Society was created in 1854, endowed with an appropriation and authorized to hold state fairs in a series which has been unbroken to the present day. The early work of this society had this unique feature. Committees were sent to every point where agricultural effort was being put forth and official report was made of the undertakings and results of all persons with plants and animals so that all might profit by their experience in the pursuit of farming under conditions that were new and strange to all. The whole State was a popular experiment station. The education of the pioneers by this method was rapid and its influence in the promotion of the early agriculture was remarkable. While organizations for holding exhibitions of achievements and for discussion of ways by which they were attained were multiplying, there was now and then an out-cropping of the idea that farmers should effectively organize for promotion of their industry and a fair consideration of it among other vocations. The first organized effort to secure a fair share of product value for producers was by the wool-growers, who formed an association on September 24, 1860, "to provide a remedy against efforts to establish a monopoly in the wool markets of the State," which wool buyers had in good working order at that date and on which the growers combination had a marked deterrent effect. In January 1867 the secretary of the State Board. of Agriculture addressed a "memorial to the people of California" in which it was said: "California is exporting a large number of agricultural products: her grains, wines and wools are quoted in the markets of the world. Our farmers must make themselves familiar not only with our productions and home markets but with markets in which our surplus may be demanded. The channel through which such information may be obtained, to be reliable, should be created and controlled by the farmers themselves. Unless the farmers do so, they are at the mercy of the world and its multitude of sharp, unscrupulous tradesmen, instead of being the independent men they might make of themselves." The result of this movement was the passage of a bill to promote the formation of coöperative industrial associations in the different localities of the State to hold local fairs and collect information, for which the State should furnish an amount of money equal to that locally contributed. The bill failed to receive the signature of the Governor, who was perhaps frightened by the financial possibilities it involved. Five years later, in 1872, the State Board of Agriculture published an inflammatory declaration from which the following is taken: "The truth is the grain merchants, the hucksters, the middle-men, the shippers, the railroads, the sack makers, the law makers, the assessors and the tax collectors manage to hold the agricultural classes in a condition of servitude unparalleled in a free country. "It has been said that these things always regulate themselves. I question if anything regulates itself. The farmers and fruit growers must combine for their own protection, as the grain dealers and hucksters combine for their own profit-otherwise they will continue to labor for the benefit of those who, however useful as a class, produce nothing." Such declarations resulted in a meeting, during the State Fair of 1872, of delegates from various farmers clubs and other local agricultural societies for the avowed purpose of organizing a state-wide association to "serve as a medium of communication between the local clubs, to canvass the condition of the agricultural interests and their relation to the other industries of the State and, if possible, to devise some means for the better promotion and protection of those interests in the future." Thirteen counties were represented and an address was issued to the farmers of the State "setting forth the disadvantages under which the agriculturists as a class are laboring, the grievances which they are suffering and showing the importance of strong and permanent organizations and early and united action." This organization was called the California Farmers Union, the name having of course no relation whatever with the existing Farmers Union, which was organized over thirty years later. This original California Farmers Union in its "address to the farmers of the State" made these two declarations, which will sufficiently indicate the temper of half a dozen others: "When the farmer is so fortunate as to produce a surplus and desires to send that surplus to the best markets, whether at home or abroad, he finds that not only the carrying facilities within his own country but even those of the high seas are as effectually united and combined against him as if owned and controlled by one man, and though the article he has for sale bears a high and remunerative price in those markets, the exorbitant freight demanded and forced from him for moving it leaves no profit. "The customs of these men have grown so burdensome and exacting that in many portions of the State large quantities of perishable products, such as fruits and vegetables, are annually allowed to go to waste rather than send them to market, and the producers are unwilling losers of millions." It is also interesting to note that though several pages of such aggressive agricultural doctrine were spread in the Report of the State Agricultural Society in 1872, not a word about it ever appeared afterwards, and the Report for 1873 shows changes in the list of officers. Even now, nearly half a century later, it is clearly discernible that commercial and transportation interests realized that the farmers were getting troublesome, and caused the leaders of malcontent to be displaced by those who would confine the activities of the State Agricultural Society largely to horse racing, which they did very thoroughly for a decade or more. However, the farmers of 1872 were not wholly cast down by the disaster to their project for a state-wide |