The record-union., 1899-12-13
SHOULD STUDY GEOGRAPHY.
A MAGAZINE WRITER PRE-
sCRIBES FOR CONGREssMEN.
Thinks They Would Do Better II
They Gave More Attention to
the Nature Of the Country and
Less to Politics.

COuSISSS NOulQ w d great OGdl pct-
ter if it would study more geography
and less politics, is the view of writer
in "Ainslee's" for December. This is
the way the suggestion is put:
TERRITORIAL IDIOSYNCRASIES.
1.-The original thirteen States under
stood one another's territorial idiosyn-
crasies thoroughly, and framed a Con-
stitution elastic enough to allow for
them. But the original thirteen have
been swelling until they are forty-five,
and will soon be forty-eight, and there
has been little or no further allowance
for further territOrialization. Political
critics call the river and harbor bill a
great graft; it is really but dead
lock between geographical ambitions
Congress has fallen into checker game
of diversified interests and conflicting
demands, all growing out of divergence
of territory and distinctiveness of pur-
suits and products, yet no one seems to
understand the complexity or the way
out of it,.
The "AinSlee" writer advances this
view after a somewhat novel study of
the effect of topography upon the char
acter of people in different sections OF
the United States. His article is in
part as follows:
When the Pennsylvania farmers
builded a ship and foated down the
Ohio River into the country which now
bears that rivers name they set the
precedent for future westward migra-
ton. Going in the easiest manner pos
sible to the easiest possible destination
they obeyed the geological law of least
resistance by which habitation has
since been made the thickest where it
could become so with the minimum OF
difficulty.
when the gold hunters receded from
the Colorado mountains leaving only
the mountaineers to fight it out with
the isolation and the altitude, and to
found a State fifteen years subsequent
ly, and when the emigrants who could
stand the overland trail no longer
camped by the wayside in. Kansas, and,
in the face of Indians and cyclones, be-
gan growing corn and wheat, another
law was obeyed and another precedent
established, namely, that the character
of peoples is determined by the amount
Of combat with the natural distractions
of progress.
These two laws conjunctively-the
law of least resistance, and the law OF
greatest conquest and endurance-have
fixed upon the area of the United States
a population as varied as the topogra-
ply, replica in almost every respect
Of its physical features.
Population climbs hills and crosses
rivers and pushes through the winds
of the prairies only SO rapidly as it is
easier to do these things than it is to
remain stationary Community char
acter evolves into the adventurous and
the experimental, or holds sturdily to
the struggle with the present, or fingers
in the complacency of battles won, &C
cording as it's environment permits, re-
quires or prohibits.
WHAT "SECTIONALISM" REALLY
MEANS.
This is what 'sectionalism,' of which
we have heard much in latter-day poll
tics, really means. 1t is a deeply laid
trait of the republic. Between the sea-
level of the Atlantic and the ocean
shores of the Pacific lie habitats as diff
ferentiated, save for community OF
language and patriotism, as the antag-
onistic States of Europe. Between Sault
Ste. Marie and Baton Rouge lie groups
of people sectionalized by geographical
demarcations as distinct as those made
by the Alleghanies, or the Mississippi,
or the Rocky Mountains. Nothing is
likely to obliterate these severances and
particularities They will increase in
force and potency as the sections grow
older; they will assume a constantly
more active function in the construc-
tive processes Of the American COM
monwealth.
Eat the apex of the continent, for ex-
ample, in Colorado and the adjoining
silver States north and south. is an
ebullience and venturesomeness as
amazing to the people of lower .alti-
tudes as it is puissant among the inhab
itants themselves who have mountains
to conquer and rarified atmosphere 10
breathe. 1t is no more apt to pass
away than are the lofty mountains
themselves, nor will it ever cease to be
an agent to disturb political conven-
tons or to supply enthusiasm to new
propaganda of many sorts.
Along the flow Of the Ohio, and by
the edges of the navigable Great Lakes,
is a geography that makes mechanical
and mineral industry as natural as liv-
ing, and furnishes no impulses other
than those of cautious. daily, thrifty
advancement.
Around the he'd of the Great Lakes
the population imbibes the zest of cold
winters, subssts upon the luxuriance
of a faultless soil and sends to Con-
gress men with the zeal and swift pro-
nf fho Of q
Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
''Southward, where the chivalry Of old
France has merged with the doughti-
ness of American engineers, AID the
masterful Mississippi mas bai1ed human
ingenuity only to be assaulted by that
ingenuity generation after generation
until the river has now become a CO.
lossal avenue of commerce, they put
forth men who stake their fame upon
the construction of interoceanic canals,
or who disrupt a political party to pre-
serve the sugar interests which have
been handed down to them from foreign
ancestors.
WESTERN INDIVIDUALITY.
Far out upon the Pacific Coast, iso-
lated by dividing mountain ranges, but
supported by natural resources which
have no peer elsewhere upon the earth
are men and women who do not know
what it is to be stinted and deprived
who dwell perpetually in comfortably
won completeness, but who, through
their distance from the rest of the ma
ton, must build their own empire af-
ter their own models, as they made
their California Code in the fifties. and
as they made their transcontinental
railroad in the sixties. They will be