Los Angeles, August 27: At San Francisco our party was broken up. Mr.
Jones and I proceeded to Los Angeles, while Mr. and Mrs. Pope elected
to linger longer in that city and to make many breaks in their journey,
to visit the seaside resorts.
Southern California in August is not an inviting place. There is
drouth, and dust. The famed orchards are simply patches of trees in
plowed ground, the trees covered with dust as well as with ripening
fruit. When we think of orchards at home, we think of beautiful plats
of grass, with trees. But that is not the California idea. They are
far from being sylvan dreams. They are places for hard work and, from
all reports, meager incomes. To pick and pack peaches for distant
markets is laborious and hazardous. The vineyards were filled with
distress over grapes at six dollars a ton. But in the real estate
offices in Los Angeles, rosier views of fruit growing were to be had
and that freely. Los Angeles is city mad. They have done wonders and
they think of the future without dismay. All things seem possible to
the promoters. On the one side they have “the back country” where the
products are going to enrich all the people and on the other side they
have the ocean on which they are going to carry the commerce of the
orient, all paying tribute to Los Angeles. The ocean, at Long Beach
and other points is beautiful, restful and invigorating, but the great
ships have found no harbors in the vicinity of Los Angeles. The harbors
must be made artificially and the commerce must be wrested away from
San Francisco, Portland and Seattle and Tacoma. It will be a great
struggle for supremacy. No American can ride down this great Pacific
coast line without feelings of pride in the developments of this
western country. It is all American, intensely American. They call it
the Golden West, but the man who has to work for a living finds the
conditions no easier here than “back east.” In many places he finds it
harder, for he has Japanese competition and the climate of which they
boast so much makes men lazy.