The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-02-22
London of that day was small town

would have seemed incredible.
He could not but have been amazed
by the territorial growth Of the country
as revealed in his dream, for among 9TH
er things he would have seen that all
France could be put down within the
area Of the largest state of the Union of
the future and leave sufficient vacant
space from which to lay out a country
as large as Turkey in Europe. Yet the
figures Of such dream would have been
more than true, for the area of Texas is
265. $50 square miles, that of France
2o4, 092 and that of Turkey in Europe
but 81, 200, so that even after taking
France and Turkey from the Lone Star
States territory strip of land 10 miles
wide and 48 4-5 miles long would be
left over.
Possibly that would have been the
most startling of all the features of the
dream to him, for France occupied no
doubt a very prominent place in all his
thoughts by reason of its friendly atti-
tude to the new power this side the sea,
but it would have been really of less
import than the fact that the distance
from the as yet unfounded capital of the
new republic to the most remote state
thereof was nearly a third as much
again as the distance between London
and st. Petersburg. And yet that again
is true, and the traveller who should jour
ney as far eastward from Paris-then, as
now, the capital of Francois from
Washington, the capital Of the United
States, to Tacoma, would pass through
Rome, once the capital of the greatest en-
pire of paganism, to Constantinople, the
ancient capital of the Byzantine empire
on through Turkey, in Europe, into Per-
STA and to Teheran, its capital, and still
more startling comparisons of distances
might be made if Alaska, the morgan
lied arctic possessions of the republic,
were to be taken into consideration.
Washington's dream would have
shown him, moreover, that in the years
to come his country was to lead all 9TH
ers in the production of wheat; of sill
yer; of all but one, the then undiscover-
ed giant island, Australia, in the output
of gold; was to be second to Great Brit
ain only in the mining Of coal, was to
be exceeded in foreign commerce only
| by Great Britain and Germany, and was
| to possess a larger internal commerce
and better facilities for internal COM
munication than any other nation in the
world. He would have seen, too, that
his country was to be uniformly sue
cessful in whatever wars it became in
j volved in with foreign powers, and that
it was to be wrenched and torn by the
most stupendous civil strife the world
has ever beheld; that, principally ow-
ing to its existence and development, a
new problem in the affairs of govern
ment-the labor question-was to arise,
and that the differences between kings
and potentates were sometimes insignifi-
can't by the side of the contes is between
employers and employees.
In place Of the few schools, the scat
tered writers, who treated almost ex-
clusively of politics, and the almost nom
/ existent artist classes, he would have be-
held vast universities equal in most re-
spects to the most venerable old world
institutions of learning and exoelling
them in some regards, a literary class
larger IN proportion to population than
anywhere else on earth, especially if
those in active journalism be included,
and great, enthusiastic and successful
following of every so called artistic call
ing in the world.
Many things would have puzzled him
immensely, no doubt. The problems of
today, from their very magnitude, if
from no other cause, would probably
have seemed quite as difficult as those
which confronted him at Valley Forge,
perhaps more So There would have
been many apparent crudities. The tele-
graph, the railroad, the telephone, the
photograph, the trolley car, the new
woman, the municipal boss, the mop
headed football player, the pretty type
writer, the bicyclist of both sexes-all
these would have amazed him not less
perhaps than the polyglot speech Of the
vast population and the vastly different
costumes and customs of the people.
I D. MARSHALL