BRIGHT PROSPECTS.
Among the bright indications for the future are the increase of industrial education, the beginning of cooperation between capitalists and employes, the increasing intelligence and combined strength of the laboring class, which give assurance of good wages, and the subdivision of the land into smaller farms, which substitutes an independent yeomanry for the landlord and tenant relation. Thus, in the thirteen States, formerly slave-holding, the average size of farms in 1860 was 346 acres, but in 1880 it was 146.
We have vast mineral resources as yet untouched, of coal, iron, and other metals far exceeding all that has yet been reached in the old as well as new regions. The marbles of Inyo, California, are more than twice as strong as the best marbles of Italy.
“Astonishing as the statement may appear,” says the Denver News, “it is nevertheless a fact that there are here, within the borders of Colorado, the wealth in coal of two or even three States like Pennsylvania. For the vast trans-Missouri country, eastward, even to the valley of the Mississippi, Colorado is the great present and future storehouse of the fuel which the demands and necessities of its varied commercial and industrial life will require. Many generations hence, when Colorado shall have become an old State, when the frontier days shall have been forgotten, when gold and silver mining shall have ceased to be profitable, even then will the coal fields of Colorado be yielding their hidden treasures of fuel to supply the demand.”
We have no territory which sanitary science may not render a healthful home, and we have millions of acres of elevated territory, where the highest conditions of human health and happiness may be attained in connection with the highest spiritual development. But these regions are not on the Eastern coast, chilled by the icy currents from the North. “Westward the star of empire wends its way,” and the Pacific Coast is destined to witness the development of the highest civilization on the globe. Of the health and beauty of California all its residents can speak, but physicians can give decisive facts. Dr. King, of Banning, Cal., says, “Out here we scarcely know what storms are. All winter long my front yard has been green and beautiful—roses blooming in January, and callas in March. During three and a half years there have been but two cases of acute disease of the chest within six miles of my office. I do not know of any death having occurred in this village or vicinity from an acute disease, since I came here nearly four years ago.” What are the lauded climates of Italy and Greece compared to such a record as this?