Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-08-13

Providence seems to have decreed that in the progress of the various portions of the western world there should be three well-defihed periods the mineral, the agricultural and the commercial.
 These have thus far followed one another in the order named and the wisdom of the arrangement becomes apparent after a moments thought Providence seems also to have decreed that whenever the proper sociological moment arrives for the further ex- pansion of the race the glacial depos- its have receded sufficiently to permit of a new mineral discovery still further west along the logitudinal lines upon which development has al ways proceeded.
 Thus we have had the mineral period beginning in the west in 1849, and in the northwest three years later. and in Alaska about decade ago With the construction of a railroad in the Tanana valley, Alaska is about to begin the agricultural period of that country. In the British northwest the agricultural period was slow to follow the discovery of mineral wealth, but has now proceeded so far that the commercial period. indicated by a hitherto unheard-of activity in rail road building. is well under way. With the commercial period of British Co lumbia, the period in which all three development periods blend and har- monize for the greatest good of a country, the United States Is deeply interested. Between Washington and Montana. which are unquestionably destined to become two of the greatest states in the union. and between It. tie corner of Idaho. and the domin ions of the crown in the northwest. is an imaginary line. To the north of this line, royalty and a crown dom. mate while to the south a great re- public lies. Inseparably joined by nature itself, 1t would seem that these two countries cannot forever be kept asunder by political or national di. visions.
 Get down your map and note the eight lines of railway which have been pushed from the three states across this line into the rich storehouses of the British northwest, and see the half dozen more lines which are under construction or projected into Canad!- an territory. Note. further. another fact of an American rail line skirting the most picturesque seashore on the Pacific until 1t reaches the metropolis of Vancouver. Watch this American line as 1t is pushing it's way still further north to an ultimate connec- ton with Canada's new trarsconti- mental road at Port Simpson. Note also the fact that this American line Is wedging It's way still further north to reach the American possessions in Alaska. and then say. if you will. that the one soil should naturally be Brit ish and the other American.
 Heretofore Brrish Columbia has been noted mostly as the mineral storehouse of Canada It's production of nearly sf50.0oo.o 900 of mineral wealth since 1852 entities it to this credit. In this production. too. Amer ican capital has of late taken. per haps. the most important part Where British capital has been timid. Amerf- can money and enterprise have taken hold and by spending fortunes in ex- pioratory digsings have developed fa- nous mineral camps out of almost abandoned districts. The hand of American capital and genius Is ss in- delfbly stamped upon the progress of British Columbia as t is upon that of old Mexico.
 So marked became this influence that railroad interests represented by James ]. HIll and the Canadian raIl- way interests represented by the Ca uadizn Pacific entered into an axree-