Arizona weekly citizen., 1881-12-25
A LIBEL ON ARIZONA AND NEW MEXICO.

The Chicago Tribune seems to be ill.,
 spired with a peculiar malignity against
 the far west, particularly the mineral
 section of it. IL cviDces is spite upon ! every occasion and hy opposition to al- 1 most any enterprise inausurated for the ben"iit of tine west We can hardly ac-
 cogut for this course Of a paper which,
 from is location, should be the cham . Fion of ibe interests of this rapidly
 EriN;ns section of the Union. The only . possible construction We can put upon : the unreasonable course of the Tribune,
 IS that Joe MediI got caught with some bogus inning scheme and he is holding
 the whole mineral producing section re-
 sponsible for his bad judgment and gull
 hbiiity. Some people never will hold
 the right party responsible for a little
 occurrence of tllat kind. Its latest out
 break IS is opposition to Senator h.
 gals bill to admit New Mexico as
 State. We will not reproduce what the
 Tribune says, because it contains too
 much nonsense and too many statements
 which are untrue. It argues that as
 santa fe has been settled since 1640 and
 New Mexico had only 1l9, ,56j persons by the last census that it has no future that
 warrants its admission as a State. The
 Tribune overlooks the fact that New
 Mexico and Arizona were isolated from l all the natural thoroughfares of com 1 merce and could only be reached by ! prairie schOoners until the advent of the | railroad. Furthermore that it was the l home of the most blocd-thirsty savages | on the continent, who gave strangers an l unpleasantly warm welcome. The cen- sus was taken in June, 1880, which showed the population of New Mexico to have been l19,565 and Arizona 40,4H. Now 1t Is not presumed that the above
 figures are more than approximately ac- curate. They were made more than a year and a half ago, when the railroad had only just brought this region into connection with the outside world. Any person who has had the opportunity to observe, knows that there has been a large influx of popula- tion during that tune and and a moderate estimate would place the population of the two Territories at over 2oQ,C00 persons. In fact, We do not believe that there has been more rapid in any section than in this since the advent of railroads In the northwest there has been a stimulated influx of population. The northwestern roads have advertised largely and offered every nducement to immigration. Our roads have done nothing of the kind, and whatever movement has been made in this direction has been spontaneous.
 TEe Tribune advocates the union of Arizona and New Mexico into one Ter ritory, with a view to its admission into the sisterhood of States at some future day as a single State
 It then goes on to libel the character of our population, our climate, our soil and the possibilities of our sustaining a population large enough to justify our admission as States. Whoever wrote the editorial could have had no further in relation to this Territory than the figures of the census and a fic- Htious map. To look at some of the maps issued one gets the impress son that there IS nothing but in this Territory. Such Is not the case, however, and in addi- lion to many rich and fertile valleys large enough to take in several New England States and ten times as pro- iuctive, We have vast table lands and ow foot hills covered with the finest grass and making the best grazing land )n the continent. Our mountains are covered with timber which would more han supply home demand, if the gov srnment would make any provision for ts sale.
 While water is not as plentiful on the surface as in some sections of the coun- ry, still it has been found everywhere md in abundance where the proper ef- OrtS have been made to find it.
 All representations of Arizona or New Mexico as barren, worthless sections md incapable of sustaining large popu- ations are gross libels, and before the d Tribune again commits such an act of ' injustice, it should send some compe- ent man to post up a little. Arizona nd New Mexico are destined to cut no mall figure in population and amount f wealth produced l