VII
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.