Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1907-11-21
OKLAHOMA, FORTY-SIXTH
STATE, ENTERS UNION.
Is the Richest, Most Populous and
Most Promising of All Her
Predecessors.

With the proclamation OF President
Roosevelt Saturday, notifying the
world that new State had been born,
Oklahoma took her place in the sister.
hood of Uncle Sam. The new State is
the richest and most promising ever ad-
mltted to the American Union. She has
half as many people as all the thirteen
original States combined when they
achieved their independence. BY ac-
tual count of noses she has six times
the population of any other State ever
received at the time of admission into
the Union. She has fifty times the
amount of wealth that could be claimed
by any of her predecessors at the be-
ginning of their State life and has,
what not one of them could show. all
the arts and sciences, the improvements
and progress that go to make a highly
civilized commonwealth, from wireless
telegraphy to the Skyscraper, from the
telephone to chemical farming. More
than million and half persons claim
the new State as theirs, and it will not
be long after the census is taken in
1910 before the 2.OOO,O0O-mark will be
passed. All the old States have sent
their best blood into Oklahoma to give
it cosmopolitan life, and, no matter
where you are from, if you travel with,
In its borders you will find your own
people. The farmer from New England
is there raising cotton side by side with
his northern crops; the Louisiana
planter has taken a homestead and is
growing alfalfa and wheat, and the
Pennsylvanian and Ohioan are digging
coal or boring for oil, while the Califor-
MAN and Texan are gaining wealth
from mills or railroads or electric
plants. There are thrift and push and
energy everywhere. If Oklahoma has
any lazy residents, they manage to con-
ceal themselves, for the whole pOpula-
ton seems on the move continually.
Spots that We're grassy prairies are
bustling towns to-day; yesterdays
towns are cities now; the hotels cannot
build additions fast enough to accom-
mOdate the travelling public, and the
railroads, strive as they may to add
tracks and rolling stock to their equiD-
ment, are simply unable to keep up
with the constantly growing volume of
freight and passenger traffic.
Up-to-dateness seems to be the watch
word of Oklahoma's people in the rural
districts as well as in the populous
citiaS Evory- forD,o,. boe his ,,,iDd ,,,;u
gasolene engine or mechanical water
power for supplying his house and out
buildings, and many own automobiles.
Telephones bring them into close COM
munication with the towns, and the
rural free delivery bears daily mail TO
their doors. Oklahoma can raise any
thing which grows between the Cana
dian border and Florida and Texas
The cotton yield to the acre is greater
than that in any other State or Terri
tory in the Union
After the proclamation declaring Ok
lahoma full-fedged State the only
thing remaining to be done to signify
its being made a complete member of
the Union will be the setting Of its star
in the flag Under the law this can not
be accomplished until the Fourth of
July, 1908.
Only three of the territories now re-
main, Alaska, Arizona and New Mexico.
The probability is that one or both of
these laSt-named will soon be admitted
to the United States, and then every
section of the country except Alaska,
Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philip
pines will be represented in the Senate