The Churchill county standard. (Fallon, Nev.) 1908-1920, 1911-01-19
THE NATIONS PROGRESS
Figures Given Showing Stupen.
dous and Unprecedented
National Growth.

Two nunOfeu anu nlnelY-niHe years
ago this month on the cold bleak shores
of Cape Cod Bay, Mass, the intrepid
little bani of passengers who reverent-
ly disembarked there from the May
flower two months before were battling
against the pangs of hunger and tor
mented by the menace of ultimate star
walton.
Out of that same harbor for the last
three months half hundred huge ships
weighed down with grain, have gone
forth to nourish the world.
There are now 92, 900, 900 of US where
there were but 1O3 in 1920. Out of the
virgin soil of the wilderness that once
stretched westward from Cape Cod to
the Pacific seaboard have sprung this
year agricultural products worth So. 000-
000, 900, record never before attained
by any single nation in the world in any
one year.
Our national wealth has increased
from $3.50, 600, 900 in 1871 to the pro-
digious sum of SIPS, 600, 900, 900 on Janu-
ary 1st last, twice that of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland
and ireland and three times that of
either France or Germany, our three
closest competitors. Despite our enor-
m )us growth in population we now have
per capita capital of 81, 859 where we
had but S1s3 in 1871. We are the
worlds greatest manufacturers as well
a its most extensive and richest agri-
culturalists. We mine more coal and
extract more gold, silver, copper and
iron cut of the ground than any two
C )untries in the universe. We are pros
p erous beyond the most extravagant
p cture ever painted in fancy by fertile
human imagination. Unable to profit
aly employ all our own capital at home,
we use our surplus millions to finance
tobacco plantations in Porto Rico and
the Philippines, sugar plantations in
Cuba, coffee plantations in Brazil and
rubber plantations in British Guiana
and thus add to our rapidly accumulat-
ing revenues.
Favored by Nature, blessed by Provi-
d ence, admired by the world, every
body's friend and nobody's avowed
enemy, endowed with marvellous physi-
cal vigor, animated by such enterprise
as no other nation has ever shown, fiat
tered and toasted the earth over, we
should be supremely happy, but we are
not.
We fret and fume because a dyspep-
tic railroad president talks pessimisti-
cally of the future, as ii he was inspir-
ed or had any better opportunity of
foreseeing things in advance of their
advent than the rest of the community
who make no pretence to being pro-
scient.
Pessimism never declared dividend
or built two houses where there was
one before. Like the flea on the dog,
pessimist is inevitable. While his
persistent propensity of reminding US
of his presence may intermittently an
noy and harrass, when all is said and
done, he cuts little ice. How literally
true this is was never more forcibly or
Interestingly emphasized than in the
figures of our national material pre-
eminence now available. He indeed
must be queer American who in the
contemplation of the stupendous devel-
opment of his country and its epochal
achievements does not feel sense of
patriotic exaltation as he reads and
studies the significance of its growth
and transcending accom- pl s h m e t 5
since that intrepid little band of pill
grims braved the terrors of the sea to
plant their standard on our then inhos-
pitable shores.