CHAPTER III 

 THE BETTER HALF OF THE UNITED STATES 



THE ninety-seventh meridian divides the United States 

 almost exactly into halves. East of that line dwell sixty- 

 four million people. Here are overgrown cities and 

 over-crowded industries. Here is surplus capital, as idle 

 and burdensome as the surplus population. West of that 

 line dwell four or five millions less than the population 

 of Pennsylvania, and scarcely more than that of Greater 

 New York. And yet the vast territory to the West so 

 little known, so lightly esteemed, so sparsely peopled - 

 is distinctly the better half of the United States. 



The West and East are different sections, not merely 

 in name and geographical location, but in physical en- 

 dowments and fundamental elements of economic life. 

 Nature wrote upon them, in her own indelible charac- 

 ters, the story of their wide contrasts and the prophecy 

 of their varying civilizations. To the one were given the 

 advantages of earlier development, but for the other were 

 reserved the opportunities of a riper time. It was the 

 destiny of the one to blossom and fruit in an epoch dis- 

 tinguished for the accumulation of wealth, with its vast 

 possibilities of evil and of good. It was the destiny of 

 the other to lie fallow until humanity should feel a 

 nobler impulse ; then to nurse, in the shadow of its ever- 



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