CHAPTER XVI. THE GROWING BREADTH OF RELATIONS TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD. The actual usefulness of the resources of the Valley, and the degree in which they will become sources of colossal wealth to its inhabitants, depends on the development of other sections and other nations in different lines. As these become wealthy and great in other ways, and require and are able to pay for the excess of its special products, those products will acquire value. If others do not need, and will not buy, at remunerative prices, what it can furnish beyond its own consumption it will still be poor in the midst of its abundance; its activity will be checked; and it will be unable to purchase the thousand things it does not produce and which enter so largely, in modern times, into the list of necessities, comforts or luxuries of life. A due estimate of the Valley, therefore, requires some knowledge of the character and degree of development of outside regions. The Eastern or Atlantic States bear closer and more important relation to the center of the continent than any other region. At first, they contained the nation; for more than half the period of its existence they have held the great mass of its population and have always held the larger part of its surplus wealth and owned and conducted the mass of its commerce, trade and manufactures. It has been only within a few years that this central section, so long and laboriously occupied in laying foundations, has so far succeeded as to begin to accumulate on a large scale. The East, by its position facing Europe, has always had a substantial monopoly of commerce and must always possess eminent advantages in that respect over the rest of the coun THE RELATIONS OF THE VALLEY WITH THE EAST. 483 The try. The constant growth of its commerce is secure. southern and central Valley will naturally obtain a considerable share of that branch of activity, by the gulf and its great river, but it will be chiefly a division of the growth of commerce, immense in itself as the South develops its untouched resources and the markets of the world enlarge; but small compared with the upper Atlantic regions-placed directly between the grain-growing States of the Northwest and Europe, with the immense advantage of the chain of great lakes and easy railway communications. The commercial superiority of the Atlantic region will always make its prosperity a matter of great interest to the upper Valley. But it is still more eminent for its manufactures than its commerce. We have seen that a considerable degree of transfer of some of these industries to the Valley began between 1860 and 1870. Western Pennsylvania and Ohio together produced four fifths as much as Massachusetts, in 1870, and Illinois and Missouri together about the same, and, united, these four Western regions produced one fourth more than New York; but that did not prevent a colossal development of manufactures in the East during that decade. The products of the manufactures of Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania rose from less than one thousand million dollars' value in 1860, to more than two thousand five hundred million in 1870; and at the last date they produced considerably more than half the manufactures of the entire Union. Transfers of much importance, of some of these industries, are likely to be made westward and the Valley will soon far excel the present manufactured values of the whole country; yet it can not be questioned that the East will always maintain a great superiority. America is beginning to manufacture for the foreign world on a larger scale each year; and the advantages of vicinity to the great commercial ports, of vast investments made and tendencies produced, will preserve to it the lead in this direction probably in all the future. The East has its agricultural greatness, also. In 1870 the value of farms in New York was greater than that of any other State in the Union by more than two hundred and fifty million dollars; Pennsylvania was only slightly exceeded by Ohio, and exceeded Illinois by eighty million dollars; and the agricultural interest in the East, generally, is one of great magnitude. But it will be remembered that one third of Pennsylvania is in the Valley, and that much of New York is the eastern part of the Great Lake system by geological origin, as well as by position and soil, and that system is an essential part of the Valley. Nor is it to be forgotten that, having the great advantage of lying near the centers of population and wealth, these States have already reached a comparative maturity of agricultural development, while most of the Valley proper has, as yet, produced only its first fruits and given but a hint of its capacities. While, then, the results of agriculture in the East will be comparatively stationary, the Valley agriculture may be developed to any desirable extent for centuries to come. The proportion of food produced in the East to its population will constantly diminish and its relations to the welfare of the Valley enlarge in the same degree. By its commercial and manufacturing superiority it must gather a dense population, generally prosperous, which will furnish an ever larger market to the Valley. As, therefore, the Valley will be ever a large customer of the East so it will find in that section one of the largest sources of its wealth. They complement each other. The mining regions of the Pacific section are comparatively new, but had the foundations of their Anglo-American civilization laid with surprising speed under the stimulus of gold discoveries. These were enlarged and consolidated by the construction of the Pacific Railway, connecting them with the East, which was completed in 1869. They decreased in the product of precious metals from sixty-five million dollars, in THE PACIFIC SLOPE AND THE VALLEY. 485 1853, to thirty-six millions, in 1872 and 1873; but the great quantity of these metals deposited through the whole range of the Rocky Mountains becomes more evident as they are more carefully examined, and they may be relied on to furnish a constant supply for centuries to come, and also vast quantities of more common, but more useful, mineral products. The product of gold and silver in this whole region, including Colorado, Montana and westward to the Pacific, was estimated to have amounted, between the years 1848 and the commencement of 1876, to one thousand, five hundred and ninety million dollars. Yet its true mining wealth must be considered as but slightly drawn upon. Already more than a million inhabitants are spread along the Pacific Slope or scattered through the valleys and gorges of the mountains. San Francisco will become another New York-the metropolis of a populous region and numerous States, the center of vast commerce with Japan, China and the East Indies; other railways will join this coast with the Valley and with the East; and, in time, its commerce and the products of its mines will become, perhaps, almost as important in value as the products of the East. Its agricultural capacities are not the least of its resources, as yet. In 1870 the value of the farms of California amounted to $141,000,000, and their products to about $50,000,000, increased to over $54,000,000 in 1875, exclusive of its fruits, while its live stock was then valued at more than $45,000,000. Its entire income, from all these resources, must have amounted, in that year, to $65,000,000-the largest sum it ever produced in one year from its mines. Yet, great as is the agricultural capacity which these statistics indicate, commerce, manufactures and mining will gather a great population of non-agriculturists, whose demands for food can not be supplied by the utmost resources of all the lands of those States which can be cultivated with profit, great as future results are certain to prove, with irrigation. In time, the abundant food products of the Valley will flow across the mountains to its commercial centers for the use of its population and for export to Asia or the islands of the Pacific. The mining industries, the forests, and the commerce of the Pacific side of the continent will ultimately raise that region to a prosperity and a magnitude of development rivaling the East; for it has a field more vast without the same rivalry from Furope. Western America will regenerate Asia, in the course of time, by its free and natural civilization, and grow rich in the process. Thus, the Valley finds itself midway between two sections whose internal capacities and outside relations assure them a boundless development. The East has two classes of markets, whose capacity to receive from her will constantly enlargeEurope and all the lands readily reached by the commerce of the Atlantic on one side, and those of the inexhaustibly fertile Valley on the other. The extreme West is equally favored by ready connections with Asia, the East Indies and the tropical wealth of the Pacific islands on one side, and the Valley on the other. By means, then, of these two powerful supports-these two arms stretched out east and west to Europe and Asia-the Valley makes its great superiority in its own special resources felt to the ends of the earth. Steam and the electric telegraph have quite changed the relations of those communities of mankind called nations. From the dawn of history nations have been, in general, Ishmaelites to each other-each in a state of violent antagonism to the rest, which, as a rule, only prudence and a sense of weakness restrained. Alliances were formed to give temporary strength for self-protection or for offense. As civilization ripened in modern times, and wide-spread activities required some check to this spirit ever threatening a sudden and dangerous outbreak of war, a loose confederacy was formed, among the most civilized nations, to maintain the "Balance of Power" in Europe. It put a curb on ambition and raised strong barriers against the destructive exercise of military |