Iron County register., 1892-06-23
WORKSHOP OF THE PLANET.
What the Great Mississippi Valley Is
Clearly Destined to Be.

| What the Great Mississippi Valley Is
Clearly Destined to Be.
One hundred years ago the pioneers
from England. the advance guard of the
| great column of AngIo-Saxon migra-
ton, that has during the interval
marched TO the Pacific. abolishing the
frontier and conquering the desert, de
scended the western slopes of the Al
leghanies into the valley of the Ohio
and disappeared in its soiitudes. Chi
cago. Cincinnati and St. Louis were
OutpOsts of civilization, exposed to the
brand and the tOmahawk. A few log
hutS, trading stations and mission
houses We're scattered along the crum-
bling banks of the rivers and in the
profound depths of the forests. There
were neither highways nor public con-
vcyances; commerce, agriculture, nor
manufactures; no schools, churches,
nor society; nothing but nature and its
yiciSsitudes, the savage and his prey.
From that unsurveyed wilderness, in
less than a century, twenty-one states
have been admitted into the union,
having an area of eight hundred mil
lion acres, a population of more than
:hirty-five million, and wealth beyond
measurement or computation. Sparse
ly inhabited with rude and unscientific
methods, its resources hardly touched.
the states of the Mississippi valley last
year produced more than three-quar-
ters of the sugar. coal, corn, iron, oats,
wheat. cotton. tobacco, lead, hay. lum-
Der, wool. pork, beef. horses and mules
of the entire country, together with
large fraction of its gold and silver
,p+n -,
ready greater than all the foreign COM
merce of the combined nations of the
earth.
China supports four hundred million
people upon an area smaller and less
fertile. The civilization of Egypt,
whose monuments have for forty CEN
turtles excited the awe and admiration
of mankind. was nourished bv the cul-
tivation of less than ten thousand
square miles in the narrow valley and
delta of the Nile. The delta of the
Rhine and the adjacent lands reclaimed
from the Zuydcr Zee, less than fifteen
thousand square miles, has long sus-
tained the United Kingdom of the
Netherlands, and given to a dense pop
ulation wealth, comfort and content
ment. The delta OF the Mississippi, be
low its junction with the Ohio. richer
than the Nile or the Rhine. excee Is the
combined area of Holland and Egypt,
aud is destined under the stimulus of
free labor and the incentives of self
government to build fabric of society
more opulent and enduring.
Add to this the inexh.ustible alluvion
of the streams above and the fertile
prairies from which they desce I'D, and
the arithmetic of the past has NO
lD5arithms with which to compute the |
problems of the economic and CONNER
cial future of the west. 1t will be pre-
dominant in the development, not of |
this country alone, but of the hemis- |
phere, and will give direction to the |
destinies of the human race. When it's |
agricultural. mining and manufactur- |
ing resources are fully developed by |
steam and electricity the Mississippi |
valley will support and enrich. without |
crowding, five hundred million people. |
and be not only the granary but the |
workshop of the planet.-Ex Senator |
IuoailS in I,innIncoft