on leased it to a Portuguese and went to live in the
city. In five years the Portuguese skimmed the cream and dried up the
udder. The second lease, with another Portuguese for three years, gave
one-quarter the former return. No third Portuguese appeared to offer
to lease it. There wasn't anything left. That ranch was worth fifty
thousand when the old man died. In the end the son got eleven thousand
for it. Why, I've seen land that paid twelve per cent., that, after the
skimming of a five-years' lease, paid only one and a quarter per cent."

"It's the same in our valley," Mrs. Hastings supplemented. "All the old
farms are dropping into ruin. Take the Ebell Place, Mate." Her husband
nodded emphatic indorsement. "When we used to know it, it was a perfect
paradise of a farm. There were dams and lakes, beautiful meadows, lush
hayfields, red hills of grape-lands, hundreds of acres of good pasture,
heavenly groves of pines and oaks, a stone winery, stone barns,
grounds--oh, I couldn't describe it in hours. When Mrs. Bell died, the
family scattered, and the leasing began. It's a ruin to-day. The trees
have been cut and sold for firewood. There's only a little bit of the
vineyard that isn't abandoned--just enough to make wine for the present
Italian lessees, who are running a poverty-stricken milk ranch on the
leavings of the soil. I rode over it last year, and cried. The beautiful
orchard is a horror. The grounds have gone back to the wild. Just
because they didn't keep the gutters cleaned out, the rain trickled down
and dry-rotted the timbers, and the big stone barn is caved in. The same
with part of the winery--the other part is used for stabling the cows.
And the house!--words can't describe!"

"It's become a profession," Hastings went on. "The 'movers.' They lease,
clean out and gut a place in several years, and then move on. They're
not like the foreigners, the Chinese, and Japanese, and the rest. In the
main they're a lazy, vagabond, poor-white sort, who do nothing else but
skin the soil and move, skin the soil and move. Now take the Portuguese
and Italians in our country. They are different. They arrive in the
country without a penny and work for others of their countrymen until
they've learned the language and their way about. Now they're not
movers. What they are after is land of their own, which they will love
and care for and conserve. But, in the meantime, how to get it? Saving
wages is slow. There is a quicker way.