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Show oilserva tiovs or .. ioditoii 1 have now ie-eii in California 3 weeks arid liavi- traveled over more than lii(ii) miles of her hard surfaced boiileva. .Is. I have viewed the sun parched plains of the San Juaquin valley, where a prolitahlo wheat crop lias not heen harvesied for the past three or four years, and the hay meadows are snfieriiiK for the need of water; where ihe uroat herds of lino dairy cattle are si rietly quarantined quaran-tined to their own pastures; where the water in the pump irrigation wells has receded from nine to twenty-seven feet in 'he past ten years, and yet, we found the country filled with hopeful and apparently prosperous pros-perous people, and there are reasons. In many respects t alilor.nia is tne lucky state of the Union. She has the cliniale that suits those who neither want it hot nor cold, and those who never want it to rain during dur-ing the xrowng saseonNow is the ttt Intf It ho growing season. She has farm products and citrus fruits in winter when the rest of the country has frost on tile pumpkin. Occasionally Occasion-ally Jack Frost steps on the mountain moun-tain rim and nips the oranges, but that don't matter much for at that time the people are busy harvesting tho touris: crop, which never fails. Another great asset of Californit is its oil, and so great is this resource that one is rarely out of sight of a drilling derrick from V,: kersfiold on the north to San Diego on the south, i am not saying oil is produced in all this region, but I am told that most of the hind, excepting (fie volcanic vol-canic mountain lands. are under lease to oil companies and promoters promot-ers and in ninny cases 'ho companies compan-ies are paying large cash sums for these leases. Many yerrs ago the town of Long ellae'n, and it was a dumpy little town in those days, male r.p mostly of low:1, farmers, secured se-cured several hundred acres of well nigh worthless swamp hind back of Signal Hill for an artesii'ii well farm and secured water for their town 1 herefrom. After drilling in the grer.t oil gushers on Signal Hill. Long Beach leased its well farm to the oil boys and has already received rentals in excess of J1.3S5.0O0. At first it was announced that this vast sum of money would be used in lieu of tax money to meet public expense and the announcement was heralded to the ends of the earth, but the plan was changed and the money is to be I expended in improving the several j hundred acre parkfi erecting public buildings bridges and paving roads, i The luck of he city has also been the luck of the land owner, both in and out of the city. The country club, with its 13S acres of land, most of which is owed for, leased with certain cer-tain restrictions concerning drilling tor a sum which paid off all its indebtedness, in-debtedness, built a new club house, left $20,000 in the treasury, and boosted the value of the $100 certificate certi-ficate held by the 400 members to $2,500. Los Angeles and southern California Califor-nia are lucky in having enough newcomers new-comers to put over public improve-, ments, especially in road building. The native sons were satisfied with any kind of a road and. as he owned most of the landed property, voted against bond issues for roads. In Long Beach the Iowa farmers rallied to his assistance and held to the chug hole road, but so great has been the influx of people every important highway is now poved and the cow paths will now come in for paving.. The great boulevards through and out of Los Angeles, in every direction, direc-tion, are congested with traffic Formerly For-merly every type of pavement from ; earth mixed, with crude oil to asphalt on concrete lv.se was used, but during dur-ing the past, few years but little has been laid other titan concrete, ft has been conclusively proven thai al! other types of pavement, where subjected sub-jected to heavy !r;ifTic. have ''--en an ultimate waste of nioivv. On many of the recently i-oii.i!r-!r'-.1 state highawys water for mixing and tamp lug concrete has been bau'"d more i than 2 liille.s through lie; ti'.-'-i'L. Oil U.I.- lh.-r-- 1. I.u ;3:i.::i u,ak:::g any form of h... .. r.a'. .i:.-Ia .i:.-Ia u.i,e v. i ; 1 1 ..,:,( r. i' it . .1) i : i.i-.- II'H lie Hole-. - v ii 1! n i ;.. -e-. ....... lo, wh.-re lie' rial v. l.ii ..,u ill.- foil! ft overlooking i... v..--aw road crews setting u ;i mi: ' - i miles of eighi inch piank, two to three f.-et from the edges of tile j pavement, preparatory to cm. ring I in the old black road with concrete ! eight inches thick al i!;e edges and .-ix inches in the cenier. Kveii on tie-country tie-country roads the black pavement i-i porsonna non grata. I have per: -nr-.l-ly made these observations and have not talked with any ag'-nt or o..'. ial I of any paving company. It N nr. iirm conviction that it is ultimate v.'iste I to use other than cement on Mie Lay-j Lay-j ton-Clearlield section of our state road. '. Today is Utah's opportunity to j grab the apple, pear, apricot, cherry land peach market of southern C'ali-j C'ali-j fornia. This assertion may seem-very strange and will be questioned by ninety-eight per cent of Utah p :ple. but it is true nevertheless. There will be practically no peaches or apricots grown-in California this year or i next. The drouth of the past three years has starved the foliage and general tree structure to such an extent ex-tent that the trees are sick- look sick, and what little fruit there is on the trees is well nigh worthless. This condition prevails all over California., and to an extent tha'. many of the canneries will not run this year. Ut- j ah fruit growers should organize now. send men here to open agencies - not ship to commission men. and handle their own product. Utah fruit is only 3(1 hours from Salt Lake by fast freight, less time than by truck from many of the California vaileys, and there are more than a million and a half people here in this and adjoining cities to buy it. It is -just as easy for us to feed southern California Cali-fornia Utah apples, peaches, cherries cher-ries and apricots as it is for Ca'ifor-nia Ca'ifor-nia to feed us oranges and lemons. We will leave here for Frisco Tuesday Tues-day morning and after a eonp'e of days there wlil leave for homo Friday Fri-day morning. T am anxious to get home. I want to awaken the people of Davis county and Utah to their opportunities. op-portunities. We have got California heat n in a thousand things. Wo can make southern California the greatest great-est meal ticket any county ever had. Outside of the most progressive citizenship citi-zenship any country has ever known, a civic pride ' hat has become religious, reli-gious, little old Davis county and j Utah has California beaten a mile. I but what has it availed us? Utah mii'l awaken. She iimst come alive to her advantages and opportunities op-portunities industrially, horlicrltur-ally horlicrltur-ally and politically Y. P. Epperson, editor of Kaysville Reflex. |