out of his bed and say to him, "For God's sake, let the Bank of England issue more notes, and we shall be saved." Banking has nothing to do with money, except in one single point. I cannot thoroughly explain that now. If you tell a banker to issue notes, he of course sells them to the public. Every note that is issued by the Bank of England, or the United States Government, or by a private individual, is sold. The customers of this banker are the buyers. He collects their bills and he pays them in his bills. To that extent there is a resource in the banker who lends upon discount. That extent we know is limited in many cases. It has disappeared in England from the country banks. In the case of the Bank of England, that power of selling notes to the public is limited to about £15,000,000. By that means it has the power of lending upon discount. But otherwise banking has nothing to do with currency. It is very true that the banker is bound to pay his debts in currency, but so am I. So are Baring Brothers; so is every trader in the kingdom. It is perfectly possible that to-morrow morning at ten o'clock every creditor in the kingdom can ask for gold. He would have to take a bank note, but he can get the money from the Bank of England.

Now, what is the good of all this investigation? What reference has it to crises? This: that, as I said before, as banking is the region for the commercial typhoons and hurricanes, it is essential to see the causes that act upon banking, and it is not from such rubbish as a certain quantity of bank notes, certain things in the £3 in the hundred; it is from these ninety-seven things; and they are goods, are property, are goods sold, parted with, and the contract expressed on pieces of paper to pay money on demand or at the time specified. That is the force of banking, and, therefore, if banking is abundant, it is because many goods have been sold, and the sellers of these goods do not want to buy much. Let me repeat it. Banking is easy, discount is easy, the rate of interest is low, in the proportion that men have given away their goods and are not disposed to buy to a corresponding full extent of other goods. Then bankers have much to lend. But when this is the other way; when the farmer has spent all his capital in caring for his farm, and the bad and naughty weather comes in August, and the corn is spoiled, then the poor farmer is in very different circumstances with his banker. With a good harvest he has plenty of time to wait. When he has no wheat, or little to sell, he goes into town -perhaps has his old horse to replace with a new one-and he puts nothing in his banker's hands, and very possibly he asks him to lend him money. Look at the effect upon the banker. His means are reduced because the farmer deposited nothing, and perhaps wanted money, and to whom he must lend. That is abundant means for banking and poor means for banking.

Now, this making of railroads, warehouses, beautiful towns, etc., are not foolish things, but they are things which destroy and do not replace, and that is poverty. Poverty means that there are no goods to sell, and when there are no goods to sell there are no goods to buy with. The banker's resources fail, therefore. Then come the crises. They are the consequences of the destruction of property which is not replaced. They are the true children of poverty, and

that kind of poverty which produces crises is never more fostered than when bankers encourage useful things, things useful twenty years from this day. The railroad does not replace its money for fifty years. If the actual outlay is £10,000,000, this £10,000,000 spent in food, etc., are not replaced for fifty years. The nation is poor for fifty years. Now, go on with that poverty, and the bedevilment of the money market will go on. The broker between the two men finds that his deposits are coming short, which means that there is no longer any sale of goods. Why? Because you have been destroying the wealth of the country in a way which will lose it for fifty years. It is no better, as far as banking is concerned, than if you had chucked it into the sea. The savings of the nation is the excess of the things it makes in comparison with the things it consumes, and that excess, if it employs it wisely, will make the nation richer. But if it "chucks it into the sea, it will remain stationary. The secret of crises is the building, beyond the savings, of useful and valuable works.

It is claimed that the English Coöperative Associations are the best financial successes in the world. That of Rochdale, in England, was started by twenty-eight men. After a prolonged strike of the flannel manufacturers, which ended in the utter defeat of the working men, a few of them met together, about thirty years ago, and said one to another: "Is it not possible, instead of the constant strife with capital, which is too strong for us, that we can use the capital spent in this way by ourselves, and do something to become our own employers ?" That was at the bottom of the idea of starting a coöperative store, and the twenty-eight men then commenced the Rochdale Society, with a capital of £28 ($140), which at the present time numbers 7,000 members, one for each house in town, and now have an accumulated capital of £150,000 ($750,000), and distributes profits among the working men of the town of between $150,000 and $200,000, annually. The educational funds of the society amount to more than $5,000 yearly; and out of the Rochdale store has sprung a cotton mill and flannel manufactory, which employs a capital of $700,000, in addition to its other capital needed in various ways. The Executive Committee of the National Grange have recommended the Rochdale plan of cooperative societies as worthy of imitation by Patrons.

There are at present seven hundred and fifty coöperative societies in England, representing a business capital of not less than $50,000,000, and the profits amount to more than $3,800,000 annually. Taking the good, bad and indifferent coöperative societies into account, we find that the average expense

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upon the business is only five per cent., and that amount includes a sum sufficient to pay the interest upon the capital.

