[51] Henry Howe; “The Great West” (1855).
[52] In the year 1900 began the great tendency toward consolidation in railway interests. Nor did the sequence cease at this point. In the same year there were begun, for use upon the Pacific Ocean in connection with this same transcontinental route, five giant ocean-going freight ships, the largest yet known, each to be 750 feet in length, of 74 feet beam, and with a carrying capacity of 22,000 tons. These ships will carry American cotton to Japan, for use instead of the short-staple cotton of India, until recently used by Japan. They will enable the railroad-builders of Japan to figure as exactly on the price of a ton of rails as can the contractor of Kansas or Nebraska. They will lay down a barrel of Minnesota flour in China or the Philippines at a cost for carriage of not over $1.25. All this shows to what extent American commerce, made active by American transportation methods, is invading the markets of the world; for, at this same time, Russia can not lay down a barrel of (an inferior) flour at the seaboard of China for less than $4.25. Surely our prophet of 1855 dreamed more wisely than he knew!
[53] The desecration of America, in the terrible devastation of her forests, is something no observant man can face with composure.
[54] The time is not one for individual optimism, and the old hopefully self-reliant spirit of the West must be content to lose its personal quality in the larger and vaguer, though not less certain, tendencies of modern life. Bearing upon a theme kindred to the above, James Bryce, author of “The American Commonwealth,” recently found occasion to write: “National ideals to-day tend toward a large and strong state, with vast external possessions, with a huge army and navy, with an extending trade, and great consequent wealth; and the ideal of education is less toward ‘unprofitable culture’ and more toward subjects that enable men to raise themselves in the world. People now talk more about capital and labor. Formerly there seemed rather more faith in the power of reason, rather more hope of progress to be secured by political change. Altogether there seemed rather more of a sanguine spirit formerly. Mankind must never cease to cherish and follow the dream of that golden age, which at one time they believed to lie in the past, but which for some centuries had been supposed to glimmer in the future. They must never forget that hope. But the golden age seemed nearer in 1850 than it does now.”
[55] The late Cushman K. Davis, United States senator from Minnesota.
[56] In 1902 Canada began to emulate the history of the United States, and planned for the building of two more transcontinental railways. She could inflict no greater blow to the United States. V. also Chap. V, Vol. IV; “The Pathways of the Future.”
[57] Engineers disagree as to the possibility of making a ship-canal of the great highway of the Mississippi; but engineers have always disagreed about the doing of great things, and then have always done them. It is likely that the dream of that shrewd merchant-explorer, Louis Joliet, will eventually be realized, and the Chicago drainage-canal will in that case attain a great importance. Indeed, inland-water transportation may be upon the eve of a great development. Thus, in December, 1900, there was organized a canal company for the purpose of navigating the Red River of the North, of improving the channel by dredging, putting in locks and reservoirs, to regulate that historic stream into conditions virtually those of a canal. Another curious proposition to reach Congress in the same year was a bill for the purpose of building a ship-canal between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, an enterprise which would have great significance in the coal and iron trade. This canal would follow the course of La Salle on his first journey from the Great Lakes—the old south-bound war-trail of the Six Nations. Geography, of all things, seems to repeat itself. No one may tell what new importance this canal proposition may attain, though it may be dormant for a time. Early in the year 1901 the leading journals of Germany were discussing the prospects of a canal from Chicago to the Atlantic Ocean, and held the enterprise practicable. As showing the extent of water-transportation on our Great Lakes, it may be stated that more tonnage passes Sault Ste. Marie in seven months of each year than goes through the Suez Canal in three years. The city of Duluth alone, at the head of the water-trail, has a tonnage each year of more than 11,500,000 tons.
[58] The population of Michigan in the decade 1890-1900 drifted rapidly toward the cities. Yet the Michigan railroads are bravely trying to solve the problem of building up a population on the country desolated by the lumbermen, and with great success are developing resources in agriculture and manufactures which for a long time lay unsuspected.
[59] In this connection the census map offers an unfailing interest. Investigation shows that our star, denoting the center of population, has traveled in all only 525 miles since 1790, the greatest west-bound gains being in the decade 1850-60, 81 miles. At no time has the center of population moved back toward the East, though it is nearer to doing so now than ever before—proof that the history of America has been but the history of a West, and also proof that that wayward West may soon bend its footsteps homeward after a century of adventure. The record of the movement of the population center is as follows: 1790, 23 miles east of Baltimore, Maryland; 1800, 18 miles west of Baltimore, Maryland; 1810, 40 miles northwest by west of Washington, D. C.; 1820, 16 miles north of Woodstock, Virginia; 1830, 19 miles west-southwest of Moorefield, West Virginia; 1840, 16 miles south of Clarksburg, West Virginia; 1850, 23 miles southeast of Parkersburg, West Virginia; 1860, 20 miles south of Chillicothe, Ohio; 1870, 48 miles east by north of Cincinnati, Ohio; 1880, 8 miles west by south of Cincinnati, Ohio; 1890, 20 miles east of Columbus, Indiana; 1900, 7 miles north of Columbus, Indiana.