FOR THE WEST 



PRESIDENT BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER 



California sends greeting to Michigan. The orange makes 

 obeisance to the yellow-tasseled corn. The valleys that mediate 

 between the Sierras and the great ocean reach forth their hands 

 to the prairies that hold the balance between the Lakes and the 

 waters that seek the Gulf. The College of Agriculture at Berke- 

 ley salutes its elder brother who, as pioneer, opened for it the 

 first paths and cut the brush. We learned both from your 

 gropings and your findings, and we thank you for both. We 

 know with you what it means to labor on the frontier, and we 

 share with you the blessed western experience of trying and 

 risking in a virgin field, whereby to irritate and teach the self- 

 satisfied composure of the East. 



The life of the nation has been continually freshened and its 

 progress largely determined by the reaction upon it of men's 

 experience on the frontier. This has mostly meant trouble, 

 but trouble is the sine qua non of growth, and without pain there 

 is no birth. After the thirteen Atlantic Coast states had become 

 tolerably used to each other, and had settled down into fair 

 composure, the occupation of the next row of states to the west 

 produced Jackson, the new democracy, and various troubles and 

 fusses. The admission of California in 1850 undid the Missouri 

 Compromise which for thirty years had formed the basis of a 

 truce between North and South. The settlement of Kansas and 

 Nebraska in the 5o's brought on the Nebraska Bill, which made 

 the Civil War inevitable. The advance of agriculture into Kan- 

 sas and Nebraska gave a succession of dry years in the early 

 9o's their power to rend and wreck the old party of Jefferson. 

 And now the extension of the frontier into the Pacific has made 



224 



