Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1876 — California Letter. [ARTICLE]

California Letter.

WOODI/AN’D, Y OLA Co., January, Centennial Year. Friend Horace: To-day is a dismal, rainy one, and as quietude within doors becomes monotonous my thoughts turn houipwards and to the many friends I am accustomed to meet in every day life. I have not singled you out especially as the one on whom to inflict the common humdrum of newspaper cor-, respondents who seek notoriety, but to write a social letter. As easy as it is for me to write friendly letters, I am not a professional correspondent of the press; but if I were the experience of six trips to the Pacific coast might furnish interesting material for many communications. To the many unsettled minds, particularly of those who have a longing desire to emigrate to this State, perhaps my ideas may be of value. Most letters to the press are written in the interest of parties who hope to make pecuniarily by them, and arc apt to be altogether one-sided; either all light or all shadow. I have no special interest in California, only a natural regard for the welfare of our common race. Experience has taught me that sunshine and shade, financially considered, are to a great extent governed by circumstances. This is my idea of California in a nutshell. If one has plenty of money, this is the best State in the Union. If a man is dependent upon his daily labor, or even has the assistance of small capital, Indiana is far better for him. Ife, one desires to engage extensively in farming, and lias the means to invest in lands at a cost of from 150 to §2OO per acre, California is the region to move to. No lands are to be had in San Jose Valley for less .-than 8150 per acre. In this vicinity they command 8100; and from here northward over one hundred miles, land can not be’ bought for less than 850 per acre. Land for renting is very scarce. I know parties worth 825,000 that are trying to rent. A few days-since I made the acquaintance of a gentleman who owned, last year, three quarter sections of land near this place and was offered the use ot 1,000 acres five years for one-fourth the crop produced each year, if the land was summer fallowed. He sold 160 acres of his land to raise the necessary means. Last winter the sod was all turned over; before the fall rains commenced it was sowed in~ wheat, and the whole field is sure to bring a good crop. A company from Napa Valley with 8100,000 capital has leased lands north pf here to sow in grain, and gives one-third of the crop. They make money, where a person of small capital could only make a living. The following newspaper clipping is another illustration of the manner in which farming is conducted here:

Dr. Glenn lias commenced shipping his wheat crop, amounting to eight thousand tons, to San Francisco. The grain is placed on a boat at Jacinto earried to Knight’s Landing, thence by rail to Vallejo, where it is reshipped by water to San Francisco. The crop at present prices will net §320,000, the freight on same amounting to §40,000, leaving the Doctor the the snug little sum of $280,000. In a short letter it is difficult to pht one’s ideas into a shape that will carry a correct understanding of matters and things in a country of this magnitude. California is known by name in every household of our land, if its fame has not reached every region of the earth; but the conceptions of this country are many times erroneous. Your children imbibe your ideas, and they may be very far from correct ones, too. Many persons living here now frequently acknowledge in conversation that they had made of California a kind of dream land, before they had seen it. They had thought its winter season was like unto the balmiest spring motaings. and never considered °that a-, cloudy, blustering, or dreary day was possible here. To theirimagination the entire country was ever clothed with greenest verdure and brightest flowers, and no possibility of roads deep iu mud ever

entered their conceptions. California boasts her varied climate, with whioh I am well acquainted, and which I admire as much as its oldest inhabitant; but in order to realize and enjoy it fully one would need a railroad built from the snow-capped mountains to the sea, and a palace on wheels, like Senator Jones’ or Charles Crocker’s, that he might move as the season or his inclination should dictate. One car load of the silver bullion we saw stacked up bv the roadside in Nevada would help him out.

L. H.