| RailMileage | Periodicals | GoldTroyOz. | SilverTroy Oz. | |||||
| 1885. | 1890. | 1880 | 1893 | 1880 | 1889 | 1880 | 1889. | |
| California | 3,044 | 4,356 | 364 | 639 | 829,677 | 608,382 | 890,158 | 1,062,578 |
| Colorado | 2,884 | 4,176 | 90 | 298 | 130,608 | 187,881 | 12,800,120 | 18,375,551 |
| Dakotas, | 2877 | 66 | 159,920 | 54,770 | ||||
| North Dakota | | 2,003 | | 139 | ||||
| South Dakota | | 2,470 | | 269 | | 149,538 | | 104,672 |
| Idaho | 944 | 8 | 58 | 71,578 | 95,983 | 359,309 | 3,137,508 | |
| Kansas | 4,441 | 8,306 | 349 | 759 | ||||
| Minnesota | 4,331 | 5,379 | 224 | 558 | ||||
| Montana | 1,047 | 2,181 | 18 | 90 | 87,354 | 151,861 | 2,246,938 | 13,511,455 |
| Nebraska | 2,988 | 5,300 | 189 | 645 | ||||
| Nevada | 945 | 924 | 37 | 26 | 236,469 | 169,617 | 9,614,561 | 4,696,605 |
| New Mexico | 1,195 | 1,324 | 18 | 59 | 2,387 | 39,457 | 303,455 | 1,251,124 |
| Oregon | 1,181 | 1,433 | 74 | 194 | 53,101 | 46,648 | 21,496 | 17,851 |
| Texas | 6,687 | 8,630 | 279 | 678 | 330 | 323,438 | ||
| Utah | 1,085 | 1,085 | 24 | 71 | 14,105 | 23,591 | 3,668,566 | 7,005,193 |
| Washington | 736 | 1,774 | 29 | 253 | 6,569 | 9,005 | 789 | 23,464 |
| Wyoming | 617 | 941 | 10 | 43 | 838 | 711 | ||
| TERRITORIES | ||||||||
| Alaska | 4 | 238 | 43,762 | 39 | 9,219 | |||
| Arizona | 906 | 1,096 | 17 | 35 | 10,254 | 44,029 | 1,738,921 | 1,812,961 |
The Irrigating Reservoir at Walnut Grove, Arizona, showing the Artificial Lake partly filled.
We shall be pardoned for recurring again to Minnesota. So recently as 1838, where St. Paul and Minneapolis now stand, the former with a population in 1890 of 133,156, the latter with one of 164,738, not a white man’s abode had risen. There were then but three cabins between St. Paul and Prairie du Chien, a distance of 300 miles down the Mississippi. Summit Avenue, St. Paul, was, in 1890, the finest street in America, if not on the globe. West St. Paul, in 1880 a hamlet of a few huts, had by 1890 20,000 to 30,000 people, with street-cars, large business blocks, fine houses and stores. The pioneer railway in Minnesota was laid in 1862, from St. Paul to St. Anthony, the first shovelful of earth being lifted by a citizen of St. Paul, who probably lived to see his State gridironed with 5,379 miles of track; his own firm constructing over 1,100 miles in the single year 1887. Minneapolis in 1887 turned out 5,000,000 barrels of flour, an average of 100,000 barrels a week.
Duluth had in 1880 but 3,740 people. In 1890, 33,115. The cause of Duluth’s advantage is obvious upon a glance at the map. It is by water no farther from Lake Erie than Chicago is, while it is some hundreds of miles nearer the great wheat-field. It is itself the very gate of this—the gate of Minnesota—which in 1869 brought forth 18,000,000 bushels; in 1886, 50,000,000 bushels. To this enormous yield, that of the Dakotas, about the same, had now to be added, the one as the other finding its way out to the hungry world largely through Duluth.
The caravans of people necessary to populate these immense western ranges were to a very great extent immigrants from Europe. The census of 1880 gave us 6,679,043 inhabitants of foreign nativity. We have no figures for the exact proportion of the total immigration into the country which found its home in the West, yet a glimpse at the total from year to year is interesting at this point. The falling off in and after 1893 is particularly noticeable. Immigrants arrived as follows:
In
1868 282,189
1869 352,768
1870 387,203
1871 321,350
1872 404,806
1873 459,803
1874 313,339
1875 227,498
1876 169,986
1877 141,857
1878 138,469
1879 177,826
1880 457,257
1881 669,431
1882 788,992
1883 603,322
1884 518,592
1885 395,346
1886 334,203
1890 455,302
1891 560,319
1892 579,663
1893 439,730
1894 285,631.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EXPOSITION OF 1876
It was fitting that the one hundredth anniversary of a great industrial nation should be celebrated by a World’s Fair. Such a plan was first publicly proposed for the United States in 1870, by an association of Philadelphia citizens. It was adopted by Congress in the following year, when an act was passed creating a Centennial Commission, to consist of a delegate and an alternate from each State and Territory. The commission organized for the great and difficult work before them by choosing General J. R. Hawley, of Connecticut, president, and by appointing an executive committee, a board of directors, and heads of various administrative bureaus.
The Government declined to assume the financial responsibility of the enterprise, but in 1872 Congress appointed a Centennial Board of Finance with power to raise a capital stock of $10,000,000. Shares to the amount of $2,400,000 were soon sold to private citizens. Philadelphia appropriated $1,500,000, and Pennsylvania $1,000,000. In 1876 Congress made a loan to the Board of $1,500,000. Thus the great problem of a financial basis for the enterprise was solved.