With the era of steam came a complete reversal of all earlier methods.
For nearly a century following the Revolutionary War the new lands of
America had waited upon the transportation. Now the transportation
facilities were to overleap history and to run in advance of progress
itself. The railroad was not to depend upon the land, but the land
upon the railroad. It was strong faith in the future civilization
which enabled capitalists to build one connected line of iron from
Oregon down the Pacific coast, thence east of the mouth of the Father
of Waters, in all over thirty-two hundred miles of rail. Then came
that daring flight of the Santa Fé across the seas of sand, a venture
derided as folly and recklessness. The proof you may find by seeing the
cities that have grown, the fields which bear them tribute. North and
South and East and West the prairie roads run. The long trail of the
cattle-drive is gone, and the cattle no longer walk a thousand miles to
pasture or to market. Once, twice, thrice, the continent was spanned,
and the path across the continent laid well and laid forever.
The largest, the most compact, and the most closely knit Caucasian
population in the world to-day, is that of America, and to-day America
is potentially the most powerful of all the world-powers. Why? Because
her unit of population is superior. The reason for that you may find
yourself if you care to look into the great movements of the West-bound
population of America.