“Astonishing as the statement may appear,” says the Denver News, “it is nevertheless a fact that there are here, within the borders of Colorado, the wealth in coal of two or even three States like Pennsylvania. For the vast trans-Missouri country, eastward, even to the valley of the Mississippi, Colorado is the great present and future storehouse of the fuel which the demands and necessities of its varied commercial and industrial life will require. Many generations hence, when Colorado shall have become an old State, when the frontier days shall have been forgotten, when gold and silver mining shall have ceased to be profitable, even then will the coal fields of Colorado be yielding their hidden treasures of fuel to supply the demand.”
We have no territory which sanitary science may not render a healthful home, and we have millions of acres of elevated territory, where the highest conditions of human health and happiness may be attained in connection with the highest spiritual development. But these regions are not on the Eastern coast, chilled by the icy currents from the North. “Westward the star of empire wends its way,” and the Pacific Coast is destined to witness the development of the highest civilization on the globe. Of the health and beauty of California all its residents can speak, but physicians can give decisive facts. Dr. King, of Banning, Cal., says, “Out here we scarcely know what storms are. All winter long my front yard has been green and beautiful—roses blooming in January, and callas in March. During three and a half years there have been but two cases of acute disease of the chest within six miles of my office. I do not know of any death having occurred in this village or vicinity from an acute disease, since I came here nearly four years ago.” What are the lauded climates of Italy and Greece compared to such a record as this?
DARK CLOUDS.
But what are the clouds that dim the brightness of our coming glory, and already overshadow us? The greatest of all is the curse of intemperance. Secretary Windom said, in his address at the Cooper Union meeting in New York, (May 25):
“I do not think I overstate the case when I say that the 200,000 saloons in this country have been instrumental in destroying more human life in the last five years than the 2,000,000 of armed men during the four years of the Rebellion. There is an irrepressible conflict upon us. This nation cannot endure half drunk and half sober any more than it could endure half slave and half free.”
Gov. St. John, late candidate for the presidency, said, in his New, York address:
“There are about 215,000 retail liquor houses in this nation. Allowing 20 feet to each, it gives us an unbroken liquor front of about 781 miles. Just think of it! Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of profanity and vulgarity. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of Sabbath-breaking. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of drunkard-making. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of filth, debauchery, anarchy, dynamite and bombs. [Applause]. Seven hundred and eighty-one miles of political corruption; seven hundred and eighty-one miles of hot-beds for the propagation of counterfeiters, wife-beaters, gamblers, thieves, and murderers.
“In the High License City of Chicago, in the great Republican State of Illinois, there are, within five blocks of Halstead Street Mission, 325 saloons, 129 bawdy houses, 100 other houses of doubtful repute, theatres, museums and bad hotels, and only two places for the worship of Almighty God. (Cries of ‘Shame!’)”
St. John should have added that intemperance was the most powerful agency for the propagation of intellectual and moral idiocy in offspring.
The increase of insanity in spite of our defective systems of education is universally recognized. The New York Sun says:
“The very rapid increase of insanity in the United States during the last two or three decades continues to be the subject of much discussion among alienists, and all those who are concerned in public charities. That a prime cause of this alarming state of things is the shipment to our shores of the enfeebled and defective of other countries, is now beginning to be understood, and both our own State Board of Charities and the National Conference of Charities and Correction have called on Congress to protect our society against the introduction of these depraved specimens of humanity, who speedily become a charge on the public, or transmit their weakness to their posterity.
“The statistics of insanity show that, in general, the proportion of the insane is greatest in the older States, where the foreign population is most numerous, and it is least where the communities are new, as, for instance, in the pioneer counties of Wisconsin. The South, which has drawn comparatively little from immigration, suffers from insanity to a much less extent than New England and New York; and it is an established fact that the Negro race is much less liable to insanity than the white. The average of insanity in New England is 1 to every 359 of the population; in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, 1 to every 424; while in the extreme Southern States the average is only 1 to 935.
“The West, like the South, is more free from insanity than the Northern seaboard States, the average being 1 to every 610 in the interior States, and 1 to 750 for the Northwestern States. In the far Western States and Territories it is only 1 out of 1,263, they being settled by a picked population, whose energy and soundness make them pioneers. It is note-worthy, however, that insanity is as frequent in the Pacific States as in New England, the explanation being that vice and indulgence prevail to an exceptional extent among the population drawn to the Pacific by the mania for gold. The average in Massachusetts, for instance, is 1 to 348; in California 1 to 345. It is also remarkable that the ratio of insanity decreases as we go west and south of New England, as these averages will show: New England, 1 to 359; Middle States, 1 to 424; interior States, 1 to 610; Northwestern States, 1 to 750; Southern States 1 to 629.
“The State where the proportion is highest is Vermont, 1 to 327; and New Hampshire comes next, with 1 to 329. We are at a loss to understand why insanity is so frequent in the District of Columbia, the average given being 1 to 189; but perhaps the large average in Vermont and New Hampshire may, in part, be due to the circumstance that those States receive the refuse of Canadian poor-houses, they having a much better organized system of charitable relief than the Dominion can boast of; and it is undeniable that some of the very worst of our immigration comes from over the Canadian border. That immigration, too, is now great, and there are factory towns in New England where the population is largely made up of French Canadians.”