preserved wooden houses of the present than counterbalanced by the expense of day.

necessary renewals of soap, clothing, wallpaper, furniture, and paint, to say nothing of breathing the sulphur fumes and rubbing the grime into the countenances of the people and their children. Not always will factory chimneys spread their pall upon the sky. Most of us will live to see the Western cities supplied with gas piped from the mining regions, and supplied as we now supply water to every user.

As for the minerals, each succeeding generation shakes its head and predicts extinction, Twenty years ago the oil wells of the Alleghany River began to fail, yet now six times more oil is marketed every year than in those flush days. Heaps of slack mark the mouths of the old "coal banks in Pennsylvania and central Ohio; but ever-widening coalfields are opened up in Illinois, in the Indian Territory, in the Dakotas, and in Montana. Inexhaustible these deposits certainly are not, but from decade to decade arrive new applications and simplifications of power and new ways of utilizing the full force imprisoned in the coal. The abundance of God's gifts of fuel has brought about one of the weakest elements in Western character-the indifference to the filth and squalor of a smokeladen atmosphere. The first condition of health and decency is cleanliness, and nobody can keep clean in any Western city. One form of wealth, most obvious in As a question of mere money-making and other civilized countries, the Mississippi money-saving, the people of the Missis- Valley as yet knows little of, for it has sippi Valley show themselves incompetent few good highways, though every variety and barbarous, for the extra profits from may be found. The Kentucky dirt the unrestricted use of soft coal are more road" wriggles down the side of a hill,

The development of other minerals is beyond the reach of prediction. What we do know is that gold, silver, lead, and copper are extracted upon constantly more and more favorable terms as science, energy, and skill combine to make the old deposits more available and to discover new. The great problem here is not to discover mines, but to save for the common benefit the riches which nature has stored up and which individuals are appropriating.

as though a waterspout had burst at the ownership of manufacturing and transtop and carried down soil and rock in a porting corporations. Indeed, the rapid confused channel; the deep-worn South- growth of these Western cities is already ern track cuts into the red soil; the rib- among the world's wonders: a house bon road lies on the Dakota prairie; the standing alone on the prairie; the station viscous winter slough of northern Ohio on a new railroad; the junction crossing clay pulls off the horses' shoes; the stone of two railroads; a little manufacturing pikes of Tennessee jolt the wayfarer; and place upon which new railroads converge; the splendid macadam parkways of favor- a big, bustling town, full of life; a city, ed cities show what good roads may be. with a beautiful residence quarter and a As yet the people of the Mississippi Val- squalid, dust-ridden settlement down at ley do not dream of the comfort and profit the railroad stations; a great city, with a possible from a system of roads always in union depot and a chamber of commerce, order-good, hard, serviceable all the year asking architects all over the world to round, well surveyed, and so engineered compete on its buildings; a splendid city, that the steep hills disappear. Hun- a beehive of busy men and women, luxuridreds of millions of dollars have been ous and magnificent, with imposing pubspent upon making city streets and coun- lic buildings and boulevards and miles of try roads, and millions are spent every comfortable homes. year, and yet there is no one single Western State that has a system of highways which would be tolerated in the smallest German principality, or in the frontier and almost barbarian regions of Herzegovina and Bosnia. The obstacle seems to be the cost of labor, or rather the assumption that road-making requires skillea labor. Perhaps the great problem of

Up to this time it must be owned that the Mississippi Valley has run rather to great cities than to notable communities. New Orleans is the one ancient city in the whole region. St. Louis and Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, Memphis, Cincinnati, Pittsburg, and Denver, are most of them still in the rough, everywhere edges showing, vacant lots gaping,

convict labor is to be solved by an intelligent system of road-construction adequate to the needs of a civilized people.

unsightly earth banks furnishing ugliness to the eye and dust to the nostrils. And through most parts of the West the villages and country towns are much inferior to those of New England, New York, or northern Ohio in trimness and tidiness. Fifty years hence these cities will be more closed up, more trim and turfedged, and some of

them, notably Minneapolis, have already entered upon the construction of a wide-reaching system of parks, to be a In the future, as at the present, the beauty and a joy to later generations. great wealth of the Mississippi Valley is When the population of the valley reaches certain to be centred in the cities, rich in 250,000,000, several of the present cities accumulations of buildings and of stocks will have a population of from 2,000,000 of goods, and rich also in the evidences of to 10,000,000, and woe betide them if

veloped into the Republican party of 1856. The States of the Mississippi Valley now cast 215 electoral votes out of 444; the census of 1900 will give them a majority of the electors, as they already have almost a majority of Senators. Of course this political influence has never been concentrated, because of divisions between North and South and between political parties; but in the councils of public men in Washington the voice of the Western members is always powerful and often paramount.

