The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 9, 1903, Page 23

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1908, IFORNIA of to-day has passed the stege of experiment very largely It has reached a period wherein 80 much that has béen desired has come to fruition, and & larger scale than could have been o4 for & few years ago, as to afford e “L'd by which to consider the future. the past five years the fuel problem of the Btate has been completely solved ost incalculable Kern and o - Supplementary to these tt evelopment of electrical power has been sccomplifhed on a very e scale, from the me- al ensrgy at a m o sam neipal por merce by sea co passage of com- s old ac- ernment, by whi great coaling stat planned as deen : has demonstrated the se of ew fuel and stand in lleu of eased the transcontinental its gates, and ready to wel- »on to come. It has enlarged 4 trade area vastly w methods and s State, indus- VS, 2 new Commercial Bodies Have in Charge Interests of Whole State. there agement ( rea Sbarboro St is also the pre Catif Promorion Com- n that wae formed about California f Board of Trade has g ce. It keeps in . nterests of Cali- p rge, permanent ifor products in Ferr ng at the foot of Market P. Chipwan is its is the voresident of mber of Commerce, which considers and s that relate to the wel- commerce of San Fran- takes lively intcrest in sco Board of Trade, of atkins the president, wholesale houses E considers public ques- £ 8 . n ground with the San ¥ s t of Commerce. ercial Museum was e commerce of the t with the coun- ent, with the islands of 5 with the repub- Central America, It useful work along these T of the Pacific Com- merclal Museum is Eugene Goodwin. Along the shores of the bay of San Francisco the smoke of scores of new manufacturing enterprices daily arises, showing the increasing commer- cial importance of the entirs State. Los Angeles, the great city of the southland, has had a large growth. Its bullding operations have been extensive; its de- velopment solld and satisfactory. All parts of California have steadlly Iim- proved in a material way: accumulating wealth; giving rise to new enterprises; t ing old lines of endenvor; jus- ifylng the hopes of the well wishers st comme al'th that coast line of £ miles forty-second parallel of ing the forward march of may be well to grasp one t as a key 1 of to all develop- California is u fact that the gold output ins $16,000,000 per annum on d often it that surpasses mining industry has been allude > at some length on the page. It is more than half a old The newer principal for extended mentio ng asked what home m manufacturi he greatest promise for the for undoubtedly Iture. Areas devoted to g ge. In many pl that were wing w ia would indicate exclusively been ~f hav ranch, which ave n ambition to raise at per annum on discarded hes have been turned orchards or vineyvards or wine grapes. So in wheat growing has di- , but other virgin lands brought under cultivation in 1 barley. For a century at least s forever California will be a to the credit of supply- a large amount of daily bread to the citizens of I of the United States, ands of the Pacific Ocean and tries of the Orient Fruit growing in California is one strik- g indication of the extent to which this e has digressed in one direction from ol1 positio almost exclusively a T tate. Figures and con- ent facts in this regard are striking furnish a rarely interesting theme lative observer of Califor- advancement. authority in California on e to the fruit industry in bably General N. P. Chip- annually, for a period of 3 s, compiled a comprehensive review of material conditions for the California State Board of Trade. There are 40,000, - 000 fruit trees in bearing in California, as n by the returns of County Asses- Undoubtedly many trees escape the of the Assessors and the full it could be made, would be more imposing, Oranges are grown 000,000 trees; lemons on 1,500,000 trees. e represented in round fig- e following approximate show- been ny wheat ra > fruit able tions mant rope, its gold attent on showing, r fruits a ples, 200 trees; almonds, 1000 trees; apricot, 2305200 tree: 1,000 trees; figs, 200,00 trees; 1.000.00 trees; peaches, approxi- 6,000,000 trees. The remainder of 40,000,000 trees before mentioned Is ivided between the pear, plum, nec- prune, quince, walnut, pomelo and lesser revresented varfetics. Wonderful Development Shown by Shipments of Last Year. arine )T less must attention be centered Nnn the wide distribution of the olive orchards - of California as showing climate and soifl adapted to the production of fruit. In twenty counties, from Shasta County on the north to Kern County, which is next north of the Tehachapi range of moun- tains, the generally accepted boundary between Northern California and South- ern California, there are growing 600,000 olive trees. In 1887 California cut little figure In the fruit market outside of its own limits. In 1890 the shipments had reached 16,000 car- loads of ten tons each. In 1901 they amounted to aslittle more than 65,000 car- loads of ten tons each. The shipments of vegetables have grown from a trifling amount to more than %000 carloads. The beet sugar industry has expanded. The output in 1%2 was 75,090 tons, as against 2000 tons in 1888 und there remain thou- sands of acres of sugar beet lands awalt- ing cultivation. General Chipman says: The table of comparative gains and losses of 1902 over the output of 1901 shows a gain in green deciduous and cured fruits, raisins, puts, wines and grape brandy and a loss In citrus and canned fruits and vegetables. The Joss in citrus fruits was 9820 carloads of ten tone each, 200 carloads in canned fruit, 2216 carloads of vegetables. The gains were: 671.7 carloads of green deciduous fruits, 4405.7 car. loads of dried fruits. 