n
importance in very recent years; it is mined mainly in Shasta county;
the value of the state's total product in 1908 was $5,232,986. Gold
mining still centres in the mountainous counties north of Tuolumne. This
is the region of quartz mining. In borax (of which California's output
in 1904 was 45,647 tons) and structural materials San Bernardino has a
long lead. More than nine-tenths of the borax product of the country
comes from about Death Valley. San Bernardino marbles have a very high
repute. California was the fourth state of the Union in 1908 in the
production of granite. It furnishes about two-fifths of the quicksilver
of the world. This has been mined since 1824; the output was greatest
from 1875-1883, when it averaged about 43,000,000 pounds. The New
Almaden mine (opened in 1824) in Santa Clara county produced from 1850
to 1896 some 73,000,000 pounds. The centre of production is north and
south of San Francisco Bay. Californian coal is almost wholly inferior
brown lignite, together with a small quantity of bituminous coals of
poor quality; the state does not produce a tenth part of the coal it
consumes. Of growing importance are the gems found in California: a few
diamonds in Butte county; rock crystal in Calaveras county; and
tourmalines, kunzite, the rare pink beryl and bright blue topazes in San
Diego county. Chrysoprase, mined near Porterville and near Visalia
(Tulare county), is used partly for gems, but more largely (like the
vesuvianite found near Exeter, in the same county) for mosaic work; and
there are ledges of fine rose quartz in the Coahuila mountains of
Riverside county and near Lemon Cove, Tulare county.

A vivid realization of the industrial revolution in the state is to be
gained from the reflection that in 1875 California was pre-eminent only
for gold and sheep; that the aggregate mineral output thirty years later
was more than a third greater than then, and that nevertheless the value
of farm produce at the opening of the 20th century exceeded by more than
$100,000,000 the value of mineral produce, and exceeded by $50,000,000
the most generous estimate of the largest annual gold output in the
annals of the state.

_Manufactures._--Previous to 1860 almost every manufactured article used
in the state was imported from the east or from Europe. Dairy products,
for example, for whose production good facilities always existed, were
long greatly neglected, and not for two decades at least after 18