Chapter II: Part 2

I took daily tours to many of the suburban towns in twenty and thirty miles radius. Culver City, Santa Monica, Venice, Beverly, Hollywood, Long Beach, Redondo, Pasadena, Pomona, Claremont, Ontario, San Gabriel, Burbank, etc. These are all beautiful spots. Some of them are real little cities with every modern facility. I thought at the time of my visit that if people who live under such an environment as I saw were not happy, they have no need to go to heaven when they die. They told me that I ought to have made my trip in the summer when I could see the country in its glory. I went in an auto bus to San Bernardino seventy miles through the country to the orange show. It is called the Gate City to Southern California. The county itself is a wonder in its output of fruits and walnuts, oranges especially. I saw millions of bushels of the yellow fruit everywhere for miles and miles till the eye tired of seeing what I called an awful waste of nature’s products. The city is called the commercial center of the orange belt. It is a beautifully laid out city with semi-tropical plants growing everywhere, luxuriantly beautiful. The show takes up more than an acre of ground, and oranges were blended in the most gorgeous display in every conceivable figure. Oranges, lemons, grape fruit and their by-products by the millions.

The trip through the valley took me over the finest roads in the world. They could not be finer. I was more than interested to pass “Garrett and Company’s” vineyards, one of the homes of the Virginia Dare products. Mr. Garrett himself is an Enfield, N. C., man. The extracts are bound to be right if it is “Virginia Dare.”

What is said of any one of the southern counties may be well said of any other, except perhaps the “Imperial Valley County.” I did not go to that county, but from what I heard about the county it looks as if a special edict was issued from the maker of all the counties to do some special work on that county alone. It was the last county formed in the state, and its area is more than four thousand square miles. It is in the extreme southwest part of the state. The lay of the land, the soil itself, the climate, location, altitude make it the best place in the world for stock raising and fruit production. There are more turkeys grown in this one county than in other similar sections in the world.

I was very much impressed with the fine school houses and churches. No money or care seemed to be lacking in the construction of these important centers. Every one I saw in the country or city was decked with profusive growths of shrubbery and flowers. While I was in Spokane, the city claimed the lowest death rate per thousand of its populations. When I was in Seattle that city claimed the same thing. When I was in Tacoma they claimed they had the lowest death rate; when in Sacramento they claimed to have the lowest death rate. In San Francisco they claimed the lowest death rate; Oakland claimed the same; Los Angeles claimed the lowest also. When we were crossing the Tehachapi Mountains ten thousand feet elevation I saw a fine graveyard up further on the side of the hill, and I was surprised. They might have been soldiers killed in the war. One almost wonders why folks should ever die in such a beautiful country. Conditions are so good for living right along. Good churches, excellent schools, clean cities, perfect climate, all must contribute greatly to long life. They ought to be happy, but happiness cannot be bought with luxuries; it contributes more than anything else to long life when other conditions are good.

The city of Los Angeles is twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean, and I venture to predict that in less than twenty years the city will extend and include Venice, Santa Monica, Long Beach and all the little coast towns along the water front, and the largest ocean vessels will be doing business in the heart of the business section as they are in Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland. Their population will soon be in the millions. It is growing by leaps and bounds every day, every week and every month. Fourteen thousand people come there every year. The people are busy everywhere. They have the secret of getting a larger population. Create industrial interests and the folks follow. Good schools and good churches; a community in which there is compatibility between all classes and not hatred. These are the best drawing cards.

One does not travel many miles in California without asking questions. Many of the questions will have to be answered by history. Cortez, Juan Rodriguez, Cabrillo, Don Gasper de Portola, Fray Junipero Serre are familiar names in its early history. The country was known as Alta and Baja, which was upper and lower California. It began in the extreme southern part of the state and went as far north as the foot of man could tread. The old maps show the southern part of the state as being a part of Mexico. It was sometimes called the land of the Heart’s Desire. To use the words of another it was in 1769, “That destiny marked Southern California for its own, ordering the fig and the vine to make soft the dessert wastes, lemon and orange bloom for the upland slopes, herds for a thousand hills, living water to make green the sun-browned land; and, last, not the dream of seven mythical cities of gold, but the bright reality of thrice seven times seven golden cities that now throb with the tides of commerce and the tread of countless feet.”

At the beginning of its history the King of Spain ordered that in order to make the country safe for Spain and its religion, that missions should be established. Under the orders of the great Catholic church fifteen or more missions were established—fifteen of them along the coast. My trip back to San Francisco, five hundred miles north, took me along the Pacific Coast in sight of many of these missions. We follow what was called the “Highway of the King.” Those we passed were San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, San Miguel, and Santa Clara. The southern part of the state especially owes a lot to these early missionaries. They gave harbor to the traveler, irrigated the land and started the early settlers and Indians to farming.