426.1 carloads of raisins, 245.7 carloads of nuts and 262.9 carloads of ‘wine and brandy—the net decrease being 6183.8 carloads. The decrease in citrus frults alone was ope-third more than the net loss. The sits of all kinds showed a gain of »ade. We sent out of the State rafl The citrus mmences in next year. whole S: 1 the erc 000,000, had a value and the beet E ss. But all these to- gether, $28,000,000, lacked $7.- the export value to the ar d, garden and vineyard vear 1%2 Northern California, Iying her own large home de- 2 nt out of the State for con- sumption 483450 carloads’ of green decidu- ous fruits, dried fruits, raisins. canned fruf nu citrus fruits, win and brandy and vegetables. In the same twelve months the shipments abroad from Southern California amounted, of the same products, to 35279 carloads, or §3,729 carloads for the entire State. It would require a train 500 miles long to carry all this frultage if moved at once, which may convey some idea of the ex- tent to whic this direction, the State has advanced frox . being only a gold min- ing loc Orange ( ty, in Southern California, ships nearly 1000 carloads of celery to the A A, THATHINGS o PEESIDEN T I 58y FRaczsco POLED SF TRADE—- East per annum, and the general ship- ments of vegetables eastward has become a large item for consideration. Fres- no has become the center of a vast raisin industry of California. A large prune industry centers in Santa Clara County. Nearly all the deciduous fruits, green and cured, ralsins and canned fruit, wines and brandy, that are shipped out of California go from great orchards in the north. Nearly all the citrus fruits that are shipped grow in the southern portion of California, but about 2000 car- loads were shipped last year from the northern and central part of the State. The shipments of vegetables are about equally divided between the northern and southern portions of the BState. The southern portion produces most of the walnuts and the northern and central portions produce the greater bulk of the almonds. Incidentally it may be remarked in con- sidering the large developments of the State’s industries, that the dairy output of California In 1502 amounted to $18,323,- WY RAZCOk FRES JYrRHANTS ZRCTDIE Progress in Arts. 556 in value. The wheat crop of 1%01-2 in this State amounted to 931013 tons. Bar- ley made a showing in clearances for ex- port from San Francisco of 4,281,182 centals. TBESIDENT. S LA AT | 2 PP S s AIESOCIT IO L/o‘ CALIFORNZ s ~~ T, Oil Gushes From Earth to Drive Machinery of Manufacture. OURTEEN districts in California Fnre now producing the crude petro- leum upon which largely rests the hope of California to greatly extend fts fleld of manufacturing. Three thousand wel's are ylelding ol freely. The principal producing dis- tricts are the Kern River, Sunset, Mc- Kittrick and Midway districts in Kern County, and the Coalinga district in Fres- no County; the Fullerton district in Or- ange County and the Santa Maria or Car- reaga district in Santa Barbara County. The smaller producing districts are Los Angeles, Puente, Whittler, Ventura, Sum- merland, Bread Canyon and San Mateo. These points range geographically from Southern California to a point only a few miles from the city of San Franeciseo. The southern districts have been producers for a long term of years. The promise is that several districts will produce for many years to come. Dr. C. T. Deane, secretary of the Cali- fornia Petroleum Miners’ Assoclation, makes the following estimate of the pro- ductive capacity of the ofl flelds that have been discovered in Kern County alone} The life of an ofl district depends upon the number of proven acres and depth of the oil sand. Experts contend that about 20 per cent of the sand is ofl, and that about 80 per cent of the ofl contained in the sand can be recovered; consequently, In a district where o, 27 the sand is 300 feet thick there should be a lttle less than 500,000 barrels to the acre, or & patch of twenty acres, roughly speaking, should give 8,000,000 barrels. It is claimed by many of the most careful experts that about 10,000 acres in these four districts, Viz.: Kern River, Sunset, Midway and McKittrick have been proven; by proven We mean that ‘wherever on these acres you sink a well you will most probably get oll, so that if you have 10,000 acres of land, with sand 300 feet thick (the real fact 18 that on a great deal of the above lands the sand is over 500 feet thick), we ought to have close to 500,000 barrels to the acre, or aliowing for first and second class land at least 2,000,000,000, barrels of oll, so thero is no meed of this generation Worrying much whether it will last our time. The discovery of the Kern River district ofl has led to the establishment of a great refining plant by the Standard Ofl Com- pany on the east shore of the Bay of San Francisco, which must be considered as one of the chief manufacturing enter- prises situated in this State. The shrewd