THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



the process. If it would have paid the Central Pacific 

 better to develop the State than to let it remain a wil- 

 derness, it would have been developed. Just criticism 

 should be directed to the system which permits the pri- 

 vate ownership of public highways, and not against indi- 

 viduals, since human nature is everywhere much alike. 



Utah was developed without the aid either of rail- 

 roads or millionaires, but Utah has had a colonization 

 policy from the beginning down to the present hour. If 

 Brigham Young had not recalled his colonists from 

 the valleys of the Carson, the Walker, and the Truckee 

 during the fifties, no one would now complain of de- 

 creasing population a sin never charged against the 

 Mormons. The difference between the sister States of 

 the Great Basin is not an affair of raw materials. It is 

 the difference between the results of speculative mining, 

 on one hand, and of the patient development of agricult- 

 ural resources by methods of sober industry, on the 

 other. 



Nevada is the victim of circumstances. Rich in the 

 potentialities of material greatness, and therefore strong 

 in the capacity to support a social structure, it presents 

 the baffling paradox of declining population in a west- 

 ern State. If it were located in South Africa, the na- 

 tions of Europe would plot and struggle for possession of 

 its minerals, lands, and waters ; if in New South Wales, 

 the colonial government would employ the public capi- 

 tal to reclaim its deserts and to enable the surplus popu- 

 lation of Adelaide to make homes upon its soil ; if in 

 Germany, the Imperial government would charter "rent 

 bunks" to operate under a commission in preparing the 

 land for settlement and building humble houses, to be 



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