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Octopus's Garden - How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,462
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Octopus's Garden - How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California (Hardcover)
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As Southern California recovered from the collapse of the cattle
industry in the 1860s, the arrival of railroads-attacked by
newspapers as the greedy "octopus"-and the expansion of citrus
agriculture transformed the struggling region into a vast,
idealized, and prosperous garden. New groves of the latest citrus
varieties and new towns like Riverside quickly grew directly along
the tracks of transcontinental railroads. The influx of capital,
industrial technology, and workers, especially people of color,
energized Southern California and tied it more closely to the
economy and culture of the United States than ever before.Benjamin
Jenkins's Octopus's Garden argues that citrus agriculture and
railroads together shaped the economy, landscape, labor systems,
and popular image of Southern California. Orange and lemon growing
boomed in the 1870s and 1880s while railroads linked the region to
markets across North America and ended centuries of geographic
isolation for the west coast. Railroads competed over the shipment
of citrus fruits from multiple counties engulfed by the orange
empire, resulting in an extensive rail network that generated
lucrative returns for grove owners and railroad businessmen in
Southern California from the 1890s to the 1950s. While investment
from white Americans, particularly wealthy New Englanders, formed
the financial backbone of the Octopus's Garden, citrus and
railroads would not have thrived in Southern California without the
labor of people of color. Many workers of color took advantage of
the commercial developments offered by railroads and citrus to
economically advance their families and communities. However, these
people of color also suffered greatly under the constant realities
of bodily harm, low wages, and political and social exclusion.
Promoters of the railroads and citrus cooperatives touted
California as paradise for white Americans and minimized the roles
of non-white laborers by stereotyping them in advertisements and
publications. These practices fostered conceptions of California's
racial hierarchy by praising privileged whites and maligning the
workers who made them prosper. The Octopus's Garden continues to
shape Southern Californians' understanding of their past. In
bringing together multiple storylines, Jenkins provides a complex
and fresh perspective on the impact of citrus agriculturalists and
railroad companies in Southern Californian history.
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