men at the head of the Standard Oil Company have put their seal upon :ine claim that the ofl supply is vast and permanent by investing millions of dol- . the various lines of creative effort. lars in bufldings, machinery and a pipe line hundreds of miles long that runs from Contra Costa County to the Kern River flelds, situated about Bakersfleld, the pipe line extending the entire length of the Ban Joaquin Valley. The transcontinental rallway systems are burning large quan- titles of California petroleum to make steam for their locomotives. Ocean steam- ships have found the California fuel to be superior to coal and have altered their furnaces to use oil. Hundreds of power plants in the city of San Francisco adopt- ed ofl as fuel. The crude petroleum is employed in mining operations and may yet be largely employed in smelting. The thoughtful reader at home and abroad will see in this presentation of the general facts about California’s petro- leum industry, necessarily ‘much con- densed to permit other material Interests to be considered fairly, enough to indi- cate that the foundation has been strong- ly and permanently laid for the future greatness of California as a manufactur- ing State. Many refining plants have been established to convert the crude pe- troleum into marketable products. Thers are thirty-three such concerns and they turn out asphalt, lubricants, distillates and coke. Last year California produced 21,624 long tons of asphalt. Parched Desert Yields Rich Niter Deposit to Explorers. LLUSION has been made in a gen- fl eral way to the two comparatively new mineral industries that, as compared with gold mining even, contain so much of yjomise for this State, name- ly copper mJning and niter production. State Mineralogist ,Aubury makes the statement that copper has risen to the place of second importance in the metal- lic production of California. In 1901 the copper output of this State 1,985 pounds, valued at $5,501,782. This gave this State the fourth place in the United States as a copper producer. State Mineralogist Aubury says: California’s copper deposits have a remark- ably wide distribution, being scattered over the length and breadth of the State and oc- curring in nearly every one of the fifty-seven countles. Thousands of deposits have been subjects of mining locations at different times and hundreds have yielded at least a few tons of merchantable ore as a result of superficial prospecting. There s hardly a county in the State that has not, at some time, made at least such small contributions to the copper supply. Such deposits, usually small as far as revealed by slight development, are scattered at varying intervals along the borders of the State and throughout every section of it except the detrital deposits of the valleys. The saline deposits of California have assumed great importance as sources of wealth. The value of borax produced in California in a period of fifteen years, in- cluding 1%01, amounted to $10,458,649; soda, to $1,09,500; salt, to $2,225576. The niter deposits are still to demonstrate their value, so far as official returns are concerned. In a special bulletin issued by the State Mining Bureau the veil of pos- sibilities in that direction is raised, and, while the Industrial advance of Calfor- nia is considered, the statements made offically by the State Mineralogist are of interest: It is tmpossible to give the exact acreage of the lands located for niter, but the following will give some idea of the extent of the bed: The number of acres located In the Owl dis- trict is more than 6000, Saratoga district more than 8000, Upper Canyon about 4000, Lower Canyon about 3000, Round Mountatn and Val- lev more than 3000, Confidence 2500, Salt Springs about 800, Tecopah 2500, Pllot, Danby, Needles and Volcano 8000—a grand total of about 85,000 acres. The minimum thickness of the surface niter is six inches. One acre of ground contains 43,560 square feet. This, at six inches depth, is equal to 21,780 cubie feet. This at seventy pounds per cubic foot amounts to1,524,600 pounds, or 760 tons per acre, say 750 tons, 30,000 acres, allowing 5000 acres to be refected, amounts to 22,000,000 tons. The analyces show that niter exists on some of the claims rich enoush to rival the beds of Chile. The growth of manufacturing in this Btate gives promise of the future. The figures of production are evidence of the present magnitude of manufacturing ope- rations. It is not feasible, with the space at command, to review the advance of any particular industry or to supply a table showing the relative importance of The beet sugar industry has expanded from an output of 1902 short tons in 1838 to 75,- 090 tons In 1%02. The ofl-producing indus- try may be traced approximately. From the annual reports of a series of years the fact is developed that, going back to 1887, the total output of California petro- leum was of the value of only $1,357,144 in total, while the product in 1901, the last date of complete and official statistics, the total was $2,961,102. The price per barrel fell off, owing to the great discov- eries in Kern County, and manutacturing was greatly stimulated by having such cheap fuel; but the quantity produced was vastly greater in 1902 than in 1887, the comparative figures being: Output in the year 1887, 678,572 barrels; output for 1901, total of 2,961,102. Since 1901 the total production is