Part 62 (2/2)

”Yes, it's more than intensive. These Adriatic Slavs are long-headed in business. Not only can they grow apples, but they can sell apples. No market? What does it matter? Make a market. That's their way, while our kind let the crops rot knee-deep under the trees. Look at Peter Mengol.

Every year he goes to England, and he takes a hundred carloads of yellow Newton pippins with him. Why, those Dalmatians are showing Pajaro apples on the South African market right now, and coining money out of it hand over fist.”

”What do they do with all the money?” Saxon queried.

”Buy the Americans of Pajaro Valley out, of course, as they are already doing.”

”And then?” she questioned.

Benson looked at her quickly.

”Then they'll start buying the Americans out of some other valley. And the Americans will spend the money and by the second generation start rotting in the cities, as you and your husband would have rotted if you hadn't got out.”

Saxon could not repress a shudder.--As Mary had rotted, she thought; as Bert and all the rest had rotted; as Tom and all the rest were rotting.

”Oh, it's a great country,” Benson was continuing. ”But we're not a great people. Kipling is right. We're crowded out and sitting on the stoop. And the worst of it is there's no reason we shouldn't know better. We're teaching it in all our agricultural colleges, experiment stations, and demonstration trains. But the people won't take hold, and the immigrant, who has learned in a hard school, beats them out. Why, after I graduated, and before my father died--he was of the old school and laughed at what he called my theories--I traveled for a couple of years. I wanted to see how the old countries farmed. Oh, I saw.

”We'll soon enter the valley. You bet I saw. First thing, in j.a.pan, the terraced hillsides. Take a hill so steep you couldn't drive a horse up it. No bother to them. They terraced it--a stone wall, and good masonry, six feet high, a level terrace six feet wide; up and up, walls and terraces, the same thing all the way, straight into the air, walls upon walls, terraces upon terraces, until I've seen ten-foot walls built to make three-foot terraces, and twenty-foot walls for four or five feet of soil they could grow things on. And that soil, packed up the mountainsides in baskets on their backs!

”Same thing everywhere I went, in Greece, in Ireland, in Dalmatia--I went there, too. They went around and gathered every bit of soil they could find, gleaned it and even stole it by the shovelful or handful, and carried it up the mountains on their backs and built farms--BUILT them, MADE them, on the naked rock. Why, in France, I've seen hill peasants mining their stream-beds for soil as our fathers mined the streams of California for gold. Only our gold's gone, and the peasants'

soil remains, turning over and over, doing something, growing something, all the time. Now, I guess I'll hush.”

”My G.o.d!” Billy muttered in awe-stricken tones. ”Our folks never done that. No wonder they lost out.”

”There's the valley now,” Benson said. ”Look at those trees! Look at those hillsides! That's New Dalmatia. Look at it! An apple paradise!

Look at that soil! Look at the way it's worked!”

It was not a large valley that Saxon saw. But everywhere, across the flat-lands and up the low rolling hills, the industry of the Dalmatians was evident. As she looked she listened to Benson.

”Do you know what the old settlers did with this beautiful soil? Planted the flats in grain and pastured cattle on the hills. And now twelve thousand acres of it are in apples. It's a regular show place for the Eastern guests at Del Monte, who run out here in their machines to see the trees in bloom or fruit. Take Matteo Lettunich--he's one of the originals. Entered through Castle Garden and became a dish-washer.

When he laid eyes on this valley he knew it was his Klondike. To-day he leases seven hundred acres and owns a hundred and thirty of his own--the finest orchard in the valley, and he packs from forty to fifty thousand boxes of export apples from it every year. And he won't let a soul but a Dalmatian pick a single apple of all those apples. One day, in a banter, I asked him what he'd sell his hundred and thirty acres for. He answered seriously. He told me what it had netted him, year by year, and struck an average. He told me to calculate the princ.i.p.al from that at six per cent. I did. It came to over three thousand dollars an acre.”

”What are all the c.h.i.n.ks doin' in the Valley?” Billy asked. ”Growin'

apples, too?”

Benson shook his head.

”But that's another point where we Americans lose out. There isn't anything wasted in this valley, not a core nor a paring; and it isn't the Americans who do the saving. There are fifty-seven apple-evaporating furnaces, to say nothing of the apple canneries and cider and vinegar factories. And Mr. John Chinaman owns them. They s.h.i.+p fifteen thousand barrels of cider and vinegar each year.”

”It was our folks that made this country,” Billy reflected. ”Fought for it, opened it up, did everything--”

”But develop it,” Benson caught him up. ”We did our best to destroy it, as we destroyed the soil of New England.” He waved his hand, indicating some place beyond the hills. ”Salinas lies over that way. If you went through there you'd think you were in j.a.pan. And more than one fat little fruit valley in California has been taken over by the j.a.panese.

Their method is somewhat different from the Dalmatians'. First they drift in fruit picking at day's wages. They give better satisfaction than the American fruit-pickers, too, and the Yankee grower is glad to get them. Next, as they get stronger, they form in j.a.panese unions and proceed to run the American labor out. Still the fruit-growers are satisfied. The next step is when the j.a.ps won't pick. The American labor is gone. The fruit-grower is helpless. The crop perishes. Then in step the j.a.p labor bosses. They're the masters already. They contract for the crop. The fruit-growers are at their mercy, you see. Pretty soon the j.a.ps are running the valley. The fruit-growers have become absentee landlords and are busy learning higher standards of living in the cities or making trips to Europe. Remains only one more step. The j.a.ps buy them out. They've got to sell, for the j.a.ps control the labor market and could bankrupt them at will.”

”But if this goes on, what is left for us?” asked Saxon.

”What is happening. Those of us who haven't anything rot in the cities.

Those of us who have land, sell it and go to the cities. Some become larger capitalists; some go into the professions; the rest spend the money and start rotting when it's gone, and if it lasts their life-time their children do the rotting for them.”

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