16 PREFACE. 



present value. Not so the West. Railroads are every- 

 where, and ten or twenty years at most will do for 

 you what it took your fathers fifty years to accomplish. 

 Millions of people are pressing westward, and settle 

 where you may you will soon find yourself sur- 

 rounded by neighbors, not in twos and threes as were 

 your fathers, but by hundreds and thousands of new- 

 comers. The growth of this West of ours has been 

 the miracle of the nineteenth century, and its improve- 

 ment has as yet only fairly begun. The Old World 

 annually pours myriads of people upon our Western 

 shores, and to these we add hundreds of thousands 

 from our native population, who find new homes each 

 year. The increase and development of the West is, 

 therefore, not to be wondered at, for it has the best 

 facilities of any land in the world. In one year 390,000 

 foreign emigrants landed in the United States, and 

 these did not include 30,000 Chinese and 2000 Cana- 

 dians. When the emigration from foreign sources, 

 which has been interrupted by domestic war, shall have 

 been restored to its natural flow, the influx will proba- 

 bly reach the following figures : Landing at New York, 

 350,000; at San Francisco, 100,000; at Philadelphia, 

 50,000 ; at Portland, Oregon, 10,000 ; at New Orleans, 

 10,000; at Galveston, Texas, 10,000; total, 530,000. 

 Of these fully 300,000 will come West, and the re- 

 mainder scatter through the South and East. Add to 

 the Western emigration 200,000 from native sources, 

 and we shall have half a million people annually seek- 

 ing homes in the West. It will not be very long until 

 the annual accessions to our population will equal the 



