T HE IK Rl GA 7 / N A G K. 27. 



ter floods and soaking the dry plains with surplus water would go a 

 long way toward preventing the yearly peril. The present system is 

 going from bad to worse for already the bottom of the river is higher 

 than miles of farms and thousands of houses, and every dollar spent 

 in piling up levees makes higher and increases the danger. 



Settlements develop mining as well as other industries, thus still 

 further stimulating the demand for machinery, tools, powder, etc,, 

 which reaches all over the East. Every farm will be within reach of 

 the hills that everywhere contain prospects, and the yonng men will 

 go there instead of fiddling their time away. They can work in a nice 

 warm tunnel all through the storms of winter, piling up ore that can 

 be hauled to mill when the roads open, and are likely at any stroke of 

 the pick to discover a valuable mine, and a good mine is the greatest 

 market maker in the world. The work itself requires immense out- 

 lays for labor, machinery, and supplies of all kinds, to say nothing of 

 the population it always attracts, in the way of traders, professional 

 men, and non-combatants of every kind. The miner is always a good 

 liver and lias no use for money except to spend it, and a mining com- 

 manity consumes more of the good things of life, per capita, than any/ 

 other class of men. They send out the cash for everything they eat 

 drink, or wear, and it all has to be carried to them. They afford an 

 excellent outlet for all the farm produce that can be raised and thus 

 buildup towns and villages in the valleys, making opportunities for 

 professional and business men, which in turn draw upon the great 

 trading centers of the older states. 



The arid states are already valuable customers for their neighbors 

 east of them, and when it is considered that a population fifty or a 

 hundred times as great would not crowd them at all, their value as. 

 future allies can be imagined. 



The interchange of commerce has been the greatest incentive to- 

 ambition in all ages that the world has known, and today it is the- 

 dominating force, stronger than any other human passion. Wars have 

 been waged and millions of lives sacrificed for the possession of this, 

 that, or the other market, by the commercial nations. What war 

 would give us a field for enterprise and commerce equal to this west- 

 ern world of ours? And this we have with no need of conquest. Only 

 the tenderest ties exist between us. No bloodshed is necessary to se- 

 cure it, no misery to follow its possession, no enemies to overcome.. 

 It is ours and it is the richest portion of the globe left undeveloped. 

 It has advantages uuequaled in many respects for there is no such 

 thing as missing a crop, there is no lack of a ready market, no fever- 

 swamps, no plague or cholera but the sunniest, happiest and most 

 healthful land that lies outdoors, with conditions that train up a noble 

 race of men and women who will build an empire in the West such as 

 their fathers did iu the East, and endow it with a high and splendid 

 growth of American civilization. 



The adoption of an adequate policy to secure such splendid results, 

 would be a fitting opening for the twentieth century. 



