The record-union., 1897-06-25

is behind the demands of our age, and
commerce. with increasing anxiety
awaits the opening OF the short water
route, by which our increasing products
can cheaply and promptly reach At
lantic markets. What the railways
cannot profitably carry to the Atlantic
Coast of our country, and what the
great centers of population in Europe
need of our products, seek this great
interoceanic highway. thus far in vain;
but the day is not far distant, when
through the inland sea of Nicaragua
will pass a stately procession or ocean
carriers, laden both ways-with the
products of our soil eastward, and with
the manufactured products and im1nl-
grafton of our eastern SeabOard and OF
Europe, westward.
Then will have arrived the time when
it can no longer be asserted that tine
Great West has everything to offer the
immigrant save cheap transportation.
No matter how cheap by rail, it cannot
be made cheap enough TO pay the cost
of production as regards the bulky
products of our soil and industry, and
leave the railroad the cost of carriage.
-
products he desires; the mills may cut
all the lumber they can handle; the
miner produce all the ore that has value
all will have a market open to them
at prices which will encourage the pro-
ducer, the mechanic and the miner. our
lands will become populated, our cities
prosperous, and our people contented
in the steady development of our state.
How Illogical the idea that land trans
portation will not share in the benefits
of this great development How can
land carriers suffer when at first hum
dreds of thousands, and later millions,
are added to the population of Califor-
MIA? Then will California, facing the
Far East" westward, and Western Eu-
rope, as well as our Atlantic Coast,
eastward, fulfill her commercial destiny.
With an ocean highway eastward and
westward, supplementing the magnlf1-
cent railway system already at her
command, she can bid a friendly COM
mercial defiance to the world, and still
say to our countrymen who crowd
eastern centers of population: Come
westward and help us; we have here
a glorious heritage-room for all who
for all they can produce!"
AS eternal vigilance is the price OF
liberty" SO, under our form of Gov
ernment especially, eternal persisten-
cy is the price of success" 1t accom-
plished the boon of rapid land trans
portation, without which our State
would have remained a provincial COM
munity, and it will accomplish the great
interoceanic waterway for which we
have SO long waited. Then both east
ward and westward we shall face the
commercial world on even terms for
the first time. Then pioneer conditions
of the past and the comparative COM
mercial isolation of the present will
have become ancient history, and Cali
fornia will meet the commercial world,
asking only a fair field and no favor.
Equidistant between the Orient and Eu-
rope, with her. seaports on the line of
navigation between them, she will for
ever remain in close touch with the
commerce of both. Her commercial po-
sition viii have been so radically i'm
proved by the elimination of 10000
miles sea carriage that her land trans
port system will be as greatly benefited
as her people, and we shall wonder at
history repeating itself, in the fallacy
of human judgment that feared the
result of increased facilities for cheap
transportation as a danger to vested
interests already secure in the patron
age of an empire which cannot possibly
live on the basis of modern commerce
and civilization wit hOut them