I am indebted to many books and periodicals for data regarding the modern American industrial development. I am indebted also to many early authors who wrote of the old West, and am under obligations to very many unknown friends, the unnamed but able writers of the daily press.
In regard to the classification of this material, varied and apparently heterogeneous, yet really interdependent, under the four epochs or volume-heads mentioned, I refer to the table given on another page.
As justification of what might be called presumption on the part of the writer in undertaking a work of this nature, he has only to plead a sincere interest in the West, which was his own native land; a love for that free American life now all too rapidly fading away; and a deep admiration for the accomplishments of that American civilization which never was and never will be any better than the man that made it. It has not been the intention herein to write a history of the American people, but a history of the American man.
EMERSON HOUGH.
Chicago, Illinois, June, 1903.
THE WAY TO THE WEST
CHAPTER I
THE AMERICAN AX
I ask you to look at this splendid tool, the American ax, not more an implement of labor than an instrument of civilization. If you can not use it, you are not American. If you do not understand it, you can not understand America.