From San Francisco to Los Angeles along the coast is a country backed by mountains of great height and beauty with slopes and valleys surpassing any description. For hundreds of miles our train slipped right along the edge of the Pacific waters, sometimes forty or a hundred feet above these waters, sometimes nearer, then off on a hill top, then across an arm of the sea, then headlong toward the water as if to go right into it, only to swerve around some high hill and then out into some beautiful valley. You have to see it to appreciate it.

Passing San Fernando, Oxnard, Ventura, we come to Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara County. The county is mountainous and has four large valleys. The valleys are the Santa Ynez, Los Alamos, Lompoc, and Santa Maria. The last named valley is said to have four hundred square miles, and can support ten times its population. Mustard seed is the leading agricultural product in the county. The whole county is well adapted to all vegetables and fruits that are common to that part of the state. I saw many orchards of great size. It is said that three-fifths of the prunes and three-fourths of the apples grown in the state grow in these valleys adjacent to the coast. This is due to the fact that perhaps the rainfalls is greater than further inland. Printed matter on this section tell us that the products of this coast range are the following: beet sugar, wheat, barley, hay, garden seed, oil, coal, asphaltum, cement, lime, live stock, butter and cheese, fruits, berries, vegetables, olive oil, walnuts.

I saw great flocks of sheep, cattle and horses. Millions of wild ducks, and we were never out of sight of sea gulls. They are the scavengers on land and water. I was fortunate in meeting people here and there who could give me lots of the sort of information I wanted.

As our train rounded the coast of Santa Barbara we caught sight of the Islands of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel. They may have been thirty miles to our left.

Passing Point Conception, a lighthouse here and there, a large open field in the actual making, or a sandhill thrown up in the past few months, crossing Santa Maria River, leaving Lompoc and Ynez Valleys behind, we came to San Louis Obispo. Great quantities of oil are delivered to this port for shipment. It is also the seat of the state polytechnic school. The rainfall here is very light, so that farming is not profitable. The western slopes of the mountains for nearly a hundred miles afford good grazing for cattle and sheep. The water is largely mist from the Pacific Ocean with a very low rainfall. At this point our train leaves the sight of the coast and we climb the Coastal Range, being pulled by three powerful steam engines up an elevation of great height, more than seven thousand feet, and head into the Salinas and Santa Clara Valley. Salinas Valley has an area of 500,000 acres and the two valleys are almost 150 miles in length and fifty miles wide. We head toward “Bishop Peak” no less than four times climbing this mountain. We go down into Monterey County and follow the Salina River till we get to Monterey Bay near Del Monte. Santa Cruz is our next stop. We pass the Lick Observatory. We enter Santa Clara Valley crossing the mountains by the same name. We also pass Stanford University. We leave San Mateo County on the left and we speed along. We pass San Jose. Dark covers us, but at Redwood City we come into sight of San Francisco Bay and thirty miles further we are in San Francisco again.

Five hundred miles are covered in about fourteen hours. The mountain ranges on both sides for several hundred miles, and the mountain on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other for several more hundred miles with an ever changing view of mountain inclines, rivers, valleys, irrigation projects here and there, the excitement of high elevation, crossing some divide, farming operations throughout the entire course, fruit orchards, vineyards, gardens, great flocks of sheep, cattle, etc., chateaux, villages, mining operations and oil wells. This is the panorama that simply bewitches the brain. It was such as this that the old colored preacher saw when he could no longer contain his emotions when he said, “My God, look at that Glory.” It is glory, and the man whose soul does not feel it is dead. Add to this the ocean scene with every angle the train makes, the steamers away out, the sunset behind these beautiful waters, and do you wonder that I have been dreaming this thing every night since I had the experience of it. It gets into your soul in some way. Some one has said, “Its all California from east to west, from north to south.” I traveled two thousand miles in the state alone in every direction. The inspiration is the same.

I spoke in one of the largest churches out there, heard some of the finest speakers in the world, saw some of the best shows, tramped over some of the orange, apple, fig, prune and berry orchards, bee and poultry yards. I visited soldiers’ homes, city parks, city museums and farms in the country. I visited some of the best schools in the West and Northwest, including the state universities where they are really doing things.

Our eyes are now set toward the east and home. We are at San Francisco. Before we leave here we must revert to the lower part of the state again. The city of Los Angeles gets its water from a distance of more than two hundred miles from the snow-capped slope of Mount Whitney. They are the highest mountains in the United States, except in Alaska. The aqueduct is the largest in the world. The reservoirs are located in the San Fernando Valley. The pipes taking this water from its source to its outlet are eight to ten feet in diameter. Forty miles of this water is run in open lined canals. The line was pointed out to me many miles out of Los Angeles by a fellow traveler who knew the history of its construction.

