a bank account, and a
home in any one of hundred fertile
canyons. There are little families
there raising few peaches, and a
few calves, and few pigs, sowing a
few acres to alfalfa (three Or four
crops a yearly renting out the team
to neighboring farmers at $500 a
day, sending few pounds of butter
to market every week, and perhaps
drying a few hundred pounds of april
cots every spring-who spend during
the year perhaps one-tenth of the mon
ey they make. There are splendid
schools all thoughtout the state, and
although a too kindly climate encour-
ages the building of rather unsubstan-
tial wooden houses, and one laments
the contrast to the beauty Of New
England villages, yet the gardens
atone for everything and the wide
spread content and thrift more than
Ia fo. ho Loot