364 LESLIE M. SHAW 



fifty million bushels of grain; Escanaba, Duluth, and Two 

 Harbors ship twelve million tons of iron ore; while Ashta- 

 bula, Cleveland, Conneaut, and Chicago unload an equal 

 amount from more than seven thousand vessels that an- 

 nually enter their harbors. The Detroit river floats four 

 times as much tonnage as passes through the Suez canal, and 

 one and a half times the aggregate of all vessels engaged in 

 foreign trade that enter our ports on the Atlantic, the gulf, 

 and the Pacific seaboard, an amount about equal to that of 

 London, Liverpool, and New York combined. 



We will classify all this western commerce. It will be 

 observed, however, that for no other purpose may we wisely 

 make class distinctions among our people, or sectional divi- 

 sions of our country. Arbitrary though it be, I assume for 

 the convenience of the hour, and for the hour only, that "the 

 west" includes Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, 

 Indian territory, and all west of these and all north and west 

 of Texas. Probably a majority of the people of the United 

 States speak of Ohio as a western commonwealth, while those 

 who live in states washed by the Mississippi river realize 

 they must travel some miles toward the setting sun to reach 

 the line that would bisect the great republic. The eleventh 

 census credited these states with forty five per cent of the 

 farm area, but gave them over seventy per cent of the culti- 

 vated land. The twelfth census shows a much larger propor- 

 tion of tilled lands. These states produce more than two and 

 one half billion bushels, more than seventy per cent of the 

 nation's cereals, and seventy per cent of the nation's hay. 

 They contain fifty per cent of the milch cows and sixty per 

 cent of all other cattle, sixty five per cent of the swine, seventy 

 five per cent of the sheep, and where, except in the west 

 would you look for eighty per cent of the wool? 



Permit a few observations, tending to show that an 

 ever increasing proportion of the people within the territory I 

 have described are giving well deserved attention to indus- 

 tries other than agriculture. Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa 

 have increased their average annual cereal products less than 

 nine per cent since 1890. During the preceding decade these 

 same states made a fourfold larger increase, indicating very 



