Yours of Feby 11th reached me this morning. I wrote you by last steamer’s mail.

I am very glad to hear that you are so far convalescent from your accident.

I wrote to Ally soon after receiving his letter asking my advice, giving what I thought to be decisive reasons why he should not begin at twenty one to learn a new trade and give up all the advantages of his education so far. If I must express my candid judgment, it is most strongly against any and each of the propositions you say he has before [him.] I don’t think they are anything but cloaks under which he hides from himself a truant disposition—just as I did. He prefers anything but a regular, fixed business. He prefers to be a boy for some time longer and not to weigh himself down with the responsibilities or the clear and definite anticipations of the responsibilities of a man. The clock speculation in which it is proposed that he should be a passenger; the travels in Portugal under the convenient office of a small consul’s small secretary, and the vague idea of doing something in the Scientific way, after a year or two with a lot of good fellows at New Haven, with boat-clubs on the bay and vacation excursions in the immediate back-ground, are all mere disguises of a respectable Bohemianism.

As to the business to come from the Scientific training of three or four years, nothing is more unlikely than that he would be able to find anything to do of a continuous character by which he could support himself or meet the duties to society which every man ought to have before him, in ten years. I know a gentleman who began the series of studies which he proposes to begin at 21, when he was 15; he had the best Cambridge training, then spent six years at the best schools in Europe; he is extraordinarily well fitted by natural temperament, being a very hard and very cautious student. His relatives are people of the largest influence in the East. He came to California at the invitation of a relative, who is wealthy & occupies the most respectable official position in the State; he has the friendship & confidence of the leading capitalists, he has been living here five years in the height of the California prosperity, living closely at a Boarding house, & is not yet able to support the ordinary expenses of a family living in the quietest style. I know another case substantially the same in all particulars—a gentleman who began the study at Yale when I was there, who has in many respects been very fortunate, who has gained a high reputation, written several books, but who lately told me that he was not yet able to support his family by his [328]

earnings. King, Gardner and Hyde, graduated several years since with high honors from the Yale School, having previously passed through the Troy School. The most they aim at is to pay their expenses, and they have not succeeded in doing that. They all three gave their entire services last year and worked day and night exceedingly hard, for their board. Two of them are now out of employment, the other has made an engagement to go to Siberia for three years on wages less than an ordinary bookkeeper or a good mechanic gets to stay comfortably at home. I know several other cases of similar import. But these are the more fortunate men. They began early; they have had nothing else in view, their minds [329]have had a complete training to their business. Ally, whatever his natural qualifications for a student or mathematician, has been diseducating his faculties for such a business. He could not follow the thread of a scientific investigation or work upon an algebraic problem for a single hour, without great mental fatigue. He could not fix in his mind by a week’s hard application the first hundred of ten thousand abstract facts & formulas which to successfully follow anyone of the professions to which the training of the scientific school would fit him, he must have all at his finger’s ends.

I have the greatest respect for Scientific men and set the greatest value upon Scientific training. I would sacrifice a great deal to it; & would not very strongly protest against a man’s deliberately accepting poverty & celibacy out of devotion to Science as most men, not very rich from the start, do who are successful as Scientific men. But that is not the case with Ally. He has never shown any extraordinary love for or aptness for Science. It is not that he loves science; it is that he hates a steady employment, and he turns to Science as a means of putting off the day when he must be his own master and assume the responsibilities of a man, by engaging in business on his own account or taking the preliminary steps to do so. To go into the scientific school; to go to Portugal, or as a non-descript in a specialty of commerce, he begins at the beginning of a road which leads no way in particular and which as he cannot look far ahead in it does not look tiresome; he goes back four or five years, and thus holds on to his boy’s play of castle-building.

