Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/819

Rh plenty of brain-work, and he is selling in the world's markets. Many a California grower of raisins, oranges, walnuts, olives, prunes, or other horticultural products goes to Chicago and New York every autumn, "to keep the run of the field." The drift of Pacific coast life is toward a rapid increase of the number of orchardists. They are organized, too, in a manner unknown among the farmers, and have several times shown unsuspected courage in independent politics. Some of these days professional politicians will have to deal with a new factor—the horticulturist, a distinct evolution from the conservative American farmer type, quicker of brain, less wedded to party bonds, and more capable of understanding the interests of the commonwealth.

This rapid review of some important economic changes of the past fifty years leads naturally to the consideration of the present conditions of life in California. Wages are still high, and all classes of workers should be prosperous. The resources of the State are being developed at a marvelous rate. In 1880 the population of California was 864,000, and the assessed value of all the property in the State was $504,578,036. "Assessed value," in California, means "that amount which the property would bring at a forced sale." In January, 1890, the estimated population was 1,465,000, and the assessed value of property was $1,112,000,000. The deposits in the savings-banks averaged over $87,000,000, and were widely distributed. The assessors' returns for the counties show that lands in city and country, and their improvements, are well divided up among the people, and California is becoming a State of moderate-sized farms and fair but not large incomes.

The wages of ordinary farm hands in California range from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a month, usually with board. Portuguese, who are already the peasantry of the rich valleys near the bay of San Francisco, expect from twenty-six to thirty dollars, and board themselves. They own small tracts of a few acres, "work out" most of the time, and are a fairly capable though slow class of laborers. Chinese, who are expert in garden and orchard work, are paid the same as the Portuguese. Italians in the vineyards rate at about thirty-five dollars, and board themselves. Skilled labor in some departments of farm and orchard work commands forty or forty-five dollars a month. Pruners, grafters, fruit-packers, teamsters, obtain such wages, and in the lumber districts Americans often get fifty dollars. Commissioner Tobin's report for 1887-'88 gives the statistics of wages paid in California and other places, and a few comparisons with New York wages will serve to illustrate the subject. California bricklayers rate at thirty dollars a week as against twenty dollars in New York; carpenters, twenty-one dollars as against fourteen; masons, thirty dollars as against eighteen; blacksmiths, twenty-one