As one travels from north to south in this state and from east to west he is very much impressed with the great network of wires stretched everywhere, apparently reaching every farmhouse and factory. These are high-powered electric wires carrying power to the industrial centers and to the farms for light and power—for power more than light. Water has to be supplied to all the farms by irrigation. Where gravity does not do the work they must depend on pumps. The electric power is used to run the pumps. This power is generated by the mountain streams hundreds of miles away. The great power plants are largely owned by companies in the East. The irrigation projects, I presume, are the most wonderful in the world. I was advised that it cost about eight dollars an acre to get the canals into operation.

Another interest of great importance in the growth of a country is the public roads. The roads were universally good. I traveled several hundred miles over the public roads in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, and for the long stretches I never saw better roads.

Hollywood, which is really a part of the larger city, is a very pretty place. The streets are paved and there was not a shoddy nor a cheaply constructed house to be seen. I counted seven moving picture studios. I had no idea that these studios were built on so vast a scale. It seems that all the stars in the moving picture world have their studios here, and their fine homes—Charlie Chaplin, Douglass Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and others. Many of the great meat packers of Chicago, Omaha and Denver have million-dollar homes in or near this little suburb. The south side of Beverly Hills is covered with these expensive homes.

There are a number of these studios in Culver City. This is a small place about fifteen miles toward the Pacific from Los Angeles. The dominating genius of it is Mr. Harry Culver. Ten years ago it was not born, and today it has a population of about two thousand people. The little railroad station, the little homes, the well paved streets and business houses, all show signs of taste and industry. Here is where “Fatty Arbuckle” got his start, and his studio is still there as a reminder. Several boulevards and electric lines pass through the town from Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean, which is only five miles away. Venice, with a dozen other settlements along the coast for ten or more miles, is the Coney Island of Southern California. Street cars and boulevards give one ready access to every part of the beach. They have all the eating houses, cheap shows, swindling games and junk shops for the attractions.

The building lots in some of these little villages are sold under restrictions. I was curious to know the restrictions. Houses that are put on them must not cost less than twenty-five hundred dollars, and no lot shall be sold to any one except purely Anglo-Saxon—a fine opportunity for unanimity of spirit and exclusiveness if not tested under the state law by some ubiquitous spirit.

The problem of racial identity is a complex one in that country. I saw Mexicans who looked all the world like Negroes, and Negroes who looked all the world like Mexicans. Their language was the only distinguishing features, and in many cases the Negroes were better clad and better groomed. Negroes spoke the unadulterated English language. Their Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana or Texas previous environment may have given them more of the Southern brogue. The Mexicans have clung to their Spanish tongue or some broken dialect. Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Porto Ricans and others form another group. Then there is another group from northern Europe and southern Europe belonging to the white races, and all these units speak a language of their own and follow largely the customs of their country. I wondered who was _fit_ and who could _qualify_ under “The Restrictions.”

I will say nothing about Chicago, but let me start at Butte, Montana. From Butte, Montana, to Spokane, Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland, Fresno, Los Angeles to the least city in the West there are all sorts of secret organizations and labor unions, selfish and otherwise, cliques and clans, to whom you must pay obeisance. Add to this the rankest Bolsheviki spirit, from the four ends of the earth, and you have a problem worth the attention of our best statesmen.

I have been trying to get away from San Francisco, but it is hard to leave a community of so inviting environment. I can only name a few places now that are strikingly full of interest. Here is the Golden Gate Park, over yonder a short distance the Presidio, a little further around on the bay the Art Palace. Here is where the exposition was held. Down on the beach are the Sutro baths and cliff houses. From this fine eminence I saw seven seals, some sleeping, some bathing, some growling. They were on the rock a few hundred feet off the beach. Rural paintings in the museums, depicting wild animal life in their natural setting with the mountain background, etc., were very real.

The Southern Pacific station, located between Third and Fourth streets, and the ferry at the foot of Market Street, or at the head possibly, are works of art. They are the last word on station building. Market Street has four electric lines, and it is the leading thoroughfare of the city. Practically all the other streets of the city run into it at some angle. Sixteen blocks from the ferry is the civic center. Here are located the city auditorium, which seats ten or twelve thousand people, the courthouse, one of the finest buildings in the state next to the capitol itself, the city library, and one of the high schools. These are circled about a square which has a large fountain of flowing water. A very large area of the city was burned when the earthquake was some years ago, but this has been rebuilt so well and completely that one would never know it. I went over most of this area.

I visited the University of California, which is located in Berkley, and had only time to go through the library and agricultural building. They have a campus of 264 acres and an enrollment of ten thousand students. They have a theater that seats ten thousand people. They have a tower 302 feet high built of white granite. In this tower is located the clock and chimes. They have in mind a large project for an athletic field and stadium. This will be located back of the college in the hills, which is the property of the college. Oakland is the San Francisco terminal of three trans-continental railroads. They are the Southern Pacific, the Western Pacific, and the Santa Fe.

