The Wrangell sentinel., 1921-10-20

a population of 70O,OOO0O0 In the con tlnental United States; and, although nearly half of the country Is noun tainous, the people are normally able to get their living out of what they produce and still have a comfortable balance of trade in their favor.
 The Salvadorean people are differ ent from those of any other Central American state. They have middle class. There are thousands of little farms not much larger than a good sized city block, and yet it Is here that the real prosperity of Salvador Is created. In no other way could a mil lion and a quarter souls find sub sistence on 5000 square miles of ter ritory. nearly half of 1t mountains.
 Nicaragua and Revolutions.
 Nicaragua Is in much the condition Of Honduras. There have been revolu- tions there since the memory of the inhabitants runneth not to the con 1ary. Here one sees a thousand op- portunities for the development of great wealth. Virgin forests of all the precious woods In the category extend ing for miles on end; coffee lands where millions of pounds of splendid coffee might be grown; sugar lands which might yield hundreds of thou sands of sacks of sugar; and yet all stand idle. Why7
 Ask the American coffee growers of the Matagalpa district; ask the revolutions come along and leave their coffee to spoil ungathered and their cotton to go to waste unpicked. Ask the financier from New Orleans who spent 20 years of hardships there try ing to gather together a competence, and who finally found his business wrecked and in the hands of the re- ceiverS.
 Given good governments, then, no countries on the map would afford greater opportunities for profitable in- vestments than those of Central Amer ica. With such governments as some of them have had heretofore all their natural wealth cannot offset the dis advantages of those governments, and an investment at 4 per cent in the United States has often been preferred to one yielding 100 per cent in some of these countries.
 When we come to Costa Rica, things are beginning to be different, and Costa Rica does not like to be reck- oned in the same class with Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. Until re- gently she has had scarcely revolution in a generation.
 Panama which Is geographically part of Central America. though 1t has not been politically so since independ- ence was gained from Spain. is blest with some very fine farming and fruit lands in the region next to Costa Rica; but nearly all of the Panamans have gone down to the canal zone re- zion for the time being. Some of the most beautiful tierra templada lands in America are to be found in the Chiquiri country, and when the people of the United States get acquainted with the possibilities there, some of them are going to settle In that re- zion and make 1t a splendid example of the possibilities of tropical Amer ica.
 It is not improbable that one of the results of the completion of the Pana- ma canal will be the realization by the people of the United States that its safety depends in no small degree upon the good conduct of the govern ments of Central America. That will mean demand for new order of things in these countries, which in turn will mean safe investments for American capital.
 Then will dawn an era of develop ment In Central America comparable to that which has taken place in Porto Rico and in Cuba.