Date: 1869
It proves that our fertile fields, after supplying food to everybody in foreign lands who will buy, and feeding the cities and towns of the Atlantic States, have sufficed to feed a rapidly growing town population at home.  It proves, also, that the Western people are not disposed to accept the destiny kindly offered them by their Eastern brethren, of confining themselves to tbe hand work of agriculture — leaving to the old States the whole field of machine labor.  Although the land on which the people of the great valley have but recently entered is new, the civil, social, and economical condition of this people is advanced nearly to the highest point of tho oldest communities.