We take the Western Pacific for Sacramento at 9 o’clock in the morning. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon we have made the trip of more than a hundred miles through the San Joaquin Valley and again into Sacramento Valley. We spend a part of two days here. The state capitol is a very fine building. The ground adjoining the building forms the finest park in the world. They have searched all the world to find trees and rare plants for this wonderful park. They have them from every known country and from every accessible community. Many of these trees were in full bloom the 28th of February when I was there. An officer of the grounds told me to find the keeper and he would give me all the cuttings I wanted, but unfortunately I could not find him.

The city is located in rather a flat country. It has not been a great many years, geologically, since this was all under water and a part of San Francisco Bay. The two large rivers intersecting this valley have done their work in transporting silt, sand and debris from the mountains so well that most of the community is inhabited. The periodical overflow of these rivers still gives the traveler an idea that it is a part of the bay. I saw nearly a hundred miles of it under water, when I wondered how the farmers got from the house to the barn.

We leave Sacramento at midnight on the Western Pacific Railroad for Salt Lake City, Utah. We pass Marysville, which we have already seen on our southern journey, Oroville a little further north, and we follow the Feather River and the Feather River Canyon. At daylight we find ourselves climbing the mountains again in snow several feet deep. The canyons are narrow and deep. The mountains above are beautiful, rugged. Vegetation and all sorts of timber come into sight again. The mountain streams are beautiful and clear. We arrive at Reno Junction about 10 o’clock in the morning. At Paxton we pass the little narrow gauge road leading into Indian Valley. The canyons look too narrow for another railroad, but just below us clinging to the rocks and the mountains the little road leads off into another mining section and through gorges that look impassable.

Of the more than two hundred stations along the way a great many of them are scarcely stopping places. A few are only places for the train crew to examine the cars. At Reno Junction, Nevada, we come into a country that is more open, and where the population is larger.

We cross Honey Valley, Winnemucca Valley, scale the Virginia Range, and come into Smoke Creek Desert, pass to the right of Granite Peak, and we come into Black Rock Desert. We pass what is called the Alkali Flats. This is a vast area of country with no vegetable growth of any sort. Nothing can grow on it. This reminds one of a very large bowl. We are moving along with great speed through the valley with the side of the bowl towering up at a tremendous height. We cross the Antelope Range in the northern part of Granite Spring Valley. A few miles further we come into the little town of Winnemucca. This is a railroad center and a cattle country.

We are in Humboldt County and follow Humbolt River. We have passed Winnemucca Peak, Black Butte, the Eugene Mountains, and other points of interest and beauty. It would tire the reader to follow us for the next several hundred miles through this tortuous river course, through large and small valleys, through mountain gorges, up the side of mountain ranges, over some of the highest peaks, under the tunnels and through great banks of snow. At Sulphur we passed several men and their horses with a big mountain lion they had just killed. The government pays twenty-five dollars for each lion killed. They are destructive to sheep. The Denver Sunday papers had the incident written up in the papers Sunday following the killing.

We cross the Desert Range at Wendover, Utah, and strike out for forty-eight miles through the Great Salt Lake Desert, leaving Grass Mountain Summit to our left, we enter another range of mountains to emerge near the south end of Salt Lake. I do not know the area of the Great Salt Lake Desert, but it is a very large area numbering perhaps several thousand square miles of country. Water and irrigation would do it no good. It looks like desolation carried to the nth degree. It must have been at some time a part of the Salt Lake. It supports absolutely no vegetation of any sort. It is a barren waste.

There is no other place in the world exactly like Salt Lake and Salt Lake City. The city is eighteen miles from the Lake. One cannot drown in the water of this lake because of the density of the water.

The city is one of the best laid out in the world. The mentioning of Salt Lake City suggests to you at once the Mormon Church. This church was organized in 1830 in the state of New York. The Mormons located later in Kirkland, Ohio, and there erected a temple which is said to be standing today. The church was persecuted, and Joseph Smith was martyred. It was moved from place to place, and finally Brigham Young, its President, had a vision. He saw a land in the far west, and was directed to go to this remote country, far away from persecutions, where the colony might worship in their own way. They started out for this far country, and were many months making the trip. The party was composed of 143 men, three women and two children, and three colored servants. The names of all are on the fine monument at the head of the principal street of the city.

When they had reached the place the President said, “This is the place I saw in the vision.” The men were advised to go to work at once on small farms. The first year they grew a good crop by irrigation, but about the time the crops matured the cricket’s came and almost ate the crops. The sea gulls from the lake eighteen miles away came and ate up the crickets. This saved the pioneers. They have in the sacred square a monument to the sea gulls. It is known as the Temple Square. The temple is the most unique building in the world. It was forty years in construction, and it cost a million dollars. It is built of native gray granite which was hauled by teams for more than twenty miles away.

