EAST OF ALLEN

Back in the late 1800’s loads of ads and articles touted California’s glories — the mountains, the ocean, the climate, the grapes and the oranges. It’s all familiar stuff to us. And it was effective. Midwesterners moved West by the thousands.

Now, if you were a civic leader in a midwest town, like say Council Bluffs, Iowa, all the moving away would get tiresome. And you might try to counter the pro-California propaganda with a little propaganda of your own. Like maybe get the local paper to run letters telling readers the so-called golden state isn’t quite that golden.

Enter our guest writer for this post — Mr. H. E. No name. Just initials. A big Iowa fan, H.E. wrote a long letter to the editor which ran in the April 20, 1882 Daily Nonpareil. The Nonpareil was the leading newspaper in Council Bluffs. The letter is an interesting piece that is a bit travelogue, a lot critical of California farming, and a whole lot Iowa booster.

The travelogue part is familiar. Mr. H.E. travelled by train from San Francisco down to Los Angeles (commenting the central valley was dismal) and then over to the San Gabriel station. He then took a carriage up to the Sierra Madre Villa where he spent a month. Of the Villa, H.E. reported:

Here we passed a most delightful month. The hotel is located at the very base of the mountains, where the foothills run some 1,200 feet above the sea, and distant from it twenty-two miles. From the porch of the hotel, your vision takes in an immense valley extending to the sea, the ocean itself, and then the great island of Catalina, some 60 miles distant, in the port of Wilmington, 25 miles away.

H.E. then described the San Gabriel Valley, as perhaps only a farmer would describe it:

This wide valley is about two-thirds occupied by vineyards, orchards of tropical fruits and nuts, cattle ranches and wheat fields. A large portion is very highly cultivated, more like a garden than a farm. The soil is ploughed and harrowed until every weed is destroyed, and every lump of earth pulverized. I never saw such high cultivation in the east. But here, where the weeds grow nearly all the year round, nothing but continuing labor will keep them down. The labor of the cultivator is increasing, and ploughing and harrowing apparently never ends.

Mr. H.E. took advantage of the good weather to travel the countryside and visit the winemaking operation at L.J. Rose’s Sunnyslope. Impressed with the Rose ranch, H.E. added that, of course, Rose is from Iowa.

But, while H.E. was willing to give the Villa and Sunnyslope its due, he was not so kind about the farming he saw. Southern California, H.E. wrote, was not good for a small farmer. The place lacks water, requires too much labor and land is too expensive. Iowans, H.E. concluded, should stay in Iowa.

All of their lands have to be irrigated, and one does not wonder that they are held at fabulous prices, when the great cost of getting them into cultivation, and the greater cost of keeping them in cultivation is considered.…

My observation in California convinces me that it is no place for a poor man seeking a home. He can, to be sure, make a living, but land is so high, the cost of cultivation so great, and the future of the fruit culture so uncertain, that none but large land owners who can farm on a great scale, with all the modern machinery can hope for ultimate success.

I would not advise any Iowa man to leave his state unless compelled to do so on account of his health. That is the only inducement that California holds out to a man of moderate means. I think there are more disappointed men in this state than in any other; men who have worked hard, struggled manfully, but are overcome by the difficulties that are peculiar to the country. The soil is wonderfully productive, but the want of water, the long dry season, the cost of irrigation, the constant labor, the distance to market are great drawbacks and difficult to overcome. Happy Iowa!
H. E.

Postscript

I came across this piece by H.E. while I was researching our Catalogue of Known Paintings of William F. Cogswell, which is in the East of Allen research library. The more I learn about Mr. Cogswell, the more I am amazed at the reach of that man’s connections.

In 1872, Cogswell was in Council Bluffs to paint the portrait of that city’s most celebrated citizen, Gen. Grenville Dodge. General Dodge, incidentally, lived an incredible life — educated as a civil engineer, he was the youngest Union general, led Grant’s spy corps, survived a bullet to his head, and surveyed thousands of miles of train track. H.E. mentions both Dodge and Cogswell in his letter and, though he does not say so, I would not be surprised if H.E. met Cogswell during the artist’s visit in 1872.

And, it should not be surprising that Cogswell’s portraits of Gen. Dodge and his wife, Ruth Anne, today hang in the Historic General Dodge House in Council Bluffs.

So, that’s how I found the H.E. letter. Once found, I was interested in H.E.’s opinion of farming practices here — that the ground was constantly harrowed to control weeds, and his view that land costs were too too high for anyone of modest means to make a living as a farmer. Certainly some of what H.E. observed in 1882 carries on to this day with the water challenges, high land costs, economic challenges and, of course, weeds. Though H.E. was writing to convince his Iowa neighbors to stay in the Hawkeye state, for the most part his critique still rings true. For that reason, I thought H.E.’s letter would make a good post.