A PICTURE.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 May 1923, Page 4

A PICTURE.

FRUIT HARVESTING IN CALIFORNIA. By a Colonial Visitor). In the days of the Forty Ninenq when tiie gold rush to California was at its height, cities ruse in a week, and when the magic dust was exhausted, or tt new load discovered, the whole population shifted in a body. Hills were torn down, Hills were built up. Settlements sprang up like mushrooms, were deserted, decayed slowly. The gold fever passed, but the descendants of the milters found another gold—one that springs from the soil, and grows on trees. The gold of the orange, the apricot, and the wheat is as good in the pocket as that front v mountain seam. A now race of Argonauts lias arisen, who follow the gleam of the golden fleece from Hun Diego in the smith to Siskyou, a thousand milenorth. And so it is in California that from early .May to late October a population of many thousands stream like a flight of locusts up the State, ■stripping the fruit from the trees and vines.

By May Hie many tmigued, man;, peopled army is on the road. You meet them on every highway ill rattling Fords, with trailers piled high with household goods, and the younger members of tiie family. Some of them re turn each year to the same ranches. The tent is pegged in the dust under the trees, cots and blankets tire spread out. The small tin stove, the coffee pot, and the frying pan are rolled out of the bedding, and the family settles down for a season. Other families

“Mptat" beside them, until, in a few days' time, long grey rows of canvas touts lie under the trees, ant! at morning and evening tiie odours of strong colfee, fried notatoes, and onions float over the ranch.

As soon as it is light everyone is up. Under the hoi southern miii fruit must; be picked early. Men and boys go over the orchards, stlipping the ripening fruit from the trees, and packing it: carefully in boxes. Women and girls go to the pitting sheds, anil, sitting on long woollen benches, stone the fruit and throw tiie two halves on to a moving licit, which carries it to 'Hite ran-niug-rouin. where other men and women tend huge vats of Foiling setup, and s*nl the l ills as they are lilled with fruit, in another sped they are cutting the oven ioe or inferior 1 1 nit for drying. The trays are earned to sul-phur-lnmses. and there sealed for 21 hours. Each worker nears a long strip nhiaed to his back. Red for the pickers, yellow I'er the nit levs. and green Im H r ea.i'iier.s. As one calls for another box. the attendant punches the

snip, and the (ompany owes another 2‘> or ' evils. When the whistle I he,', s ai ms drop weari!y to aching s 11 !i- • . ami the workers go hack to the trills. Tim i.aiv eonversaliou is the constant “I low many boxes did you dr to-day'" or perhaps it grumbling, “I Imd nothing Imt little hard green ones to-day or front a girl. “.Ice likes me. I guess. He always gives me a dandy tins." A L login (ho lemi drift dow n to the iioul-rooms ill tiie nearby town, the young ones go to tiie “movies,’' and the older Women 101 l about outside the tents. The eompauv i- a very mixed one. There is the Rev Pollock, from a Ver- *; "':! Presbyterian Church, who has !u;tg trouble, ami must he out of (loot's in a drv climate. His church has given him the money to come to Cttlii'oinia, and he keens himself by workiit e in the on hard*-. There i- ;i I iiglt -■heiil teacher who wants to make ;t

!ii tie money this vacation, and believes in “rubbing no against the people.” There are a. dozen college ' indents earning next year's lees, and school ihildren from ail tin* eouiilry lotiud. There is Mrs .Jones. the eom I'ol'tii hie mother of a family in a nearby town. “Might as well make a hit of money when you can,’' she tells tier neighbour-. Tliete is Rtl Wing and a u'ouil ef dependents. Ii is shrewdly suspected that some of them have been smuggled in over tiie Mexican border, and that Rtt levies blackmail on their wages. There is Rallied Singh, whose fat Iter wa- dec ora led for valour in Hie Indian Mutiny. There are I’ieos, Fi-

giierciiis, anil Verdugos. whose ancestors in those happy-go-lucky days when (’aiiforniii was a Mexican ptoviiiee owned iiiiuiiiil"- ■ (ra-ls of laud, rod" magnificent hor-cs, played for fabulous slakes, ami lived like petty kings aiming their serf:. There arc Indians who worked on t ties - estates, or in til" Franciscan missions, w here t heir giamls:re- learned In plough and sow, to

build ami hake, and forgot how to hunt.

(file night a baby is born, its shift-le-s Mexican mol her has made no provision for its coining, and the child is wrapped in a potato sad;, until Mrs Jones discover- it, and arrives next morning with a bundle of baby clothes and gii.-id advice lor its care. Bui the tins- brown thing, whose name is Jesus Maria, kicks and cries under the trees all day. Its mother lias already returned in the shed-.. On another night there is a quarrel between an Olivas and a l.opez over pretty Rosie Obispo, and Juan is stabbed in the shoulder. He walks about with a bandage, but the Olivas tribe inis left. There are ten Lopezes In camp and only four Olivases. lit a few weeks the trees in the- district are picked bare, one by one the tents are folded, the army -moves: north, and scatters like sand over the hundieds of randies. On through the peach country, the walnut country, through the vineyards of Fresno, on again to the apples of Watsonviiles. the prunes of Fanta (’him, north still through tlie Sacramento wheat fields, north again to the hop-growing countries. El f amino Rett!, the main state highway, marled out by the .Mission Fathers as they colonised, is choked with argonauts. At night every dry stream bed has its campers.

All throubh September the army is thinning. The families with children have to return in time for school. The college students are at the universities, and those who have homes drift slowly hack. By mid-October only a few are left. Home of the men go into the lumber camps and the fisheries : some take the road and go south for winter: other.- camp on the edge of towns, and are driven from place to place by health authorities, and the pressure of citizens who have missed washing from their lines, and found the cows dry in the morning. Home are “fly-by-nights,” and sell .second-hand automobiles. Their gipsy ancestors stole and track'd horses, hut the horse is an obsolete animal in California. The descendants deal in "flivvers.” and have as unsavory a reputation as their cousins in England, Bohemia, or Hungary.