698 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE3 Off. Doc. 



place?" They said it used to be a mining town of two thousand 

 inhabitants, but it is all gone now. There is no wood, no tree, no 

 vegetation there, and so they have gone. Now you can see why 

 it is that Nevada, several times the size of the State of Pennsylvania 

 has a population about the size of this city of Harrisburg, and it 

 was less in population in 190U than it was in 1890. I am not saying 

 this to disparage any one, but I only want to bring home to you this 

 proposition. As a matter of fact, that trip made an Easterner 

 of me, and set my feet in the opposite direction, when I came to 

 look at the surrounding country. I had gone West with the inten- 

 tion of staying there, but I came back East, after I had gone over 

 that country determined to stay East. 



A little over a century ago men began to go over the Allegheny 

 mountains into the new country beyond. Then, from ISUO to 1850, 

 they spread into Ohio and Kentucky, and perhaps Illinois, and they 

 flourished at your expense. Why? For two reasons; one was that 

 it was a new country, fresh and undeveloped, and your young blood 

 went out to develop it. Then came the Civil War, and after that 

 was over the .stream of population crossed the Mississippi. Hereto- 

 fore the people of the United States had dug out their homes from 

 the forest; then they came out with plows, and turned a furrow or 

 two and made a home; then came the self-binder, and then other im- 

 proved farm machinery, making it easy to make a home, and from 

 1870 to 1900 the population of the United States doubled, and in 

 these thirty years the agricultural industry developed. 



What does that mean? Why, it means that in thirty years these 

 people of the United States were compelled to produce as much 

 as they had done in 250 years before. For one hundred years these 

 people out there have been competing with you because they have 

 had cheap lands with fresh soil, and because they had your fresh 

 young blood to develop it, and they raised cattle out there at prac- 

 tically no cost whatever. Take the illustration I have frequently 

 used of the Jew peddler who went to Deadwood thirty years ago, 

 and distributed a few cattle on the public land there. A few years 

 later he had 20,000 and then 300,000 of cattle worth |3,000,000, 

 every dollar of which he made by distributing cattle on Government 

 lands. It was easy for these people to ship cattle into this new 

 countr}' take them off the train and distribute them on that land, 

 and then ship them back at |2 a head, you, of course, to stand 

 the loss. I spoke to a Westerner about raising cattle in the East, 

 and he laughed at me, and said '"You go back and teach those 

 Eastern farmers to make Jersey cream." 



Now, here, gentlemen, it this proposition: This Eastern country 

 is adapted to the raising of trees and grass; the Western country 

 is adapted to the raising of corn cheaper and cereals. Then we have 

 the great Central West, between Pittsburg and Denver. And when 

 proper economic conditions are developed regarding the raising of 

 grass and trees, and the cutting down of the trees is stopped, the 

 tree and grass men in the North Atlantic states must flourish. 

 Pennsylvania and New York will make great horticultural states, 

 because they have the trees, and the time is coining very rapidly, 

 I believe, when this will be the cattle producing country, and the 

 West be better adapted to doing some other thing — not that it is 

 not a good country; I would not say anything against that part of 



