RESOURCES OF THE FAR WEST 225 



over twelve hundred miles east and west from Stockton, Cali- 

 fornia, to Denver, Colorado. We can work these mines 

 every day in the year, with every necessary and many of the 

 luxuries of life springing from the soil adjacent to the mines. 

 On no portion of the globe can such bounties be enjoyed as 

 in the territory described. But these boundless resources 

 can be made available to the world only by cheap railroad 

 transportation. This is the primal and underlying factor of 

 modern development. 



America contains resources capable of supporting hun- 

 dreds of millions of people. Happy homes can be assured 

 to generations yet unborn where now are desert wastes, if 

 the cultivation of our fields shall have precedence over all 

 our other efforts at development. Then we can open our 

 mines, and control the seas. 



It must be clear from the above mentioned facts, that 

 the enormous resources of our countrj^ can be made susceptible 

 of occupancy only by judicious building of railroads. We 

 must gather the waters from our mountain streams and 

 spread them upon the thirsty and grateful soil of our virgin 

 west; enabling the husbandman to repeat in Colorado, Utah, 

 and Nevada the work begun in California. Wealth will 

 flow from every furrow. Wlien our deposits of precious 

 metals are opened throughout those states, great industrial 

 works will cluster around our coal and iron mines; supporting 

 thousands by honest toil. 



Capital is timid in enlisting in such enterprises. It is 

 of absolute importance that interdependence and confidence 

 should exist between capital and labor, if our nation is to 

 advance in material growth. It should be the aim of Amer- 

 icans not only to seize and hold a front place in material 

 progress, but to emulate every good work and every high 

 and noble effort of the leading civilized nations. If we adopt 

 this rule of action, labor and capital will meet upon mutually 

 helpful levels; and the capital necessary to enable the people 

 to open and enjoy the riches now buried and useless through- 

 out the great west, will be easily secured. Then the de- 

 velopment of our resources will be the most phenomenal in 

 the histoiy of the world; the balance of trade in our favor 



Vol. 6-15 