The Tabernacle standing in the same square is also a unique construction. It will seat ten thousand people and has in it one of the best organs made. The building is a “long, oval shape, dome top. The hearing qualities are perfect. One may drop a pin in a hat or on the floor, and two hundred feet away, at the other end of the auditorium, hear it fall.” No nails are used in its construction. Pillows support the arches, while wooden pegs tied with raw hide support the individual pieces.

The gray stone Assembly Hall, where relics and art collections are kept, is also in the same square.

One should visit the state capital. It is located on one of the nearby mountains. This mountain is at the head of several streets and had an electric line running around it and to the top. The building itself is one of the finest in the country. It has large granite supports measuring three or four feet in diameter, twenty or more feet in length, of Georgia marble, polished to a finish, each weighing twenty-five thousand pounds. These great pillows were brought from Georgia on forty-six cars.

One could spend weeks in this fine building studying the art of it and the great display of relics of the early pioneer life. Several Mormon sisters have charge of the collections, and they are very interesting as well as very entertaining.

We leave Salt Lake City, and forty miles east we come to Provo. We are more than four thousand feet in elevation. It is called the “Garden City.” It is near the Wasatch Mountains. We pass through the Provo Canyons. This is unlike anything else we have seen. We climb the mountains overlooking a most beautiful valley off to the left with a very fine stream said to contain trout. There are fine homes and orchards and many flocks of sheep and cattle. There is some mining a few miles across the valley on the opposite mountain side.

A railroad stretches across the valley to connect with this mine from the main line. A few apple orchards. Some fine red barns. The meadows evidently afford a great deal of hay. Hundreds of stacks of hay, as green as if just cut, dotted the valley. We are in several feet of snow and being drawn by several massive steam engines. Up, up, up we go till we reach Soldiers’ Summit, seven thousand and four hundred feet high. Your heart begins to beat a little faster, some one has the headache, another has bleeding of the nose. If you have slept all the way through the valley and up the mountains you will begin to wake up when you reach this high elevation. Unless your heart is seriously affected you do not need to worry, for you are in this elevation only a few minutes, when you begin to drop to normal altitude for these parts. The snow is about six feet deep and sparkling. The air is fine and pure, and your mouth grows dry for some of the crystal liquid you have just passed. It comes from crags and crevices for more than a half mile above you, scarcely missing the sides of your train as it passes its narrow channel.

A crowd of a dozen or more school girls get on the train. They are all the world like our own girls, only they were white, every one of them. They sang songs, made speeches, moved from place to place on the train, recited their lessons, talked kindly of their teachers and their fellows, of the loved ones they have left behind for a few months—they were just school girls, that was all. The tourists, including my lonely self, were glad to have this merry bunch—this innovation to break the monotony. They leave us at Green River, and we settle down again to our usual repose when we are soon disturbed by the news butcher saying, “The mountain ahead is one-half mile high, the canyon ten feet wide, just wide enough for the train to pass.” “It is Castle Gate.” The walls of the red stone stand up like the walls of a sixty-story sky-scraper. On both sides these walls tower up till your neck tires looking up at them.

Here the engineers have defied nature. You follow the river and the canyon, sometimes on this side, sometimes on that side, rising and falling in elevation till you reach Mack, near the state line of Colorado at an elevation of four thousand and five feet. You pass through a valley widening out from a ten-foot gorge to forty or fifty miles, and absolutely fenced all around by these massive walls for fifty or more miles as effectively as if done by the master hand of some giant. We follow Hog Back Canyon and a tributary of the Colorado River. We arrive at Glenwood Hot Springs at 10:30 at night, four hundred miles from Salt Lake City in an elevation of five thousand and seven hundred feet. We stop here for the night and take the 6 a. m. train the next morning for Denver.

We are on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. We pass up the Colorado River Canyon. The road is tortuous, the stream abounds like the waters of “Galore,” the mountain crags are high and precipitous, every foot has tested the skill of the engineer. It is wonderful. We go through Tennessee Pass, sight Mount Jackson toward the west. Mount Elbert to the left more than fourteen thousand feet high is seen. We leave Readville to the left and pass through the richest mining region in the world. Georgetown, Red Cliff, Fair Play, Platt Ranch, Buena Vista, Cripple Creek, Anaconda Goldfield. All these are centers of mining interests. They abound in gold, silver, lead, copper, zinc, etc. We come south from Glenwood Springs to Salida nearly a hundred miles and into the Arkansas River Valley and follow this river to Florence and Pueblo.

It will be remembered that in the summer of 1921 there was a cloudburst in that section of the country, and Pueblo was in the midst of the washout. Hundreds of lives and millions of dollars worth of property were lost. The valley still shows great evidence of that destruction everywhere you look. This was particularly true of the city itself. I stood under the pier of their fine station, and the high water mark was two feet above my head. We are seven hundred miles from Salt Lake City and still seventy-five miles from Denver. We are at Colorado Springs. Denver is our destination for the night. As we leave Cannon City and Florence we sight to our north perhaps a hundred miles Pike’s Peak. This is early in the afternoon, and we do not lose sight of that majestic wonder of the world until we have passed Denver for almost another hundred miles.

