The Growth of the Gulf Ports.
Through the growing popularity of the Gulf ports as outlets for the country's merchandise, the Southwest is bound to be a great gainer. As compared with 1904, there was a larger gain in the exports by the ports of the Gulf of Mexico in 1905 than the Atlantic ports showed.
This gain is due to several causes. More and more the great railways are establishing terminals at the Gulf outlets. From the chief productive centers of the Mississippi Valley the distances to these points are shorter than to the Atlantic, and the grades are easier. In population, productivity, and general industrial and commercial importance, the southern end of the vast Mississippi Valley is growing with disproportionate rapidity. The Southwest's pull on the population center of the United States is shown by the fact that during the decade ending with 1900 that point moved fourteen miles westward and three miles southward.
The center of the country's production of wheat and of oats, and the center of the total area in the country's farms, are now west of the Mississippi. The center of the production of cotton, now on the western verge of the State of Mississippi, and the center of the production of corn, now in the western part of Illinois, will cross the big river before 1910. More than sixty-five per cent of the country's exports already originate west of the Mississippi.