A resounding chorus of gratulations will herald to the world within
the next two years the first centennial of two events upon which the
history of the Great West is founded--the purchase of Louisiana and
the expedition of Lewis and Clark to the mouth of the Columbia River.
Whether the student of history at the Saint Louis World's Fair in 1904
pause in admiration of the political foresight of Jefferson, or join
in the general acclaim of the heroism of our first explorers at
Portland, in 1905, the fact that will most impress him is that
geographical lines have been obliterated and there is no West.
Migrations having their origin in the dim, remote past, and continuing
down to the present, have brought the Aryan race face to face on the
opposite shores of the great western ocean, and the world finds itself
confronted with that condition which William H. Seward predicted,
when, addressing himself to the commerce, politics, thought, and
activities of Europe, he said they "will ultimately sink in
importance, while the Pacific, its shores, its islands, and the vast
regions beyond, will become the chief theater of events in the world's
great hereafter." The East that Columbus sailed westward from Spain to
discover will ever be the world's East; the West, "the remote shores
that Drake had once called by the name of New Albion," will be the
East of the World's Great East, and the West only in its geographical
relation to the Atlantic seaboard of our own country.
The West has fulfilled every promise of its value to the Union made by
its champions when its cause was before the people of the new
Republic; it has refuted every prediction of dire effect made by the
opponents of its acquisition. When the purchase of Louisiana was under
consideration, the fear was expressed that people who would move to
that region would scarcely ever feel the rays of the general
government, their affections would be alienated by distance, and
American interests would become extinct. The generous response of men
and money made by Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa, when the Union was in
the throes of a struggle for its preservation, attests the loyalty of
the Louisiana region. A Southern senator asked, in 1843, what good was
Oregon for agricultural purposes, and said he would not give a pinch
of snuff for the whole territory. Yet the Oregon Country has given the
Union three sovereign states, and part of its territory has been taken
to form two other states; its occupation by Americans was a direct
cause of the annexation of California; it has in the Columbia River
and Puget Sound two important bases for military and naval operations;
far from being inhospitable to the honest farmer of the Atlantic
seaboard, or the Ohio Valley, it has one hundred thousand farms,
valued at nearly $600,000,000. Alaska was denounced as a barren waste,
that would never add one dollar to our wealth, or furnish homes to our
people. Yet in less than forty years Alaska has supplied gold, fish,
and furs worth $150,000,000, and has paid revenue to the government
exceeding by $1,500,000 the price Russia got for it in 1867; and at no
distant day Hawaii and the Philippines will justify American
occupation by statistics as telling as those here presented of
Louisiana, Oregon, and Alaska.
If a nonexpansive policy had prevailed in our national councils at the
beginning of the nineteenth century; if the presidential chair had
been occupied by another than the broad statesman who saw beyond the
Mississippi, over the Rockies to the Pacific, and over the Pacific to
the cradle of the world, we should now have an intolerable situation
of affairs in North America. Had we refused Louisiana from Napoleon,
what is now the United States would be partitioned, geographically,
about as follows: East of the Mississippi would be the Republic of the
United States of America of 1783, with England in Canada on the north,
and Spain in Florida and fringing the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana would
have fallen into England's hands as a result of the Napoleonic wars,
and so, perhaps, Oregon, either by reason of a favorable
interpretation of the Nootka convention, or Vancouver's discoveries.
Mexico, as the successor of Spain, would own Texas and all the
remainder of the west south of the forty-second parallel and not
included in Louisiana. With a republic on one side, and European
sovereignty on the other, the Mississippi would to-day be bristling
with cannon. The purchase of Louisiana was political foresight, and
the completion of our title to Oregon was a direct result of the
Louisiana transaction. The war with Mexico was the logical sequence of
both. From whatever point we may regard it, the acquisition of the
trans-Mississippi region, viewed in the perspective of a century, was
worth what it cost in money, actual war, and risk of war with what, in
the early stages of our history was the most powerful nation on the
globe.
The beginnings of the West date from 1850. Further back the census
reports do not present statistics that can be compared for valuable
purposes, with present standards, although as early as 1840 there were
nine hundred thousand people along the western shore of the
Mississippi in Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, and Missouri. These states
were long on the firing line of American civilization, and their
people subsisted by general farming, or by outfitting ox-train
merchandise caravans for Santa Fé and Chihuahua, or by outfitting and
trading with pioneer settlers _en route_ to Oregon, or gold seekers
flocking to California. Jim Bridger put up in southwestern Wyoming in
1843 the first post for the purpose of trading built west of the
Mississippi River, and its establishment marked the beginning of the
era of emigration to the Far West. Until a comparatively recent period
a goodly portion of the public domain lying west of the Missouri
River, and comprising perhaps five hundred thousand square miles, was
mapped as the "Great American Desert" and they who penetrated its
solitudes and returned unscathed to "civilization" were regarded with
that curiosity that pertains to a traveler who has visited an unknown
land. With the upbuilding of the country and the spread of knowledge
of its capabilities, the title of "Great American Desert" has been
swept away, and the colored maps that illustrate the books of the
twelfth census, regard the white portion as "unsettled area." This
includes a considerable area in every state and territory west of the
ninety-ninth degree of longitude. East of that line the only white
portion is in southeastern Florida. Progress in the half-century
comprehended in this brief review has been remarkable and the present
position of the West is strikingly shown in the appended statement,
which represent its percentages of the total for the United States for
the different items tabulated. In a few instances comparisons are made
with 1890 and 1850:
=====================================+============================
| Per cent.
+---------+---------+--------
| 1900. | 1890. | 1860.
+---------+---------+--------
Gross area with Alaska | 75.4 | ---- | ----
Gross area without Alaska | 59.1 | ---- | ----
Population, gross | 27.5 | 26.6 | 8.6
Urban population | 17.6 | [1]13.1 | 14.1
Number of farms | 35.8 | 32.6 | 8.2
Acres improved | 48.8 | 44.4 | 6.3
Farms, total valuation | 44.1 |[37]36.7 | 6.9
Farm products, value | 43.2 | 37.4 | 20.3
Farm animals | 59.4 | ---- | 11.9
Wool, yield | 69.8 | ---- | 4.7
Hops, yield | 64.3 | ---- | 7.1
Timber, area | 55.4 | ---- | ----
Lumber product, value | 32.4 | 24.9 | 10.0
Gold, yield | 99.6 | ---- | ----
Silver, commercial value | 99.8 | ---- | ----
Coal | 15.1 | ---- | ----
Railroad mileage | 45.2 | ---- | .25
Manufactures, value of product | 16.1 | 14.5 | 3.9
Operatives in factories | 12.2 | 11.9 | 3.1
Imports and exports | 19.0 | ---- | ----
-------------------------------------+---------+---------+--------