THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



dence did the world begin to realize that the American 

 was to be the master of the new continent for all time, 

 and that his rule must move westward as naturally and 

 inevitably as the sun in its course. Only when the new 

 government, hewn out with the sword and cemented 

 with the blood of its citizens, had been finally and firmly 

 established, did the heterogeneous elements in the 

 sparsely settled original States crystallize into a national 

 spirit and a national character. From that hour the 

 material development of the New World began in earnest. 

 The people labored as with the vim and courage of him 

 who works for himself. Men began to dream of an 

 America which should be richer and more populous and 

 powerful than even Europe. 



The war was over the war was begun ! England had 

 been shaken off by force of arms, and the other Euro- 

 pean ties would be loosed by the arts of diplomacy; but 

 it remained to wage war on the forest, the plain, the 

 desert, and the mountain, and to create a better civil- 

 ization than the world had seen. What millions of men 

 and billions of dollars were employed and rewarded in 

 the process what workshops, and railroads, and farming 

 districts were created in the wilderness what cities, 

 with swarming thousands of inhabitants, with homes 

 and colleges and hospitals, were erected in the midst of 

 the primeval silence what States were carved from the 

 woods and prairies what unexpected commerce, borne 

 in undreamed-of steamships, was sent to whiten the un- 

 explored inland seas ! 



It is in the answer to these questions rather than in 

 the poet's paean to democracy that the true explanation 

 of the economic progress of the nation will be found. 



4 



