The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-09-01
WEST AND EAST.


the ties of federation and the disruption OF
the states. This is very shallow and SUI
perfcial view. The only overmastering
interest that has ever in our history made
any great section of the nation politically
"solid" has been slavery, and the last
presidential election showed that the solid
ity of the South will hardly survive the
century. When the solid South begins
TO crumbte at its edges in the Virginias
these political prophets of evil predict the
great West will gradually become solid
against the East. The West is sure to gain
immensely in population and therefore in
political strength for the next thirty years.
The South, despite its great natural
riches. its fertile soil, bland climate, vast
mineral and timber wealth, cannot hope
to keep pace with the West, for the drift
of the bulk of the exodus from the East, as
well as from Europe, will continue
to be to the great West and
especially to the Pacific Coast. The
Northern bred man, whether he
comes from Europe or the old states of tie
East, does not like the climate nor the so
L
fore the great West is sure to be strong
enough in the near future to rule the East
and the country, if it cares to draw a Sec
tional line. The West will not fiaunt the
banner of sectionalism in the face of the
old states of the East. not because it is the
child of the East; not because of the ties
of social sympathies, political traditions
and associations, but because it has no
great, exclusive, all-absorbing, single ma
terial interest, like slavery, to make it an
tagonistic to the East.
1t is no longer true that the West is ex-
clusively an agricultural region and the
East the home and empire of manufactures.
Ohio, Illinois and Missouri, once purely
agricultural states, have immense amounts
of capital today invested in manufactures.
Sharp differences upon economic opinions
and interests do not always divide states
in politics. Up to the organization of the
Republican party the old South was not
solid South against solid North. Even
as late as 1852 Kentucky and Tennessee
held aloof from the South and voted
against the Democracy. In the last Presi-
Dental election Pennsylvania and New
York, great manufacturing states,
cast their vote for Harrison, but New Jersey
and Connecticut, also great manufacture
ing states, voted for Cleveland. Indiana
has rapidly growing manufacturing in
terest and is very close state; Illinois has
greatly increased her manufactures since
1880, but gave Harrison much smaller ma
jority than Garfield. The West is not so
exclusively agricultural, compared with
the East, that it can be said to be in any
more danger of becoming solid for any one
sectional interest than the East. All dam
ger of the Pacific states scaling off from
the Union disappeared with the building of
those great transcontinental lines of quick
transportation which make Seattle as near
New York today as Boston was to st. Louis
when the first mile of the Mon Pacific
was built.
The vast internal commerce of the
United States is the real basis of its POI
ltical unity. As long as the transconti-
mental rails and wires remain undisturbed
We shall be an unbroken Union. The cap
ital of East and West is mingled in vast
business interests that forbid any ser
ious sectional quarrel, and the Attain
tic seaboard is always likely
to remain, directly or indirectly, the
great purchasing market for the CONNER
cial West because it is nearest Europe
II from San Francisco, or Portland, or Sc
attic we could sail west and find Europe
in China and Japan, San Francisco would
grow to the magnitude of New York, and
Portland and Seattle would grow
to the size of the second rank
but our Coast has no Europe within six
days steaming and for this reason the At
lantic coast will have the best of the Pacific
coast commercially until at some distant
day there will be vast system of inter-
continental railway connecting us with
the whole length of South America, from
Buenos Ayres and Chile to Brazil and
Colombia.
There are no questions of deep senti-
ment, no questions of economic business
consequence upon which a solid West
could be maintained against the East.
The superficial assumption that Western
sectionalism at no distant day will lift
its head with hostile front against the East
is shown by the fact that the West threw
its strength in the Republican national con-
ventions of 1876, 1850 and 1884 enthusiast
ticaliy for Blaine, who is not even West
ern born or bred, and whose whole politi-
cal life up to 1880 was exclusively spent in
the service of the extreme Eastern state of
Maine. The West in 1888 was ready to
nominate Blaine if he had been in
the field, and it is ready today if
he was a candidate. Sectional feel
ing must be really rather SUPER
fetal at the West when for fifteen
years past 1t has been ready to elect New
England statesman to the presidency.
Senator Edmunds wrote his constituents
in 1850 that 1.-The presidency will never
again go to any man who lives east of the
Hudson" 1t certainly never will if moth
ing warmer than the Vermont iceberg is
the candidate of New England, but for
that matter the presidency by popular
election never did 60 to New England
man, save in the case of John Adams in
1876 and Franklin Pierce in 1852. John
Quincy Adams was chosen by the House
of Representatives in 1924 The Republic
can party has, it is true, nominated for
president Western man in every instance
save that of Blaine, but this has not been