The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1911-01-17
UNCLE SANS MATERIAL
WEALTH
Two hundred and ninety-nine year.

ago this month on the cold, bleak shores
Of Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts,, the
intrepid little band of passengers who
reverently disembarked there from the
Mayflower two months before were
battled against the pangs of hunger
and tormented by the menace of ulti-
mate starvation.
Out of that same harbor for the last
three months half a hundred huge
ships, weighted down with grain, have
gone forth to feed and nourish the
world.
There are now go, 000, 900 of us where
there were but 103 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, a record never before at
tanned by any single nation in the
world in any one year.
Our national wealth has grown from
$750,000, 900 in 1871 to the prodigious
sum of 1925, 900, 900 900 on January LIST
last-twice that of the United King
dom Of Great Britain, Scotland and
Ireland and three times that of either
France or Germany, our three closest
competitors. Despite our enormous
growth in population we now have a
percapita capital of $1,S59 where we
had but 1888 in 1871. We are the
worlds greatest manufacturers as well
as its most extensive and richest agri-
culturists. We mine more coal and ex.
tract more gold, silver, copper and iron
out of the ground than any two coun-
tries in the universe. We are pros
porous beyond the most extravagant
picture ever painted in fancy by fer
tile human imagination. Unable to
profitably employ all our own capital at
home, we use our surplus millions to
finance tobacco plantations in Porto
Rico n the Philippines, sugar planta.
lions in Cuba, coffee plantations in
Brazil and rubber plantations in Brit.
ish Guiana and thus add to our rapidly
accommodating revenues.
Favored by nature, blessed by Provi'
deenc, 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
fattered and toasted the earth over, we
should be supremely happy. But we
amt.
We fret and fume because a dyspep,
tic railroad president talks pessimis-
tically Of the future, as if he was in
spired or had any better opportunity Of
foreseeing things in advance Of their
advent than the rest of the community
who make no ~pretense to being pre-,
scient.
Pessimism never declared a dividend
or built two houses where there was
one before. Like the flea on the dog
the pessimist is inevitable. While his
persistent propensity of reminding us
OF his presence may internationally an
noy and harrass, when all is said and
done, he cuts little ice. How literally
true this is was never more forcibly or
in .erestingly emphasized than in the
figures of our national material pre-
eminence now available. He indeed
must be q queer American who in the
contemplation of the stupendous de-
velopment of his country and its epoch
al achievements does not feel q sense
of patriotic exaltation as he reads and
studies the significance of the record Of
its growth and transcending accom-
plishments since that intrepid little
band of pilgrims braved the terrors of
the sea to plant their standard on our
then inhospitable shores.