CHAPTER VI 

 THE POTENTIAL GREATNESS OF NEVADA 



No other State has been so bitterly derided as Nevada. 

 It has been asserted that the silver mines which made it 

 all it was are exhausted; that it has no other mineral 

 wealth ; that it has no agricultural resources ; that it has 

 nothing to attract people, and that as a consequence it is 

 "flickering out." These statements have found wide 

 acceptance, and as a result newspapers and public men 

 have seriously discussed propositions to deprive Nevada 

 of its Senators, or to merge it into Utah, or otherwise to 

 degrade it from its present place of statehood. 



All these charges are untrue. Potentially, Nevada is 

 one of the greatest States in the Union. It would be 

 difficult to name one commonwealth east of the Missis- 

 sippi river which surpasses it in physical endowments, 

 and it even ranks well in this respect among the other 

 States of the Far "West, which it resembles in climate, 

 soil, and variety of resources. It is true that Nevada has 

 lost population since the decline of the great excitement 

 on the Cornstock lode, but it is not true that this decline 

 is due to the fact that the State has not the raw materials 

 of a rich, populous, and powerful community. The 

 proper prescription for the economic ills of Nevada is not 

 degradation, but development. 



194 