We spend four days in Denver very pleasantly and profitably. It is the “Mile High City.” We have left all the mountains behind. The community, including Colorado Hot Springs and Denver and Pike’s Peak need no description from me. They are too well known. It is the healthiest place in all the world. I saw no graveyards, and I presume they are few and very far between. The elevation is more than five thousand feet. We are now seven hundred and fifty miles east of Salt Lake City. Denver is a fine place in which to live. I am not so sure about the conditions of earning a living.

We leave Denver at 10 in the morning and stop for the night at Phillipsburg in Kansas. The country is practically all prairie land suited for cattle, horses and sheep, corn, wheat, and the grasses. It is an open country with few trees excepting the low sections and river bottoms.

We pass Lincoln City in Nebraska and later the city of Omaha. We have already crossed the La Platte River and now at Omaha we cross the Missouri River. Passing Council Bluffs in Iowa we speed along to Des Moines, Iowa, where we plan to spend the next night. We arrived late in the evening and left early the next morning for Chicago. The country was largely given to farming and stock raising.

We were in Chicago about two weeks, and were then off for Washington City, where we spent another week, then we came home, arriving here at Bricks the 22nd of March. A most cordial reception awaited me here. I was met at the station by teachers, students and friends of the community, all led by the school band.

Not many colored people on the Pacific Coast as compared with our eastern country. They are scattered here and there throughout the middle west. Most of those I saw looked as if they had good jobs and were busy. I saw a great many very nice homes of our colored people. I visited a great many places of business entirely colored. The colored ministers were all educated men. The colored churches were up to date. I spoke in a number of them, and the audience looked well groomed and happy. I quizzed the professional men, and they advised me that the outlook for the colored people generally was good. All advised that colored men going west ought to have some money to start a business.

If colored men would go west and enter farming their opportunities would be unlimited. They ought to have money enough to carry them till their crops come to maturity. If they grow fruit it takes the young trees five years to come into bearing, and they must have something to depend upon during that time. At the same time there is no time of the year in California when a farmer cannot grow vegetables. There are fruit growers’ associations that take care of everything the farmer grows. He can become a member of any of them irrespective of his color. He must have some money and some farming sense. There are forty-five thousand colored people in Los Angeles. Only a few are farming. There are not enough farmers to attract any attention. I am always sorry to see so many of our folks flock to the cities when the farms are offering so many opportunities for independence and a better living.

There is nothing needed in the west so much as water and people—_water and people_. If they get the people the irrigation projects will soon give the water. They need not only people who are not dependent upon others for every move they make, but people who are industrious and who have the brain.

We hear in the East a great deal about the Japanese. I hear more about them here than I heard on the coast. Out there they have the reputation of being industrious, smart and great organizers. I do not think those are bad qualities. They are qualities that we have been taught to prize. There is no reason why we should prize them in one race and despise them in another. They are universally courteous. Some Northern people think they will get all the land. I saw millions and millions of acres of land in California alone that somebody needs to get and put to use. Then I saw other millions stretched four thousand miles and more across the American continent that will feed all the world when brought under cultivation and development.

They tell us out West that all the mountains in that country are full of minerals. If that is true we have not touched the world’s supply. From the unoccupied land I saw there must be enough to feed a hundred times our present population. In some of these states one can travel almost a hundred miles and not see a sign of human life except the little station settlements. New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and a few other cities are too congested for healthy environment, and some propaganda ought to be started by some organization or somebody to popularize the country and the farms.

The spirit of competition in our large cities in any occupation is virulent. It is not worth the struggle. Manhood and womanhood is stagnant. It is truly the survival of the fittest. I never saw a Negro farmer in the South begging bread. Vast areas of our best farming land ought to be bought by this congested crowd filling our large cities.

Our people go to the city because of the lack of compatibility of people in the community where they want to live. They may not like the other races out West, but there was great silence and a unanimity of opinion relative to an open expression of their hatred. Poor execution of the laws, open expressions of hatred, fear of personal molestation. These were the expressions I met in Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago.

Norman Angell expresses it in his book, “The Fruits of Victory,” when he gives the cause of the world’s restlessness and war. He says they have resulted from our wrong thinking. We have got to be big enough to forget some things and start off right. Correct our thinking. I attended a Christian Science Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and one of the tenets of their church is that if you have a pain just forget about it and it goes. It seems to work, for that church is doing a great business all over the country. That is what we have got to do in the political world and in the world where our relations interlock. We do not get anywhere by hatred and fighting.

