The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-08-18
Il NEW EMPIRE.

Inc most remarkable event in the ma
terial progress of the past five years In
the United States has been the tremen-
dous growth in population and settle
lnent throughout every section of the
! great Northwest There has also been a
great development in the settlement of
the country to the Southwest; but the
progress has not at all kept pace with
that made in the country which is trib
utary to these two cities of st. Paul and
Minneapolis.
The great movement of consolidation
which has been in progress among the
railroads running toward the Pacific
Northwest has been called into existence
in recognition of this condition. The aim
is to do the increased carrying business
thus created with the least possible meas
ure of expense, and to bring regions
which are the complement of each other
in their productive resources into imme-
date touch.
1t is this principle which determined
the connection between the Burlington in
and Northern Pacific. The Burlington
taps the great producing region of the
South and Southwest, and carries its
products well up into this region, taking
back in its cars those products Of ours
which are essential to the comfort and
prosperity of the South and Southwest
If this exchange of material can be car
ried on with substantial Iessening of
expense and friction, the economic gain
will be to the Northern and Southern re-
gions alike, and the country in its en-
tirety must feel the effect of the in
creased prosperity which will result.
Day after day hundreds of native
Americans pass and repass through the
st. Paul union depot engaged in the mis-
sion of locating homes in the great pro-
ducing region of the Northwest at every
point up to the Canadian border line, out
to the Pacific ocean and south as far as
the line of the Union Pacific railroad.
Then, there are the hordes Of incoming
foreigners who seek to plant themselves
in the regions into which those railroads
reach.
A new worlds trade is springing up
farther west. For the markets of the
Orient thousands of Americans will be
engaged in new industries during the next
decade. 1t is folly to believe that the
material represented by the communal
needs OF the Orient which the United
States are looked to to supply, will con-
tinue to be hauled across the American
continent. No. The entire Pacific coast
will be at work through mine and soil,
through factory and warehouse, in the
great productive works which the opening
Of an Oriental trade will make necessary
Out to those points and across the end
less prairies and table lands of the Amer
lean continent, the emigrant will wend
his way, until by and by there will be as
secure local traffic along the roads of
the American Northwest as there is to-
day along the trun: lines of New York.
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois and
Ohio.
1t is within the lifetime of many Of
us that the prairie schooner dragged its
weary length along the great deserts of
the American West. These are deserts
no longer Millions of acres, then thought
lrreclaimable, are now maintaining tens
Of thousands of rich and happy American
producers. Those which are still desert
will in the great majority of cases be
made to bloom as the rose within the life
time of this generation, through the great
movement of irrigation, which is just in
its inception.
The Southern states, too must soon feel
the reviying touch of this new commercial
and productive era. 1t is Westward Ho!
The contribution which the South can