The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969 Page: 344
498 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
the Gold Rush which brought California almost l oo,ooo immigrants
in one year.
California has climate, which I do not think even the most bigoted
of you will claim for Texas. As early as 1841, California was being
extolled as a land where hollyhock and Sweet William bloomed be-
side the cabin door at Christmastide. It was being lauded as a land
where chills and fever were unknown, and as a land where a Mis-
sourian with malaria was such a rarity that folks rode twenty miles
ahorseback just to watch him shake.
This climate made California once the largest wheat-producing
state in the nation, and gave it an export grain trade with England
and the world for twenty years that was more important, I think,
to its prosperity than was the cotton trade to Texas in the same period
after the Civil War. The varieties of California's climate and its
mountain-stored supplies of irrigation water, enabled the state to
transform its cereal grain dependence into a high-value, diversified,
row-crop industry-note the word industry-that has a raw value an-
nually of more than $4,000,000,000. We have an agriculturally-oriented
friend in California whose winters are spent in prayer for a killing
frost in the Rio Grande Valley.
The climate attracted the infant motion picture industry and the
equally infantile aircraft industry to California about 191o. Climate
brought California its first centers of abstract scientific research in
the astromonical observatories atop Mounts Wilson, Lowe, Hamilton,
and Palomar. These research centers stimulated the knowledge points
of the state's educational system, and these then combined with the
aircraft and electronic industries to make California the leader in
Space Age research and productivity until Houston was discovered
by political divination. The effects of that discovery are reflected well
in the fact that Texas for the first time has passed California in the
gross value of prime Space Age contracts.
Gold gave California an initial source of internally-generated cap-
ital, of which enough was retained within the state to make it self-
financing internally; a status unique among the trans-Mississippi
states. This internal capital supply was augmented, indeed multiplied,
within ten years of gold's discovery by the Comstock Lode. Although
the Lode was in Nevada geographically, its silver torrent flowed into
California because it was controlled by San Francisco capital. Indeed,
the destiny of Nevada ever since it was sired by silver out of sage-144
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Periodical.
Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969, periodical, 1969; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117146/m1/178/: accessed May 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.