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Show THOUSANDS FIGHT COLD Orange Belt in Grip of Cold Wave Thirty Year Record Broken lxs Angeles, Jan. 7. Temperatures from four to six degrees lower than Sunday night were recorded last night, blasting the hopes of orange and lemon growers It was admitted today that citrus fruit Iosbcs would be extremely heavy Estimates of damage ran from ten to thirty million dollars. Railroad freight losses, figured fig-ured in terms of shipments, were approximated ap-proximated in the statement of the shippers that the 1913 crop of oranges and lemons would bf from trn to twenty thousand carloads short. Last year's crop netted growers I $35,000,000. Eleven millions went to the railroad In freight and refrigerating refrigerat-ing charges. At the beginning of the i season this year's crop value wus es- !timate, at $50,000,000, and according to heads of various fruit associations and firms, the damage done by th.-present th.-present two-day freeze will amount perhaps to half of the entire crop. Government Attitude a Factor Actual losses to both growers and I railroads, however, will be dependent to a ceitain extent upon 4he attitude jof the government toward the shipment ship-ment of slichtly damaged fruit. V. A Randolph head of big shipping con-cern, con-cern, declared that if the government held the same attitude as it di I last year in the northern "sweated fruit" , cases, the present crop would be the smallest in the history of the cltlllfl industry. The government ruled that ! oranges which had been subjected to j the sweating process were the same as adulterated food and coniiscated the entire shipment "Sweating" Draws Out Frost Growers believe that a slight appll- cation of ' sweating' would take the frosf out of a great deal of fruit which otherwise would be useless. Nearly l oo earloads of oil. distillate and other fuels were used in the smudging operations last alght. In Rpdlaiids the orchardist quit trving to do anything when the thermometer showed a minimum of 19 degrees. San Bernardino w-as two degrees lowei and three citrus men estlm ited that the loss would be fully $8,000,000 Lob Angeles. Cal . Ian 7 Thousands Thou-sands of men were out last night pitting pit-ting their Ingenuity against the cold weathei in an effort to save lioui further damage southern California's orange and lemon crop, which was valued, at near'v " " What the loss entailed bj the present pres-ent freeze was cannot yet be estimated esti-mated with any degree oj accural but it was serious so serious, growers grow-ers and citrus experts say, thai it will have an appreciable effeel upon the price of fruit and the ont!"ok las-night las-night was not encouraging The weath.-r bureau predicted a calm windless night, with temper-atures temper-atures aa iow as, or lower than, tboso which Sunday night shattered the record rec-ord of 3u rears Within a radius of 126 miles of ls Angeles, an area which embraces virtually all of the important oran?. and lemon growing sections, smudge poib h the thousands smouldtred or blazed emitting dense clouds of the smoke which it was hoped would raise the temperatures within the orchards and groes sufficiently to prevent fur- rB ther freezing of fruit on the trees. lJM All Sorts of Smudging. iH All sorts of smudging ysstemp. were employed In places crude oil was used to roll thick clouds of black, pun- IH gent smoke among the orange and H lemon laden trees. In other sections blazing distillate burners dotted tho jH hillsides and valleys, luridly Ulumi- jM nating the smoke clouds overhead. These smudging operations were in iib i progress all of last night and to-day to-day and will hP continued until the : prcrcnt cold wave abates. Then it ill be possible to estimate the dam- done, not only to the citrus crop 1 i but lo winter vegetables, almonds and 1 I deciduous fruit trees, which are dam- H aged severely H Serious Losses Expected. jH According to managers of various J ; growers' associations, hardlv more ! than a tenth of the orange crop has ! shipped out The remainder, 1 1 th- assert, will show serious losses '1 Surmrban trolley lines were more or jH less demoralized today through the jH freezing of air brake valves Water i pipi s burst, and in one instance a H ' householder was forced to call the fire department because his garden H hose had frozen and could not be I used to extinguish a kitchen fire that ll threatened to damage his home rl Long icicles on fire plugs were oh- J jects of curiosity, and in los Ange- Il les and other towns of the orango ! belt ice formed so thickly on stand- jing water that children were able to jil r.ttempt skateless" skating. -,?H |