THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



salaried employes, submissively doing the will of other 

 men. Multitudes of them avail themselves of the chances 

 of liberal education which benevolence has so plentifully 

 scattered over the land. They prepare to win what they 

 conceive to be the easy rewards of professional careers 

 as lawyers, physicians, teachers, musicians, and so on. 

 While there is yet plenty of room at the top, it is much 

 easier to find the way to the middle or the bottom of 

 the list. The result is a surplus of professional people 

 in every walk, especially in cities and towns of our older 

 States. Religious journals complain of an over-produc- 

 tion even of preachers, ministers, and missionaries. 



Of the fact of surplus people available for the con- 

 quest of Undeveloped America there is, therefore, no 

 question whatever. Never was there an army better 

 equipped or more eager for its task. In character it is 

 almost cosmopolitan, but with the strongest Anglo- 

 Saxon predominance. It has been educated to a stand- 

 ard not dreamed of by any colonizing host of the past, 

 thanks to a system of common and high schools of 

 which the latter approximate the university education of 

 fifty years ago. Collectively, it is by no means destitute 

 of pecuniary resources, for it represents a vast aggregate 

 of savings and property. It is animated by the moving 

 cause of all successful and epoch-making emigrations, 

 the desire to better the conditions of living for its indi- 

 vidual members. 



So conditioned and equipped, these children of a race 

 of world-conquerors and republic-builders these sur- 

 plus men and women of America stand with their faces 

 to the morning of the new century, magnificently fit to 

 do the work of their day and generation. 



