242 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION .

and they refuse to do it at all times, except at certain times in the
winter for a short time. The average wage for California in farm
labor, according to the figures of the United States Department of
Agriculture, are 80 per cent higher than the average for the entire
United States.
Mr. EsterLy. Then why does this Mexican labor drift away?
Mr. Moore. Industry is suffering, due to the vacuum caused by
your 1924 act.
Mr. EsterLy. Why would they go away if they can male $22 a day
down in your country?
Mr. Moore. Cantaloupes don’t grow the whole year round.
Mr. EsterLy. But there are other crops coming along too?
Mr. Moore. When our lettuce crop is on, they make 35 to 75 cents
an hour in that. ]
Mr. Esteruy. Up in the North, you know, we have to keep our
farmers the whole year, I have got three men up on my farm just
chopping down old apple trees to keep them going.
Mr. Moore. How many carloads from your country do you ship
to the entire Nation?
Mr. Esterny. We do not engage in specialties such as you have.
Ours is a general and diversified farming proposition.
Mr. Moore. Certainly, you have a few little apple trees our here
and a few more over there and a little something else over here.
Mr. EsterLy. Then we make some money at that.
Mr. Moore. Certainly, and more power to you, but these vast
spaces out here in the West that the United States Government has
spent hundreds of millions of dollars on to develop water so that the
people of this country could be fed, and they are being fed by them.
Mr. Esterry. Well, has there not been a little overdevelopment of
the irrigation proposition? You know the irrigation proposition now
does not receive very much favor in Congress.
Mr. Moore. I am not here to argue that.
Mr. Esterry. It is claimed that one of the reasons we have a congested
 farm situation now has been overdevelopment of western
irrigation. :
Mr. Moore. Our Congress voted the appropriations for these vast
projects.
Mr. EsteRLY. At the instance of the people in those States.
Mr, Moore. Partly so. That may have been so.
Mr. EstErLy. Perhaps they overreached themselves—our friends
in the various States out there.
Mr. Moore. I think they did, especially in the Rocky Mountain
district. Until they discovered the fact that they could go in there
with sugar beets, for which they need Mexican labor, they were not
even able to pay the interest on what they owed the United States
Government. That beautiful Salt River Valley in Arizona almost
went bankrupt because it was all in cotton until they go to diversifying
and got vegetables in there. and they are now making monev and
paying it back.
Mr. EsterLy. Perhaps you can diversify your country also.
Mr. Moore. We are the most highly diversified country in the
world in California.
Mr. EsterLY. Then vou should have occasion to employ labor all
the vear round.