| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Steven Stoll. The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1998. Pp. xix, 273. $35.00.

This book is a fascinating tale of the California countryside that growers made as well as the detrimental consequences this new world had for the environment and labor relations. Steven Stoll writes in a clear and graceful manner that allows the reader to understand how, between 1880 and 1930, an enterprising group of orchard capitalists made California the nation's leading producer of fruit. 1

Stoll begins with a richly detailed description of California's natural advantages of warm climate, river water, and fertile land that first attracted wheat growers who shipped most of their crop to foreign markets. When California wheat declined due to overseas competition and falling global prices, fruit growers stepped in to build a more successful agricultural enterprise. This new kind of agriculture was based on the ideas of agricultural economist Edwin Nourse, who advocated the industrialization of agriculture through adoption of modern business methods such as specialization, mechanization, and marketing. California growers first had to learn how to manipulate natural forces to their advantage by diverting river water to irrigate fields, surveying the variety of soils, and studying climate patterns. These efforts were not enough, however; fruit producers also needed to develop a better distribution system that transported the most perishable products to distant urban markets and circumvented the power of commission merchants and jobbers entrusted to sell their fruit. . . .

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