more or less of a matter of surmise, but the figures will show a great advance when they are prepared from all avallable returns. Approximately, it is known that California last year produced from 15,000,000 to 16,000,000 barrels. The present year will lJargely beat the record for 1902. The oll industry will be one of the Sreatest on the Pacifio Coast and If the yearly value of the output does not large- ly surpass the value of the annual gold production of California in a few years all observers of current events are mis- taken. Messengers of Trade Carry Our Products to Every Land. AST year Ban Francisco shipped l merchandise to foreign countries and to the Atlantic States of the United States by sea to the value of $47,601,422, and imported by sea during the same year $36,078,220, making the volume of sea commerce alons $83,679,692 for twelve months. The highest gold production that the State is credited with in any one year is $51,204.700, this be- ing In the year 1852. The foreign trade of this port in 1902 was illustrative of the wide scope of the enterprise of California since the exclusively gold days. Great Britain bought of California mer- chandise to the value of $13,261,433; China, $5,966,519; Australla, $3,488,135; Japan, $4.- 063,710; Central America, $2,263,860; Mexico, $1,643,557; British Columbia, $1,120,170; the Philippine Islands, $1,118,818; South Africa, 733,220; Asiatic Russia, $214,813. Last year San Francisco exported in treasure $14,851,789. The treasure imports during the same twelve months amounted to $10,692,232. The salling vess arriving at thle past in 1902 from foreign and At- lantic ports wumbered 431, and the steam- ships arriving from foreign and Atlantic ports numbered 418. During 1902 there wera cleared from this port 429 sall and 423 steam vessels. California supplies itself very largely with food, wines, etc. Its foreign markets and American markets are steadily ex- panding. In 1901-02 San Francisco exported 107 centals of wheat, 1,178,215 barrels of flour, 4,281,182 centals of barley. The value of the wheat and flour that was shipped last year was §14,455,321. The pack of canned goods last year amounted to 2,141,650 cases, each containing twenty-four tins of 2% pounds each. Growth of this port was also manifested by the Increass in the customs receipts, which reached the large total for the year 1902 of $7,648,- 433 83. Beven years earller, namely, in 1805, the total annual customs recefpts were but 35,485,897 12. The internal reverus col- lections for the last full calendar year were $2,892,760 3. Of this total the sum of $1,040,361 36 was paid on spirits. The latest authoritative figures con- cerning the extent of the manufacturing industries of California are found in the census reports of 190. According to that authority, the total value of all manufac. tured Califorina products in the named was $302,8 h was an crease of $89,470, The v of live stock in California on January 1903, is estimated by the United States Bureau of Agriculture at $79,067,976. Man new Industries have been started each year since 1900, and the output of manu- factures during the year 1%3 will greatly exceed those of any preceding twelve months in the history of California. In the five years from 1807 to the close of 1902, the bank clearances of San Francisco rose from $750,789,143 91 to $1,373,362,025 31 Last year wine and brandy were shipped out of the State by sea and rail to the amount of 8368 carloads of ten tons each. The lumber production of the State in 1902 reached the total of 3,179,680 feet The reader will probably be filled with amazement that in one State should ex- ist such great diversity and magnitude of products. The facts must remain sadly incomplete without, at least, a cur- sory glance at the great ship bullding dustry that centers at Francisco. The naval construction at this port by the Union Iron Works, in a period of fourteen years, for the United States, has included the battleships Oregon and V consin, the cruisers Charleston, °San Francisco, Olympia, Tacoma, California, port of San South Dakota and Milwaukee; the gun- boats Marietta and Wheeling; the moni- tors Monterey and Wyoming; the tor- pedo boat Farragut, the torpedo boat de- stroyers Perry, Preble and Paul Jones; the submarine boats Grampus and Pike. The values represented by this fleet of twenty vessels is $27,165,000 for construc- tion only. Some of these ships nave world wide reputations, especially the Oregon and the Olympia, The Japanese cruiser Chitose, that cost $1,500,000, was built at the Union Iron Works. So were the steamships Alaskan, Arizonan and Cal- fornian, the Peru, St. Paul, Senator, Po- mona, Spokane, Helene, Mauf, Liki-liki and other steam vessels, Since 1887 there have been constructed on the Pacific Coast and documented at San Francisco more than 600 steam and sail vessels, the collective values of which run high into the millions of dollars. At the date of the last completed fig- ures for the whole State, the value of the property of California for assessment purposes was $1,2% X the returns be- ing for the year 1%02. The total value of property in California in 1852, when gold was at flood tide in this State, was $64,- 519,375. Perhaps a stronger-contrast be- tween the material conditions in “the days of gold” and those of the present day cannot be found than in this adver- sion to the matter of real values.