of the various parties, in time. Industrial forces will learn to act independently of political differences, for the Age of Reason has already dawned. Many other questions have been settled by the law of interest during the last half century and all the rest will be arranged in their turn. This certainly secures the future of the North and South Atlantic States. Their era of colossal development has only begun. New England, which has done so much, is to do incomparably more; and the States south of Virginia have every reason to consider their past and present as nothing compared with their future. Already the surplus of the northern and western regions of the Valley are beginning to flow from Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and many other points through the defiles of Tennessee and northern Georgia to Savannah and the southeast coast. The southern basin will soon begin to pour its own growing flood of production in the same direction, to which, in due time, will be added the vast treasures of northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona and southern California. Great industrial interests in the Antilles, the northeastern States of South America, and in western Africa are springing into life and will arouse activity along the south Atlantic Coast of the United States to correspond.

There is to be no monopoly of wealth and progress hereafter. What natural highways can not do for each section artificial ones will accomplish, and Unity in Diversity, diffused prosperity, interdependent resources and wealth will cement the political union while it assures the freedom and sufficient independence of each of the component parts.

CHAPTER XI.

THE EAST AS A LEADER.

The great, smooth, fertile center of the United Statesvariously and endlessly productive from the higher slopes of the Alleghanies to the steep sides of the main ridge of the Rocky Mountains-naturally impresses itself deeply on the character and history of the people. The unity of its river system and the continuity of its almost level surface from Fort Benton to Pensacola and from Pittsburgh and Duluth to New Orleans and the mouth of the Rio Grande furnish a breadth to activity and a fullness of reward to industry that give it indisputable rank as a leader. The mass of the people are already there, and, since majorities rule, the Great Valley can give a decisive answer to every question on which its whole population unite.

The great golden West beyond the plains has already shown itself an important factor in national affairs. However small its population it is financially strong-a treasure vault, a bank of hard cash for the country-and is daily acquiring weight by its many resources and the wonderful future whose grand outlines can even now be slightly sketched. It does not require the gifts of a prophet to comprehend that the grand Republic of the New World, with its new race crowned by the halo of industrial and commercial genius, has not reached a limit at the Pacific shore. It is a new beginning, a fresh commencement of growth, at least as much more majestic than any possible with the Atlantic alone as a commercial highway as the Pacific is more ample than the former modest ocean.

America began to loom up vast and mighty to the eyes of Europe, the merchants and manufacturers of the Atlantic

Slope began to gather princely fortunes, and the Great Valley to bring all its immense surface into market for use when the first State sprung up on the Pacific Coast. The whole country became conscious of its greatness when the gold of the West began to flow in a powerful tide of surplus capital into the channels of trade, furnished the means to build railroads and developed all lines of business in equal proportions. The wealth of the Pacific Slope has not yet been gauged, Pacific commerce has only begun. The view of future possible progress by these means stretches off beyond the Pacific a boundless horizon. The Pacific Slope began at once a magnificent leadership.

But the Atlantic Coast was the birthplace and is still the home of the brilliant Anglo-American Race and its mighty fortunes. All that is most excellent in thought, in character, in conduct, in institutions, inventions and industries first sprang up here before being transferred to the larger field and the broader career of the West. Nor was the East prolific only of beginnings. Stimulated by a large field opened for supplies in the West it gave itself to perfecting what it had begotten. Its children it educated with zeal and carefulness, after the most approved methods, before sending them West. It labored after the best systems of law, of politics, of religion, and contributed them to the new communities beyond the Alleghanies. Its press, its forum, its pulpit grew constantly purer, more intelligent and high toned, more nervous and forcible, and labored earnestly for the best interests of the young States and Territories. Mental and moral activity constantly rose in ardor and deepened in their intensity, re-arranging, improving, inventing, to present the best and most perfect products of their labors to the West.

Many of its best educators, its most promising youth, its most experienced and successful men of business it supplied to the new States, that they might lay the best possible foun

THE EAST MATURES AND FLOURISHES.

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dations for future excellence. Much of the legislation of the nation for the new regions was in the same kindly and unselfish spirit. But the millions of its children it sent west did not leave empty homes and dwindling cities and industries behind them. Those who were left received other millions of immigrants, the peasants and artisans of Europe, put them in the fields, the kitchens, the workshops, the manufactories, and trained them to be good American citizens. They did not allow themselves to be overrun or controlled, to be outvoted or their progress embarrassed, because their own people were drained away and strangers took their places. The vigor of order and patriotism never waned on the Atlantic Slope. It was a most remarkable history. Rome, depleted of its citizens of the old and vigorous stock in the course of its conquests, lost its purity and self-command, and became a hideously criminal and dying Empire. The Atlantic States were constantly sending off the old stock in a widening and deepening tide of emigration to a score of States in the Mississippi Valley, yet maintaining and strengthening the old tendencies with constantly increasing liberality and thorough

ness.

It was, therefore, a natural and necessary leader, and maintained a general and very natural control over the development of the new regions. If the young States learned new lessons the old mothers conned them carefully and appropriated all the good of them. They never fell into dotage and stereotyped forms, maintaining a healthy progressiveness, constantly learning, rejecting the imperfect and adopting the improved, or, at least, making fair trial of all that seemed to be so. Its business men projected western enterprises, made investments and profited by new openings for gain and the great rise in property values produced by the increase of settlement. Although this was in the pursuit of personal gain it was a great advantage to a new country to have men of foresight and resources of capital interested in its growth and prosperity.

So, for their own ends, but not less to the well-being of the western pioneers and settlers, New York dug a canal that connected the waters of Lake Erie and Hudson River, and furnished water transportation from the upper Valley to the sea; Pennsylvania improved the road from Delaware River to Pittsburgh, and dug more or less canals; and a national road, called the Cumberland, smoothed the land passage from the Potomac to the Ohio. The genius of Fulton and the capital of the East had perfected the steamboat which Hudson River, where it was first used, may be said to have presented to the Ohio.

one.

Here was the appropriate work of a leader done as efficiently as could be desired. In all good words and works pertaining to civilization, industry and general progress it instructed and aided the West as only an old country can a new But there was a great want of capital and the East was itself a new country with no large stores of accumulations. The commerce and manufactures of a great country had to be created after the western pioneers had commenced to multiply new States. The surplus products of the Great Valley itself were largely employed by the diligent enterprise of the East in gathering the necessary wealth. It stimulated production West by its great activities; exported, imported, manufactured, invented, multiplied machinery that economized human muscle, and, in a thousand ways, contributed to Western success-but in nothing more than by its own successful finance. The increase of its own wealth, its manufactories and cities and commerce furnished vital force to the new States by giving them markets. Otherwise they would have been buried and helpless under the surfeit of their own unsalable products.

Such was its successful leadership up to the introduction of Railroads. The beginnings of railroad enterprises date about 1830; but they made slow progress for many years. Time was required to learn the methods of organization and