Every city and every town I visited from Spokane to Seattle to San Bernardino, seventeen hundred miles south is on a boom and every one you meet is a boomer. That is the way to build up a community or a city or a town, or anything else. I was not supposed to give any addresses while on this trip, unless there was some fine opportunity to make friends for the American Missionary Association and for Brick School. I could not afford to let such opportunities pass even though I was out seeking recreation and rest and change. This opportunity came to me at least twenty-eight times. I was invited to speak twice in Dr. H. H. Proctor’s Church in Brooklyn, N. Y. Dr. Proctor was a classmate of the writer at Fisk University. He had one of the largest churches in all the South, the First Congregational Church in Atlanta. When the migration of colored people began to be a problem in the Northern centers, Dr. Proctor was called to Brooklyn to meet the impending onrush. He has projected one of the largest church enterprise in Greater New York, and his bringing the enterprise to a successful fruition will mean great things for New York and for the colored people generally.

Dr. Proctor is a large man, mentally and physically, and he has a large vision. His vision is not larger than the times are demanding. Our church people are demanding a larger programme. Some of our churches, perhaps all of them, have been too reticent and conservative, holding on to the dead past and lost prestige with the masses. Dr. Proctor is planning a progressive and constructive programme. I could not lose the opportunity which his kind invitation gave me to tell our Northern friends what our Southern brethren are doing along many lines. I also had the invitation to address a large Baptist Church in Brooklyn where more than a third of its membership of more than three hundred members were from Gloucester County in Virginia. A former Brick School boy was the shepherd of this flock.

Out on Long Island we had the pleasure of addressing a small Congregational Church under the leadership of Rev. G. W. Hinton. We found here a goodly number of our North Carolina friends, and they were glad to hear from their friends here in North Carolina.

Later the Fisk University singers from Nashville, Tenn., met with the Greater New York Fisk Club at the Y. W. C. A. in a Harlem Cafeteria, and a fine programme was given. I was invited to speak at the Baptist Ministers’ meeting in New York in one of the largest churches in the city. If the size of the church, the furnishings, etc., and the appearance of the men meant anything it certainly looked as if our friends in New York City were very prosperous. The young lady who directs all the work of the Y. W. C. A. on 137th Street is a Brick School girl who later graduated from Pratt, and we have every evidence that she is making good in that great city.

At Springfield in Massachusetts we had the pleasure of speaking three times for Rev. William N. DeBerry. Dr. DeBerry is a product of Fisk University and Oberlin Theological School. He has the finest work of any of our men. His church organization is unique; he is progressive and constructive, at the same time scholarly and conservative. He is the most aristocratic Negro preacher we have today. His spirit is contagious, and he has the finest coöperation of his members from the oldest to the youngest.

At Rochester we had the invitation to address a very fine gathering of friends who had met at a reception to the teacher of their Sunday-school class and to the minister of their church.

At Buffalo we also gave an address at another Baptist Church. In all of these places we met scores of people from North Carolina.

In Cleveland, Ohio, I had the invitation to speak several times at the Mount Zion Congregational Church. Rev. Harold Kingsley is the present pastor. Rev. Kingsley is a product of Talladega College, Ala. His wife was a former teacher here at Bricks. We had a most cordial reception at his church and at his home.

It was in this church where I read my first essay nearly forty years ago. Its pastor at that time was Rev. Dr. S. N. Brown, who is now Dean of Theology at Howard University. The church has had a great history. The former pastor was Rev. George V. Clark, of Charlotte, N. C. Dr. Clark was a Liberty County (Georgia) boy and a product of Atlanta University. The church is now in the most congested Negro section of Cleveland and has before it a great destiny and future. The present minister is a young man of great enthusiasm and well prepared to meet its growth. The city of Cleveland has a congested Negro population: I saw a statement in the Cleveland papers from the head of the Cleveland “Community Chest” that of all racial groups in the city the colored people had more than done their part with the least expenditure of effort.

I visited several of the larger churches—Baptist and Methodist churches. All the Cleveland churches seem to be in the most progressive state. Their church buildings are among the very best in the country. Their membership and attendance are very large.

In Detroit we attended Rev. Dr. Bradby’s church, which is said to have a membership of four thousand people. I also spoke at one of the services. They had four services going at the same time. About a third of these people held up their hands indicating that they were from North Carolina. The day was very cold, but their spirits were very warm. Dr. Bradby is a Canadian, but understands thoroughly the Negro temperament, and gives them exactly what is best fitted to that temperament. He speaks with authority.

At night I attended one of our churches ministered to by Rev. Brooks. The church has some institutional feature and is doing excellent service for the community. Mrs. E. E. Scott, of Montgomery, Ala., is assistant in these civic service features.

In Kalamazoo, Mich., we attended a revival meeting in the Methodist Church. The temperature outside did not disturb the emotional elements the least when the several ministers put on the “arousements.” I had to wonder whether I was in northern Michigan or in North Carolina.

