The Cordova daily times., 1920-06-26

now be generous enough to own that one of. the first and boldest of those who urged free lands for free settlers was Andrew Johnson. Bitterly did he pay for his blunders and his obstin- acy; let us now remember that when the shareholders were at the height of their power he stood up for grants that would scatter plenty OCT a smil- ing land"
 It is significant that the first Re- publican candidate for the presidency was called "the Pathfinder" It is a striking coincidence that the first Re- publican president was a surveyor, and that he had sought to be con- missioner of the land office. Nor is it without significance that the second Republican president had been the most resolute champion of the poor whites of the south. When ct last l working order our chief magistrate was Ulysses s. Grant, who had travel son to the western ocean, and who had known the life of a boy on the farm. Are not these facts logically as i'm portant as the far more frequently mentioned facts about the four Vir ginia planters who in earlier days reached the presidency.
 Our countrymen have laughed over Mark Twain's western adventures, the have admired Bret Harte's min- ing camp stories, they have quoted Joaquin Miller's poetry, they are now reading John c. Van Dykes, descrip- tion of the glories of Colorado, but the development of these lands is far more wonderful than anyone can say of it. Long ago one of the most pow erful of our writers, Albert D. Rich ardson, we'll entitled his narrative Beyond the Mississippi" How the surveys were made and the tracks were built, how town answered town even as deep called unto deep, how the ranchers fed their f1ocks, and the mines yielded their treasures, and all in so short a time, rivals the pal ace of Aladdin. It used to be consid- cred a triumph of mathematics to find the distance of an object beyond an impossible river. The aggressive settlers who came after the civil war would not believe that river or noun tain, that dense forest or sandy plain, was impossible.
 There go the engineers" said Ben ion, as he pointed to the drove of bison. Where the rushing beasts could find a way man could go, and man did go. What this development meant to the soldiers of the civil war none of us can tell We are too near the mighty movement to see it in the true perspective. It may be that we Americans take it too much as a matter of course. Perhaps some fu- ture De Tocqueville or Bryce must come here to write the worlds perma- nent account of the growth between the Mississippi and the Pacific. It may be that some new Humboldt will make it one of the noblest chapters of his Cosmos"
 Pensions were paid to soldiers, to the widow and to the orphan, yet no pension system could have done for the veterans what the opening of the West did for them The forty years between Grants beginning as presi- dent and the inauguration of Taft are to the lands beyond the Mississippi more wonderful than the four hundred years that preceded. them. From the fallen heroes of Custer's band to the rising walls of Leland Stanford Uni versity, from the surveys of Dodge to the Lick telescope, from the bar ren sands of a few years past to the irrigated harvest fields of today, what development in the world is like this? To those who believe that Providence guides the moderan races as surely as He guided the Israelites