When the Federalists in 1803 protested against the annexation of Louisiana, they were wise in their day and generation, The term "West" is here used in the for they were right in expecting that Atlantic coast sense, for Ohio and even eventually the supremacy of the Atlantic Illinois are thought by the communities coast States would disappear. In the beyond the Mississippi to have an Eastern Presidential election of 1828, the States savor, and some people have even exof the Mississippi Valley had the balance pected a division of the Union on the line of power, and threw it without hesitation of the Appalachian Mountains. Almost for Andrew Jackson for President; and in the only perfectly safe prediction about the West soon after sprang up the effec- the Mississippi Valley is that it will tive Free Soil party, which gradually de- never be politically disassociated from the

Confederacy tried to attach the Western States by offering them the unrestricted use of the Mississippi River. The force of

West to stand by its seaport relations, and at the same time to insist upon its right to the Mississippi. The most enduring lesson of the Civil War is that no State, or group of States, will ever be allowed to withdraw from its sisters without war. Indeed, many parts of the West are simply transplantations from the East; thus

Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The French fully tried in 1861, when the Southern sought to build up an inland empire, and the force of political gravity drew their realm towards the Atlantic settlements. Burr dreamed a dream of a Mississippi self-interest then and there compelled the kingdom, and he could not convince even the shallow Wilkinson that it was possible. Jefferson Davis offered the alliance of the Southern Confederacy to the Northwest States, and they clave to their Eastern brethren. The East and West are no more politically separated from each other than Rhode Island from Connecticut, or Illinois from Iowa. The Appalachian the Western Reserve of Ohio was for Mountains have long ceased to be a physical barrier between East and West, and the two sections are dependent upon each other-the West has the food-supply; the East, the manufactories and seaports.

If the two sections were at this moment separate countries, the object of the statesmen in the East would be to open up unrestricted trade with the West, and the

years a little Connecticut; Michigan has the New England town-meeting; Massachusetts men abound in Minnesota, and New Yorkers in Illinois and Nebraska. Rivalry between the two sections there will always be; divergence and disunion will never come. From the days when the Kentucky "broad-horn" boats were seized by the Spanish at New Orleans, down to

Nevertheless, the existence of a distinct sation. The vice of megalomania is, how

nd self-conscious section having seaports ever, not confined to Gulf-directed waters. nly on the Gulf does deeply affect the Great, roaring New York, broad - spread lirection of national policy, especially in Philadelphia, Boston of the Public Liforeign relations. Our forefathers valiant- brary, have also their own standards of y fought a valiant foe in their Indian wars, what is grandest in the world; one might and our fathers measured their strength say of the West what was once remarked against each other in the Civil War; but about a new university which made no the Mississippi Valley is, and must hence- secret of its advantages, “The trumpet forth be, a region of internal peace. A is a pretty toy for children "; and the miners' riot, a little shooting of negroes West might reply, with Dr. Sampson, at an election, a railroad strike, are the "Yes, I am a vain man; but then I have only opportunities for the use of force good rizzon to be vain." within the boundaries of the valley. The biggest stock-yard in the world is A few years ago the legislature of important, and becomes more important West Virginia presented a sword to as dinner-time approaches; but a little one of its sons who was an officer in thoroughbred may be more valuable than the United States navy, and bade him a car-load of Indian ponies. In a counbe ever ready to draw that sword for the try town of New Hampshire is a little defence of his native State. Not till the open-air theatre constructed on the modest enemies' gunboats find their way up the estate of the artist who designed it, by Mississippi, Ohio, and the Great Kana- the friendly aid of neighbors; it is as wha to West Virginia will the Mississippi much a work of art as the Washington Valley have to defend itself. Yet no one Monument on the Potomac flats. The West who has watched the trend of public opin appreciates the monument, but would think ion during the last few years can doubt the theatre a plaything, and cannot quite that it is the fixed desire of the major- understand that dimensions have nothing ity of people in the interior to extend to do with beauty or comfort, or with the power and influence of the United States by annexation of territory and by a share in the world's diplomacy. It is not simply its sheltered position which leads to this feeling, for the West is ready to pour forth its sons for national defence, or even for national aggression; it is a desire that a great nation should have a great part in the world at large. In case of real war, the coast cities may have to pay the bill, but, for good or evil, the foreign policy of the United States appears to be in the hands of the people of the Mississippi Valley.

One of the most frequent criticisms of the West is that the people are more impressed by a big thing than by a good thing. Immensity, broad space, towering mountains, the vastness of the Mississippi, impress the imagination of the people; the greatest river in North America, the longest air-line in the world, the heaviest ten-wheel consolidation locomotive drawing the longest train of most heavily laden cars bursting with the biggest crop of wheat sold for the most money in the history of mankind-these are the staples of the journalist, the subject of conver

success. The truth is that the West is just now in the condition of a great building solidly founded, well constructed, but still surrounded by stagings, the people as yet more interested in the height of the walls than in the beauty of a cornice or the humor of a gargoyle. What the West needs-and what the East needs, for that matter-is a proper scale of proportion, such as makes one Lincoln look larger than 10,000 aldermen.

The people of the West need no one to tell them that they are many, rich, powerful, prosperous, and advancing. What they do need, most of all, is that respect for trained expert opinion which is so difficult to secure in a democratic republic like ours; and a broader standard of distinction.

Pork, corn, wheat, cotton, sugar, steel rails, reapers, wagons, shelf hardware, and shingles, will take care of themselves in the West. But will the Mississippi Valley take its place among the great intellectual communities of the world? Scoffers and Philistines accuse the West of having got no farther than the Pacific coast poet, who had plainly much advanced in culture