In Germany, coöperative banks were established some twenty years ago, which are said to have proved a great blessing to the laboring classes. The capital of these banks consists of funds known as active and reserve. The first is derived from the monthly or annual contributions of members; the latter is made up of admission fees, and from retaining a percentage of the profits in the bank, to be distributed in case of dissolution. Deposits and loans are made, and these, with the active fund, constitute the working capital. No interest is paid on contributions, but members derive a dividend from the general profits, averaging some fifteen per cent. per annum, and are allowed advances at a low rate of interest, to the amount of their stock, and larger sums, by giving security to other members. The aggregate business of these banks in 1867 was $13,000,000, and the proportion of losses was but one quarter of one per cent., which is creditable alike to the administrative ability of the officers, and the honesty and integrity of its members.

Wise men ask, when they see an acorn before them, does it contain an oak? And, judging from the small beginning and successful growth of these societies, one could not but infer that they contain the germ of true prosperity and happiness. The progress has been striking. It took twenty years for cooperative societies to accumulate the first five million, and only five to accumulate the next. The entire capital of England, at the present time, is about $40,000,000,000, and the profits thirty to forty million, while the profits of coöperative societies are nearly four million, or thirty per cent. on the capital employed. The "California Agriculturist" says: "With the glorious success of our mother country before us, it seems that the working men of the west and the farmers might combine, and by putting the shares at $5 to $10 each, so that all could take part, in a short time could have a substantial coöperative store and manufactory in every town of a thousand inhabitants in the west, and by such a course would dispense with the necessity of shipping our produce to eastern consumers, and paying transportation companies three to four times as much for shipping as the producer gets for raising. When such a movement is organized, there will be no more legislation needed on rail

roads; and they, like all other branches of industry, will have to work for the same that others do, or suspend operations."

CHAPTER XXX.

EXCEPTIONAL CONDITIONS OF THE PACIFIC COAST AFFECTING AGRICULTURAL PROSPERITY.

SUMMARY OF ADVANTAGES: OF DISADVANTAGES---WET AND DRY SEASONS-VARIABILITY OF THE AVERAGE-IRREGULARITY IN EACH YEAR-TABULAR STATEMENT OF EXTREMES OF RAIN-FALL --SEASONS OF DROUGHT-AMOUNT OF RAIN NEEDED TO SECURE A CROP-AMOUNT ACTUALLY DETERMINED--FENCES AND FUEL--FORESTS AND THE RAIN-FALL-FORESTS AND INLAND NAVIGATION.

PATRONS of Husbandry from the older States will naturally seek for reliable information within the Order with regard to the advantages which the Pacific Coast offers to immigration. We shall endeavor to state these with fairness, believing that the presentation of the shady side will yet leave, in the vast area of unoccupied land, in the salubrity of our climate, the range of our productions, and the variety of industries which must necessarily spring from these, conditions of prosperity unequaled on the face of the earth. The early settlers were wont to call this "God's country;" we believe it is most emphatically and peculiarly "man's country," the chosen field of his highest endeavors and accomplishments.

Of the 40,000,000 of acres of tillable land in California alone, there is probably 18,000,000 which can be obtained at a moderate cost and upon favorable terms. Under the Homestead Act the same facilities exist as eastward; but here the farmer is not obliged to house his stock, to build barns, or, in most cases, to clear his land. A chain of valleys, where wheat can be grown without irrigation, extends from Los Angeles northward to the Russian river, with a great number of smaller tributary valleys or offshoots, remarkably adapted to the purposes of diversified farming and stock growing. There are almost as many climates as townships. Directly upon the coast, in the latitude of San Francisco, neither the grape nor semi-tropical fruits will flourish in the open air; yet three miles from Martinez, in the Alhambra vineyards, every desirable variety of the grape, cherry, peach, almond; the orange, lemon and pome

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granate, are grown to perfection. These extremes of variability are found within a few miles of each other.

The "tule" lands are estimated to cover 3,000,000 of acres, and contain the richest soils, to reclaim which, capital is now largely directed. The time is not far distant when they will be covered with the most profitable crops, for which there are all the advantages of cheap water transportation.

But the most marked geographical feature of the Pacific Coast is the great valley which has been so fully treated of in our chapters on irrigation, "of 57,200 square miles in extent, equal to Illinois, Wisconsin, or Michigan, or Iowa, or Ohio and half of Indiana combined, or of half the area of all the Middle States."

All this immense area possesses the working man's climate, a climate resembling that of Italy in its general character, though far more bracing and exhilarating in its effect upon man and animals. The following table, from "Hittell's Resources of California," shows the mean temperatures of January and July, and the difference between them in different localities:

The most serious drawback to California as a farming country, is the frequency of droughts. Oregon and Washington have here an advantage, counterbalanced, to some extent, by their frosts and snows, though the latter seldom involves an utter failure of the crop. In portions of California, two rain