FROM ADDRESS AT SEATTLE, WASH., MAY 23, 1903
There is no other body of water in the world which confers upon the commonwealth possessing it quite the natural advantages that Puget Sound confers upon your State. There is no other State in the Union, and I include all of them, which has greater natural advantages and a more assured future of greatness than this State of Washington. Phenomenal though your growth has been, it has barely begun; and your growth in the half century now opening will dwarf absolutely even your growth in the immediate past.
I am speaking in the gateway to Alaska. All our people, even those from the locality whence I come, are beginning to appreciate a little of Alaska’s future. The men of my own age whom I am addressing will not be old men before we see Alaska one of the rich and strong States of the Union. I thank fortune that the National Legislature has begun to wake up to the fact that Alaska has interests of vital importance not merely to her but to the entire Union. Alaska contains a territory which will within this century support as large a population as the combined Scandinavian countries of Europe; those countries from which has sprung as wonderful a race as ever imprinted its characteristics upon the history of civilization. Exactly as the Scandinavian peoples have left their mark upon the entire history of Europe, so we shall see Alaska with its mines, its lumber, its fisheries, with its possibilities in agriculture and stock-raising, with its possibilities of commercial command, with the tremendous development that is going on within it even now, produce as hardy and vigorous a people as any portion of North America.