I spoke in a Baptist Church in Chicago where they are said to have a membership of ten thousand people. Several services were going on at the same time. I also addressed a congregational audience in Chicago presided over by Rev. Dr. C. W. Burton. Dr. Burton is a product of Talladega College, and Yale Theological School. He is a fine type of minister and is doing great good.

In Butte, Montana, I was told there are about five hundred colored people and three colored churches. These churches had no regular ministers at the time of my visit. The colored men work as porters and miners. They have mixed schools. They have several social clubs and secret orders, such as the Masons and Odd Fellows.

In almost all of the cities I visited mixed schools are the rule, and many of them have a percentage of colored teachers. In Cleveland especially I was told that the colored teachers are liked very much by their students and parents of the opposite races. In many places it would be most difficult to tell who are colored and who are white. Most of the teachers I met are very efficient and alive to their job.

In Tacoma I spoke to the Sunday-school in the morning and in the evening I spoke at the evening services of the First Congregational Church, Rev. Dr. Edgar C. Wheeler, minister. Prof. Oliver H. Richardson, of the University of Washington, followed me with an address on the “Study of International Relations.” The subject of my address might have been “Inter-Racial Relations.” At the close of this address I visited the colored Methodist Church, and also spoke there. The church was well filled, and the services were full of interest. The minister was a well trained man, and had the best order and system in the church.

In Portland I attended a meeting of a select group of ladies and gentlemen of the Theosophical Society. I did not speak, but went primarily to hear an old friend speak on the subject of “Racial Unity.” His lectures covered a number of cities on the coast, and his subjects, “The Unity of Religions,” “Seven Valleys,” “Inter-racial Amity,” “Harmony Between Religion and Science,” “The Mashrak; Ulkar or Universal Science,” “What is a Bahai?” “Four Stages in Man’s Growth.” All of these different lectures are summed up in the one though, “The Fundamental Unity of Races and Religion.” The object of the lectures are the promotion of universal brotherhood, international coöperation, universal education, the abandonment of prejudices. The lecturer was a colored man, a product of Fisk University, and of the law school of Howard University. He has traveled through Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. His thought and language is clear and convincing. Our friend Dr. Gregory proved himself a master with these subjects.

The subjects above are very suggestive. There is nothing else to be said when the speaker has finished his address. What does it mean? In New York, Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Paul, and all our large centers there are the finest temples and edifices built to the new cult, new thought, new religion. Many of our traditional churches in these large centers have a hard fight to get a hearing. I attended one of these new thought churches in St. Paul where the interest was at white heat with an attendance of more than seven hundred people. The temperature outside was fourteen degrees below zero. This was at night. All these cults are based in one way or another on the Bible, but we seem to have adapted for our own spiritual edification and practice that which fits our own mind and temperament. We then argue that everybody else is dead wrong. Some of the finest minds I know are lined up with these new cults. Surely they must have some basis for their mental attitude.

I was asked by the Secretary, Rev. Dr. George Hinman, of the American Missionary Association office in San Francisco, to fill an appointment for him in Berkley, Cal., February 26th. This was at the North Congregational Church at Berkley. This church was right under the shadow of the University of California, and I counted it a great honor to be asked to speak there. The minister of the church was Rev. Mr. Ralph Baxter Larkin. He was sick the day of my visit, and I was introduced by Rev. Dr. Sargent. The printed programme announcing the service for the day with my address had this on the first page, “A Church of Reverent Worship, open mind, intellectual freedom, social conscience, spiritual aspiration and human sympathy. It seeks to discover and interpret the meaning of life in the life of the eternal.” This expression gave me great poise for what I had to say. I was at once at ease.

It is fine to speak to people who have a sympathetic spirit especially when you have a feeling that you have an unpopular subject. My racial identity was not clear in the mind of the gentleman who introduced me. He said something like this: “Professor Steiner, of the University of California said somewhere that if he had to be born again he would like to be born a colored man, so that he might be able to study the colored problem from the inside. We have with us today a gentleman who understands the colored problem, and who did not have to be born colored either.” These may not be the exact words, but it is the thought. The first thing that I had to do was to dispel the mind of my audience of the fact or statement just made, that I did not have to be born a colored man, and that I wanted them to know that the traditions of our country and the laws in many, if not all the states, had said that any man is colored who has one iota of Negro blood in his veins. “I am glad to have the honor to address you as a colored man.” Those who know me best tell me that I do not have many stopping places. So I fore-warned my friends in the front of me that sometimes my address was three in one and sometimes one in three. Three in one when I have only one hour in which to speak and one in three when I have three hours in which to speak. Speaking to a Congregational Church, and a white church, too, one has to observe the traditions very closely. These traditions limit us to about thirty minutes, and unless one is very interesting he had better stop in twenty-five minutes. So my address had to be three in thirty.