But, it is true, he may have a real idiosyncratic inaptness for a mercantile life—a peculiar personal dislike to it. It does not seem to me that he has shown it. On the contrary he has seemed to be quite naturally at home in it. But it may be so, and so much so that he ought not to try to conquer his repugnance to it. If it is so, then he should not look to any new business in which four or five years of hard study and acquisition of facts; acquisition of facts, and training of the mind to comprehend and combine and apply them, is the necessary foundation of an apprenticeship—for in a business point of view, after several years’ study, he will only have arrived at that basis of mere preparatory education for his new business that he had for his present business when he entered Collins’ store. The scientific school is but the alphabet & multiplication table. Either Law or Medicine would be the easier business to acquire; but I should prefer some mechanical employment as that of a ship-carpenter or a machinist—business in which a large amount of Scientific knowledge and study can be used with great advantage and pleasure, but in which a strong basis of preliminary study is but little more essential—provided a man has the wisdom & tact to make use of the scientific acquirements of others—than in a merchant’s business.

Ally has the difficulty which seems to me to belong to all your [330]descendants—of an unusual slowness or feebleness in the development of his natural propensities & faculties. He does not know his own mind, and grows irregularly. He needs a mental and moral tonic, and to be freed from whatever is weakening to manly sedateness or steady vigor of character. He should on this account not allow himself to associate with persons younger than himself, but make himself the companion if possible, and if not the companion, then the apprentice or attendant of men older than himself—older in habits as well as years. I don’t mean that he should not play, of course, for all men of every age should, but that he should look upward & not backward in the associations of his amusements as well as his work. It is better for him now, to be a confidential servant of men, than a leader of boys. I should not say this to most boys at his age, but I know the family weakness at his age.

I have urged the side of the question which I thought he was most likely to fail to properly appreciate—as to the Scientific school.

It may be after a fair consideration of it, it will still seem best to go ahead—that he has a scientific bent, which it is best to yield to. Then the question is, what is the best course to pursue in view of the half dozen years lost, (lost—as far as the scientific end in view, merely is concerned) in which he should have been laying the foundation? I say by all means spend a year in studying Latin and mathematics, before beginning the special studies. At least a year. It will save time & expense in the necessary subsequent study. Then as to the particular profession, I think manufacturing Chemistry will be a much better business than Civil Engineering or Metallurgy. An imperfect education would go further in it. If nothing better offers after a few years study, skill in compounding of drugs would be easily acquired and this is a steady large business, in which the demand for men of superior education can never fail—whereas in Engineering or Mining or Metallurgy not one well-qualified man in a hundred finds steady employment and almost all pass intervals of the most depressing anxiety in which the temptation to use dishonorable means of obtaining a livlihood are I fear in the majority of cases not wholly resistable. I have seen a great deal of misery of this kind, and I don’t want Ally to condemn himself to it. I know scores of men, better educated as Engineers than Ally can hope to be in ten years, who suffer more for want of employment than any good mechanic ever needs to in this country. Such men can almost always relieve themselves from immediate distress, by lending themselves to some swindling speculation. Once having done so, and the fact being recognized, they are ruined. Of such wrecks I have seen many and they are the most miserable men I know. For all that I would not advise against a boy’s following an inclination to be an Engineer or Metallurgist, under favorable circumstances, (such as Ally would enjoy,) if he [331]began at fifteen—but I would advise no man to begin to study for such business at twenty.

The Buena Vista Vinicultural Society is, we believe, the first extensive joint-stock agricultural enterprise in the United States; and the production of wine in a large scale is in itself a comparatively new undertaking with our citizens. Having recently made an examination of the vineyard of the society, we therefore think proper to offer the following notes for the information of any whom they may concern:

The society cannot yet be supposed to be clear of all the unforeseen difficulties and hazards which unavoidably attend a large undertaking of a novel character, especially in a new country, and we do not propose to predict its future. Our object will be simply to derive from facts in the progress of its experiment thus far, some trustworthy conclusions as to the probable profits of large vineyards, under reasonably good management, in California.

