ts are raised in Southern California by careful cultivation with
little or no irrigation, but the idea that cultivation alone will bring
sufficiently good production is now practically abandoned, and the
almost universal experience is that judicious irrigation always improves
the crop in quality and in quantity, and that irrigation and cultivation
are both essential to profitable farming or fruit-raising.

CHAPTER X.

THE CHANCE FOR LABORERS AND SMALL FARMERS.

It would seem, then, that capital is necessary for successful
agriculture or horticulture in Southern California. But where is it not
needed? In New England? In Kansas, where land which was given to actual
settlers is covered with mortgages for money absolutely necessary to
develop it? But passing this by, what is the chance in Southern
California for laborers and for mechanics? Let us understand the
situation. In California there is no exception to the rule that
continual labor, thrift, and foresight are essential to the getting of a
good living or the gaining of a competence. No doubt speculation will
spring up again. It is inevitable with the present enormous and yearly
increasing yield of fruits, the better intelligence in vine culture,
wine-making, and raisin-curing, the growth of marketable oranges,
lemons, etc., and the consequent rise in the value of land. Doubtless
fortunes will be made by enterprising companies who secure large areas
of unimproved land at low prices, bring water on them, and then sell in
small lots. But this will come to an end. The tendency is to subdivide
the land into small holdings--into farms and gardens of ten and twenty
acres. The great ranches are sure to be broken up. With the resulting
settlement by industrious people the cities will again experience
"booms;" but these are not peculiar to California. In my mind I see the
time when this region (because it will pay better proportionally to
cultivate a small area) will be one of small farms, of neat cottages, of
industrious homes. The owner is pretty certain to prosper--that is, to
get a good living (which is independence), and lay aside a little
yearly--if the work is done by himself and his family. And the
peculiarity of the situation is that the farm or garden, whichever it is
called, will give agreeable and most healthful occupation to all the
boys and girls in the family all the days in the year that can be spared
from the school. Aside from the ploughing, the labo