San Francisco, August 24: After spending a few days in Seattle we
started southward, with Los Angeles as the end of our journeying in
that direction. Tacoma has been out-distanced by Seattle, but it is
itself a great and growing city. Portland, in Oregon, is a city of
older appearances than Seattle. It has more leisure and more culture
and, perhaps, more realized riches. It has a great river, mountains
around it and the ocean only a few miles away. Portland is building for
the future and the growth of Pacific Ocean commerce is in the dreams of
all the business men.
On the way to San Francisco we rode up the Rogue River valley, which
we found not equal to its fame, and around Mount Shasta, grand and
glorious in the sunshine that fell around its snow-covered peak. The
next morning we were in the wheat belt of California, the wonderful
Sacramento Valley. In August it is barren enough, nothing green in
it except the fields of alfalfa, an occasional plum orchard and the
wonderful live oaks scattered over the landscapes, always with the
range of mountains in the perspective. Wheat growing in these valleys
has about reached its limit. The continual cropping has left the soil
impoverished and there is talk of cutting up the big ranches into
individual small farms, watered artificially. What there may come out
of this form of development is problematical. Some persons who had
lived in the valley assured us that the heat is often so intense that
it scalds the fruit on the trees. On the western slope of the coast
range the climate is much better for fruit and also for gardening.
Incidentally, it may be remarked that the American is hardly the
race that will develop this form of intensive farming. They want to
do things on a bigger scale and they shun the manual labor that is
necessary to make it successful. Portuguese colonies are said to be
prospering in the culture of fruit and the Japanese also are making
headway. They are willing to do such work and to do it for wages that
are not considered adequate by Americans. Under present conditions
nothing seems to me more hopeless than the establishment of fruit
farms, by American farmers from the Mississippi Valley, in the
valley of the Sacramento, the Rogue River or even the Yakima and the
Yellowstone.
San Francisco has recovered marvelously from the earthquake and the
fire. It is a city in the process of rebuilding and the rebuilding
is all along greater and better lines. Old Chinatown is no longer a
city of rookeries, but of substantial brick and steel, with shops that
would do credit to any city. The haunts of vice are fewer and the
old devotees of oriental vices complain bitterly that the “town” has
lost its “atmosphere.” If it has, it is so much for the better. San
Francisco has been hampered and handicapped, but its business men are
striving to retain the commerce of the Pacific for which so many other
cities are now striving and for which Seattle has made so much headway.