The property of the society includes a body of land of over 6,000 [333]acres, of which the vineyard occupies six hundred and forty-five acres. The number of vines planted is over a million (1,128,120). At the last vintage about 103,800 of these were in bearing. These varied in age from one to thirty years—almost one-half of them only being of full-bearing age. These latter stood in various parts of the six hundred and forty-five acres of vineyard land—the recent plantings having been for the most part made between the rows of old vines. So far as conditions of soil and aspect are concerned, therefore, the whole ground has been tested by the vintage of 1864.

The vines are managed under a system of extreme simplicity; no staking or training is required, and an extraordinary economy of labor in their cultivation is attained. They are planted in rows from three and a-half to four and a-half feet apart each way, and are cultivated by Chinese laborers in the manner known as the flat way of cultivating Indian Corn in the Eastern States. The soil being very friable, flat, and free from stones, both horse and hand hoeing are performed with great ease and rapidity; and the total expense of cultivation in 1864 was at the rate of but six dollars and three cents per acre, including the pruning of the vines, and an allowance for superintendence, and the wear and tear of the implements used.

As the young vines grow to full-bearing size they occupy more room, and hereafter a larger part of the cultivation will need to be by hand. The expense of cultivating the older and closer planted part of the vineyard does not appear in the accounts furnished us, distinctly from that of the whole. We think it safe to assume, however, that the expense of cultivation need never be more than four times as much for the whole vineyard as it was in 1864, in which case twenty-four dollars and forty-seven cents per acre, which is at the rate of fourteen dollars per thousand vines, may be considered a maximum rate for the expenses of cultivation.

The picking of the grapes, and the loading of them in wagons, cost in 1864, a fraction less than a rate of three dollars per thousand vines.

The following is a statement of the rate of production of fifty thousand full-bearing vines, as nearly as it can be determined, in 1864—a year of extraordinary dryness and unproductiveness.

Production.	Rate per Thousand Vines-Galls.
White Wine for Champagne	137
White Wine	333
Red Wine	160
Brandy	16

Of the bearing vines in 1864, only 16,000 were planted before 1858, and none of those since planted bore as fully at the last vintage as they may be expected to hereafter. The youngest plantation then produced [334]

[335]according to the Superintendent’s estimate, but fourteen gallons of white wine per hundred vines, while those planted before 1858 produced fifty-seven gallons per hundred, and those planted previous to 1855 eighty gallons per hundred. In previous years the production of the latter has been larger; and it is believed that an average production of eighty-six gallons per hundred for mature vines of the Spanish or Old California variety, and seventy-one gallons per hundred for vines of varieties recently introduced from Europe (which forms about one-ninth of the vines planted), may be calculated on. An estimate of the future production of the vineyard, therefore, based upon the foregoing table of the yield of 50,000 of the older vines in 1864, must be regarded as moderate.

The whole expense of wine-making, from the field to the cask stored in the cellar, was in 1864, at the rate of twenty dollars per thousand vines, or four cents per gallon of white wines produced—superintendence, interest on cost, and wear and tear of casks and implements included.

The distillery expenses amount to a rate of ten cents per gallon of brandy produced, or for sixteen gallons the production of 1,000 vines, one dollar and sixty cents.

The machinery being designed for the larger work that is expected to be required of it in the future, a reduction is expected to occur in the above-stated rate of expenses of wine-making equal to at least half a cent per gallon. It is possible, however, that unforeseen difficulties may occur in the management of the increased business; and we therefore adapt twenty dollars per thousand vines as the established rate of expenses in wine-making.

The buildings and machinery used in the process of wine and brandy-making, are of substantial construction, and well adapted for the accomplishment of a large amount of work, with great economy of current expense. A steam engine of thirty-horse power is employed, and the wine at different stages of the process is moved by a force-pump through hose and metallic pipes, the whole extent of which employed is nine hundred feet. The apparatus used is an improved arrangement of that recently adapted in the best French vineyards. The cost of the whole works, including the press-house, the distillery, and the cellar, with their equipments complete, has been $40,000.

