Weekly independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 1887-1914, 1911-01-20
UNCLE SANS
MATERIAL WEALTH

years dSO lllS HOHln vi tue COlu,
bleak shores of Cape Cod Bay,
Mass. the intrepid little band Of
passengers who reverently disem-
barked there from the Mayflower
two months before were battling
against the pangs of hunger and
tormented by the menace of uIti-
mate starvation.
Out of that same harbor for the
last three months half a hundred
huge ships, weighed down with
grain, have gone forth to feed and
nourish the world.
There are now 80, 900, 600 of us
where there were but l03 in 1920.
Out of the virgin soil of the Wild
erness that once stretched west
ward from Cape Cod to the Pacific
seaboard have sprung this year
agricultural products worth S.
600, 600, 600 a record never before
attained by any single nation in
the world in any m year.
Our national wealth has grown
from $3.50, OOO. 900 in 1851 to the
prodigous sum of Sl25, 900, 600. 900
on January lst 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 COM
petitors. Despite our enormous
growth in population we now have
a per capita capital of 81 1853 where
we had but S1S3 in 1871. We are
the worlds greatest manufacturers
as well as its most extensive and
richest agriculturalists. We mine
more coal and extract more gold,
silver, copper, and iron out Of the
ground tnan any two countries in
the universe. We are prosperOu.
beyond the most eXtravagant
picture ever painted in fancy by
fertile human imagination. Unable
to proitably employ all our own
capital at home, we use our surplus
millions to finance tobacco planta-
tions in Porto Rico and the Philli-
pines, sugar plantations in Cuba,
coffee plantations in Brazil an d
rubber plantations IN British
Guiana and thus add to our rapidly
accommodating revenues.
Favored by nature, blessed by
Providence, admired dy the world,
every body's friend and nobody's
avowed enemy, endowed with
marvellous physical vigor, animated
by such enterprise as no other
nation has yer shown. fiattercd
and toasted the earth over, we
should be supremely happy. But
we amt.
We fret and fume because a
dyspeptic, railroad president talks
pessimistically of the future. as if
he was inspired or had any better
opportunity of f~orseeing things in
advance of their advent than the
rest of the community who make
no pretence to being president.
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 annoy
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
u national material pre-cminence
now available. He indeed must
be a queer American who in the
contemplation of the stupcndous
development of his country and its
epochal achievements does not feel
a sense of patriotic exaltation as he
reads and studies the significance
of the record of its growth and
transccnding accomplishments stree
that intrepid little band of pilgrims
braycd the terrors of the sea to
plant their standard on our then
inhospitable shores.
GHEfgKzzEN5zIzauu2zNzs LIE,