I have looked with great interest, in passing through these mountain gorges, at the enterprise of the people who have constructed intersecting lines of railroad upon these difficult grades and through threatening cañons. It has not been many days since such feats of engineering would have been regarded as impossible, and yet now railroads have touched the highest points, have gone above the snow line, have reached elevated mines, and brought isolated valleys into rapid and easy communication with the more settled parts of the country. It has given me great pleasure to look upon the beautiful valley in which the town of Salida is situated, and which will undoubtedly be capable of large agricultural production when a system of irrigation is completed. It might be desirable to the people of Indiana and Illinois and other agricultural States if Colorado had to buy her wheat and corn from them, but our larger interest makes it desirable that every community should supply its own wants. I anticipate with pleasure the day when these mountain States will not be content with mining, but shall add agricultural pursuits and manufacturing, and when the wool which is sheared from the flocks will be woven at home. [Cheers.]
It is a pleasant condition of things when all classes are prosperous, when the workingman has fair wages that leave him some margin above his daily necessities. I should lose hope for our institutions when there should be despairing classes among us. An American citizen could not be a good citizen who did not have hope in his heart. Every boy, however humble, can pass through our public schools and climb to any position of usefulness and honor he has the ability to attain. There have been marvellous instances of what courage and pluck and intelligence may do in this way.
To the children I give a cordial greeting. They have been a happy feature of almost every gathering in the journey. I hope they may all receive that attention which will make them men and women of intelligence, and capable of taking a full share in all these good things in the community and in the State, for which they are to be responsible. [Cheers.]
[CAÑON CITY, COLORADO, MAY 11.]
Leaving Salida the route lay through a stretch of country unsurpassed in grandeur. The train made a short stop on the hanging bridge over the Arkansas River in the Grand Cañon. Emerging through the Royal Gorge the party reached Cañon City at 2 P.M. amid the cheers of its entire population, including 400 school children. Mayor J. M. Bradbury, T. M. Harding, A. D. Cooper, and Warden W. A. Smith were among the prominent residents who welcomed the President; also, Greenwood Post, G. A. R., Dr. J. L. Prentiss, Commander.
President Harrison spoke as follows:
Comrades and Fellow-citizens—It gives me great pleasure to see you and accept with a thankful heart those cordial greetings with which you have met us. I have been talking so much since I left Washington that I really am almost talked out; and yet, until I shall have altogether lost my voice, of which there does not seem to be any prospect, I cannot refrain from saying thank you to those friends who greet us with such affectionate interest. We do appreciate it very highly. But I do not at all assume it is merely your interest in me. It is, I am sure, your interest in the country, in its Constitution, and in its flag—the flag for which these comrades fought, which they carried through the stress of battle and brought home in honor. It is our free institutions, our free ballot, our representative Government, that you all honor in coming here to-day. It is very surprising and very pleasant to drop down out of these snow-clad summits and to have passed into our hands in the valley, branches of peach and pear and bouquets of flowers, the first fruits of spring—a spring more genial here than it seemed at Leadville this morning. [Applause.] I am very glad to have revealed to me the possibilities of this country, and to see how, under the system of irrigation, that which seemed to be a waste—accursed of God—comes to be a very garden of Eden in beauty and productiveness. I hope you have not only the fruits and flowers of paradise, but that you have in your homes that state of peace and blessedness which prevailed before our first mother took the apple. [Applause.] To these comrades I want to give a comrade's greeting. I know of no higher honor in this world than to be called "comrade" by the survivors of those who saved the Union, [Applause.]