We recapitulate as follows:

Maximum rate of Expenses per thousand Vines, close planted and full bearing, with a production of five hundred gallons of White Wine, one hundred and sixty of Red Wine, and sixteen of Brandy.

Vineyard Expenses	$14 00
Housing the Grapes	3 00
Wine-making and Cellerage	20 00
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Distillery Expenses	1 60
Total	$38 60
At the rate thus established the Annual Expenses of the whole Vineyard of one million Vines now planted, when in full-bearing condition, will be	$38,700 00
Add twenty per cent. for contingencies	7,730 00
Total for one million Vines	$36,440 00

The total production of the vineyard, in full bearing, at the rate previously determined, will be—

	Galls.
White Wine for Champagne	167,000
White Wine	333,000
Red Wine	160,000
Brandy	16,000

The California market is at present overstocked with new native wine of inferior quality. The better class of native light wines has never been put in the general market; they are unknown to the public; and, from the present price of ordinary wines, nothing can be inferred as to their value when they shall have been introduced in large quantities, and their superior quality generally appreciated. For these reasons, it is impossible to form an estimate, with much confidence, of the value of the production of the vineyard. We are informed that some thousand gallons of the white wines of 1863 has been sold in New York at a price which leaves ninety-two cents as the net price of the wine in the cellar. At this price, the value of a vintage would be $500,000—a fair allowance being made for the red wine and brandy.

To establish a minimum, however, we estimate the value of the whole, for Brandy, as follows:

	No. Galls.
449,800 gallons White Wine, reduced 6 to 1, is of Brandy	74,966
160,000 gallons Red Wine, reduced 6 to 1, is of Brandy	26,666
Total	105,632
Add Brandy previously provided	10,666
Total production in Brandy	112,298
Which, at the extremely low price of $1.50 per gallon, is	$168,447
Deduct distillery expenses	10,163
Minimum value of vintage	$158,284
Deduct yearly expenses	49,440
Minimum net profit per annum	$108,844

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Of the profit likely to be found in the manufacture of champagne, in which the officers of the society have great confidence, and which has been commenced under the management of an experienced person, we have said nothing—preferring to confine our observation, as far as possible, to the facts of the business which has been established by actual experience.

The advantages which California possesses for the production of wine over any European country, is chiefly found in its climate, which is probably the best in the world for the purpose. Through extensive districts of the State during all the period of the year in which the grape is growing and ripening, the sky is nearly cloudless and the air warm and dry; hail is unknown; nor in sixty years, during which time authentic and particular accounts are extant of the vineyards planted by the Spanish missionaries, have any of the diseases to which the vine is subject in Europe appeared here. The advantage of the climate, however, is greatest at the period of the vintage. An entirely satisfactory vintage season, that is to say, one in which damp weather or frosts do not occur to the manifest injury of the grapes, and consequently of the wine, is expected in European vineyards not oftener than once in ten years, and when it occurs is an occasion for special national thanksgiving. In California, whatever variations have been experienced in the climate at other seasons, a perfect vintage season has never failed. The consequence is that grapes ripen uniformly, and rot is unknown. This greatly facilitates and cheapens the labor of gathering the grapes, and simplifies their subsequent treatment and the whole process of wine-making. California also possesses a large extent of volcanic soils, in which alone the best wine-grapes of Europe can be cultivated with entire confidence. In the Eastern States, all the vines of the Buena Vista Vineyard would be subject to mildew. Here it has never made its appearance.

Until recently all these advantages might be supposed to be fully offset by the great cost of labor in California; but the employment of Chinese laborers, and the application of labor-saving machinery, added to the great simplicity which the peculiarities of the climate and soil render feasible, especially when the business is conducted on the large scale adopted by the Buena Vista Society, entirely remove this disadvantage. It is reasonable to expect that experience will suggest still further improvements in this respect. But even should the expense of labor be doubled, as far as can be judged at present, the business is one promising extraordinary profits.

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